Can Consuming Eggs Help You Gain Weight?

The key to gaining weight is consistently eating more calories than your body uses. While eggs provide calories, lots of other healthy foods contain more calories per serving, so simply eating eggs may not be the best way to gain weight. Eggs can certainly be part of a balanced diet to gain weight, however.

Consider Egg Nutrition

To gain a pound, you need to consume an extra 3,500 calories beyond what you expend, according to Mayo Clinic. To safely gain weight, do it slowly, Cleveland Clinic advises. Aim to eat an extra 200 to 500 calories per day. With that goal, you’d have to eat quite a few eggs to significantly increase weight gain, so include a range of nutrient-dense foods in your plan for variety and balance.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), adding two eggs to your diet each day provides about 144 calories, which means it would take almost a month of eating only eggs for extra calories — and you’d need to eat nearly 49 of them — before you gained 1 pound.

Eggs are a nutritious food to eat when you’re trying to gain weight, however, as each egg provides 6.4 grams (g) of protein as well as about 0.2 milligrams (mg) of riboflavin, 92.6 mg of phosphorus, and about 1.2 micrograms (mcg) of vitamin D.

Eat a Healthy Diet

Including eggs as part of a healthy diet plan can help you gain weight. Choose unprocessed, whole foods like eggs, which are packed with nutrients, recommends Mayo Clinic. Increase the frequency of meals if you’re having a hard time adding more calories to the meals you already eat — five or six small meals may be easier to consume than three large meals.

Add calorie- and nutrient-dense foods (other than eggs) to what you’re already eating: Top off a high-protein pasta mixed with vegetables with your favorite cheese, or add some nuts to your oatmeal. Smoothies and shakes packed with protein powder and healthy fats like avocado or nut butters can increase your calorie intake as well.

Include Plenty of Protein

You need to eat plenty of protein (and combine it with strength training) if you want to add weight as muscle rather than fat, advises the AARP. As you age, you need more protein to gain or maintain muscle mass. To gain muscle weight, aim for 1.2 to 1.3 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day to fuel your resistance-training workouts. (Use an online calculator to convert pounds to kilograms.)

According to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, some research previously suggested that there was an upper limit on the amount of protein the body could absorb at once. But other research has since shown that when eating proteins that absorb more slowly, like ones you’d get in a varied diet — from meat, eggs, dairy, legumes, and other plant sources — there doesn’t seem to be an issue absorbing high-protein meals that contain more than 25 g of protein. The amount, rather than timing, of protein (along with strength training) seems to be what matters when it comes to gaining muscle weight.

Potential ways to use eggs as part of a weight-gain diet include eating an omelet or scrambled eggs for breakfast; adding sliced hard-boiled eggs to your salad or sandwich at lunch; or topping a mix of sautéed spinach, tomato, and chickpeas with a poached egg for a nutritious protein-rich dinner.

Consume Eggs Safely

Consuming raw eggs — even dipping into raw cookie dough — isn’t recommended, because raw eggs can contain Salmonella bacteria. If the eggs are contaminated, even a smidgen can cause foodborne illness. Salmonella symptoms include vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, and fever, and can last for up to 10 days (though the bowels can take months to recover), according to Mayo Clinic.

This unpleasant form of food poisoning can lead to death in some patients if the infection is severe. Serve cooked eggs immediately, advises the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. Never leave cooked-egg dishes out for more than two hours, or one hour if the temperature is above 90 degrees F — illness-causing bacteria grows rapidly.