I had trouble eating enough calories due to lack of appetite and relatively bad teeth, but I finally figured out a way to solve the problem, milkshakes, but now I have a different problem.
I want to create a shake that has loads of calories to gain the caloric surplus needed for exercising, but I don’t know which macronutrients to use, so here’s a few questions:
If I don’t pass over the recommended calorie limit, would it matter if most of the calories come from fat, like 2/3 of them, found in peanut butter? (I don’t plan using just peanut butter, but I want to know how fat works, I’m underweight, so I don’t want to get ,skinny fat", which is when your body fat percentage is too high and you are still underweight)
If I have enough proteins and fats in the shake, vitamins and so on and don’t pass over the calorie limit, would it matter if most carbs were sugars? I know that complex carbs are recommended, but since my goal is to gain as much calories as possible, would it matter that much?
If sugars on their own are a problem, is there a ratio of sugars : complex carbs I should look out for?
As long as you’re getting all of the nutrients you need (including macronutrients like proteins and fat and micronutrients like vitamins), and your total number of Calories is good, then nutritionally, it’s all the same. Where it can make a difference is in satiety: Some foods will make you feel more or less full than others, and so lead you to eat less or more total.
The one caution I would give is to make sure, not only that you’re getting enough total protein, but that your proteins are complete. Very few non-meat foods are complete by themselves, but there are combinations of plant foods you can eat that are. Probably the most common is legumes and grains.
I would just amend the above to say that, if in the U.S., you should consult a Registered Dietitian, rather than a nutritionist. Anyone can use the latter title, but there are some requirements for the former.
In my therapist’s continuing quest for more public dollars, she decided I was suffering from chronic depression … and recommended I eat TWO meals everyday … she sure was pissed when that actually worked … and now it’s back to my little biting problem … [sigh] …
Anyway … you just have to force yourself to eat a balanced diet … the FDA Dietary Guidelines (2015) is a good place to start … and think variety …
What sold me was that putting healthy balanced things in a taco means you can eat nothing but tacos the rest of your life … and that’s a life worth living !!!
A high fat diet could result in most of it going through too quick.
it could result in stomach upset and GERD… acid
it could result in cholesterol in your blood
it may put you off the food
Also avoid large amounts of milk products due to lactose as well as fat.
Sugar ruins your appetite and that can ruin your nutrition. some simple sugar is ok, but you do need carbs in your belly to get you through the day. You want to focus on getting a good eating routine… and sugar is definitely NOT that. It can make you feel good for a short bit, but its empty calories.
Some people get gout from eating too much meat.
Stick to meat or carbs, fruit and veges for most of calorie count … how much meat ? well some , or a lot.
I am talking only about shakes and you can’t put meat in shakes, so…my shakes should look something like 2/3 complex carbs, with maybe a little sugars and the rest 1/3 fat and protein, right?
I don’t know where you can buy it, but people with cancer on chemotherapy often have problems eating enough calories (because chemo causes nausea) so the opposite of “weight loss shakes” exist: read-made shakes in a tetra-pack with 1500 or 2000 calories in a very small pack and vitamins and so on.
Aid orgs like Unicef, MSF and others use Plumpy nut Plumpy'nut - Wikipedia for malnourished kids in Africa - it’s made from peanuts with added vitamins because one small packet has 500 calories and keeps quite some time.
Sudden spikes of simple sugars are not good for your insulin-regulation system. Studies seem to hint that not only obesity, but needing a lot of insulin (because of sugar spikes) may “burn out” the insulin-producing cells, leading to diabetes.
However, if you put a bunch of stuff like fiber (I think you can buy that seperate) or a banana, you will get complex things which should slow down the digestion of the simple sugars.
Second this. Lack of appetite could be a symptom of an illness - or old age (if coupled with bad teeth).
Is there a problem with cost (insurance won’t pay for new teeth, nor a doctor’s visit, nor nutritionist)?
If your lack of appetite isn’t caused by serious illness; or is a side effect of meds you must take; or simply old age, one recommendation I’ve seen is ginger (if you like it) and more spices in general (you woul have to experiment which herbs/ spices you like).
If you shakes are thick in viscosity, and you already have bad teeth, rinse with water after drinking, but don’t brush for 30 min.: both acids (Vitamin C) and sugars soften the enamel, so scrubbing right after will do more harm. Rinsing with water and scrubbing later is better.
I don’t know if the OP is elderly (lack of appetite + bad teeth could be, but could be other cause), but since he suggested milk shakes, I assume the OP has no problems with digesting milk.
However, if milk is a problem, there are alternatives to cow milk - not only soy milk, but also goat milk or formula.
That would be for a normal diet - but only shakes are not a normal diet. *
How do you plan to get your vitamins - seperate fruit drinks/ smoothies, or added into the milk shakes? Some vitamins need fat, some don’t, and not all nutrients are compatible with milk. Maybe you should seperate into one water/ juice based vitamin drink, and nutrition-dense milk-based drink per day.
I’ve read studies - but don’t know how reliable they were - that people on a liquid-only diet (e.g. in hospitals with a tube after surgery) lost weight because the body has problems digesting a liquid-only diet the same way as a normal diet.
E.g normal food is chewed up to 30 times, so saliva gets added with enzymes that start digestion; a shake skips that step*.
Solid food is also changed into a sludge in the stomach before it’s fully broken down into compoments by enzymes and adsorbed through the intestine wall; liquid food might just pass too quickly.
Therefore my recommendation to add fiber flakes (cereal section? or where the bodybuilders do their own shakes?) or algae powder, sth. that absorbs water** in your intestine to give you a fuller feeling and slow down digestion.
There is a diet that consists of day-old white bread and pure milk, but the milk is eaten with a spoon, each mouthful “chewed” 30 times. The reasoning is: the milk has all vitamins that a human needs (babies live on it), and white bread is easy to digest, so no stress on the intestine; by “chewing” on the hard bread and the milk, it takes a long time to eat, giving your body time to get used to feeling full and you learn to listen to your body again.
I don’t know if that hypothesis has been tested, though.
However, dentists talking about 3rd teeth stressed how important the force of chewing is to keep the bones in the jaw from atrophying, so if you already have bad teeth and then want to stop chewing, maybe you should use at least chewing gum or similar.
Are you talking about actual milkshakes made with milk and ice cream? I wouldn’t recommend a diet of actual milkshakes, since most of the calories are coming from fat and sugar. Plus, you’d be setting yourself up to developing poor eating habits that could lead to being very overweight.
If you’re looking to start exercising, you want to eat foods that have nutrients. It’s not enough just to eat calories. Your body needs nutrients to improve your body from stress of exercise.
Smoothies may be more what you need to look into. You can blend together fruits, vegetables, peanut butter, milk, yogurt, etc to make a very nutritious meal. Use frozen fruit if possible so that the smoothie has a better consistency.
Don’t get too hung up on where extra calories come from. Your body is pretty efficient at converting extra calories into fat, regardless if they came from protein, complex carbs, simple sugars, or fats. If you have an excess of calories of any kind, they will typically be converted into fat.