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…
Jini Patel Thompson is an internationally recognized expert on natural healing for digestive diseases. She healed herself from widespread Crohn’s Disease and has remained drug and surgery-free for over 25 years. Jini has appeared on numerous podcast, TV, and radio shows throughout the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, giving people hope and vision for how they can heal their Colitis, Crohn’s, Diverticulitis and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), using entirely natural methods. Her books on natural healing for digestive diseases have sold worldwide in over 80 countries.
