14 Bulking Snacks & Meals (High Calorie Foods for Extra Carbs, Calories & Protein)2024

If you are curious to know about Bulking Snacks & Meals, you have come to the right place.

Want to know a secret about getting big that not many people know?

You should be just as disciplined and intentional during a lean bulk as you are during a cutting or fat loss phase.

Bulking is an important part of training for muscle growth for both beginners who want to gain muscle and professional bodybuilders who are getting ready for the Olympia.

In this case, the goal is to eat more calories than you need to gain weight. To do this, you need to eat a lot of protein, carbs, and fats.

What is Bulking?

Bulking is a part of the cycle of bodybuilding, but it isn’t just for bodybuilders. Bulking is when you eat more calories than you burn while also lifting weights.

The goal is to use calories and strength training together to grow and build muscle mass and strength.

A bulking strategy can be used by anyone who wants to add muscle to their bodies.

It does, however, need careful planning. So that you gain muscle instead of fat, you need to eat the right foods with enough calories and do strength training at the same time.

Strategies for Bulking, And What Comes Next

Bulking requires a delicate balance. If you don’t work out enough and eat too much, you’ll gain weight, but not in the way you want. If you don’t think about where the calories come from, you could also end up with an imbalance of nutrients.

The Importance of High Calorie Snacks for Bulking and Weight Gain

The basic strategy behind bulking is to do weight training and eat more calories. To gain mass and weight, you need to eat more calories than your body burns.

This might sound like the best case scenario, but it’s not that easy. When trying to gain weight, it can be hard for a lot of people to eat enough calories.

In order to eat between 3,200 and 3,800 calories a day, which is the average amount for female and male bodybuilders when they are bulking, you will need to eat three meals and a few high-calorie snacks throughout the day.

Snacks with a lot of calories and protein are especially important one to two hours before and after a workout. The best way to get enough protein to help your muscles grow is to eat it all day long. To do this, you need both meals and snacks.

20 Bulking Snacks & Meals

Here are my favorite healthy bulking snacks, whether you need a bit more protein, carbs, or just a quick, tasty bite with a lot of calories:

Weight Gain Protein Shakes

Weight gain protein shakes would be at the top of the list of the best and easiest to make healthy snacks for bulking.

When made with the right ingredients, protein shakes can give you all three of the most important macronutrients as well as some micronutrients. So, it’s one of the best snacks to eat if you want to gain weight without giving up your health or time.

Also, a protein shake can give you anywhere from 200 to 1500 or even more calories.

Here, we suggest that you use Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass to make a protein shake. This Weight Gainer gives you the following list of macronutrients.

Besides Serious Mass, there are a lot of other protein shakes that can help you gain weight. You could also use bananas, milk, etc. to make tasty protein shakes and smoothies.

Beef Steak

Beef is a great high-calorie food for bulking because it has a lot of protein and other macronutrients. Beef is not at all one of the foods on this list of high-calorie meals with the most calories.

But compared to other kinds of meat like chicken or fish, beef has a lot of calories.

When it comes to beef steak, a regular serving can have up to 320 calories and an impressive 36 grams of protein. Here is what a regular serving of beef steak does for your body.

Beef steak is a great source of iron and sodium in addition to these macronutrients. Speaking of which, eating beef steaks for a lot of your meals can also help you get more creatine, which can help you work out better.

So, beef is always a good option for people who want to gain muscle and weight.

Whole Wheat Bread

If you’re looking for good sources of carbs, you can’t ignore wheat-based foods. Whole wheat bread is one food made from wheat.

It is a great source of carbs and has a good amount of protein and micronutrients like calcium, potassium, and iron. Here’s how much of each macronutrient you get from 100 grams of whole wheat bread:

You can add something else, like butter or an omelet, to whole wheat bread to make it taste better and get more calories.

Pancakes

Pancakes are another food that has a lot of carbs and other good things for you. Most bodybuilders and people who want to get bigger eat pancakes for breakfast or as a snack.

Here’s how a 100g serving of pancakes breaks down in terms of its macronutrients:

Remember that was the chart for the macronutrients in a 100g serving of pancakes. If you eat more, the number of calories you get will be proportionally higher.

Subway Sandwich

No, dirty bulking is not what we’re talking about here. When it comes to how healthy the food is, Subway has a reputation that is different from other fast food chains.

So, if you want to gain weight by eating lots of calories, Subway might be a good place to go.

Here are the calories and nutrients in one of their high-calorie meals, the Big Beef Melt Subway.

There is no question that a meal with 816 calories and good amounts of all the major macronutrients is what people who want to get big should eat.

Subway is also a great choice for people who are busy but don’t want to eat fast food that is completely unhealthy.

You can choose from dozens of other foods that will help you gain weight besides the beef melt sandwich.

Hard Boiled Eggs

Eggs aren’t part of any gym diet plan, so they can’t be on a list. If you look at the meal plan of any great bodybuilder, you won’t find eggs very often.

