Download my free Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint for the exact steps to structure your diet, calorie surplus, macros, and more to gain muscle at the optimal rate while minimizing fat gain or go to witsandweights.com/muscle.

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Do you struggle to eat enough calories to support muscle growth? Have you tried "just eating more," only to feel sick or frustrated when the scale won’t budge? What if eating more calories could actually be enjoyable—even with dietary restrictions?

Philip (@witsandweights) shares 12 proven strategies to help you break through plateaus and gain weight effectively. Inspired by listener Jim from Michigan, who tackles weight gain challenges while playing hockey in his 70s, Philip dives deep into strategies that fit any lifestyle.

Whether you’re a “hard gainer,” have specific dietary restrictions, or simply want to build muscle sustainably, these tips will transform how you approach nutrition. With practical advice like adding calorie-dense foods, leveraging liquid calories, and making your meals more appealing, you will be empowered to fuel your body for growth without the misery of force-feeding.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

3:34 Strategy #1: Adding calorie-dense food to your meals
5:08 Strategy #2: Incorporate liquid calories
6:17 Strategy #3: Enhancing meals with smart calorie boosts
6:50 Strategy #4: Focusing on the foods you enjoy
8:06 Strategy #5: Increase your meal frequency
9:15 Strategy #6: Don't drink water before your meals
9:52 Strategy #7: Embrace calorie timing
11:22 Strategy #8: Make your food visually and socially more appealing
13:28 Strategy #9: Have high-calorie snacks always available
14:26 Strategy #10: Sneak calories into drinks
15:43 Strategy #11: Plan your meals around fats
17:40 Strategy #12: Track and adjust by keeping it simple but systematic
19:43 Managing stress and recovery to improve appetite
22:59 Outro

Episode resources:

• Gain weight episode: The Most UNDERRATED Fat Loss Secret Making You FATTER (and Sabotaging Muscle Gain Too)

• Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS
  

How to Eat Thousands of Calories to Gain Muscle and Weight (Not Just for Hardgainers)

If you’ve ever struggled to gain weight and muscle, you know the frustration of eating until you feel stuffed, only to see the scale refuse to budge. It’s even more challenging if you have a small appetite or dietary restrictions. Fortunately, there are practical strategies to help you eat more calories and enjoy the process without feeling miserable.

Whether you’re a hardgainer trying to pack on mass or simply someone looking to support your muscle-building goals, these 12 strategies will make a big difference. Let’s dive in.

12 Strategies to Eat More Calories Without Feeling Miserable

1. Add Calorie-Dense Foods
   Focus on foods that pack a lot of calories into small portions, such as avocados, nuts, seeds, and oils. These can be easily added to meals to increase calorie intake without increasing meal volume significantly.

2. Incorporate Liquid Calories
   Liquids don’t fill you up as much as solid food, making them a great way to sneak in calories. Think shakes, smoothies, or whole milk-based drinks with added protein powder, nut butter, or fruit.

3. Enhance Existing Meals
   Boost your current meals by adding calorie-dense ingredients like butter, cheese, or coconut milk. For example, cook eggs in butter or mix nuts into your oatmeal.

4. Eat Foods You Enjoy
   Choose foods you genuinely like to make the eating process enjoyable. You’ll naturally eat more when you enjoy your meals, which makes hitting your calorie goals easier.

5. Increase Meal Frequency
   If eating large meals feels overwhelming, try eating smaller meals more frequently. Instead of three large meals, aim for five to six smaller ones throughout the day.

6. Avoid Drinking Water Before Meals
   Water can fill your stomach and suppress your appetite. To maximize your ability to eat more, save your water intake for after your meals.

7. Capitalize on Hunger Windows
   Eat larger meals during times of the day when you’re naturally hungrier, such as breakfast, post-workout, or before bed. Use these windows to load up on calories.

8. Make Food Visually and Socially Appealing
   We’re wired to eat more when food looks good or is enjoyed with others. Plate your meals attractively and enjoy them in a relaxed, social setting to increase your intake.

9. Have High-Calorie Snacks Available
   Keep easy-to-grab, calorie-dense snacks on hand, such as trail mix, protein bars, or nut butter packets. These can help you stay on track when you’re busy.

