You Need To Eat More In Project Zomboid Now

I know this video is a year old, but my problem is the REVERSE. My character keeps gaining weight if I eat like a normal human. The only solutions is to stay away from normal and high calorie foods. Limit myself to vegetables around 70% to 80% of the time🙄🤦🏼‍♂️. I stay away from cereal, chips, peanut butter, etc. I spend 1/2 to 2/3 of my day with the hunger moodle. And if I’m lucky I get the down arrow on my weight. The balancing of the game seems to be designed around VERY slow metabolism. I read comments from other players and I think to myself “WHAT GAME ARE THESE PEOPLE PLAYING???”. Touching 3 cans of food (non vegetable) in any given day is punished. That’s absurd. Truly absurd. I feel like the current calorie burn meta was designed by an obese person so they could cope.

I have 600 hours on Zomboid. Your "newbie trick" taught me something! I use this method, but slightly differently. Watching you do it was such an eye opener. It was so much more efficient than my current method, and made so much more sense! I'm embarrassed I hadn't figured that out sooner.

It's 7 months later, and at the risk of coming off as mean, I have to say that some of the information in this video needs to be corrected.

Firstly: The effects of the calorie rebalance stack. Prominently, walking in weapon stance + attacking. This burns calories insanely fast and was strangely not demonstrated in this video. On any difficulty above normal, the calorie drain is absolutely bonkers for this reason alone.

Secondly: Weight is not determined exclusively via calories; this is a glaring problem with this video. I'm not fully versed on how nutrition works, and I had to consult the wiki to get this information, but the key ingredient in all of this is carbohydrates. Fats don't seem to stack harshly at the moment; maybe it's a playstyle thing but I'm not entirely sure how fats work.

Basically, carbohydrates determines the MAXIMUM potential weight you can gain. How do I know this? I went into debug mode and checked one of my casual saves -- my character had nearly 3,600 calories, yet only one chevron of weight gain! Then I ate a box of cereal -- about 560 carbohydrates -- and boom, two chevrons. The wiki states you can gain a multiplier of 3, but I've never seen this. Basically, the chevrons you see next to your weight is a literal multiplier; carbohydrates are the fastest way to boost the multiplier. Carb heavy food is critical.

The wiki states that you need, in one day, at least 400 carbohydrates -- about one box of cereal -- to get a multiplier of 2, and about 1,700 to get a multiplier of 3. Again, I've never seen three chevrons, and chugging that many boxes of cereal may not be worth the multiplier in the long term.

The point is: Calories are NOT the only factor in weight gain. My character had eaten fish fillets and two tubs of ice cream, combining out to the the previously mentioned 3,600 calories. This resulted in one chevron with negligible weight gain; the calories can be burned extremely fast in day to day combat.

One chevron of weight gain is functionally useless. Your weight creeps up at a value of .001 (yes, note the decimal point!) every FOUR frigging seconds! Good luck gaining any weight before your calories burn through. Two chevrons is absolutely required to boost your weight now; three is nice but the sheer volume of carbohydrates you have to eat makes me wonder if that's even humanly possible in a typical game.

Remember: There's a hard limit of about 3,600 calories that your character can hold. Any calories beyond this are completely discarded; do not chug 4 boxes of cereal thinking you'll have 8,000 calories and three chevrons, the calories will be wasted. Like I said, I'm not sure if three chevrons is realistically obtainable.

The wiki also states that the amount of calories needed actually varies somewhat depending on your character's current weight. I'm embarrassed to say this, but I couldn't figure the math out. A better math head could probably make more sense of it.

On a final note: It might be worth giving yourself 4 free trait points in the sandbox menu and taking 'Nutritionist', if only so you can see what foods, and prepared meals, provide you with sufficient calories and carbohydrates to maintain your weight.

Hope this helps.

Walking should be much more efficient than running. Humans have evolved to march from campsight to campsight, running is only for fleeing a foe or katching food.

Most people need to travel 1 mile to burn 100 calories, be it running or walking. The average person can run 1 mile in 9 to 10 minutes, and the average person can walk a mile in 20 minutes. In order for a person to burn 100 calories in 53 seconds, they would need to be "walking" at a speed of 68 miles per hour.

you could spend literally all day sprinting irl and wouldn't double you calorie burn for the day

Obesity bros our time has come.

I love the faint Final Fantasy 9 music in the background. Can barely pick it up but I know that soundtrack anywhere.

Calories are already wack in the game, a lot of food seems to give almost no calories. I struggle in my single player to maintain my current weight. I already ate all butter and similar high calorie items in the entire city.

no wonder man I'm losing so much weight I'm trying to stay in between 77-82 but I'm falling to 77 way too frequently and I'm eating cereals pb and high cal stuff I really have to get my trapping and farm set up if this is the case because I jog a lot just because I'm bored in between the gameplay.

