There are plenty of commercial weight-gain products out there, but it’s easy and affordable to make your own.
What’s more, making your own weight-gain recipes puts you in total control of what goes into them.
If you’re thinking you’re doing your body a big favour by spending your hard-earned cash on commercial products with exotic-sounding ingredients, then let us give you a reality check, you’re almost definitely not.
Gasp, shock, horror!!!!
It's well known in the game that these ready-made solutions should ONLY ever be used as a last resort, quite simply when the ability to have your own is not available to you.
No the ingredients inside these ready-made offerings are far from rat poison. But the best way to put it is if the £50 worth of weight gain had the retailer making a conservative 20-30% and then the manufacturer the same........ you get the idea
For the record, the ingredients may well have some health benefits, but probably nowhere near enough to justify the price or offer more than you can simply do yourself, maybe they just sound impressive.
Whoa Whoa Whoa sweetie child, you're going to need some whey protein for these recipes
Read our best Whey protein powder guide here
Quick Jump To The Recipies
The simple truth about weight-gain recipes
At a basic level, a weight-gain recipe is a combination of protein, fat and carbohydrates.
A protein powder made up with milk will take care of the first two elements (although you can always add more), so your priority is usually the carbohydrate.
You can also add fruits and even vegetables for extra nutrients.
If you’re eager to get started right now, scan down this article to find 10 really easy and tasty weight-gain recipes with over 800 calories.
Alternatively, keep reading while we talk you through the basics of putting together your own protein smoothies, even without a recipe.
Protein powder
Our advice is to buy the best protein powder you can find even if it only comes in a limited range of flavours.
In fact, in principle, you could make any recipe with unflavoured protein powder (or vanilla) and just add the flavouring you want by other means. In practice, it can be a bit easier to use protein powder in a flavour which suits the other ingredients you want to use.
If in doubt, use vanilla, it goes with just about anything and it’s easy to adjust the flavours if you choose to do so later.
Read our best Whey protein powder guide here
Liquid
In principle, you can make protein shakes with water and that’s not actually necessarily a bad idea if you just want to down one quickly after the gym.
If, however, you’re looking to gain weight, then plain water isn’t really your best option.
You can use it, but if you do, you’re going to have to add the calories by some other means and that could get complicated.
Our suggestion is to forget about using water and make whole milk your go-to liquid, possibly backed up by another high-calorie, protein-rich option like double cream, Greek yoghurt or cottage cheese.
You can add other liquids, like fruit juices, for their flavour (and the extra nutrients they bring) but they should take second place to milk and its relatives.
If you’re vegan (or lactose intolerant), then soya milk or nut milk should be your main staples and you’ll need to check how this impacts the overall calorie count of a dairy-milk-based recipe so you can make adjustments if necessary.
Carbohydrates
Porridge oats and bananas are main choices for carbohydrate content, we’re guessing this is because they’re affordable, widely available and easy to store and prepare.
There are plenty of other options, just be aware that you need to choose ingredients which can be eaten without (further) cooking.
You also want to think about how long you’re going to be storing your weight-gain meal and what that means for your ingredients.
For example, if you’re happy to eat your meal with a spoon, rather than having it as a drink, then you could feasibly use pretty much any breakfast cereal, but if you go down this route, you might want to add the cereal just before you are due to eat it to prevent it from going soggy.
Other ingredients
Here are some other ingredients which you might want to consider for your weight-gain recipes.
Nut butters
Nuts are full of protein and nut butters are an easy way to add it to weight-gain recipes.
In terms of value for money, plain old peanut butter is usually the clear winner, unless you can find another butter on sale.
Other nut butters such as almond can be truly delicious and if your budget stretches to them, then they can be a great buy and a convenient way to ring in the changes with your weight-gain recipes, but if you're on a budget, peanut butter will do the job just fine.
Seeds
Interestingly, we’ve yet to find any weight-gain recipe which includes seeds and we don’t know why, possibly because they might be a challenge to some blenders.
Chia seeds and flax seeds contain about 19% and 18% protein respectively as well as a host of other nutritional benefits.
If you’re worried about putting them in your blender, grind them first.
If you have a coffee grinder use that and if not, you can easily buy a small grinder for whole spices and seeds.
NB: if you’re using chia seeds, remember that they absorb liquid. We’d suggest that you make your recipe in the usual way and then just add water if you want to make it a bit thinner and therefore more like a drink than a food.
Vegetable and seed oils
These are often full of healthy fats. Some of them taste good, others don’t really taste of anything so they essentially become invisible as far as the overall flavour goes.
Basically, if you like the overall taste of a recipe, but want to add some calories, then this could be a good option.
They could also be a feasible replacement for cream in many recipes if you find that cream makes a recipe too heavy for your liking or if you’re aiming to avoid dairy completely.
Chocolate
If you’re buying dark chocolate to eat as a snack or use for cooking (or both), then you could put some into your weight-gain recipes.
If you have a microwave, just put some in a glass container and give it some short bursts until it melts.
If you don’t, put it in a glass bowl and put that over hot water until the chocolate melts.
The reason it’s important to use a glass bowl is that it will withstand the heat and still let you get the chocolate out easily.
To be perfectly honest, when it comes to adding chocolate to our weight gain recipes, we prefer using cocoa powder and/or chocolate spread, both of which will give you all the goodness and taste of dark chocolate without needing to bother with melting it first.
