How to Train Yourself to Eat More?

I’m working with a personal trainer. He says I’m not eating enough, which is what he thinks has caused me to stop losing weight. He wants me to consume 2000 calories on workout days and 1800 on non-workout days. I can’t seem to get past 1,200 calories. Once I hit 1,200 I’m full. I tried eating high dense calorie foods to see if I could squeeze in as much calories as I can thinking I could eat more if the food was smaller in size, but I am still full. Is there a way to train yourself to eat more?

You just need to force it down. Two weeks and it wont feel that uncomfortable or make smaller increments over a longer period. There’s lots of strategies to achieve this though. Off the top of my head:

  • eat faster
  • eat higher energy sources
  • eat more frequently
  • eat larger portions
    Etc

Liquid calories would be a start.

Drink a protein shake after every meal.

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Indeed, liquid (protein shakes) would help. If you don’t want to drink protein shakes, you could go for more milk.
A glass of milk is like 100 calories I guess, so a few glasses a day could give your calories a boost.

That’s a very common situation for women (some guys too, actually, but many more women).

Full as in “I’m stuffed and eating even a wafer-thin mint will make me explode Monty Python-style” or full as in “I really don’t feel like eating anymore and the thought of having more food is totally meh.”? Because those require two different approaches.

The first would benefit from “sneaking in” calories throughout the day like the guys are saying. 100 calories a few times a day is easily doable. The second situation is just in your head and, depending on the person, will either be easier or harder than the first.

Also, what did you eat yesterday - the food and the times?

Momma don’t do milk. We’ve been down that road.

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It’s the first one where I am too full to eat more. I’m not use to eating 6 times a day, which is what my trainer wants me to do, but I’m trying. Sorry, I haven’t been writing down times of when I eat. Here was my day yesterday:

Breakfast: A smoothie containing banana, apple, strawberries, cherries, kale, and hemp milk.

After breakfast 1 hour training with my personal trainer.

Lunch: 2 eggs, steamed carrots and green beans, 1 potato, and imitation crab. I was trying to add more calories with the crab and I’m not sure if this is an “okay” food to eat. My trainer will check my nutrition log next week when I come back.

PM Snack: Starbucks coffee frappucino. Again, I was trying to add calories while I was out doing errands, but got sick from it not realizing there is milk in it. I already know I’m going to get sh*t from my trainer for the frappe because of the amount of sugar in it.

Dinner: 4 artichoke hearts. I wasn’t very hungry after getting sick from the frappe.

Eve Snack: I got hungry later on in the evening so I had a fist size portion of leftover spaghetti.

Try chewing some gum. It helps to release more digestive enzymes because it tricks your body into thinking you are eating again. I found this a good way to help bring back appetite after my all you can eat sushi lol.

lol, that’s not the reason I don’t do milk. I get sick from it.

When I need to bump the calories up I stop at the bakery grab donuts, then teriyaki sticks, then grab me at least 2 high protein chocolate milks, or a half gallon. Set my phone timer to go off every two hours and make myself eat a snack. I actually managed to throw down 5,000 calories the other day. It can be done! You have to want it!

Here’s how you’ll know whether your trainer is legit. If he doesn’t notice that you only ate about 30g protein on this day (and, likely, roughly the same on at least a few other days), ditch him and look for someone else.

Seriously, that menu is loaded with fruits and vegetables, but little actual muscle-building nutrition. Are you vegetarian? Even if so, you’re going to need to find some high quality protein sources to have in each meal. That’s something to fix before increasing calories.

Throw 1-2 scoops of protein powder into the morning smoothie and remove reduce the fruit. That’s extra protein and calories. Have a workout drink when you train. That’s more calories. Slightly reduce the vegetables in lunch and add in another egg. That’s more calories and more protein. Instead of a crappacino, bring a protein shake when running errands.

Four artichoke hearts is not a “dinner”, it’s a snack. Just a chicken breast or thigh would’ve been a better go-to for a “not hungry but have to eat”-situation. Instead of spaghetti, a hard-boiled egg or two would’ve been a better evening snack.

Those are a few ways to add protein (and calories) to that sample day.