10. Sneak Calories Into Drinks
    Add calorie-dense ingredients to beverages you already drink, such as whole milk or heavy cream in coffee or tea. This is an effortless way to increase your intake.

11. Plan Meals Around Fats
    Fats are the most calorie-dense macronutrient, with 9 calories per gram. Build meals around fatty foods like salmon, avocado, or nut butters to easily add calories.

12. Track and Adjust
    Use a food tracking app to monitor your calorie intake and make gradual adjustments. Start with a slight surplus and increase incrementally to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

The Secret Ingredient: Stress Management

It’s important to remember that stress and poor recovery can suppress your appetite and digestion, making it harder to eat enough. Prioritize relaxation, quality sleep, and manageable training to keep your body in an optimal state for eating and recovery.

Ready to Build Muscle?

If you’re serious about gaining muscle, download my free Muscle Building Nutrition Blueprint, which gives you the exact steps for setting up a successful muscle-building phase, including calorie targets, macros, and tracking tips. Head to witsandweights.com/muscle to get started today.

Eating more doesn’t have to be a chore. By using these strategies, you can fuel your muscle-building journey in a sustainable and enjoyable way!

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Have you ever felt frustrated trying to gain weight and muscle where, no matter how much you think you're eating, the scale just won't budge? Maybe you've been told just eat more, but you feel stuffed and sick every time you try. Or maybe you're dealing with certain dietary restrictions that seem to make everything harder. Today, I'm giving you 12 specific strategies that make eating more calories not just doable, but actually enjoyable. You'll learn exactly how to break through your plateau without force-feeding yourself or feeling miserable. These are proven methods that work, whether you're 20 or 70, whether you have dietary restrictions or not. So if you've struggled to gain weight and build muscle, stick around. You're about to learn exactly how to make it happen. You're about to learn exactly how to make it happen.

Philip Pape: 0:52

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're tackling a challenge that doesn't often get enough attention how to actually eat enough calories to support muscle growth. I want to give a special shout out to Jim from Wayne, michigan, who inspired today's episode. He sent in a text message and he wrote hey, philip, I've been listening to your Wits and Weights podcast for about six months. It's great. I realized that the majority of people want to lose weight. I've been skinny my entire life 5'9", 140 pounds. I'm still active. I play in an over 70 ice hockey league once a week. I was diagnosed with celiac disease 20 years ago. Not fun, but it could be worse. I know I need to be in a calorie surplus, but I usually struggle to eat 2,000 calories a day. Could you please do a full-length podcast on how to gain weight and muscle? So thank you, jim. This is exactly the kind of specific problem or challenge that I want to hear from you as listeners about, so I can deep dive into it. On the show, and while we recently covered some fundamentals of gaining weight to improve your body composition, that was episode 257 at the end of 2024. I'm going to link that in the show notes.

Philip Pape: 2:06

Today we're going to focus specifically on 12 strategies to get the calories in, just to be able to eat them all when you struggle with appetite or dietary restrictions. By the way, this could apply to anyone at any calorie level, not just hard gainers, even if you're, say, a woman who's trying to get back to maintenance for the first time and you feel like it's too many calories, these strategies can still apply. So before we get into it, though, you might be wondering okay, that's great, but why do I even want the calories in the first place? How do I build muscle? What is the strategy there? For that, I'm going to ask you to download a free guide that I have called Muscle Building Nutrition Blueprint, and that's going to give you the exact steps for doing that, for setting up your muscle building phase, from the optimal surplus and rate of gain to the macros, to what to track and even a specific example of a real bulk. So click the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash muscle to download that free guide, and that'll set up your muscle building phase for success. And then, when you're running that, you'll say okay, now let me listen to this episode to understand how to get all that food in, because it's not working for me quite yet.

Philip Pape: 3:15

All right, so I'm going to break down these 12 strategies into three sections. First, we're going to cover four strategies to add calories without feeling stuffed. We're going to cover four strategies to add calories without feeling stuffed, then four strategies for the timing and habits that could make eating easier. And then, finally, four strategies to implement it sustainably. So let's start with adding calories without feeling stuffed. Strategy number one is pretty straightforward, and that is adding calorie-d dense foods to your meals. This is about making every bite count, focusing on foods that pack in as many calories as possible into as little volume as possible, which you'll find that a lot of these strategies are the opposite of what you would do during fat loss. So keep that in mind in case it sparks some curiosity there. So I'll give you some example Add avocado to things, if you like avocado.

