How To Gain Weight On A Vegan Diet: Tips & Meal Plan

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A healthy, balanced vegan diet can be a great way to gain weight if that is your aim. It is full of healthy foods that are rich in good fats, protein, and carbohydrates which can all be used to meet those weight-gain goals.

Why Do You Need to Gain Weight?

There could be any number of reasons, including recovering from a recent spell of ill-health to building muscle mass, usually to improve physique or performance in a sport. The vegan diet has been adopted by many top athletes and found to be optimal for this purpose. If you need convincing, we feel sure that watching The Game Changers movie will be enough to make anyone reach for the black beans instead of the beef for their post workout meal.

If you have experienced unexpected weight loss, we recommend seeing a medial practitioner who can get to the root cause. But for those wishing to gain weight healthily and sustainably on a vegan diet, we can help!

What Is a Vegan Diet?

A vegan diet is a part of the vegan philosophy that seeks to exclude the use of all foods taken from animals to avoid contributing to their exploitation and harm. So, when it comes to diet, this means no meat, fish, eggs, or dairy but that still leaves us with a bounty of fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, grains and all the products made from them.

This healthy selection is often seen as a negative for gaining weight, as people may prioritize protein-dense foods like meat and dairy, but there are protein-dense vegan foods, too, and they come without the unhealthy fats and other negative health outcomes associated with products taken from animals. Plus, choosing plant foods means we get plenty of other key nutrients like fiber, vitamin c and more.

In short, the vegan diet can provide plenty of protein and healthy fats for healthy weight gain, whilst also nourishing other aspects of your health.

Why Can’t Some Vegans Gain Weight?

Negative caloric deficit is the most common reason for difficulty gaining weight. As many healthy plant-based foods are high in fiber and water content, we may feel full before we have taken in the required calories to gain weight. If our solution is to just eat more of these foods, this can leave us feeling sick, bloated, and still behind on the calories we need.

Fear not, there is a simple solution. The answer is caloric density. This merely means understanding which food groups provide us with the most calories per 100g, and then eating as much of them as we need! Read on for a breakdown of the most calorically dense vegan foods out there.

How to Gain Weight on a Vegan Diet

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Everybody is different and it’s important to understand our current and expected calorie intake, metabolism, and body type before deciding on how we go about gaining weight. The following tips outline the best ways in which we can maximize our weight gain on a vegan diet.

Know Your Current Calorie Intake, Metabolism, and Body Type

The first step to gaining weight is simply figuring out your current calorie intake. Calorie King provides a free and easy calculator to find out how many calories are in our meals—a good approach is to track the ingredients you eat in a normal week, then calculate a total. Alternatively, there are many calorie tracking apps that will do this for you. Simple!

Then we should calculate our metabolism or Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Put simply, this is how many calories we need to sustain ourselves whilst resting.

If we want to gain weight, we want to take in enough calories to account for our BMR, plus the calories we burn during exercise, and then a bit more! This will result in a positive caloric balance and healthy weight gain. Active.com has a simple and easy to use BMR calculator to do the sums for us.

Body type also plays a part in our approach. Our body type is somewhat decided by genes, but is largely adaptable to our diet and exercise choices. The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) provides an excellent overview of body type and how we can adapt what we have into what we want.

Get Enough Calories

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the key to gaining weight is calories. A simple rule is making sure we take on more calories than we burn, and we can utilize both exercise and diet to do this.

Knowing which food groups are calorically dense is key! Eating large portions of only salad or veg, whilst healthy, won’t give us the calories we need to gain weight. Of course, we should continue to eat these nutritious foods, but they must be supplemented with more calorically dense options.

The Centre for Nutrition Studies outlines some examples (calories per 100g):

  • Vegetables: 25 calories
  • Fruits, potatoes, and starchy vegetables: 60 to 70 calories
  • Rice and grains: 125 calories
  • Avocado: 167 calories
  • Soy products (edamame, tempeh): 110 to 195 calories
  • Nuts: 600 calories

Here are a few tips for hitting your new calorie targets:

  • Utilize one of the many calorie tracking apps available to clearly visualize your calories.
  • Nuts, seeds, and avocados are your friends! These calorie-dense foods are delicious and great for bulking out calorie-light meals. Why not try nut butter satay sauce with your next stir fry!
  • Cooked grains like brown rice, quinoa, and barley can be a great addition to bulk meals like stews and soups.

Increase Your Food Intake

When gaining weight, try and think bigger! This doesn’t mean eating three pizzas in one night, but it does mean maxing out on those healthy fats and proteins like avocados, beans, tofu and more. This can take time to adjust to, so go slow if you need to.

Gena Hemshaw, author of ‘The Full Helping’ suggests a 50 percent increase in meal size as a good starting point. For example, instead of one sandwich for lunch, try a sandwich and a half. This will add up over time.

Snacking is also your best friend. Snack, between each meal if you can, on calorie-dense foods. Snack bars rich in nuts, seeds and oats are a great option as well as nutrient-dense smoothies full of nut butters and fruit.

Eat On Bigger Plates

Now this may seem like a strange tip, but the size of our plates has more of an effect than we might think!

Research shows that people tend to eat all of what they serve themselves. Nobody likes the look of a half-full plate, so increase the size of those plates, fill them up and you are much more likely to finish that larger portion.

Choose Energy Dense Foods More Often

Gaining weight is not just confined to set meal times. It is about adopting a mindset that focuses on choosing energy dense, calorie-rich foods at every opportunity. So, whilst it’s key to make sure you pack your main meals full of energy-dense foods, also look for them when you’re on the go.

Keep an eye out for energy bars that are rich in nuts, seeds, and grains. Even keeping a jar of peanut butter in your bag to dip fruit in is a great option for on-the-go snacking!

