I don’t know where to post this, so I’m posting it here.
I need to gain some weight because I’m borderline anorexic. But I can’t afford much more than bread, potatoes, eggs and cheese, That is my diet. And I hate eating it. It’s the only thing I can stomach that is cheap, but I hate it. I don’t want to eat eggs and potatoes for the rest of my life. I would rather die of malnutrition, like I am currently doing.
I have no appetite, but that is a symptom of something else. Ideally, there is a way to gain weight while eating less mass. Something calorie dense.
I might be slightly exaggerating. But for the last couple of years I’ve been eating potatoes and eggs for almost every single meal of the day. And yes, I eat one warm meal a day. Sometimes I suppliment with some bread to stop the hunger pains. Sometimes I also eat a piece of vegetable.
Oil is expensive. So is electricity. Boiling is cheapest.
And I’m looking to gain weight, not make my food less miserable.
Gaining weight requires consuming more calories than you use . If you hate everything you cook you will not eat enough. Simple as.
I don’t hate everything I cook, I hate eating. It’s a chore. I have no appetite. I need a way to cram more calories into me without needing to do so much chewing and swallowing.
Then you need to make your food more calorie dense. The only way to gain weight is to consume more than you use. There is no other way.
Been on the no chewing journey, how are you with meal replacement shakes? The bulk powders come in lots of flavours and cand be very cheap per meal. It’s usually got dietary fibre, vitamins, minerals, and will healthify you far faster.
For potatoes, you need the skin included to keep nutritional value, which can be hard with no chew but doable.
You’re essentially thinking newborn diet, you need calorofic nutition that’s easy to eat even when you don’t want to.
You got this, it’ll get easier.
My meal smoothie is basically banana, white beans, spinachs, frozen fruits, lemon flavored yogurt and soy milk. I’d also add hemp hearts (expensive but super dense), nuts and a few other things. Also vanilla and almond extract for taste.
Thick blended soups are also an option. You can just drink them.
On a calories per dollar-ratio, oil is probably at least one quarter of the price of potatoes.
The difference in electricity costs is not going to be significant in the context since you’ll make back the money on the calories you ingest from the oil instead of more potatoes.
Cooking potatoes in oil is also very significantly less miserable than eating boiled potatoes, and this is coming from someone that actually likes boiled potatoes quite a bit
Oil is calories. Oil helps you gain weight. Same for butter, margarine and lard. If you can find a good price on any fat, buy it and use it.
You need 50g of oil to roast a kilo of potatoes, and you can buy 4L jugs of it.
Okay, and how do I gain weight from that?
Oil is very calorie dense
So why not just do a shot of rapeseed oil and be done with it? Why even involve the potato?
Am I going too far? Maybe. Will that stop me from trying? No.
did that some time ago, it’s not particularly nice tastewise, but you can just chug one or two shots a day - that’s about 700kcal if you do 40ml per “serving” the YouTuber “DougDoug” did something similar for his diet. if you buy the cheapest oil (here it’s sunflower I think) you’ll get extremely many calories per unit of Money. in Germany that’s about 3000 kcal per 1€
You absolutely can, if that’s what works for you. Nutritionally, there’s no difference between eating oil with a meal or separately. Lots of people take olive oil shots or mix butter in coffee or whatever and that’s OK. That approach can be particularly good if it’s helpful to think about it more like a supplement than a meal.
People may recommend against that in favor of working it into a meal you won’t hate eating, and there’s some merit to that for some people. But if eating is going to suck either way, just start by doing the thing that gets you calories. Work toward getting a mix of protein, fat, and carbohydrates (with potatoes + oil + eggs you have all 3) and fiber too. (potatoes have a bit) The rest can come later.
This page has a table of cheapest cost-per-calorie foods alongside some other general recommendations that may or may not be helpful. Notable items from that table are flour, bread, sugar, pasta, rice, olive oil, ramen, peanut butter, pinto beans, and lentils.
Ultimately though any food you’ll eat is always better than any food you won’t. A calorie is a calorie pretty much no matter what form it takes. You got this!
It makes the potato have more calories because it has oil in it.
Same amount of chewing and swallowing. More calories. It’s what you want!