Philip Pape: 4:04

They're very calorie dense and we're talking mostly whole foods here. By the way, doing it with whole foods. Obviously, you can add in processed foods and we're going to touch on that occasionally here but there are calorie dense whole foods. So avocado, egg sandwiches. You can drizzle olive oil over just about anything, but I'm thinking vegetables or rice. You know, when you're making rice, add olive oil in there, or a tablespoon of olive oil is 120 calories. You can add butter when cooking, which makes it taste great anyway, like even better. I love putting butter on steak. When I'm cast iron, I'm frying it in a cast iron skillet and then I finish it off in the oven.

Philip Pape: 4:40

Always keep in mind saturated fat intake, of course, but again, we're trying to get more calories here. And then nuts and seeds, incorporating them into everything. You can put them in salads, you can put them as a side, you can eat them straight up. And remember that fat, as a macro, has more than twice as much calorie density as protein and carbs. It has nine calories per gram instead of just four for the others. So take advantage of that macro.

Philip Pape: 5:06

So that's number one is calorie dense foods. Strategy number two is to incorporate liquid calories. All right, liquids just don't fill you up like solid food. There's a reason for that they are effectively pre-digested. You think that's gross. I'm sorry, but that's. You know, when we're having liquid, anything that would normally be a food, you're taking a step out of the process and so you're able to eat more of it. So we're thinking shake, smoothies, whatever, and honestly I'm not going to be giving you a million recipes here but a base of some beverage like whole milk has a lot of calories.

Philip Pape: 5:39

I love whole milk, just in general. When you're trying to gain weight, it goes down easy. And then there's brands like Fairlife that have higher protein and Fairlife chocolate milk that has even more calories. So whole milk, a banana, some peanut butter. So that's our calorie density right there. A couple tablespoons of peanut butter. So let's see 150 calories for the milk, 100 calories for the banana, 200 calories for the peanut butter, and then whey protein. Even a scoop of whey protein is 120. So that's over 500 calories that you can drink in just minutes. And if you have dietary restrictions, like Jim's celiac disease, just make sure it's gluten-free, okay.

Philip Pape: 6:16

Strategy number three is adding extra calories to existing meals by just enhancing what you already eat with some smart swaps. So like cooking eggs right in a slab of butter instead of using a spray just to make sure you add those calories. Adding an extra slice of cheese to your sandwich, mixing nuts into your oatmeal, using coconut milk in whether it's a curry or a soup, something like that. So that's a very simple one of just like seeing how you can add calories that are almost unnoticeable and don't really fill you up in any way to existing meals. So strategy number four is to focus on foods you enjoy. Now, this might seem obvious, but it's one of the top factors of a sustainable diet.

Philip Pape: 7:02

No matter what you're doing fat loss or gaining You're going to eat more consistently when you actually like your food period. So it's one of the tenets Don't be guilty with what you eat. Make sure food satisfies you, make sure it meets your goals and make sure you enjoy it. So you don't want to force feed yourself bland chicken and rice if you hate it. I don't care if you're in fat loss or gaining right.

Philip Pape: 7:24

Force feeding of any kind is not going to be good and I hear oftentimes people say how do I get more calories? Or I feel like I have to force feed myself, or calories, or I feel like I have to force feed myself, or I need to force feed myself to get the calories. What do I do? And it's like no, you don't need to force feed yourself. Let's listen to this episode, all right. So that was it for strategy number four, just focusing on foods you enjoy, because that, mentally, is going to cause you to be able to eat more. Just a simple one there, in case you're trying to force feed anything. Now I want to move on to the second group of four, which is related to timing and habits. So strategy number five. And so, not to confuse you, but I'm keeping the numbering from one to 12, but I separate into four groups of or three groups of four.

