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Troubled Skinny College Guy Needs Nutritional Advice

791 Views 1 Reply 2 Participants Last post by  runnerveggie
I'm underweight and want to gain ~30 lb/13.6 kg or more and am having trouble picking out
certain foods from the store while budgeting then cooking simple recipes for snacking, breakfast, lunch,
and dinner consistently without making many trips.

I'm worried about running out of food quickly on a weekly routine and spending too much and too often.

Any advice for a realistic plan my fellow vegans? You don't have to be a college student to answer this. ;)

P.S. The only stores around are Walmart, Target, and Kroger if that helps. And my personal meal plan ideas so far are oatmeal combined with almond butter & mixed fruits and scrambled tofu for breakfast, rice & bean burrito (I'll most likely add some leaf veggies, tomatoes, guacamole, and culantro in the mix) for lunch, stir fry consisted of tofu, beans, rice, and mixed veggies for dinner, and almonds & fruit-leaf veggie smoothies as snacks.

UPDATE: I just went to Walmart and roughly estimated a budget of ~$60-ish/week (~$800/semester). I think that is A-OK compared to eating in the cafeteria for $1320; I think this plan can reach my goal. Any thoughts? Thank you guys!
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I think your plan sounds very reasonable. You might consider adding some substantial snacks/mini meals, as some people find eating more frequently helps them gain weight. With a budget of $60 a week, I think you should probably be able to afford faux meats a couple of times a week, so don't be afraid of those to change up your routine.

A few other ideas that work well for a busy college student are soups, stews and chilis. You can make a big pot on the weekend and eat for a few days. If you have a freezer, you could make an even bigger batch and freeze individual portions. You can also cook grains like rice or quinoa and freeze in individual portions.

Make sure you are buying fruits and veggies on sale, and look for frozen fruits and veggies to go on sale too -- frozen veggies are a great convenience item as they usually don't require chopping and just need to be heated up, plus they will keep for a long time. Keeping fresh veggies on hand sometimes requires going to the store more than once a week, since sometimes they don't keep that long. But, if you use some frozen veggies you should be able to make it through the week so you only have to go shopping once a week.

For other ideas, you can peruse other threads about being vegan on a budget -- searching for "budget vegan" seems to bring up quite a few of them.
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