Nourishing & Strengthening Foods . . . for those who are Underweight or Recovering from Illnesses

Losing weight and being ‘thin’ seems to be the ‘end all and be all’ in Western society these days. Everywhere you look, books and websites and recipes are focused on helping us become thinner. But for many thousands of people, weight loss is unintentional, even devastating, and is impacting their health and quality of life severely. These people may be recovering from surgery; they may have a chronic illness or cancer. They may be struggling with anorexia or depression; or may simply be old and weak and unable to look after themselves properly. They may be new mums breastfeeding their babies and needing nourishing food to boost their energy and milk supply. Or they may just be like me – naturally thin – and the busyness of life is wearing them down. Sadly, underweight people are often overlooked when it comes to nutritional health. They have few places to go for help.

I know when I needed help with gaining weight, the doctor I went to just told me I just needed to ‘eat more’. He suggested I eat lots of fatty foods, like chops and ice cream. It didn’t work. When you’re sick or stressed and have no appetite, it’s very hard to ‘eat more’ – you just don’t want to. If this is your problem (or you’re trying to get someone like this to eat), I hope these ideas will be helpful to you. Years ago, I found an old book that had some good advice for those who need to gain weight. (Sadly, I’ve lost the book and only have a few photocopies from it, so don’t know the title.) It said:

“It’s not how much you eat, but how much you assimilate that builds a strong body. Weak, run-down persons stuff themselves in an effort to gain strength, and more food often than not merely adds to their troubles. The vital elements of most foods are locked in minute cells which must be broken down to release their building elements. This breaking-down process should be well begun before the food reaches the stomach.”

The article goes on to talk about how food needs to be chewed to a ‘fine, milky paste’ before it is swallowed, to get the most from it – but when we’re stressed or busy we don’t take the time to chew properly. And when people are weak and sick, it just takes too much energy. So one solution in times of stress, busyness or sickness, is to use a ‘blender’ to whip food into an easy to digest consistency. The Thermomix is perfect for this!

How blended foods can help underweight people

The most nutritious combinations of foods to blend into a drinkable state are proteins with fruit juices. For example: nuts, eggs or cheese whizzed up with fresh fruit to make creamy juices. (See below in ‘breakfast & snack ideas’.) ‘Cream of’ soups are also perfect – you can blend veggies with your milk of choice, add some herb salt and a tablespoon of butter, ghee or coconut oil, and warm it up. In the Thermomix, you can blend veggies to a paste in seconds, add the milk and fat, blend on speed 9 for a minute, then warm to about 60C. Some veggies that work well like this are fresh green peas, shallots, raw beetroot, carrots, parsley, spinach, asparagus, and mushrooms. It’s best to do just one veggie on it’s own at a time – 1 cup of milk (I recommend a dairy free milk as it’s easier to digest) to a handful of the chopped vegetables, plus salt and butter, ghee or coconut oil. This can be sipped from a mug, which is easier than sitting down to a meal when you don’t have much appetite.

Small meals more often

Another helpful idea is to eat smaller, nutrient-rich meals, more often. For people who are sick or lacking appetite, it’s difficult to eat a normal sized meal at one sitting. Four or five small ‘meals’ a day are easier to cope with. Sometimes that might just mean a smoothie or a cup of the ‘cream of veggie’ soup, or even banana ‘ice-cream’ or custard – as long as it’s nutritious, don’t worry too much about what it is. (See suggestions below for more small meal ideas.)

Foods that are helpful for weight building and strengthening

Here’s some ideas for meals and snacks that I’ve found helpful. Stick to plain foods, nothing too rich or complicated – just simple, nourishing food.

