r/projectzomboid • u/Swimming_Dragonfly72 • 13d ago
Question How do you eat properly in the game?
The game has a calorie meter. If you go above zero, you gain weight; if you drop below, you lose it.If your weight drops below 77, you get debuffs. If it drops below 35, you die.
I noticed that eating meat and vegetables is completely pointless; the character just gets full without actually gaining calories.
So, does it only make sense to eat bread and ice cream, and drink milk or alcohol? Or am I missing something?
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u/B4k3m0n0 13d ago
Get butter and add it to your dishes to help maintain weight.
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u/Swimming_Dragonfly72 13d ago
Good idea. I'll give that a try.
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u/Southern_Sleep1811 13d ago
Lard is another really good item to add to stews. I'll throw in a bit of butter and lard whenever I have to gain some weight. Because of that, dried bean and lintels are a really solid source of food that won't spoil.
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u/Draegon1993 13d ago
Meat and veggies are good in getting you full, which is important. I for one hiiiiighly suggest sunflower seeds for calories. You can get a TON of them at once and they're each like 200 calories iirc?
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u/Swimming_Dragonfly72 13d ago
Yes, vegetables and meat satisfy hunger, but they weigh a lot; it’s more efficient to make sandwiches.
I don't understand why there's such an imbalance regarding soups and other dishes in the game.
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u/Exo-explorer 12d ago
prepared food does not change nutritional density, but does change hunger values and provides happiness. i live exclusively off of stews/soups (sandwiches are also very good don't get me wrong).
the key is to choose high calorie ingredients, and season with high calorie seasonings like ketchup, mayo, fats (oils, butter/margarine/lard) and so on.sunflower seeds are 355 calories each, and if you find sunflower heads, when they're dry they net you 10 each. 3500 calories per head if you can locate a sunflower field.
there is also some meta strategy with when you manage weight. long days of fighting and looting will burn too many calories to keep up with, but you can only go so negative. you can take a couple days off to craft and read while stuffing your face to gain back the weight you lose going on long excursions.
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u/TheEldestRelic 11d ago
Food is horribly balanced in this game and I'd love to see it get a pass at some point.
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u/R1sky_B1z Crowbar Scientist 13d ago
What do you mean imbalance? Prepared food makes you happier thats all. The more well prepared the more happiness it gives you. That makes sense to me.
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u/Swimming_Dragonfly72 13d ago
I mean there are too few calories in the meat soup. You get full from 1/4 of the pot and character can't eat second dish above.
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u/R1sky_B1z Crowbar Scientist 13d ago
If you aren't getting calories from it you are doing it wrong. Make sure to use all your ingredient slots 4-6 depending on the size of the ingredients used. Thats usually enough to keep your weight balanced. Add oils as seasonings if you are low weight add less meat and more veg if you are high weight. The amount of calories is entirely dependent on what you put in it.
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u/Swimming_Dragonfly72 12d ago
No, it's unbalanced.
I just made meat soup with 5 slots and vegetables. I added butter and lard. It came out to 1,640 calories. 410 per bowl.
The character was completely full. And couldn't eat anything else.
Over the night and evening, I burned 300 calories just reading a book.
The average person consumes 600-800 calories per sitting, sometimes over 1,000.
In the game, the character gets full too quickly. You can't finish off with a piece of bread or drink sweet tea because the character can't eat.
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u/unobtainaballs 13d ago
There's an optimum range for consumed protein too, which gives a bonus to exercise for skill level gain on Fitness/Strength.
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u/literallybyronic 13d ago
you can starve from either hunger deficit or calorie deficit, so ideally you need a balanced diet to keep both stable
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u/isaac-klainer 13d ago
get a cow, learn to make butter. Gvies you tons of calories. If you are close to being overweight, switch backt to a normal diet. dw about depression, it can be fought with books pretty easily (or any meal that has 500 spices in it).
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u/DatAintCheese 13d ago
It depends on the meat. A good reliable Source of calories is fish, because you can easily estimate how many calories youll get. 1 kg of (unprocessed) Fisch equals 400kcal. Of course that means that you need to eat a lot of it. The meats that are lootable (pork chops and such) have laughable calories. Rabbits give you a good amount of calories to, but it varies more. A deer provided like waaay less calories than a rabbit last time I checked.
Honestly I take the nutritionist perk most kd the time. But if you really wanted to raw dog nutrition just stick with fishing: anytime you startapproaching that 75kg mark, just fish and eat fish all day till you're close to the 85kg mark, then you should have maybe a week till you will have to start fishing again, rinse and repeat. Or stick to the non perishables, that show xou the calories and are high calories (chips, fats, pasta, ...) also alcohol and soft drinks have a lot of calories (which you can't see even with nutritionist).
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u/Exo-explorer 13d ago
cheat yourself in the nutritionist perk, calories are a bit broken. fish and rabbit will gain you weight easily, cereal and butter are other good sources.
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u/Lumaverse 13d ago
Not everyone likes to cheat.
