What are some super-compact/dense foods that will give you a lot of calories? I feel like I run out of stomach room while I’m eating. For instance, if I eat 2 servings of oatmeal, then look at the label and see “Well I really want 6 servings in my stomach” but by then I’m full. Even rice or pasta takes up more room than I want.
All I can think of is Grape Nuts cereal. Would that be considered a super high-dense calorie food? What else is like that? And I don’t mean something with a ton of fat; you can guzzle oil if you really want condensed calories; I mean something more calorie-balanced (carbs/protein), preferably cheap and/or healthy for you!
Your most calorie dense foods (apart from oils) will be nuts and seeds as well as nut and seed butters (i.e. peanut butter).
IIRC I read somewhere that butter is very calorie dense as well and a preferred item for people who want to carry the most calories with them for the least weight (e.g. long distance hikers).
The OP is probably a skinny kid that wants to bulk up. I was a skinny kid who wanted to be bigger at one point. Now as a not quite as skinny as I would like to be adult I have the opposite issue.
There’s only a few basic kinds of food. Fiber is zero calories. Pure bulk. Water and vitamins are zero calories, too. Protein and carbs are each 4 calories per gram. Fat is 9 calories per gram. If you want to gain weight, you should pile on the fats. Butter, oils, fatty fish, nuts, avocado, peanut butter, bacon, etc. That’s how you “save room” in your stomach.
Although, it’s definitely not as simple as more mass (or volume) of food in your stomach makes you more full. But anecdotal experience among people trying to gain weight says that eating more fat helps a lot.
I was, also gonna say, fatty fish. It is amazing how much calories are in oily fish. Ask the bears during a salmon run, they pack on the weight for hibernation.
The holy trinity for bulking (ie adding calories that take minimum volume for the resulting weight gain) is:
Peanut butter - you can easily fit 1500 calories worth in a single shake (that’s half of a standard 16oz jar). For healthier, get the ones that only have peanuts and salt as ingredients.
Bacon - add it to or on top of any dish for culinary perfection and more calories. This is less healthy to do all the time, but fits fine if you eat low carb.
Cheese - add it to or on top of anything. A good variation is powdered parmesan cheese, where you can easily add hundreds of tasty calories to almost any dish, but there’s a staggering variety and breadth of cheeses you can use to complement almost any dish, including dessert. This is more healthy than bacon, but may be less healthy than peanut butter.
A fourth but oft-underrated option is Wolf brand chili - it’s ~800 calories per can, and that can is small - add some parmesan cheese or even double up to two cans, and you’ve got a good 1000 - 1800 calories in one normal sized meal.
