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Iulia Serban, RDN, is a registered dietitian nutritionist with a Bachelor's degree in Nutrition and Dietetics, and a Master's degree in Nutrition and Quality of Life.
While people who try to gain weight may have heard that high-calorie smoothies can boost their efforts, not everyone knows how to prepare one as well. That’s too bad because if you can’t blend high-calorie smoothies correctly, you will say pass to one of the drinks with the most calories.
From author's experience
As a 1.96 m (6 ft. 43 in) tall man, I prepared and consumed hundreds of high-calorie smoothies, and I openly admit they have made my weight-gaining process easier and significantly more convenient.
Keen on simplifying weight gain with high-calorie smoothies as well?
In this article, as a result of combining the insights gained from years of blending weight gain smoothies with the expert knowledge of registered dietitian Iulia Serban, you'll find a simple but effective way of making high-calorie smoothies.
First of all, before you start preparing a high-calorie smoothie, you need to know how many calories you need from it because this kind of smoothie can have between 400 and thousands of calories.
To explain the previous calorie range, according to the FDA's nutrition facts label guide on calories, a serving of packaged food that has 400 calories or more is generally considered high-calorie.[1]
Food and Drug Administration
See how many calories a food needs to have to be high-calorie per FDA.
Therefore, a serving of a high-calorie smoothie, whether it’s homemade or bought from the store, should have at least 400 calories.
Once you know how many calories you want your smoothie to have, you can start preparing it by following the next steps in this article.
Making a high-calorie smoothie is very simple. All you need is a knife, to cut the ingredients, and a blender to mix the ingredients.
To prevent your blender's blades from damage, put the liquid base (e.g. fruit juice) of your desired weight gain smoothie in the blender before mixing the solid ingredients.
Although a high-calorie smoothie can help you gain weight by making it easier to get on a caloric surplus, the smoothie's ingredients are responsible for the drink's nutritional profile.
Below is a list of the types of ingredients you can add to high-calorie smoothies for weight gain:
As an important note, the main ingredients in smoothies are fruits and vegetables. If other ingredients are predominant, they will most likely result in a different drink.
For example, if you attempt to make a smoothie and use a dairy product as the main ingredient, you will, according to the smoothie vs shake comparison, get a shake and not a smoothie.
The key to making high-calorie smoothies is to pick ingredients that have a lot of calories. Therefore, pick high-calorie vegetables and fruits, whole dairy products, calorie-dense snacks, and increase the calories with nutritious add-ins.
To make a smoothie with as many calories as possible, choose ingredients that count among the low-volume high-calorie foods.
With so many ingredients and calories in the game, it's easy to overload your smoothie with sugar. Therefore, you need to pay special attention to what you put in the blender.
"A smoothie with the right ingredients hasn't got too much sugar. You can make sure of that by replacing syrups, honey, and other sweeteners with a ripe banana, for example," says Iulia Serban, RDN.
Furthermore, you can decrease the sugar in your smoothie by increasing the proportion of high-calorie low-carb foods, such as nuts, seeds, avocado, and coconuts.
To get the most control in making smoothies, prepare them at home. The healthiest smoothies for weight gain are homemade.
Next, let's look closer at each of the ingredients you can add to high-calorie smoothies.
It’s already hard to find vegetables that are high in calories, more so when you are looking for the ones that can taste well in a smoothie.
Yet, after we studied hundreds of vegetables to find out the ones with the most calories, we discovered many that have hundreds of calories and can level up your smoothie game.
Here are 3 high-calorie vegetables that work well in smoothies:
You can also use small quantities of low-calorie vegetables, like spinach, in your smoothies. But, if you use too many of these vegetables, you won't have enough place for the high-calorie ingredients.
Find more nutrient-dense veggies and the ones with the most calories in our list of high-calorie vegetables for weight gain.
Besides making your weight gain smoothies look colorful and taste delicious, fruits will add a ton of micronutrients to the mix.
Also, since they contain fruits, which are generally rich in carbs, fruity high-calorie smoothies have the added benefit of filling up your energy reservoirs.
Here are some fruits and juices that you can put into your smoothies:
Although the best kind of fruits you can add to your smoothies for a high-calorie intake are dried fruits, like raisins, dates, figs, and prunes, these don't have enough juice in them to be turned into an enjoyable smoothie.
Fortunately, there are many other fresh fruit alternatives with a smoother texture, such as avocados and bananas, that can still increase your smoothie’s calories, even though not as much.
Use our list of high-calorie fruits for weight gain to find the fruits with the most calories to add to your smoothies.
Bonus tip: You can use apple juice or other kinds of fruit juice as a liquid base for your smoothies, instead of adding water, which has no calories.
Dairy products can add plenty of calories and a thicker texture to your smoothies because they are generally rich in fats and also feature good quantities of protein.
Generally, to maximize the calories in your high-calorie smoothies, you should use full fat dairy products instead of their leaner variants.