Eggs can be cooked in different ways. You can boil them (soft or hard), make an omelet or poach them, and probably a lot more. But we’re talking about hard-boiled eggs here because they have even more protein, fat, and other good things for you.

Here’s a list of the main macronutrients you get from 2 large hard-boiled eggs:

In addition to these macronutrients, hard-boiled eggs also have a lot of micronutrients that are very good for you.

Two hard-boiled eggs can give you more than 10% of the Vitamin A you need each day, as well as 6.6% of the iron, 5% of the sodium, and other micronutrients.

So, eggs are definitely one of the best healthy snacks that will help you gain weight and are easy to find and make.

Lamb Curry Korma

What about adding a little spice to your list of foods for bulking up? Well, you could always eat curry, and lamb curry korma would be a great choice.

You can always eat rice with lamb korma curry to make a spicy, tasty meal.

Below is a list of how much of each macronutrient you can get from a cup of lamb korma.

Isn’t that a great meal for bulking, with 800 calories and a lot of key macronutrients? The fact that you can always serve korma with rice or something else makes it even better. So, you’ll take in even more calories.

Lamb korma is also a great source of Vitamin D, Iron, Calcium, and potassium, in addition to these macronutrients. All of these things make korma one of the best high-calorie foods for getting big.

Oatmeal

You might expect oatmeal to be on the list of low-calorie foods that help you lose weight. But the truth is that it can also be part of your diet plan for putting on muscle.

Here are the number of macros in a cup of oatmeal that weighs about 60 grams.

Who eats oatmeal on a plane? You can always add something to make it taste better. If you want to gain weight, you should add something else to your oatmeal, like milk, fruit, nuts, or something else.

Pasta

Pasta is another food that is high in carbs and can help you meet your daily calorie needs. There are different kinds of pasta, like brown pasta and white pasta.

We suggest that you eat white pasta with sauce on top to get more calories and keep your hunger at bay. A cup of white pasta with pesto sauce has the following macronutrients:

It’s not a rule that you can only eat pasta with pesto sauce. There are many different sauces and other things you can put on pasta. Spinach is a classic example.

Try eating pasta for lunch or dinner, but don’t forget to add sauce, spinach, or other high-calorie ingredients. We said white pasta instead of brown pasta because white pasta can keep you hungry so you can eat more.

French Toast

If you want to get bigger, French toast can be a regular part of your breakfast plan. It is a great way to get carbs, fat, protein, and some micronutrients.

Here is how much of each macronutrient a typical serving of french toast has.

French toast is also a good source of Vitamin A, calcium, and iron, in addition to these macronutrients.

Also, French toast is a great choice for breakfast if you don’t have much time because it can be made in less than five minutes. You can also eat more than one toast at a time, which makes it easy to reach your higher calorie goals.

Cottage Cheese

Cheese is another snack you can eat often to help you gain weight. Even though it doesn’t have as many calories as most other snacks for building muscle, its low price and high protein content make it a good choice for our list.

Here is how much of each macronutrient you can get from a cup, or 200 grams, of cottage cheese.

There are a few different kinds of cheese on the market besides cottage cheese. Some of them have even more calories than cottage cheese, so you can also eat them.

Add cheese to your snack dish to increase the number of calories you take in.

Greek Yogurt

Greek yogurt is another milk product and one of the best snacks for gaining muscle. And different kinds of yogurt, even Greek yogurt, have very different amounts of calories, protein, fat, etc.

So, you have to look at the energy chart and choose the one with the right amount of fat or calories. Here are the number of calories in a high-fat greek yogurt that you can easily find at a grocery store near you:

You might not think that’s a lot of calories. But remember that this is only a snack that goes well with other high-calorie foods like bread. You can always try mixing your Greek yogurt with something like fruit or bread.

Protein Bar

Unless you have never worked out before, you have probably heard a lot about protein bars. Keep in mind that the average person needs 100 grams or more of protein every day.

Protein bars are one of the best ways to make up for the lack of protein. Not only do these bars have protein, but they also have a lot of calories, which can help you reach your goals of gaining weight.

Here is a nutrition chart for a 53-gram protein bar.

In addition to these macronutrients, protein bars have a lot of other important nutrients.

For example, they can provide up to 25% of your daily calcium needs, more than one fifth of your daily iron needs, and about 10% of your daily vitamin D needs.

Wrapping Up

There’s no reason to eat poorly just because you want to get bigger.

(I will say, though, that you have a lot more room to treat yourself, which is nice!)

Along with meals that have a good mix of protein, healthy fats, and good carbs, try to find a few snacks that fit your macros well and that you can keep on hand.

Don’t be tempted to reach your calorie goal by eating junk food or fast food. It’s not hard to stock up on Greek yogurt, nuts, and whole grain crackers to keep you full between meals.

FAQs – Bulking Snacks & Meals

Camila Smith

I am Camila Smith. I am a fitness expert and personal trainer and a life coach, blogger, and triathlete. As a health and fitness expert, my mission is to cut through the industry’s noise and empower people to find lasting health, happiness, and confidence through sustainable solutions. More About Camila Smith.