Paleo Weight Gain Shakes & MCT Fats

[solisspirit]

Hopefully, you all can help me out with this one. I've pretty much had it with my weight loss, so I'm now into making high-calorie weight gain shakes, but I have a question. Has anyone else done this with success? Basically, the shakes I'm making have these ingredients:


1 Medium to large Avocado, approx 1 cup = 384 calories, 35g Fat, 20g Carb, 5g Protein

1 cup of coconut milk – 445 calories, 48g fat, 6g carb, 5g protein

2 medium ripe bananas – 205 calories, 54g carb, 2g protein

1 cup sweet potato cooked – 249 calories, 58g carb, 4g protein

Totals = 1283 calories, 83g fat, 138g carb, 16g protein

On a daily basis, one of these a day, give or take a few hundred calories, can give me about 1200-1800 a day. This does not include my meals. I stopped drinking Ensure's but needed to find another way to get more calories.

I'm very serious about getting my weight back, and I heard avacados and eating a high fat diet, using MCT fats, will help me in doing this. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

[dfpowell]

Have you tested these foods individually, and can you tolerate them? If so, give it a try and spread it throughout the day.

[solisspirit]

So far, no problems.

[nsaidcolitis]

You sure the coconut milk is not a problem? I'm also looking at adding calories but i can't add anymore stuff. How well do you tolerate sugar from fruits?

[UkuleleLady]

I couldn't really tolerate all that in one fell swoop, and never mind bananas, but, if you can, it seems like a good way to gain weight. That's a lot of calories for a smoothie! Good luck.

I gained back almost all the weight I lost, and I've actually had to cut back on coconut milk. It took me about six months.

[tex]

How well do you tolerate sugar from fruits?

I'm not sure who that question is addressed to, but the sugar in fruits is primarily fructose, and many of us don't tolerate fructose very well while we're recovering, except maybe relatively small amounts of it. In most cases, coconut milk is easier to tolerate than bananas, if large amounts are involved.

Tex

[DJ]

Hopefully, you all can help me out with this one. I've pretty much had it with my weight loss, so I'm now into making high-calorie weight gain shakes, but I have a question. Has anyone else done this with success? Basically, the shakes I'm making have these ingredients:


1 Medium to large Avocado, approx 1 cup = 384 calories, 35g Fat, 20g Carb, 5g Protein

1 cup of coconut milk – 445 calories, 48g fat, 6g carb, 5g protein

2 medium ripe bananas – 205 calories, 54g carb, 2g protein

1 cup sweet potato cooked – 249 calories, 58g carb, 4g protein

Totals = 1283 calories, 83g fat, 138g carb, 16g protein

I could have tolerated your drink fairly early in my healing process. I am on Entocort. If it's working for you, it's a wonderful start and it sounds delicious!

[DJ]

If your drink makes your bowel movements looser, try reducing or removing the bananas for now.

I would like to send you ten pounds of body fat in the mail

[Leah]

I concur with everyone here. If you can tolerate all of that, go for it, but the bananas would do me in. Let us know if you start gaining weight.
Leah

[sunny]

It's funny, I eat all these foods every day, except I only eat 1 banana . I use coconut oil, coconut mamma or coconut butter in my 2 cups of decaf and lots of fats from meats and I am losing weight ...about 1/2 pound a week. So much seems to depend on metabolism and my illness seems to have changed mine.
.I'm not trying to lose weight but I am. I don't think you have to worried about good fats as they help some lose weight. Before my heart surgery if I ate many carbs, I gained weight, but not so much anymore.
It will be interesting to see how these shakes work for you. Hoping they do the trick for you.
Sunny

[solisspirit]

Thanks! So far, everything is working out. But, the bananas are still questionable for me. There are other recipes I'm also doing to change it up a bit, and most of them have to do with adding two to four eggs inside the shake. But, I have a question here. Doesn't it seem like four eggs is a little extreme? I mean, those things have a ton of cholesterol in just one alone. I usually put two eggs in one shake, rather than four, and I barely taste it. Also, as far as the coconut milk goes (and I use the canned coconut milk as you get more fats and calories), in just one serving (there are seven servings in one can), there is 8 grams of saturated fat. If I'm drinking nearly a whole can, isn't this amount of saturated fat bad? I'm just trying to make sure this is safe.

[tex]

The answer to both questions is (IMO), "No, provided that you get most of your fat from healthy sources — namely, animal fats". Getting fat from plant products is not as safe. You can learn why by reading the articles at the links below:

Food Myths Debunked: Eating Eggs Raises Your Cholesterol Level

Food Myths Debunked: All Saturated Fats Raise Blood Cholesterol

Tex

[Leah]

Thanks for posting those articles Tex. I was just going to say "eating cholesterol doesn't raise cholesterol". If you want to gain weight, carbohydrates will do that!
Leah

[showstopa]

I am going to have to try this recipe for a shake. I think I can tolerate everything except maybe the bananas.

Sometimes I can but sometimes they give me heartburn.....Why is that?

[tex]

Sometimes I can but sometimes they give me heartburn.....Why is that?

It might depend on the dosage size (or the total amount of all the sugar in your diet on any particular day). Or it may depend on how ripe the bananas happen to be. Here's why:

When our intestines are inflamed for an extended period of time, we lose our ability to produce certain enzymes needed to digest sugars. The longer the inflammation continues, the more our ability to produce those enzymes becomes compromised. The enzyme needed to digest lactose (lactase) is the first enzyme lost, and it is lost almost immediately. Even a relatively short-lived case of the flu knocks out our ability to produce lactase. But with serious inflammation, such as is associated with MC, over time, our ability to produce the other enzymes tends to decline, also. As we lose the ability to produce those enzymes, we lose the ability to digest large (or even moderate) amounts of the sugars that those enzymes are used to digest.

As we get our intestinal inflammation under control, we slowly regain our ability to produce those enzymes again, though in many cases the maximum production capability may be less than it was originally, especially if the inflammation was severe and long-lasting (for years). The point is, while our ability to digest sugars is compromised, dosage becomes important. We may be able to digest small amounts just fine, but larger doses result in indigestion.

But another consideration is that the sugar content of fruit tends to change as it ripens. The article at the following link does a good job of explaining that phenomenon:

The sugar content of bananas changes as they ripen, in a process controlled by a plant hormone known as ethylene. Green bananas are almost all starch and have low sugar content. As the bananas ripen, the starch content decreases, then sucrose appears. Next, fructose and glucose appear and increase. After about 28 days of ripening, sucrose begins to decline. The sugar content in overripe bananas can be dramatically higher than in bananas that are underripe and optimally ripe.

Fructose and Glucose in Bananas

Tex