Is it too little?
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Is it too little?
| Wed, 02-25-2004 - 4:15am |
I'm trying to self-recover from anorexia and i'm trying to eat as much as i can. But i realize that the most i can eat is still about 1500 calories and i've not gained any weight in a week and a half. Am i still eating too little? I hope somebody can tell me from your personal experience how much you ate to gain weight and how long it took? What kind of foods should i eat? i heard that if you eat to much fatty food, your body ends up gaining only fat.. izzit true? Thanks very very much...

Hi snow_puppies,
That's a really tough one to answer and I wish it was easy. Everybody is different. Basically in order to figure out how many calories your body needs you need to look at your age, weight, and your activity level. But you also need to take into consideration you basic metabolic rate. Everybody burns calories even if they just lie in bed all day and that rate is different for all of us. Depending on how long you have been anorexic your metabolism may have slowed down, but if you are not gaining with 1,500 calories a day then I would say you need more.
Since you are trying to recover and actively gain weight, why not try to listen to your body and eat when you are hungry. I know that might be hard, but it's worth a try. You can write down what you ate, how much, and how you felt after each meal emotionally and how full you were. I know that's something therapists use to help their ED patients learn to listen to their own bodies' needs.
As far as the fatty foods and gaining fat that's not entirely true either. Your body can actually live off fuel instead of carbs. In my opinion, based on the many nutrition books I have read over the years (LOL) and all the things I have tried, I have found metabolic typing to be the best and healthiest. Everybody is different and we have different nutrional needs. Some of us need more carbs than others for example. If you can, get the book The Metabolic Typing Diet and do the self-test to figure out what metabolic type you are. Then follow the recommended foods in the book. Or for now, you can go to www.mercola.com and follow his nutrition plan http://www.mercola.com/nutritionplan/index.htm. On the top right you will see a link to a beginners, intermediate, and advanced plan. When I eat like this, and I do most of the time now, I feel the best I have ever felt.
Love & hugs, Kristina
The opinions I have expressed here are from my own experience and are not intended as medical advice or to take the place of your own physician's advice.
Love & hugs, Kristina
I suffered from an eating disorder a couple of years ago and went into an outpatient care program where they helped me to gain weight back to an acceptable range. I would say, depending on where you are at and how long you have sufferend from this you are definetely going to need more. I would say to bump you calories up to 2000 (I know this seems scary but believe me, it's gonna get worse...) and see if you start to gain weight. Give it about a week and if no change, go up in 200-400 increments/week. To start putting on weight I think I was around 2500/day and after the first little bit (after my metabolism started to sort itself out, and since I had been deprived for so long it went into overdrive), and eventually had to gradually move up to 3600 in order to keep gaining weight. I know it sounds crazy but honestly, they made me keep track of everything I ate to ensure I was getting enough (if I didn't keep gaining weight on the outpatient status I would have had to go in and stay in the hospital as an inpatient which I did not want to do). Anyway, basically just keep adding calories until you are stealily gaining weight and keep it there until you reach your desired weight and then gradually reduce them again back to an acceptable level (usually around 1700-2200 for a teenage girl/younger women). As for what you eat, at first I was scared to eat "bad" food but eventaully I realized that if I had to put on weight, I was going to have fun doing it and I basically pigged out on ice cream, toaster strudels, mini pizzas, candy, doritos, bagels, pasta, cereal, granola bars..basically anything that I wanted. (keep in mind I was eating 3600/day and that's hard to do unless you are eating calorie dense foods). Anyway, your body is in an extremely deprived state and for the first little while no matter what you feed it it's not going to come on as fat. Just be sure to get in lots of healthy food to ensure your getting your nutrients and then have some fun and eat some foods you've probably wanted to eat but haven't let yourself. As you get closer to your goal weight, try and eat a little healthier and reduce the amount of junk because you don't want to make eating junk food a habit and by this time you may start putting on weight in an undesirable form if your not carefull. I know this is an extremely scary time for you right now, but trust me, your body needs calories right now, and by only giving it 1500 a day you're not going to add any weight and the longer you keep yourself at this low weight the more damage you risk to your long term health.
Anyway, sorry for this super long post, just sorta wanted to give you as much info as possible. Good luck with the recovery, be persistant, keep reminding yourself why you want to recover and just believe in your body and it's ability to know what's right.
-keep on eating!