Sticking to a vegan diet can make it challenging to gain weight without ingesting a lot of grains (oatmeal, wheat, rice) which are not good for your gut – and when you’re dealing with IBS or IBD, your body often cannot tolerate legumes (beans, lentils, soy, etc), so you can get locked in a downward spiral between your mind’s values and your body’s needs.
I advise vegans dealing with digestive issues to at least ingest some fish oil (cod liver oil is ideal) for the sake of their health – but this goes RIGHT back to that downward spiral I mentioned above between your values and needs. And so I’ve also put together some well-tolerated vegan ingredients you can use to create your own high-nutrient shakes:
Vegan Weight-Gain Building Blocks
Here are some gut-friendly vegan nutrients (no grains, no legumes) you can use as building blocks:
- Udo’s, flaxseed, or MCT oil
- Yacon powder
- Lucuma powder
- Sprouted chia powder
- Ground flaxseed
- Vegan Protein powder; rice, pea, quinoa or hemp protein (or Absorb Plus VEGAN)
- Non-acidic fruit; bananas, peaches, mangos, papaya, pears, avocado etc.
- Nuts; cashews, almonds, hazelnuts, macadamia, pistachio (raw nuts should be soaked and then slow-roasted to disable phytates and other anti-nutrients. If you can’t do this, then just use roasted nuts)
- Seeds; pumpkin, sunflower, hemp, sesame (chia and flax are also seeds but already listed above)
- Coconut water
- Nut, oat, or coconut milk (but no carrageenan) – cut with 1/3 – 1/2 water if too thick or heavy on the gut
- Sweetener: stevia, luo han guo (monkfruit), raw honey, maple syrup (avoid sugar alcohols like xylitol, erythritol, sorbitol etc. as they can cause bloating/diarrhea)
Mix your choice of any of the above ingredients together and blend into a smoothie! Try to use 1 tbsp of healthy oil (start with 1 tsp and work your way up) per shake.
Here are some gut-friendly shake recipes that I like, but you can modify to get more calories in, or increase or decrease bulking agents, etc. as to your tolerance. The below measurements are more guidelines (as I don’t always measure when I’m creating my smoothies!), so you can adjust these ingredients as needed – some people prefer denser smoothies, and others a bit thinner. You can also add or decrease liquids in these recipes to your liking:
Brazilian Tango
1 cup coconut water or coconut milk
25 – 30 g protein powder (rice, pea, hemp, quinoa)
1000 mg L-glutamine powder
1 tbsp lucuma powder
2 tsp yacon powder
1 tsp chia powder (or 1 tsp ground flax) – if you want a thicker shake, then increase chia up to 1 tbsp according to taste
10 roasted cashew nuts
Sweeten to taste
1 tbsp flax or Udo’s oil
Blend until smooth
Creamy Goodness
1/2 cup coconut water
1/2 cup nut milk
25 – 30 g protein powder
1000 mg L-glutamine powder
1/2 cup of non-acidic fruit
1 tbsp hemp hearts
1 tbsp flax or Udo’s oil
Blend until smooth
Chocolate Nut Butter Swirl
1/2 cup water
25 – 30 g chocolate protein powder
2 tablespoons creamy roasted peanut butter
OR creamy roasted almond butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Sweeten to taste
1 cup ice cubes
Blend on high speed until smooth
Whole-Food Boost
1/2 cup nut milk
1/2 cut water
1 tbsp hemp hearts (seed)
10 cashews
2 tbsp pistachios
Half an avocado
1 banana
1 tbsp flax or Udo’s oil
Sweeten to taste
Blend until smooth
Here’s a well-tolerated juicing recipe that you could use as your base for these shakes, instead of water or nut milk. You can make up a batch of this juice and then freeze single-portions in either ziplock snack bags or ice cube trays, for easy usage:
Gut-Friendly Juice Base
1 bunch of swiss chard or baby greens
1 cucumber
1 avocado
7 stalks of celery
Handful of parsley
2 apples
1 cup water
*Makes about 3-4 cups of juice once blended
You can also use any of your favorite vegetable juicing recipes, but then add the following to your veggie juice and blend together – this turns it into a meal you can gain weight on:
25 – 30 g protein powder
1-2 tsp chia powder (or ground flax)
1000 mg L-glutamine powder
1 tbsp flax or Udo’s oil
If you decide to try any of these yourself, I’d love your feedback! Did you make any changes to the recipes? Drop me a comment below…
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