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High-calorie, low-fat foods/recipes?

Looking for suggestions for high-cal, low-fat foods & recipes - I've realized that part of my inability to eat enough calories* is due to the Strattera reducing my appetite, because these past few days it's been even harder to eat enough, coinciding directly with the increase in dosage.**

I can think of any number of things that are high-cal high-fat, and I could eat a million baked potatoes smothered in butter and cheese and sour cream,*** but that wouldn't be a really positive change overall. :) I've started poking about online, but so far most of the pages I'm seeing don't want to give me a list of such things, instead they want to let me know that those low-fat foods I'm buying aren't doing me any good if they're high-calorie because excess calories are excess calories. Well, yes, I'm rather counting on that, actually.

So: suggestions of foods you can think of that are high-cal, reasonably low-fat gratefully accepted. Laying off the dairy because of the lactose-intolerance thing would be good, and I loathe and despise squash.**** In case anyone got a hair to suggest anything involving squash.

I may make some potato-leek soup tonight. I've got a carton of lactose-free 2% milk, which should help.

* A problem that I've rarely had outside of being sick.

** I'm not considering lowering the dosage at this point until I've been on it long enough to see if there's been any other change - at this point, I'm gaining enough other good benefits from the meds that I am perfectly happy to deal with the appetite issue. :)

*** Number slightly exaggerated, but only slightly.

**** Wish I didn't. Many recipes sound absolutely delicious, if it weren't for that nasty squash in them. But I've tried over the years, and I doubt I'm going to suddenly change now.

***** This footnote is orphaned.

****** So is this one, but it also contains content: I just added "recipes" to the post, because I realize that yes, fruits and vegetables pack a good deal of caloric energy into small packages, but I'll eat them more if I can find new ways of preparing them. :) I get bored easily unless I looove a particular food.

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Well, fat is really the only way to get really dense caloric content. But some fats are better than others, and I'd tend to look less at low-fat and more at the healthier fats. Nuts are good and dense, and usually good fat. Avocados. Oily fish (also good for the Omega 3).

Nutritionally, this is better than buying low-fat foods that are packed with not-very-nutritious sugar.

As far as more concentrated carbs and sugars, dried fruit can be a relatively good way to get a fair bit of calories. You can eat a lot more at one go if it's in dried form.

Hope that's of some use ...

Thanks. :) The omega-3s are supposed to help ADD as well, so that would be two good reasons to eat more of the oily fish.

Other good sources of omega-3s are game meat of any kind and buffalo. Verra tasty.

Buffalo, huh? Mmmm. *had a buffalo burger for lunch Sunday* :D

Yep! I eat buffalo instead of beef in all my meals for that reason. It helps that I can get it locally, but yeah, very high in the omega-happy things. Buffalo is great in meatballs, sloppy joes, stew, chili and the like. :D My current favorite way of eating it is potroast with veggies, gravvy, and custardy popovers.

Lack of hunger is very vexing; after my surgery, my appetite disappeared. I ended up eating a lot of junk food just to get some calories but went a little overboard (it's not actually good to get most of one's calories from mochas, heh).
Here's some things that continue to work for me:
A little peanut butter on whole grain toast
Buffalo steak (I can eat this even when I am not hungry, but because it is buffalo it has almost zero fat), or buffalo steak black bean lo mein (easy to make, not too much fat, oodles of calories!)
Dried fruit can be surprisingly calorific, and if you add in nuts (okay, they have fat, but I consider it good fat) you can get lots of calories. Dried cherries and walnuts are particularly good, and pecans with pretty much anything.
Carr's Whole Wheat crackers have 80 calories in *two* crackers. A small plate of them with some grapes makes a very tasty snack; I like em with hummous or jam.
Let me know if I should keep rambling on....

Hey, ramble away. :) The more ideas, the better.

With me, when losing my appetite after being sick, I'd always realize it was a short-term thing, so it didn't matter too much, because I'd be back to normal after a few days. But I don't know if this is going to be short-term or long-term - I may get used to it, once we've got the meds adjusted right, and go back to normal eating. The uncertainty is the most annoying part.

I'm thinking I should actually go look up sites and food ideas for people trying to *gain* weight, which is an interesting reversal.

I hope the appetite kicks back in for you. I ended up eating strictly on taste; I didn't realize how much my body's hunger led me to good choices.

If you are okay with good fats, olives have lots of calories. A plate of olives, hummous, fruit, and some pita is suprisingly calorific, but dairy free.

Fresh, frozen berries can override my 'not hungry' vibe; they're great plain, of course, but have more calories when whirled in the blender with the fake milk of your choice and some nut butter, bananas, or silken tofu. Dark chocolate cocoa powder is a great addition, too.

Fresh fruit and nuts, drizzled with a teensy amount of high quality extra dark chocolate (Girhadeli, Green and Black, avoid all that candy-ass Hershey's stuff) is decadent but calorific and quite healthy.