Philip Pape: 8:05

Strategy number five is to increase your meal frequency. Just as simple as that. But again, a lot of people are not doing that. People get in a rut and the way you eat is just the way you've always eaten and it's based on your work schedule or how you pack your lunch or whatever. But you've got to be creative and say okay, instead of three huge meals, I'm going to have five meals. I'm going to have three modest meals and two small snacks, right, or six or even seven. I mean, you'd be surprised how many you could fit in if you're creative about it. And a lot of people are stuck in this, like intermittent fasting mindset or feeding window mindset, or not eat too early, too late. It's super flexible. It's super flexible. So meal frequency itself can be effective for you because you won't get too full on any one meal and, again, you won't feel like you're force feeding yourself. So if you're only eating three times a day and you're trying to gain weight, you're going to have to eat at least four or five, just almost across the board, no matter who you are. I'm still in my gaining phase now. I definitely eat six times a day, maybe seven, and it just makes it so much easier because then each feeding is reasonable in size, it goes easy on your stomach, it digests well, you feel great throughout the day, and so on. All right.

Philip Pape: 9:20

Strategy number six is don't drink water before your meals. Now, some people would advocate for this strategy in general for a number of reasons I'm not going to go into. But it's a good one here, because most people don't think about this. They just drink when they drink. Water fills your stomach. It reduces appetite. Drinking water before your meals could be a great technique when you're in fat loss, but to try to get in the calories it's going to be very tough. So just start with the food and then fill it in with the liquid, unless you're just having a liquid meal, like we talked about earlier. So don't drink water before meals is strategy number six.

Philip Pape: 9:52

Strategy number seven is to embrace calorie timing by taking advantage of your body's natural hunger windows. So what I mean by this is you're going to be hungry, even in a gaining phase, at certain times. You know when that is, and for a lot of people that is first thing in the morning. So don't skip breakfast, pre and post workout right Now you may not be that hungry before your workout, but you should be have some hunger after your workout. Take advantage of that to really gobble up the fuel. And then before bed, and you're like, well, that's shocking. Before bed, I don't mean like eat at 9pm and then go to bed at 10pm, I mean, like you know, 6 or 7pm, like as late as you can push it where it doesn't affect your digestion or your sleep, and it may be a smaller feeding, it may be an extra kind of dessert slot or a pre-bed meal, that's like two hours before bed. That's smaller, right. Think like Greek yogurt with berries, that kind of level. Or I like a casein pudding with almond milk protein, where it's kind of light but it's still got a decent amount of protein in there and some calories, maybe a couple hundred, 300 calories to finish up your day. And it goes well with the frequency thing, right, I mentioned eating more frequently, because then you might have, okay, first thing in the morning, pre-workout, post-workout, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and then pre-bed, and that's like seven feedings right there, and that's on a training day. Maybe on a rest day you have one fewer feeding and then you have to just be aware of the fact that you need more calories per feeding. All right.

Philip Pape: 11:22

Strategy number eight is to make your food more appealing visually and socially. I would say we naturally eat more when food looks good, right. Why do you think we love going to restaurants and having somebody else make these nice plates of food? It comes out heck, even going to like a greasy diner, and it comes out. You're like oh, this looks delicious because you didn't make it right. Or when you eat off of somebody else's plate, somehow it tastes better.

Philip Pape: 11:49

We went to Montreal years ago and I was amazed at the delicious food there. But not just that, it's how they plated everything. I was like everybody is a chef, is a culinary gourmand over here. We would just go to a diner for breakfast and the fruit was like cut up into, was sculpted into fancy shapes. Everywhere we went was like this. It was like an expectation and we wanted to eat it. Let's just put it that way.

Philip Pape: 12:15

So when food looks appetizing, when we're eating with other people, when we're relaxed, when we're not rushing and even sometimes when we're distracted, which normally is a big no-no because we want to eat mindfully. But when we're talking about a positive distraction, I'll say, like eating with our family at the dinner table. We can potentially eat more that way. So how you take advantage of that is obviously, besides going to restaurants when you're at home is the food just looking good, being food that you enjoy, being a good, interesting combination, fun recipes and eating with other people, and making sure to kind of load up on the food when you're doing that, because that's kind of tricking yourself to eat more without realizing it. If you will, it's just very interesting. And even being relaxed and not rushing and being mindful, sometimes you can actually eat more naturally because of the lower stress. It kind of depends on the person. So make food visually and socially appealing is the overall tip there. So make food visually and socially appealing is the overall tip there.