Skip Cardio Workouts

Whilst cardio is great for our health and fitness, it is also an efficient calorie-burner, and when gaining weight we want to maximize our calories. Of course, exercise is still key to a healthy lifestyle so we aren’t suggesting you cut it out entirely!

If you are looking to gain muscle mass, the No Meat Athlete suggests stopping all forms of cardio in the short term and actually reducing the number of workouts you do per week. Of course, for some people this isn’t realistic, so reducing the time and intensity of cardio workouts could be a good starting point.

Try this approach for 4-6 weeks and see what difference this makes to your weight gain, then reassess your goals.

6 High-Calorie Vegan Foods

So, we know now how to approach our calories to gain weight. Here are six examples of calorie-dense foods you can add to your diet to maximize your weight gains. Luckily they are all versatile and delicious!

Nuts

Nuts are a diverse calorie-dense food group. They also contain many essential nutrients and vitamins. Walnuts, for example, pack in 185 calories in a 28-gram serving and contain essential omega 3 fatty acids that are great for brain and heart health. Brazil nuts are an excellent source of selenium, which is essential for strong immunity and many other body processes.

Try adding a handful of chopped mixed nuts to oatmeal for a super-healthy, calorie-dense breakfast!

Avocado

Avocado is the perfect calorie-builder. It is also full of fiber and micronutrients such as vitamin c, folate and potassium. Plus, it is delicious and versatile. Try adding a whole avocado, along with grains, nuts and seeds to your salad for a calorie-rich lunch. Turn it into guacamole to accompany chili non carne, or add it to sandwiches or smoothies.

Quinoa

Quinoa contains around 222 calories per cup (185g), as well as protein, fiber, and many other essential micronutrients. It is also a complete protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids, making it the perfect ingredient for building muscle! Eat it with curry, chili or ratatouille; use it as the base for a herby salad; or as the filling to burritos.

Olive Oil

Oils often get a bad rep when it comes to healthy eating, but there is a reason a plant-based Mediterranean diet is considered one of the most healthy. Olive oil packs 119 calories into a single tablespoon, making it an easy ingredient to add calories to a soup, salad, or other meal

Unlike many of its vegetable oil counterparts, it is healthy, delicious and is high in antioxidants, so can reduce your risk of chronic disease.

Brown Rice

Not only is brown rice calorie-dense, with 216 per cup (195 grams cooked), it is also delicious, versatile, and usually inexpensive. It is also the perfect accompaniment for your protein and can be used to fill up those large plates.

Smoothies

Smoothies are a quick and convenient way of concentrating calories into one convenient dose! Make sure your smoothies are calorie-dense by adding nut butters and milks, soy yoghurt, seeds, avocados, and fruits like bananas.

Take Supplements If Necessary

Whilst nutrition is the most important factor in weight gain, supplements can play a role in assisting our progress, as well as making sure we are getting everything our bodies need. For vegans, a B12 supplement is recommended, and vitamin D and iodine are often useful, too.

If your weight-gain programme means cutting out foods that you rely on for certain vitamins and minerals, supplements are an easy way to make up for this.

Meal Plan For Gaining Weight On A Vegan Diet

There are endless options when it comes to weight-gain meal plans and of course it largely depends on the individual. As long as we are hitting those calorie-dense food groups in every meal, we’re on the right track.

Try this example day as a starting point for weight gain and adapt it depending on what works best for you. We have included two options for every meal to get you started:

Breakfast

Option 1: A big bowl of oatmeal with maple syrup, banana, flax seeds, nuts and soy milk
Add a protein shake if you are building muscle

Option 2: A bowl of soy yoghurt with banana, flax and chia seeds, and mixed nuts, alongside 1-2 slices of toasted rye bread with guacamole

Morning Snack 1: Handful of nuts and an apple
Morning Snack 2: Granola bites and a banana

Lunch

Option 1: A large portion of brown rice, black beans, avocado and salsa. Pack in as much as you can comfortably eat on this one!

Option 2: Large portion of quinoa and chickpeas, chopped avocado, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and olive oil dressing

Afternoon Snack: Peanut butter and jelly sandwich with wholemeal bread
Smoothie: Bananas, frozen berries, nut butter, soy milk, oatmeal, protein powder, and some greens blended up

Dinner

Option 1: Baked tofu or tempeh with a large bowl of lentil pasta, herbs, and veggies

Option 2: Stir fry made with almond butter satay sauce, tofu or tempeh, edamame beans and veggies. Served with wholewheat udon noodles

Dessert

Berries and vegan ice cream

Evening snack: Peanut butter and banana sandwich and some dark chocolate

This should stack up at around 3500-4000 calories, meaning you should easily end up with a positive calorie deficit. Once you know your calorie needs, play around with this kind of meal plan to find what’s right for you.

If your aim is not to build muscle and you just want to gain a little weight, why not try using the excellent Million Dollar Vegan starter kit meal plan as a starting point, along with some high-calorie additions such as the foods mentioned in this article.

Conclusion

There are so many calorie-rich and nutritious plant-based foods out there, that can be used to maximize weight gain.

The key takeaway message from this is to simply to understand our current calorie needs and metabolism, then make sure that we take on more calories than we burn. We do this by:

  • Prioritizing calorie-dense foods like nuts, avocados, whole grains, and soy products
  • Maximizing portion sizes so long as that is comfortable
  • Reducing cardio
  • Taking supplements if necessary

By sticking to these tips for at least 4-6 weeks and being disciplined with our approach, the results will come. Remember to make use of all the excellent tools out there like calorie counters, tracking apps, and meal plans to make sure you are best equipped to meet your goals.

Most importantly, get creative, have fun and enjoy the process.

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