It was already a massive pain before to try and keep a neutral weight, and it's going to suck even more now. If you are like me and enjoy making prepared food with the cooking mechanic, it's going to take an absurd amount of butter and lard to bump up the calorie count for literally all of your prepared meals to make sure you maintain equilibrium with your weight. I don't see any way of preventing yourself from becoming underweight unless you are eating nothing but bags of chips and ice cream every single day.

is that ff9 music? sounds like somewhere around Dali

this ain't gonna change me getting high hunger trait tho

So because they've increased calorie burn without retooling calorie/hunger balance at all, it actually helps to take extra hunger perk just to maintain a normal balance now.

Hearty Appetite is S tier imo. Even with it on, I'm always in danger of becoming underweight

NOW! 🌩️

Hi, is this still a problem after stable build patch?

I found this video because my character dropped 5 kg in a week. From 80 already down to 75 and it's still going down. I just eat when the game tells me to. Maybe I should be Full to Bursting after every meal?

I usually play with nutrition off. I'm tryna kill zombies not play master chef

Looks like I will be picking the obese trait much more often.

that's fascinating. and makes me wonder what my food spawn settings are

Uhuh so I'm gonna start doing obese run again

This was such a bad change they did. Ive now released a mod fix for this on steam workshop called: Calorie Fix . It adjusts walking speed calories to be less than running to make it more realistic and manageable.

I've played so much of V41, I'm done with it. But god, I can't wait for V42. All the changes thats already happened and will happen, it's like I'm waiting for PZ2! Hoping its gonna be as amazing as it felt when I logged in on V41 the first time and for a solid 375h

Always felt like I needed to go on a cabbage diet always when I started to always near 100kg on any character I had.. hopefully this helps

My character is almost always losing weight despite eating to the point of bursting all the time. I can't seem to keep the weight up.

great vid...but that ff9 music gave me nostalgia

So it'll be nice to play with overweight trait now

I dont MIND the change in theory...

but i think instead of just increasing walk and run values, the old normal should be tied to walking, a lower amount burned for standing still, and a greater for running and sprinting.

As of right now it just means a base increase to how much food you need, NO MATTER WHAT.

even if you are at a safehouse reading all day, the walks to kitchen for food/ basic movement will end up with a small-but still net increase in calories burnt.

If it was changed to actually reduce standing still consumption, days that you dont do shit would actually burn less food than the current standard. Im fine with a risk-reward system in this game but theres no reward with this impelentation. It is always going to be a net food increase no matter what you do.

Do not like this change as it stands at all.

EDIT
After watching and seeing that running uses less calories than walking, yeah, this change sucks. Just a bad call/implementation IMHO

Dang people who lived on foraging because of the insanely rare loots will suffer even more.

woohh... that makes no f sense.
I can walk to the city just fine (IRL) but it might takes a while.
Running however, well, that would burn me out ez pz .... but there its nearly the same Oo
Walking should take like 2 mins or so - given that its slow

why do i appears to be the only one struggling losing weight in this game

Debating on whether not to add hydrocraft its a huge mod that simplifies a lot of things you can't do in the game with a hefty content gate... but from what I've seen like the mines and different workbenches and what not look fun but not sure if it'll break the game too much

Honestly, I don't mind the calorie drain, but I do wish it were more closely tied to hunger. The annoying part is when you're in a massive calorie deficit and your character refuses to eat. I find it a little hard to accept as "realistic."

I mean yeah, us humans need to eat a lot, not like 3 pancakes per day

I was already forced feeding my character lard and marshmallows to keep up, ugh.

Dude… this game is getting way to realistic…




I love it ❤🧟‍♂️

This definitely need rebalancing. It looks like they didn't do nearly as much testing as you did. I don't have anything against sprinting burning a lot of calories, but having a slow walk for 100 meters burning more calories than actually sprining for 100m is just crappy balancing.
I hope they at least put a sandbox setting to modify it.

Lol all the NPCs are going to starve so fast.

I am not against increasing food usage but this is a bit excessive and disproportional. There might still be enough food on the map but it just doesn't feel right if simple walking uses up almost as much calories as building something. Walking should also always be more efficient than running. It should last about 2 minutes, which is still twice as much as but compares better to the other activities

This is actually great for me because I LOVE cooking and we have ranching coming out soon too

Ahh yes, the grindiest survival game just got more grindy. :P Great...

Hardcore for only hardcore and grinding, but not for realism and actual gameplay, great!

Man, I used to abuse sprinting not burning extra calories during lean seasons. Guess I'll have to play more legit now. Kinda like the magic pancakes they patched out.

Hey, could you research what the different rarity settings actually mean, and what kind of loot falls into each category? Like what's the percentage difference between rare and insanely rare etc, and what would be considered surivival essentials or other?

Would this the make overweight trait be more worth picking over underweight now that burning calories is easier?

VAGABOND JUST GOT A BIG BUFF AND UNDERWEIGHT JUST GOT A BIG NERF IM SO HYPE

Instead of improving the game their revamping junk that doesn't need to be touched