Been at a desk for 20-years, now at physical labor. Recently figured out that I’m running a serious caloric deficit, and I’m already a skinny fucker. Also, I’m aiming to build a little muscle and a lot of endurance. How do I eat?!
Back when I was working hard, ate tons of fast food. Too expensive and time consuming, don’t want off the clock to go eat (hour round trip including eating). Took a 12-hour shift today and did OK sucking down granola bars, water and kratom, ate my wife’s kickass meal when I got home.
What can I cook or bring to work to power me? What’s simple and cheap and doesn’t require much on-site prep? (We have a microwave, toaster, all that, I just want calories and protein in my face with no fuss). Afraid I’m half-ass cannibalizing myself.
Roasted peanuts are cheap, high calorie, high protein, and shelf stable. It’s a decent mix of all the macronutrients (including carbs and fiber). Personally, I can also eat them all day.
Around me, a $3 jar has 2500 calories, over 200g fat, over 100g protein, and about 30g fiber. On a per dollar basis, it’s hard to beat for shelf stable food.
My bulking food was always Triscuits and hummus. A lot of calories in a small package and not really unhealthy. Walnuts are also good for you and calorie dense.
I like to make up pasta dishes in sauce with veggies that reheat well. Pasta alfredo (made with butter and parmigiano reggiano) with spinach and pieces of chicken, or red sauce pasta with a bunch of veggies like zucchini, broccoli, onions and even beans, with some olive oil in the sauce. I buy the precut frozen veggie medleys and chuck them in. You can also make egg fried rice with veggies in it, with your choice of butters and oils. Cheese, nuts, dairy, eggs, I agree with other commenters that fat is not your enemy. Sugar and ultra-processed stuff should still be avoided but embrace the butter, haha.
Peanut butter is also fantastic for healthy calorie density and travels well.
The easy way to add calories and protein is dairy products. Start your day with coffee and heavy cream instead of milk or half and half. Add cheese or butter to meals you already enjoy.
When a buddy of mine was general labor at a warehouse, his lunch was occasionally a sleeve of Oreos and ice cream. You can be as “irresponsible” as you want for a while.
You can be as “irresponsible” as you want for a while.
This is really the important part. If you’re worried you’re not getting enough fuel, the simple answer is whatever you can stomach until you feel like you’re in the right place, and then you can optimize.
Seconding dairy - cheese sticks, or a thick slice of cheddar off the block, are a really dense source of calories, have decent protein, and can sit in your lunch all day without issue
Why on earth are you eating kratom at work?
Addiction/dopamine issues, maybe? That’s why I would do it
Rice and beans
Chicken (season and cook on a pan in the oven at high temperature)
Make soup
Stew (thicker soup)
Oatmeal for breakfast
While you’re bulking: pasta and bread
You can cook diced onions and other vegetables and add to pasta sauce to improve it
When trying to gain weight (or simply not go minus as in your case) the method will be the opposite of what is needed to lose weight. I have helped someone with this in the past and what I saw as his greatest trouble was that he would get too full to eat more very quickly. I asked about his diet and it was just full of foods which are very filling without actually containing many calories. Lots of fruits and vegetables with almost no carb and no fat.
So really what you need are easily digestible and not too filling calorie rich ingredients. Think lots of grains and fat. Buttered potatoes instead of air fried potatoes. Carrots instead of lettuce. White pasta over whole grain pasta. Cream or mayo based sauce instead of a stock/water based sauce etc. However still try to eat healthy. If going for bread take the white bread without added sugar for example. And still include vegetables but don’t make them over ⅓ of your plate. I have read many success stories with adding heavy amounts of dairy to the diet which makes sense since milk is there to grow a calf as fast as possible. Drinking a package of milk a day is almost a miracle cure to being underweight if you can stomach it. In fact the medical food packs they give to malnourished children are dairy based. Consider it if your diet allows it.
However what specific meals which are convenient to bring I don’t have many ideas. But I hope this mode of thinking will help at least a bit. It has to be a big portion that you can actually stomach. Think about which foods you seem to be able to eat a huge amount of and then narrow those down to the most calorie rich. They also have to not clog your stomach for the whole rest of the day so being easy to digest is also key.
I’m basically in the same boat as OP except opposite job direction (went from labor to desk). Over a decade of manual labor with no scheduled lunch breaks has left me with poor eating habits. I tried meal prepping but ended up doing what your friend was doing, loading up on fruits and vegetables with some protein. Wouldn’t eating stuff like buttered potatoes and drinking a couple glasses of milk everyday lead to heart problems? Or would cardio and being underweight basically cancel that out?
I don’t have data to quote here but considering heart problems were rare back in the day when butter, lard and tallow was used in generous amounts in combination with obesity being rare and daily labor was common, I would assume it would be mostly fine. Heart problems in non-overweight people are rare even today, especially at younger ages.