Lunches and Dinners:

• blended ‘cream of’ soups with raw veges (as above)
• homemade mayonnaise on salads
• waldorf salad
• egg salad with toasted sourdough (see my gluten free recipe) 
• nourishing soups and stocks (see my recipe for Coconut Lemon Chicken Soup, or for a quick and tasty chicken soup try Creamy Chicken and Brown Rice Soup. There’s also lots of nourishing soups in my Simple, Healing Food cookbook)
• lightly cooked spinach, stirred into soup/broth just before serving so it wilts but isn’t overcooked
• steamed or roasted vegetables (cooked veggies are actually easier to digest than raw veggies when you’re unwell; it doesn’t take as much work for the body to break them down)
• fish/chicken/hamburger patties, grilled, with baked potato and a little salad or steamed veggies (I find when I have no appetite, the one thing I can stomach is plain beef or turkey mince patties with herb salt and some steamed veggies!)
• baked potatoes or sweet potatoes topped with butter, mayonnaise, sour cream or dairy free sour cream, with some crumbled bacon or cheese, and chives
• tuna and celery salad with homemade mayonnaise on toast or in a sandwich (tuna, mayo, a little mustard, boiled egg, finely chopped onion, celery and dill pickle)
• beef stroganoff or stew (not too rich, tone down the seasonings) on pasta or mashed potatoes (you can use my dairy free sour cream in place of dairy sour cream if needed)
• casseroles – nothing too rich though – dairy free white sauce recipe here
• seafood/chicken with cheese sauce on gf pasta or rice (if you can have dairy, otherwise a df white sauce or melty ‘cheese’ sauce
• baked macaroni and cheese with gf pasta (again, if you can’t have dairy use this melty ‘cheese’ sauce)

Breakfast and snack ideas:

• fresh juices blended with egg/nuts/cheese/raw coconut – try: fresh orange juice with pecans or blanched almonds; fresh pineapple with raw cashews or pecans; fresh grapefruit or tangelos with raw nuts or fresh coconut; pineapple with a couple of tablespoons cottage cheese or orange juice with cream cheese if you can have dairy; a mixture of fruits, as in my Creamy Citrus Smoothie. [Note: if you can’t have nuts, just use the raw coconut or shredded coconut, or even sunflower and pepita seeds.]
• banana and egg in smoothies – bananas are great for weight gain! I would use a non-dairy recipe with nut milk, like my Banana Nut Butter Protein Shake or Chocolate Almond Smoothie
• avocado on toast/crackers – preferably a sourdough or artisan gluten free, or seed crackers
• hot chocolate made all on milk – again I’d use dairy free nut milks – try my Creamy Cashew Milk Hot Chocolate
• Swiss breakfast – a handful of oats or quinoa flakes and raw almonds, soaked overnight in yoghurt (1:1 ratio); next morning top with grated apple and cream if you like, and a little honey or pure maple syrup. (Can use coconut cream or coconut yoghurt.)
• sliced banana with cashew cream/cream/yoghurt
• cooked cereals – I like the Chinese style drinking porridge in the Thermomix Everyday Cookbook, or cooked quinoa flake porridge with fresh fruit and coconut cream on top. Try Cyndi O’Meara’s Pina Colada porridge – so good!
• a tablespoon of black molasses stirred into milk of choice, slightly warm is nice (my 1st child LOVED this!)
• fruit ‘cereal’ with chopped nuts – try one of these: pink fruit cereal, raw fruit cereal. Or CADA – a handful each of shredded coconut, raw almonds, dates, and a quartered apple, chopped on turbo speed a few times in the Thermomix until muesli consistency. I like to add frozen blueberries to my CADA.
• custard – cashew & honey custard, rice-almond milk custard, banana chia seed custard – with sliced bananas is great (especially like this!), or in an apple-berry custard crumble
• banana ice cream – frozen bananas whizzed up in the Thermomix, with a handful of raw nuts (macadamias, cashews, almonds)
• stewed fruit with cream/yoghurt/cashew cream
• Grain-Free Scones with homemade jam (like my naturally sweetened strawberry jam) and cashew cream/cream
• apple pie (recipe in Life-Changing Food) with cashew cream/cream/custard

On a personal note, for most of my life I struggled with being underweight. My gut health was poor (which I didn’t realise until I was in my 40’s) and stress and busyness caused me to have little appetite, making things worse. Once I changed my diet to a nutrient-dense, gut-healing diet, I finally managed to gain weight and felt a lot healthier. I also had to learn to slow down, sleep more and eat sitting down and not rushing around. This book tells the story of my healing journey and has the kinds of recipes I ate to heal:

So if you are in the same ‘boat’ as I was and need to gain weight or eat more nourishing foods, I hope these tips will be helpful to you, too. All the best, Jo 🙂