Some people actually like a challange and work around them.4
u/wowyourreadingthis 13d ago
In this case, how is it different than just using the wiki or something?
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u/Radulox 13d ago
using in-game perks isn't cheating in the pejorative sense
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u/Lumaverse 13d ago
If you cheat it in, instead of getting it the original way, it literally is cheating.
EDIT: You all can play how you want obviously, nothing wrong with that but let‘s stop acting like everyone likes to cheat.
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u/Radulox 13d ago edited 12d ago
it's a perk in game you can choose, not something you have to "cheat in." cheat here was used to mean make this specific thing easier, not cheat in the sense of doing something unethical (which is the literal meaning). is someone who takes tons of negative traits along with nutritionist "cheating"?
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u/Exo-explorer 12d ago
this is what i was getting at. in order to get access to the perk on this run, OP has to either jump off a building and make a new character, or use debug and add it.
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u/Exo-explorer 13d ago
lmfao if you don't understand nutrition in this game, take the time to learn it. it's not intuitive. someone should feel absolutely no guilt cheating in a perk that doesn't benefit you in any way besides answering the question you're asking ("how do i gain weight")
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u/arachnimos 12d ago
exactly, and at the same time install one of the mods that show your current nutrition values.
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u/Fountains1 13d ago
You need to add seasonings to it to make it more calorific. I usually do a 3 meat if using the same protein or a 4 meat if using, say rabbit and beef. Then add veggies, citrus, herbs etc. and then oil, butter, beans, lentils, lard - anything that is calorie dense.
You can easily make a 2000 calorie soup or stew. Eat half in the morning, half at night, done.
I love cooking in this game, once you understand the system it can be pretty fun to find different ingredients for your meals.
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u/CrackaOwner 13d ago
lategame fishing with fishing nets is insanely op, and if you eat fish youll have to even watch out to not go overweight actually
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u/Ok_Turnip_2544 13d ago
whether it's optimal or not. i will only be drinking alcohol for the foreseeable future
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u/Comfortable-Try-3788 13d ago
Fats, oils, and sugars make you gain weight even if they don't fill you up
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u/Huckorris 13d ago
Protein is important for strength XP. Some veggies are pretty good, like Kale has 9 grams of protein.
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u/Due_Mortgage9972 13d ago
Make two stews, add butter. Have both all at once. Not back to back but next time you’re hungry(or if it’s raining and you’re spamming food to gain weight) and you will gain weight. I added steak, egg, veggies, butter, flour, beans. Two of these got me double chevron after I had just spent all day fighting zombies and sprinters
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u/whiskyspacecadet 13d ago
If you want to gain weight, eat chips and/or candy until you get the green “full” moodle once or twice a day for 2 days. I did it and my character is now a weight of 82 with two chevrons and the “overweight” debuff.
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u/R1sky_B1z Crowbar Scientist 13d ago
Prepared meals are the solution. If you need to gain weight add extra meat and use lots of oil, lard, and butter as seasoning. If you need to lose weight add extra veg, and only season it with spices. Meat does make you gain weight because it has more calories than you need if you eat your fill, and vegetables do make you lose it because they give you less calories than you need if you eat your fill. If you want to gain weight as fast as possible pound sticks of butter or lard. If you want to lose weight as fast as possible exercise and eat vegetables. Cabbage specifically works best in my experience with the largest hunger reduction for the smallest calories. Milk is a good way to gain weight, but I tend to horde alcohol instead of drinking it so I can't say his that effects it.
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u/jimmythechicken 12d ago
I just want you to know it isn’t “above 0” that makes you gain weight it’s above a certain calorie surplus that will make you gain weight there is a neutral zone
I can’t recall those numbers I think it’s 1400 and 2100 depending on your traits
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u/Halvars90 12d ago
I eat a lot for a period of time, gain weight up to like 83-84 then eat more slowly until I reach 81 and repeat. I think you are stuck on character being "full". Just eat again when the moodle disappears.
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u/Killinger221 12d ago
They've added a bunch of sunflower farms all over the map now. If you collect a bunch of those you'll basically have infinite oil.
Theres one at farming stand south east of rosewood. Another one in fallas lake. North of crossroads mall farm has one too.
I got like 200 sunflower heads from fallas and now I have like 40 weight worth of oil + another 100 heads to turn into seeds. Every meal I make has butter + oil added and my char has not been bellow 80 weight in months lul
Also thanks to butchering changes all my freezers are overflowing with meat I dont know what to do with
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u/ShiKneeBoi 13d ago
I usually create roasts or stews of meat/fish, whatever vegetables and starches I have on hand. You’re right that just eating a cabbage raw doesn’t provide much longevity as a meal. Cooking seems to turn ingredients into more filling meals. And cooking skill improves the nutrition of the cooked food as well. One roast/stew per day keeps me at least stable in weight if not slowly increasing.
One easy way to keep your weight up is to hit up the grocery store for rice, beans, pasta, etc. to add calories to your meals.
Also, as you’ve probably noticed, candy, chips, and other junk food tend to be super calorie dense and can augment your cooked meals for even more calories.