Ideas to help my DS gain weight.

[mollyfolk]

My DS who was on the cusp of being underweight anyway has lost a load of weight after getting three different illnesses in a row this winter.

We have been referred to a dietitian but while we wait could anyone come up with some good ideas for adding calories to his food in the healthiest possible way so I'm not feeding the other kids chocolate all the time.

He has porridge for breakfast, fruit or chopped raw veg for snacks with hummus or nut butter on crackers or a boiled egg. Then we have fairly typical family dinners; meat potatoe and veg, fajitas, curry, cottage pie, spag bol.

What can I add to just his portion of food. So far I've thought about adding cream to the porridge.

Asda "extra special" yoghurts are really nice. Approx 250 cals per smallish pot. Lemon, strawberry & fudge were stocked in my local branch. Made with cream rather than just added sugar.
Traditional puddings - pies, crumbles, etc with full fat custard.
Use proper butter rather than margarine. Tastes so much nicer.
Creamy, cheesey pasta bakes.
Make lasagna with extra cream added to the cheese sauce.
Dauphinois potatoes as a rather nice side dish.
Jacket spuds with lashings of butter & grated cheese
Add cream & fruit to his porridge.
Can he eat nuts? Let him snack on peanuts & cashews, raisins & sultanas.
Milkshakes made with icecream & frozen berries blended in.
Hot chocolate made with whole milk & topped with squirty cream. Have with buttered toast & jam as an evening snack.

Nutella toast

Cheesy pasta with buttered baguette Cauliflower cheese

Meat pie, chips, mushy peas

Syrup sponge pudding and custard

Homemade coleslaw with lots of mayonnaise

Also, stuff like dried fruits are very high calorie but rich in fibre.This'll stick to his ribs:

www.allrecipes.com/recipe/11298/grammas-date-squares/

Grind up cashew nuts and add those to his porridge- it tastes delicious- so much more creamier. Add butter and soft cheese to mash, grind up nuts and seeds and add to any sauces. That's what I do for mine.

You could also make the sticks shorter - if they're half the length he'd be dipping them in twice as often?

As others are saying - make the porridge with cream. If he likes granola you could add that onto the porridge like a nutty topping?

Do you think he'd eat more with more variety in the mornings - because if it's more interesting he might be tempted to eat more?

Just thinking about this. On the "not fattening up the whole family" thing - would it be viable to e.g. take a portion of potato out after they're mashed but before you add butter/milk and then mash his with butter/cream while you mash everyone else's with milk? Same for butter on veggies and cheese on pasta. You can also stir parmesan through tomato based sauces - that might be doable without having to put it on everyone's?

Same for mornings - adding cream to his porridge doesn't have to add it to everyone's? Or are you making one big pan of porridge so that's harder?

Puddings - could do fruit and fat free greek yoghurt Vs fruit and full fat potentially?

How similar does it have to be? E.g. are they old enough to understand "Joe gets nut butter on his porridge because the doctor says he needs more calories to be health, whereas we're already getting just the right amount"?

How is his appetite? I assume you have tried just giving him larger portions? Normal healthy food should be unrestricted quantity if he is underweight.

Full fat everything, eg no low fat yoghurt, milk, houmous etc.
Double cream in porridge is delicious
Buttered toast with eggs
Higher fat meat for dinner
Butter in the potatoes,
More oil in the frying

Basically if you don't want to add sugar (and I agree) or make it look like he is getting loads of treat foods then the most calorie dense food is fat, followed by carbohydrates.

What about drinks? Flavoured milks, smoothies, meal replacement shakes? Depending on age the other kids can have regular milk or fruit juice when he is having something different.

Echo the pp who said ground nuts - can be added to porridge and other foods, for example I would make muffin mixture then split the batch and just add ground almonds to DS’s ones. Whatever he wants to eat just repeat until he has put on some weight, don’t worry about variety til then. DS was SO underweight after illness and prefers cooked food, so I would get him COOK kids meals and give him bolognese and cottage pie 3x a day, neither of the other DC were clamouring for it! As otherwise he wasn’t getting the protein and calories at breakfast or lunch. ££ but you could also make your own!

Also smoothies - can just add peanut butter to his and not the other DC.

Fat and protein.

Cheese is really easy and there are so many varieties, I often buy the ready sliced so there is no effort involved in grabbing a slice.

We do protein milkshakes once or twice a day, just vanilla protein powder and whole milk. It tastes like any other milkshake and has 22g protein. Could add cream.

Fattier cuts of meat. Creamy cheesy mash. Proper ice cream for most desserts.

He's not gaining weight but he has at least stopped losing it. I swear he's on at least 3k calories a day, is 55kg at 5'10.

I went through a phase of checking my blood sugar response to various foods and roped in dh and ds. Ds response to food is incredible, nothing sends his sugars soaring and they're back to normal in no time.

Sounds like he has a great diet but honestly if you know he is underweight, where are the high calorie foods he could be having?
Veg and houmous is not going to make a growing but underweight/ low weight child gain weight.
Extra protein and fats would help, milkshakes, fortified milk can be used to squeeze in some extra calories. Is he allowed the odd biscuit, cake or ice cream perhaps?

Yes of course. I'm just giving an idea of what we eat generally so I can add fat to his portions. He's been eating loads all Christmas. It's been a Christmas full of chocolate, ice cream and deserts and it hasn't made a difference for him. But I also think I need to concentrate now in January on making his normal meals both more fatty and nutritious.

On an average day we don't have biscuits. I bake a tray bake every week and they have that. We have dessert on Sundays. They get sweets after a park run that we do on Saturdays.

I went through a phase of checking my blood sugar response to various foods and roped in dh and ds. Ds response to food is incredible, nothing sends his sugars soaring and they're back to normal in no time.

It's so interesting. He's definitely wired differently to the other kids. He eats more than my two other children but is the skinniest.

Normally I don't worry but he looks awful now. We all caught the vomiting bug but it seemed to leave him weaker and thinner than any of us.

Almond flour in the porridge.

Toast with loads of butter melted into it