Philip Pape: 13:16

All right, let's go to the final segment here, which is really about, I'll say, implementation and sustainability. So these are some more day-to-day practices that you can have. So strategy number nine here is to have high-calorie snacks always available, like to pre-prep to meal prep. High calorie snacks, simple right. Always have ready to eat calorie dense foods available trail mix, protein bars, nut butter packets, pre-made sandwiches there's so many things and, yeah, I'm okay with protein bars. You don't want to be eating five a day, but look for those opportunities. Trail mix is a great one, because then you can get like nuts, dried fruit, even throw in some M&Ms in there the kids' version of trail mix. Again, we're trying to gain weight here, so we've got this flexibility. Think about that and pre-make your snacks, just like in a fat loss phase, where I recommend that you pre-make high-protein, low-calorie, like lower-fat snacks. Same idea here Just prepare higher-calorie snacks for yourself and easy things to grab and pack and go on a hike with or throw in the car or whatever. All right, that brings us to. We got three strategies left.

Philip Pape: 14:28

Strategy number 10 is to sneak calories into drinks. So we talked about sneaking calories into food earlier. This is really when you have a drink that you're already having, like coffee, have it with whole milk. Now, if you like your coffee black, and that's just how you drink your coffee. But a lot of us put cream or something in there. Put the most calorie dense thing in there. Now, right, put whole milk or heavy cream. Put heavy cream in there there, actually, almost. I don't want you to go bulletproof coffee because I don't like that huge amount of MCT oil in there. But that's a high calorie beverage. You know. Protein shakes made with whole milk instead of water or almond milk, having juice juice is okay occasionally, right Between your meals, you know, combining this with the liquid thing that we mentioned earlier. So just sneaking calories into everyday drinks that you already drink. Now I wouldn't want to go to like regular soda, for example. I'm not going to go that far. It's more of, I'll say, whole food type additions to what you already drink. Actually, tea works for that as well. My wife loves having milk with tea, kind of British style. I actually joke with her. I'm like, oh, are you having some tea with your milk? And she knows that and it tastes great. I get it All right.

Philip Pape: 15:43

Strategy number 11 is to plan your meals around fats.

Philip Pape: 15:49

Because fats are the most calorie dense, I want you to build meals around them.

Philip Pape: 15:54

So salmon with butter sauce, pasta with cream-based sauce, nut-crusted chicken or fish Meaning. What I mean by that is, unlike the earlier tip of just like adding fat, this is making sure that you pick meals and recipes that are fat-centric, that are fatty, that are rich. You're like oh, that's what I'm hearing on this podcast is very interesting, right, because it kind of flies in the face of sometimes what you think about with nutrition advice, but it's about your goals, it's about your context. We're trying to get more food in here, so enjoy the rich foods you know. Eat like the French, let's say right, whole eggs are great during this time. So think about fat centric meals as opposed to the protein and carbs, because you're probably going to get enough protein anyway if you're already there when you're not gaining. And then the fats are where the calories come, and then the carbs are everything else. Your carbs shouldn't be low, unless you're deliberately on a low-carb diet. But people forget about the value of fats for increasing calories.

Shonnetta: 16:55

Hi, my name is Sharnetta and I want to give a big shout out to Philip of Wits and Weights. I discovered his podcast just a few short months ago, but I quickly realized how valuable his content is. With all the many fitness and nutrition influencers out in the world today, I often suffer from information overload, but Philip poses careful questions to his guests that get to the meat of the subject matter, while most everyone offers free guides to this, and that what I found most unique about Philip is his live training and weekly Q&A sessions. If I can't make it live, I can always catch the replay. I am very grateful to find someone I feel is so passionate and genuine to his purpose, while also being hands-on within the Wits and Weights online community. He is truly only a click away. Thanks, philip, for all you do.