Here are some dairy products that you can add to your smoothies:
FoodData Central
2. Ice cream - Nutritionix.[3]
Nutritionix
Nutritionix
FoodData Central
To detail a bit, heavy cream is the dairy with the highest number of calories that you can add to your smoothie. Besides, ice cream is a calorie-dense and delicious choice.
Yet, since both heavy cream and ice cream contain sugar, you should think twice before putting them in the blender.
Adding heavy cream or ice cream to your smoothies may rise the sugar level of your slurpable snack, especially if combined with fruits, honey, or syrups.
"For persons who consume it occasionally, a smoothie with heavy cream and ice cream is not harmful, but those who drink it daily need to limit the additional sugar in their diets," says Iulia Serban, RDN.
To expand on other dairy products, whole milk is great at offering a finer texture to smoothies. Alternatively, if you prefer a thicker smoothie, use full-fat Greek yogurt.
If you want to prepare an energizing high-calorie smoothie, you should almost always consider adding some sort of nuts or seeds because they are rich in healthy fats, and this makes it easy to leverage the number of calories in your weight gain blend.
Adding too many nuts and seeds, however, can easily load your smoothie with too many fats, so you want to be mindful of this.
The world of nuts and seeds holds a large variety of high-calorie products that are a great fit for smoothies.
From raw nuts, like walnuts and almonds, and nut butters, like peanut or almond butter, to seeds, such as the pumpkin or chia ones, and nutty types of milk, like coconut milk, you have plenty of options to choose from.
Check out our list of high-calorie nuts and nut butters for more ideas.
In case of seeds, here are some you can add to your smoothies:
FoodData Central
See FoodData Central's data about dry roasted sunflower seed kernels.
FoodData Central
See FoodData Central's data about roasted pumpkin and squash kernels.
Nutritionix
FoodData Central
As whole grains are generally packed with healthy nutrients, such as complex carbs, they make for an energizing high-calorie addition to your smoothies. Besides, whole grains, as a complex carb source, will make your smoothie gradually release energy into your body, instead of provoking energy spikes as simple carbs do.
Here are some whole grains that you can add to your smoothies:
1. Muesli - FoodData Central.[10]
2. Buckwheat - FoodData Central.[11]
3. Raw oat bran - FoodData Central.[12]
FoodData Central
If you need extra calories, you can put some add-ins into the blender and get an even more nutritious smoothie.
Here are some add-ins that you can add to your smoothies:
FoodData Central
See FoodData Central's data about dark chocolate with 70-85% cacao.
FoodData Central
See FoodData Central's data about whey-based protein powder.
3. Honey - FoodData Central.[15]
FoodData Central
Be careful to not make high-sugar add-ins like honey and maple syrup the main ingredients of your smoothie. Add just a small size of such products into your weight gain drink.
On the brighter side, protein-packed add-ins like eggs and protein powder will help you build muscle, and thus, gain healthier weight.
Talking about building muscle, did you know high-calorie smoothies can replace pre-workout meals that boost muscle gain?
And if you want to also help the neurons in your brain function better, add some dark chocolate to your smoothie. It has been proven that dark chocolate improves blood flow to the brain.[17]
Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology
Made at: University of Nottingham
See the study that shows cocoa may improve cognitive function by improving blood flow to the brain.
Generally, you don’t want to put water or ice cubes in a high-calorie smoothie because water has zero calories, so it will not help you gain weight. Even worse, it will take up precious space in your smoothie.
Instead of water, you can add milk, yogurt, or juice to your smoothie because these liquids are higher in calories.
Nevertheless, in case you don't want to use milk or juice, you don't have many other thinning choices aside from water. A smoothie that is too thick is difficult to drink.
Regarding ice cubes, you can replace them in your smoothie by putting frozen juice in the ice-cube tray or by adding frozen fruits in the blender. Alternatively, you can use frozen milk or some half-and-half.
Additionally, in case you want to reduce your smoothie's fat content to a minimum, use low-fat high-calorie foods as ingredients.
If you don't want to make a high-calorie smoothie from scratch, you can follow our recipes for weight gain smoothies.
When you get bored with smoothies, you can mix things up with some high-calorie shakes.
If they don't have too many added sugars, like syrups, high-calorie smoothies can be a healthy source of nutrients, especially if you also exercise regularly. Yet, if you have any medical conditions requiring special diets, like diabetes, check with a doctor before consuming high-calorie smoothies.
It's generally not a good idea, however, to make smoothies the main focus of your diet. A healthy diet focuses mainly on solid foods. Find some ideas for high-calorie solid foods in our lists of high-calorie foods and weight gain bars.
To sum up, once you know how many calories you want your weight gain smoothie to have, you can either make one by choosing your favorite high-calorie ingredients, or by following a recipe. In the process, remember that the main ingredients of smoothies are always fruits or vegetables.
Once you know the ingredients, all you need to do is to bring them to the kitchen, chop them (if needed), and put them in the blender, where you mix everything.
Gaining weight can't get much more convenient than this. Happy blending!
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