If you have an underweight toddler who’s fallen off their growth curve, these healthy foods for toddlers to gain weight may help. They’re high in calories, nutrient-dense, and often make the rest of their meal taste a whole lot more delicious!
How to Know if a Child Needs to Gain Weight
It’s important to know whether your child is, in fact, in need of dietary modifications to increase their weight before you start trying to add calories and/or fat to their diet, so let’s start there.
Is your child meeting milestones, gaining some weight (even if not a lot), and seeming generally happy and content? Are they following their own growth curve? If the answers to those are yes, you very likely can relax about their size and continue to allow them to follow their own hunger cues.
Just because a child is in a lower percentile for growth doesn’t mean they need to be made bigger. And just because a child is larger, doesn’t mean they need to be made smaller.
Kids, like adults, can be healthy at every size.
If, on the other hand, you have a child who’s fallen off of their own growth curve for a length of time (sometimes kids fall off at one checkup and are then fine at the next, so I’d urge you not to rush into this), is going through a medical issue where they have a more limited diet, or you’re looking for nutritious ways to add more sustenance to their food—to help them stay fuller longer—these foods should help.
TIP: Read more about growth curves and growth chart percentiles.
Food for Toddlers to Gain Weight
Here are some of the best high-calorie and high-fat foods that are great sources of nutrition too.
- Avocado
- Avocado Oil
- Almond Butter
- Banana
- Beans
- Butter
- Beef
- Cashews
- Chicken, Dark Meat
- Coconut
- Cheese, full fat
- Cream Cheese, full fat
- Dried Fruit
- Eggs
- Hemp seeds
- Flax Oil
- Milk, full fat whole milk
- Olive Oil
- Peanut Butter
- Peas
- Salmon
- Sweet Potato
- Sour Cream, full fat
- Yogurt, full fat
- Walnuts
TIP: Read more about healthy fats for kids.
How to Add Calories to Foods without Force Feeding
The thing about feeding kids is that we can’t force them to eat. (Okay, you theoretically could, but that’s not a way to raise a kiddo who trusts food or you to feed them!) So here’s how I would suggest you approach this: Aim to add these foods into regular rotation as they are, and also add some of them to foods your child already eats.
And try to avoid forcing your child to eat, but instead provide relaxed and frequent opportunities for them to eat some food—even if that means you have snacks or meals more frequently than you have been.
Here are some examples of meals and snacks with higher calories:
- Smoothie with 2 tablespoons nut butter or ¼ cup avocado or plain whole milk Greek yogurt
- Smoothie with flaxseed oil
- Smoothie with 2 tablespoons added hemp seeds
- Kids Weight Gain Shake
- Toast topped with nut butter and banana
- Toast topped with coconut butter and banana
- Toast topped with butter and avocado
- Eggs cooked in butter
- Whole milk yogurt with almond butter or cashew butter stirred in
- Mashed Roasted Sweet Potato blended with full fat coconut milk
- Pasta tossed with Pesto, peas, and cheese
- Pasta as Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese
- Bean and Cheese Quesadilla with sour cream and/or guacamole for dipping
- Spinach Quesadillas with cheese and cream cheese in the mix, plus sour cream and/or guacamole for dipping
- Chocolate Protein Muffins with a cup of whole milk
- Salmon cooked in olive oil with potatoes and sour cream
- Avocado Chocolate Pudding
- Stir heavy cream, mashed banana and maple syrup into oatmeal
- Ground beef cooked in olive oil or butter
- Chicken thighs in Butter Chicken
- Peanut Butter Energy Bites
TIP: You can do all of this without needing to buy special toddler formulas or protein powders, so save yourself the money!
High-Calorie and High-Fat Recipes to Try
These recipes pack in a load of nutrients in each bite or sip and are great options to try if you’re needing to maximize the bites that your kiddo is taking.
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This post is not meant as a substitute for medical advice. Please consult with your pediatrician and a trained pediatric feeding therapist for individualized help.
This post was first published February 2020.
Do you think I could add duocal powder to most of these recipes including the energy bites?
I am not familiar with it so I can’t say for sure. Let me know if you try it though.
I’m so happy I’ve found your page and now app with all this helpful information! I’ve been struggling with my toddler to eat and for a while I was t worried because I figured she will eat when she’s hungry then her doctor became worried so it’s been a whole thing this last six months or so! I also feel bad because I’ve definitely gone wrong about getting her to and made eating more stressful because I was so worried she was too small. I really have more hope and assurance on how to approach this after reading a few of your articles and ideas on meals to make. I’m praying I’ll have some breakthrough here thank you!
Hi Amy,
Will you be able to put a diet together to lose weight for me as a mother and a diet for my toddler to gain weight?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks,
Naz
Hi- I don’t have content that fits that as I don’t promote weight loss. I hope you can find some recipes to share with your family though.
Very nice content
Thank you for talking about such problems. Now, on the contrary, most people consider only a lot of weight or its rapid gain as a problem. Although the preponderance in any direction is not normal for every organism. But nobody takes the problem of underweight seriously. It is customary for us to consider overweight people as sick, and people with a thin waist as healthy. Although it may be radically the opposite. Therefore, it is so important to understand and notice if a child has weight problems in any of these directions.
My 3 yrs and 1yr 7mnths they r not gaining weight. They are too slim n m worried about them. Please help
good one and really i will try this for my two year old child
wow its really great one I liked it and will share with my friends
Thank you for this. My 2 year olds’ 30 month check up is soon and I have been stressing out because he gains and loses weight right before a well check. And I hold my breathe everytime he gets weighed. If he hits a percentile I’m relieved. If he doesn’t boy does it make me feel bad.
My husband laughs that i’m stressing about this. It’s like a big test for me whenever it’s time to visit the pediatrician.
I’m exactly like you. Good to know I’m not the only one who gets anxious about baby’s weight check.