For the record, we mean high-quality, unsweetened cocoa powder and chocolate spread of the sort bought from health-food shops (online and offline) rather than the sugar-filled stuff which takes up most of the space on supermarket shelves.
Avocado
Here is what you need to know about cutting an avocado without slicing your hand. Counterintuitive as it may seem, you are best to use a larger knife rather than a smaller one.
Make an incision, if you are using a small knife, then you should feel the point rest against the pit.
If you are using a larger knife, hold the avocado steady so you get as much of the blade as possible on or near the pit of the avocado.
Then hold the knife still as you slowly turn the avocado until you have an incision all the way round from the outside to the pit.
Then take away the knife and twist the top and bottom parts of the avocado so that they come apart.
For the sake of completeness, you actually want to get into the habit of keeping the knife still and moving the food whenever you cut anything and if you practice this, you’ll actually be able to make your weight-gain recipes more quickly and easily and your cooking in general will speed up.
Fruits and vegetables
As previously mentioned, bananas are popular additions to weight-gain recipes but really you can add any fruit you like, literally.
Don’t rule out vegetables either although the harder ones, such as root vegetables, may take a little more preparation.
Carrots are sweet and so is freshly-cooked beetroot (obviously not the pickled stuff). Many green, leafy vegetables could also fit in to a weight-gain recipe, our top choice would be spinach since it is full of iron, even raw.
Another option, which would pack two health punches into one, would be to make a chia seed jam (there are plenty of recipes on the internet) and then put this jam into your weight-gain recipe.
Sweeteners
You’re unlikely to need sweeteners in many weight-gain recipes but if you do then our top suggestions would be honey, maple syrup or agave and golden syrup or brown sugar, probably in that order.
If you do want to go for maple syrup, then check the pack carefully to make sure that it is actual maple syrup as opposed to maple-flavoured syrup.
Flavours
If you can add it to food, you can add it to a weight-gain recipe, so if you have a stock of herbs and spices then feel free to use them.
You could go with classic combinations such as mint with chocolate or cinnamon with vanilla, or have fun experimenting.
For the record, in our experience, buying a plain flavour of protein powder such as vanilla and then adding your choice of spice to it generally works out tastier and certainly more cost-effective than buying a protein powder in the flavour of that spice.
Cinnamon is probably where this is most obvious. You can certainly buy cinnamon-flavoured protein powders and some of them are quite good, but we think adding real cinnamon to vanilla is usually a better way to go.
Just for fun
You’re presumably making your weight-gain recipes for a serious reason, but there’s nothing to stop you having a bit of fun too.
If you want to add food colouring (like green for Halloween or red for Christmas), then go for it. Feel free to add garnishes too, if you’re drinking your weight-gain recipe at home.
10 really easy and tasty weight-gain recipes with over 800 calories
For all of the recipes below, you just put the ingredients in a blender and pulse until smooth.
NB - the exact calorie content of these recipes will depend on the protein powder you use, but if you’re using any sort of widely-sold protein powder they will all have over 800 calories.
You can, of course, adjust the ingredients to taste, just think about the impact on the calorie count if you do. Switching out one flavour of protein powder for another is unlikely to make much difference but switching out full-fat milk for semi-skimmed or double-cream for ordinary milk most certainly will.
Chocolate and avocado
350 ml whole milk
1 ripe avocado, pitted and cut up into blender-sized pieces
3 tablespoons cocoa powder, unsweetened.
3 tablespoons honey
Two tablespoons chocolate spread
Two scoops chocolate protein powder
Choconananut
350ml whole milk
2 scoops chocolate protein powder
1 banana cut into blender-sized pieces
1 scoop peanut butter
Banana and strawberry
350ml whole milk
100ml double cream
1 large banana cut into blender-sized pieces
4 medium strawberries (with the stems removed)
2 scoops protein powder (strawberry and/or banana are obvious choices here, vanilla is good as is chocolate).
Chocolate orange
225ml whole milk
100ml double cream
225ml orange juice
2 scoops chocolate protein powder (this recipe also tastes good with vanilla)
Tropical
350ml whole milk
60ml double cream
60ml coconut milk
100g pineapple (chunks work best, if you have rings, cut them up before you blend)
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
2 scoops vanilla protein powder
Vanilla and oatmeal
350ml whole milk
60ml double cream
30g porridge oats
1 tablespoon honey
2 scoops vanilla protein powder
Chocomint
225ml whole milk
100g chocolate ice cream (vanilla is also good)
¼ teaspoon mint flavouring
2 scoops chocolate protein powder
Supergreen
350ml whole milk
100ml double cream
Handful of spinach (cut or torn into blender-sized pieces)
1 banana (in blender-sized pieces)
25g porridge
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoon peanut butter
2 scoops chocolate protein powder
Vanilla nuts
350ml whole milk
100ml double cream
1 large banana
100g porridge
2 tablespoon peanut butter
3 tablespoons chocolate spread
2 scoops vanilla protein powder
Fitness fanatic and always on the move. Carly is a certified personal trainer and currently teaches spin class, Zumba, and Body Pump amongst a few others. Carly has a PhD/MSc in Sport and Exercise Nutrition so she really knows her stuff and has worked in fitness and health all her life. We are honoured to have her as a member of the team. Carly has an infectious laugh, loves terrible, terrible jokes and her dog Trevor and often works with a local mental health charity