Philip Pape: 17:40

And then the last strategy is to track and adjust by keeping it simple but systematic. I want you to think of progressive overload for your calories. Okay, first you have to understand your baseline. How many calories do you actually need? Hopefully, you're tracking and you know what your surplus is and you know what your maintenance calories are. So you know that you're burning, say, 2,600 calories and you're in a 300 calorie surplus. You're going to eat 2,900 calories and you feel stuffed when you eat even just a little bit above your maintenance. Well, aim for not quite the full amount on week one, right? Aim for 2,700 and then 2,800, then 2,900, right? Very simple thing. I do this with clients all the time. I give them a very achievable goal for the next couple of weeks before their next check-in so that we're not feeling like we're overreaching and feeling like we failed just because we didn't miss it. Focus on one meal at a time, right, and one day at a time and a really good way to do this is if you're using a food logging app like Macrofactor is to take what you normally eat and then, for tomorrow, pre-plan and pre-log one change to a meal or one additional snack or meal per one of the strategies we talked about today. So don't change everything all at once, just tweak and add, tweak and add and it might be adding more fat, it might be adding an extra feeding, might be adding a shake in there, whatever makes sense, so that you're not obsessing or worrying too much about doing all of this. And then you're gonna adjust based on how well you feel. This is where biofeedback can come into play, like your hunger signals, and it's the opposite of during fat loss. So our goal here is not to feel like we're force feeding, like we're stuffed. So anyway, that's really putting it all together. The way I categorize these in the three groups may be a little bit arbitrary, but I wanted to keep it organized for you as you go through this and then you could use the timestamps to find each strategy. We'll just list the strategies right there in the show notes for you to make it easy so you can dive in.

Philip Pape: 19:40

Now. The one thing that you might be missing that has nothing to do with food and I wanted to address it and it could be the best way to increase your intake is managing your stress and recovery, just like during fat loss, when you're in a gaining phase but you are chronically stressed or you're under-recovered, right, that might be due to a lack of sleep, maybe overtraining, although that's not usually the issue. Your body actively suppresses your appetite and digestion. Now I've told you many times the opposite, that it can cause you to have a higher appetite and actually over-consume. But remember, we're in the opposite. We're in the opposite world here, the mirror world, alternate reality of gaining, where everything kind of flips on its head and when you're really stressed you may actually have trouble eating and your digestion might be off your gut health, things like that. And so sometimes, if you can barely eat 2000 calories and then you go on vacation and you relax, you're like I had no problem putting away 3000 plus calories a day without thinking about it. Why is that? It's because you're relaxed, you're not stressed. So it kind of goes both ways and I want you to keep that in mind, which is great because it means we should always be striving to manage our stress and recovery that way. It's not like we have to change the principle during a gaining phase.

Philip Pape: 20:55

So I want to just recap the 12 strategies for you just to reinforce in your mind real quick. I'm just going to list them. Number one calorie-dense foods. Simple, very high-level strategy. Number two liquid calories. Number three enhance your existing meals. Tweak them.

Philip Pape: 21:13

Number four make sure you're eating things you enjoy. Number five add more meals or feedings. Increase your meal frequency. Number six don't drink water before meals. Number seven use the eating windows that you are already hungry with, like first in the morning, after your workout, before bed, you know, afternoon whatever Take advantage of those to add in the calories. Number eight make sure it's visually and socially appealing when you're eating. Number nine pre-plan or pre-prepare calorie-dense snacks, like think the trail mix, for example. Number 10 is to tweak your everyday drink that you already drink, like your coffee or tea, and add in some calorie-dense liquid to that, like heavy cream. Number 11 is to prioritize fatty foods in general. Just think of rich, creamy, fatty, nutty cheese, all those things. Prioritize those. And then the last one is to track and adjust systematically and use a form of progressive overload to kind of ease into this and work your way up.

Philip Pape: 22:15

Now do you remember Jim's question about struggling with celiac disease? Notice how all these strategies they work with any dietary restriction. It's about the principles, right? Not the specific foods. I gave you some examples, but we're not about specific foods here, so you can, no matter what you're dealing with. You can apply these principles All right. If you want to put all these strategies into action in a gaining phase, remember I have a free muscle building nutrition blueprint that builds on everything we covered today in terms of the setup, like what are the calories and macros, what is the surplus, what should I be tracking, what is the biofeedback, what are the measurements, and then an example of a real bulk. To get your copy, click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash muscle to download that right now. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, building muscle isn't just about lifting heavy, it's about fueling heavy too. This is Philip Pape and you've been listening to Wits and Weights. I'll talk to you next time.