Homemade fried rice with eggs and veggies can get past my 'not hungry' vibe, too.

I do need to replace more of the fats in my diet with healthy fats, although I'm not going to go overboard - you can have my butter when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands - but more nuts/olives type of fat and less of the other stuff would be, in all, a really good idea. :D

Mmmm, hummuos. I should also think about prosciutto and melon, once the melon season really gets underway. I can eat a lot of that.

I would increase your protein consumption, eat a larger chicken breast or a lean piece of beef. I went vegan for a while so I could eat more and decrease my calorie consumption.

Also maybe include a boiled egg every other day and peanut butter is way high on the calorie scale but it has such good oils and an excellent protein source.

Hope this helps.

Mundee

Mmmmmm, eggs.

And now I'm actually kind of wanting peanut butter on fresh-baked bread so I think that's a good idea. XD

Honey's good - on toast, in tea, or in fact in pretty much anything... rice makes a good base for building up calories - add nuts and fish in abundance to up the calories and get lots of vitamins and minerals and things too.

Is it really so disasterous if you don't reach your minimum calorie intake while you're adjusting to the drugs? I know it's important not to starve yourself but it's also important to listen to your own hunger cues, imho.

I'm currently eating less than I have been for the previous month, when I was losing about three pounds a week, which is actually too fast to be really healthy. If I can't get the intake up a bit more, my body will go into famine-shutdown and stop burning so many, which will make it that much harder to lose weight in the long term. I'm also having problems getting enough basic nutrients on the about-1200-calories my body has been wanting to eat right now.*

* That's before taking exercise into account - I burn approximately 175-200 calories on the bike for a net of 1000ish. At my current weight, I should be getting closer to 1600-1800 net for slow, sustainable weight loss. (The website I've been tracking this with wants me to eat 1800; I took that down to 1600 because the 1800 was getting to be a chore to meet. :)

Ah, okay, I see the problem! Do you get 'trail mix' over there? It's a mixture of nuts, seeds and dried fruit - easy to snack on and full of calories and nutrients, but not too likely to make you feel bloated or be to overwhelming if your appetite's not too great. You can just nibble through the day. Dried apricots are good that way too.

Good luck. :)

Ironically, I just went upstairs to the snack bar to see if I could grab a piece of fruit or something, and came back down with a bag of trail mix. XD

I'm trying to cut way back on the dairy (or at least dairy fats), too--which, since I love and adore cheese and could happily make whole meals just out of that is an interesting challenge.

Cutting back on all fats was more than I was quite feeling ready to tackle, so I'm working on cutting back on saturated fats (which dairy is heavy in) instead. Which seems to mean moving toward stuff that uses olive and canola oil instead of butter or other fats, and looking toward lean meats and nuts and beans. I've been exploring using hummus and tahini as alternatives to mayo and cheese as things to spread on sandwiches. And trying to get away from the creamier salad dressings and sauces.

I already don't eat much red meat, but I'm trying to consciously lean more toward poultry and fish, too.

And--sob--to keep my cheese consumption minimal. On the other hand, I'm discovering that there are foods that taste quite okay without a layer of cheese. Who knew?

I go in long cycles of preferring red meat to fish/chicken, then back again. I'm squarely in fish/chicken mode right now, and could happily eat my weight in chicken while Lump o'Meat like pot roast sounds unappetizing. (Steak grilled in my dad's way would be welcome at any time, but that's a comfort food and I don't have good access to a grill, so it's not a problem. :)

Lactose intolerance is a lovely thing to have when one is trying to reduce dairy. XD Get sick a few times and my brain associates the food with the feeling. Ice cream is sort of icky to me now. I eat cheese and butter too much for that to get a strong association with being sick, but if there's over some et amount of cheese in a dish, I start perking up at every twinge, rumble, or tingle from my stomach, wondering if the pills are working this time or not.

Traditional homemade fruitcake - hold on, don't freak - which consists of dried fruit with just enough dough to hold it together, basted in rum (or another similar liquor of your choice) is very high-calorie and actually quite tasty. This is not to be confused with the traditional and terrifying store-bought modern fruitcake. I don't have a recipe handy but can dig one up if you like - yes, one I've made that people did in fact eat on purpose. ^_^

Raisins are, of course, nature's own sugar bombs. So I'd think oatmeal-raisin mixes would be good, such as oatmeal-raisin cookies (any recipe, really; if you're really avoiding fats, swap out butter and swap in olive oil 1:1) and various breakfast foods.

I can't stand beans for the most part; the only exception being baked beans that I make with a heavy barbeque influence. They are high in protein and non-fatty calories, however. (My "recipe" for this starts with canned S&W baked beans, to which I had mirin, barbeque sauce, a little honey, a little maple syrup, and lots of mixed pepper.)