I get enough protein eating a vegetarian diet. Yesterday was 47 grams of protein. I’m usually at around 60 grams, but like I said, I felt sick after the frappe and wasn’t up to eating a full dinner. I’m not a strict vegetarian, but I choose to stay away from meat products because my heart starts racing a little bit after eating meat. If I eat meat it’s very little and not often. My trainer has excellent reviews from other clients, he has a Masters in body sciences, works with athletes, and comes from a family of trainers. I feel he knows what he’s doing. I’ve only worked with him 3 days so far so it’s early to tell if anything is wrong with this guy.

47 grams of protein? So you weigh like 23 lbs?

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Some people can get enough protein with a vegetarian diet.

You are not getting enough protein with your vegetarian diet.

Not trying to shift the thread topic, so I’ll just say that if you focus on significantly increasing your daily intake of high quality protein sources (and, thus, increasing your daily calories), you’d see nothing but benefits. Fruits and vegetables are not high quality protein sources.

If he doesn’t explain to you the drawbacks associated with weight training while following a low protein diet, then he doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he doesn’t pull out every stop to explain and convince you why someone your size requires more than 60g protein per day, then he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

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Ok so what is a high quality protein source? Define “high quality”. I can’t eat much dairy because I get acne and have bathroom problems. Milk makes me feel sick. I can’t have too much meat because my heart will race after eating it. I feel sick with foods that have too much processed sugar. Naturally found sugar in fruits are fine for me. Too much processed carbs make me feel tired and I end up going to sleep. Every protein powder I’ve come across has some weird flavor to it and the ones that I’ve had taste gross. My stomach isn’t big enough to handle the volume of food necessary to consume enough protein with plant based foods. I’m not exactly left with many options. I’m sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

You could get enough protein eating a vegetarian diet, but you don’t. I would recommend doubling it. Actually, I’d recommend tripling it but one step at a time.

I thought you said you had problems eating more?

Well that’s lucky, these foods are also terrible for your weightloss goals.

Define too much? For me, lean meat, fish and eggs are high quality protein sources so I think it would be worth examining how much of these you can consume without causing other issues.

I feel you on that one, there are some terrible ones out there. In my experience, the “guys” protein shakes tend to be cheaper and taste/mix better than “girls” ones. All I can recommend (certainly on this site), is that you experiment a bit, if budget allows, because they can be a godsend for getting extra quality calories in.

Another option is protein bars, far from ideal but I believe there are some good ones out there. Make sure you check the ingredients and make sure that its not:

a) A chocolate (candy?) bar with a bit of added protein to make you feel better
b) A cereal (granola in Americanese?) bar with a few added nuts so it’s “protein-ey”

Unfortunately, if you have to stray away from lean meat, eggs and veg and use packaged nutrition, you have to learn to read labels carefully.

Any foods that were animals at one point (Chicken, turkey, fish, pork, beef, escargot, whatever) or are taken directly from animals (dairy, eggs) are going to be the highest quality and most efficient sources of protein.

Is that just from red meat (steak, burgers, etc) or from all “meat” including chicken, turkey, pork, and fish?

If you’re trying to lose fat, you should ditch processed carbs anyway, so that’s fine.

Flavors are an individual thing. All I can say is tons of people have no problem with Metabolic Drive or Mag-10, with Mag-10 being less like a “shake” and more like a “drink”. Most sane people would agree either of those taste better than a fruit-kale-hemp milk smoothie.

This is one of the biggest problems with plant-based diets. Underestimating how much good protein they get each day because so many of the foods are calorie-dense. Protein shakes can help, fish can definitely help (you tried imitation crab, so I see zero reason why you can’t go with real fish), eggs (and even egg whites) can absolutely help.

[quote]I thought you said you had problems eating more?
[/quote]
Good catch. And, again, it’s one of the reasons we ask people what they ate yesterday. “I’m stuffed and just can’t eat enough calories” turns into “I’m not getting enough basic nutrients and, most recently, I was actually still pretty hungry.” Not really a knock on you, MadMomma, it just reinforces the importance of things like food journals to review.

I do have problems eating more calories. Volume depends on if it’s a high or low calorie dense food I’m eating. That was the first time I has a starbucks coffee and learned it has a ton of sugar in it. I get hungry when eaten much in a while. When I had the coffee it was at about 12pm. I had the artichokes at about 4:30pm. When I got hungry later on in the day it was at about 8:30pm.

Correction: When I haven’t eaten much in a while.