There are also 2 new high quality studies out there showing milk fats being significantly safer for heart health compared to other saturated animal fats. I can link that study for you on request. However you wouldn’t need to use butter for your potatoes necessarily. You can oven bake potatoes in rapeseed oil or olive oil just fine and get the same calories in, if you happen to be afraid of milk fat that is. Finding a milk alternative would be harder however since the seed and nut oils out there are generally much less nutrient dense than whole milk. The exception would be soy milk but then you have to be careful not to get a version full of sugar.
Fat has been way over demonized in modern times, it’s nowhere near as bad as people think it is. There are some unhealthy trans fats, but those have been banned pretty much everywhere.
If you’re not sure about something, rub it against a piece of paper! If the paper turns clear, it’s your window to weight gain.
Did you go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, too?
Hi, Dr. Nick!
Hi, everybody!
You must say “Canapurda” out loud when doing so though.
Last year I got down to roughly 115lb abs 6ft due to a combination of job stress, alcohol related gastritis, then when I used weed gummies to quit the booze I got cannabinoid hyperemesis (1 year no booze now, about 6 months no gummies. Might try one or the other again at some point but I’d need to address my lifestyle and job stressors first).
I went to see a gastroenterologist and their main advice was just to take the opportunity to eat terribly, or at least, what would normally be considered terribly. Normally calorie dense foods are ill advised because they lead to obesity but if you’re having trouble keeping on weight they’re exactly what you need.
I basically wound up living off snickers bars for a few months. Rock climbers actually use them for the same reason; there’s a looot of calories packed into those tiny bars, and a decent amount of it is fat / protein compared to similar options (maybe payday bars if you really wanna up the protein factor). The caveat here is that I also have IBS, so I needed to take Metamucil / psyllium husk fiber as well to make sure my stomach kept functioning well / keep the chocolate and sugar from agitating my colon, which also would have led to malabsorption / not absorbing the calories, which would have defeated the point.
You can get the fiber in capsules to just take with water instead of having to mix up a whole beverage to chug, but if you do that you need to make sure you stay hydrated so it doesn’t constipate you. I recommend getting a water bottle / skein of some kind that sits against your body well so it can stay with you on the move. I used one of those gallon bottles and would leave it on my work computer with a tall straw and just sip at it every time I stopped to chart, but it sounds like you might need something more around the size of a quart to strap to you.
Best of luck!
Ok you need to separate this. You need food options and you need bulk calories.
For breakfast, you need a decent hit of low GI carbs and a protein source. Whilegrain toast with whatever or oats is GOAT, add in a protein coffee (Cold brew/espresso and vanilla protein powder) and you have my breakfast. If you want some more calories and fats in breakfast mix the protein shake on whole milk not water. But this combo burns long and slow.
For the calories at work onsite grab yourself some mass gainer protein and smash a shake with lunch. Lunch can be whatever the hell you want with one of those. One serve of most mass gainers is half of my daily maintenence calories. Unless your job is professional weightlifting, you probably wont out-work this. Although Id advocate for a big boy wholemeal roll stuffed with some meats and a lot of salad.
I think it would be a really good idea for you to track your intake for a few weeks and get a good idea on how much you really need to eat. My Fitness Pal is ok but Macrofactor takes a breakdown of what you put in and your weight and over time dials in how much you need to eat for what physical result you want.
In simplest terms for muscle gain in most grown men the rule of thumb is 1g of protein per lb of lean body mass is a good number to aim for spaced as equally as you can throughout the day in 3 to 5 meals. I could write more about the myths and legends that permeate this shit but for 99% of people 99% of the time - This will work.
Take me for example. My 0% body fat weight would be 155lbs. So 1 scoop of protein in the coffee, 25g. Protein bar mid morning 25g, mass gainer at lunch 50g, even if your afternoon snack is pure carbs dinner only has to be 55g for me to hit the base markers for ideal muscle growth and theres 56g in a double quarter pounder.
Ground beef mixed with eggs, salt pepper etc. you can eat it Luke warm or heat it at the job site.
Or hard boiled eggs, easy to travel, easy to eat.
Both are good options providing good fats and protein for your job.
The big thing is the make sure you have enough electrolytes (sodium, potassium) thought the day
Some people think they need to carb load to do physical activity, that isn’t true. If you become fat adapted (ketogenic) you can tap into the tens of thousands of calories the human body stores as fat. The human body does not store sugar / carbs, you only have about 5g circulating in the blood stream at any time. The theory of carb loading is you try to replace that 5g of sugar as your using it in the blood stream, thats a hard game to play.
Bonus: if you go full carnivore you won’t have to poop at the job site
