How to gain weight, get healthier and live longer?

You might have lost more weight than planned. This doesn’t happen for most of us. But, to be sure, you might want to make an appointment with your doctor and get a check up.

Being overweight or underweight is not healthy. After your visit, if all turns out alright, you might want to start eating more healthy food. But, what is healthy food?

On a vegetarian diet, ‘how to gain weight’ involves eating more volume of plant-based foods with higher calories and/or more frequent eating. The problem may be that you might not be eating enough ‘starchy vegetables’ and higher calorie fruits like bananas and mangoes, especially if you get tired too easily or don’t have enough energy throughout each day.

We do need sufficient calories as well as high nutrient plant-based whole foods for our bodies to function right. Also, you need to exercise because energy needs to be used up in order to create more of it. Personally, eating brown rice and potatoes give me enough strength and energy to jog and work out with weights.

What I choose as my ‘daily staple foods’ containing the most calories are potatoes, brown rice and beans. That’s it. You could also add a handful nuts every day or so and an avocado each week. I would eat these ‘sparingly’ because of the fat content.

Even though you are in excellent health, I would limit nuts and seeds and avocados. But, if you have cardiovascular problems, high cholesterol or any other health issues, I would check with your doctor if you should eat higher fat food or not.

I would get most my calories from fruits like bananas, mangoes, potatoes, rice and beans and not from oil, fat and refined carbohydrates like crackers and cookies, etc..

I would avoid refined oils like olive oil and any others. Run from fried foods like the plague! I know they say dairy like Yogurt is good, but it really isn’t. And, if you just have to eat nuts, try chestnuts, instead!

These nuts are one of the lowest in fat content. Fats (doesn’t matter if it’s saturated or not) can injure the inner lining (epithelium) of your veins and arteries. We want to avoid a future heart attack or stroke, right?

I never have had a problem being underweight, just the opposite. But, it’s a good idea we know the amount of calories we need to lose excess weight and maintain our healthiest weight for our build and height.

You might discover through research you are not underweight, but within the ‘healthiest zone’! What did you weigh in high school? Don’t we all want to be trim and fit like we used to be way back in the days?

Visit ‘USDA my plate’ to determine how many calories you need each day. Check out the BMI or healthy weight chart. We discovered my wife needs about 1800 calories per day, while I needed slightly more, at 2000. When you figure out your calorie intake numbers, use it as a good rule of thumb.

Sometimes, you may get a ‘hunger attack’ because you’re not getting enough calories. You may go for the wrong snacks like cookies and crackers loaded with fat, salt and sugar!

If you want to gain more weight, you could eat bread and tortillas. Try a sandwich with my hummus spread. It is though, best to substitute lettuce as a wrap or dip vegetables instead of eating refined grain (whole grain and all others like corn and wheat tortillas, etc.)

After a while on a plant-based diet, you get the ‘hang of it’ and know how much of what to eat for enough calories and nutrition. The rule is, ‘eat all you want until you feel full and satisfied’.

Try eating more of these for higher calories for weight gain