Red meats have pretty good calorie density, and in ground beef categories you can pretty much set your own desired fat level by choosing the right cuts. Traditional ground beef is around 23% fat; I usually buy the 7% grind instead. You could probably get the butcher to grind you something even lower than that.

I have a stupid recipe for sloppy joes which starts with sloppy-joe-sauce in a can, but instead of just that + ground beef: cut up 1/2 onion, cook partly (enough to build up a glaze on the pot), remove from pan and set aside. Cook ground beef in the same pot (you want to deglaze the pot). Add back onions, mixed pepper, salsa of choice (previously prepared, or from a jar), sloppy joe sauce, bbq sauce of choice, let simmer.

You can add nonfatty ground beef calories to spaghetti sauce, too, of course. That's also a thing I take from a jar an enhanse; usually with pepper, onion (prepared as above), several cloves garlic (cooked with the onion), mirin, and a fleet of spices off the rack to taste.

Oh, and when preparing ground beef, it's pleasant to throw in some garlic-tinctured olive oil first, and (again) some mixed pepper. Olive oil is also a fat, of course, but it's unsaturated rather than saturated, which in chemical terms means the hydrocarbon chains are not completely filled with hydrogen atoms, and so have these physical kinks in their structure that isn't present in saturated fats. This is good, because it avoids the arterial buildup you get with saturated fats. And the things that McDonald's and other national fast-food chains do to stabilise their "vegetable oils" for longer-term shipment, storage, and use, make them worse than normal saturated fats - they'd be better off switching to lard, from a health standpoint. But I digress.

Anyway, I'll think more on this and see what I come up with.

Cool, thanks. :) I've heard that "real" fruitcake is nothing like the store-bought stuff, and I'm willing to believe it, but I've never tried it. :)

I'm trying to cut down fats mostly because my normal diet is way high on the fat. :) Cutting down, plus replacing most of the unhealthy ones with healthier ones ought to be a Good Thing overall.

Mmm, sloppy joes. :)

It's too expensive to eat frequently, but how about sushi? I'd expect the rice to have a lot of carbs, and the fish is high in protein, and hopefully some of the fat is omega 3. I love the fish, so I actually prefer to get sashimi with sushi rice (instead of plain rice), and thereby adjust the rice content downward. I guess brown rice would be healthier, but for sashimi, sushi rice is better than plain white rice is better than plain brown rice.

Is sodium a concern? I think there is tofu-kan jerky -- like beef jerky, but made from tofu, with lots of sugar and soy/salt for seasoning. So I expect it is high in salt, sugar, and protein.

Do you have trouble with yoghurt?

I second the suggestion of eating more nuts. They *are* high in fat, but my understanding is that on balance their fat is good for you in moderation, so a handful or so of nuts per day is apparently recommended.

I forget, what's the deal with eggs? If on balance they're good for you, there are lots of tasty things involving eggs. I wonder if there are dairy-free custards (maybe soy milk would work as a substitute?). Stir-frying scrambled eggs and sliced tomatoes makes for a yummy dish that you can have with rice.

Do you like soups? I guess store-bought butternut squash bisque is not for you, but I find soups to be really tasty, so I would think that even when my appetite is down, I'd be able to eat some soup. (When I get steamed clams at a restaurant, I avoid using the cup of broth for washing the sand away, so that I can drink the yummy clam-y goodness of the broth, salty as it is. Yum!)

P.S. Glad to hear Strattera is helping with your hyper-focus.

Oh yeah. I think nutritionists typically recommend against fruit juice and non-diet sodas because they have a lot of sugar, which (a) hits your bloodstream too quickly and (b) can stimulate your appetite. The former might not be too hot, but the latter would not be a bad side effect if you're trying to improve your appetite. I've heard it said that a little wine can also serve as an appetite stimulant.

Dark chocolate (is always the answer to any diet quandary), and maybe cookies where you replace the oil/butter with apple sauce and add lots of nuts, raisins, (chocolate chips), etc.?

Disclaimer: I know nothing of the caloric content of these items.

Glutinous rice things? They're not the easiest thing to assemble, but glutinous rice balls with bean paste are a tasty snack. Flipping through the Chinese Snacks cookbook I'm sending to my parents, I can see steamed rice puddings-- made with rice flour, no dairy. Savory cup custards are made with eggs and stock and have bits in the bottom (avoid chestnuts for your own sanity). Sticky rice recipes with lots of inclusions, sweet and savory. There's an Indian dish I made once with potatoes, peanuts, and tapioca pearls and veggies also... OK. I am a starch-eating fool and these may just fill a person up without being caloricly satisfactory.

The Japanese cookbooks I have use surprisingly little fat (calories unknown...) ; I recommend looking for Shizuo Tsuji's name as the recipes in those books are extremely well-explained. Indian recipes seem to be either normal in fat or swimming in heavy cream-- I suppose it's the regional variations. :) I can type out any recipes if you ask.

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High-calorie, low-fat foods/recipes?

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