Calorie intake calculators

A very important thing to know is that you CANT always listen to reccommended daily intakes. They are usually not accurate and often underestimate how much energy your body needs. For the point of this exercise I put my details into various calculators which all returned very different results.

 FYI 10272 kilojoules = 2455 calories

As you can see some of the calculators stated I only need to eat about 1900 to maintain my weight. However I have lost weight eating that amount in the past which means it is obviously not enough for me. In saying that, I usually dont eat as much as 2500 calories each day either which is what another calculator suggested.

The point I am trying to make is that everybody is different and no calculator can accurately tell you exactly how many calories you need each day. Also, your body will not use the exact same number of calories each day. Some days you will need more or less energy, which is when listening to your body really becomes important.

If a doctor or dietician tells you how much you should be eating then I highly reccommend that you follow there advice. Ideally you wont count calories at all but if like me you do, please dont listen to these types of online calculators as they really aren't accurate.

You may find that you need to experiment for a while to see how much food your body truly needs by looking at your patterns of weight loss/maintenence/gain and also your energy levels and hunger. :)

My relationship with food post anorexia

Although I no longer consider myself to suffer from full blown anorexia, I know I still do not have a completely normal relationship with food either. I dont really worry about the fact that my relationship with food is a little different to others around me as it is not particularly harmful. I find it quite interesting as I have noticed other people who have also recovered eat quite similarly to me.

Firstly, I prefer to eat larger quantities of low calorie density foods. So the size of my meals is the same as others calories wise most of the time, however my meals just contain a lot more food. This probably started for me when I had anorexia and tried to eat as much as possible while consuming the fewest amount of calories possible. So while I dont try and limit my calories anymore, I still enjoy the same types of foods so need to eat a lot of them to ensure I am getting enough energy.

Because I really enjoy lots of vegetables and salads, I add heaps of these to my meals which makes them very large in volume. 

It sounds silly but I think I also like to eat large quantities of food because I just really enjoy eating and love food. I eat 6 meals a day and hate skipping meals. It is actually a fear of mine to skip meals and being hungry makes me really anxious and upset. I would much prefer to eat 6 small meals than 5 larger ones each day, even if it means I have to get up early so that I can do so.

Even though my meals are large, I eat them really fast which people often notice and are astonished by. I dont know why I eat so fast, but I have always the first to finish a meal ever since I started my recovery. I remember when I was really sick I used to eat my meals incredibely slowly, at an attemp to savour of morsal of food. But I suppose I just dont feel the need to do this anymore as I give my body all of the food it needs and am less obsessed with food.

Unlike most people, I still keep a basic count of the number of calories I eat each day to ensure I am getting enough energy. Some people may say that this is an unhealthy behaviour for me to have and I can see where they are coming from. However I have found this to be necessary in order for me to maintain my weight. If i dont do this and just try to listen to my hunger cues, I often find my self accidently eating too little.

I always eat absolutely everything on my plate. I know that this is probably a really weird trait for a post anorexic to have but I always finish all of my meals. I think I started doing this so strictly in recovery so that my anorexia could not try and tempt me to leave food. (Because I always ate everything on my plate no matter how full I felt, my anorexic voice didnt even try to get me to leave any behind.) So I guess I have kind of been conditioned to not associate feeling full with stopping eating.

Life is way too short to always go for the lower calorie option

Something I have realised in my recovery, is that like really is way to short to only ever eat fat free or low caorie products, jut because your eating disorder tells you that you should. Thr truth is, I think that free yoghurt tasted terible so nevereat in anymore. In fact, my favourite sort of yoghurt i the full fat type that I comfortably eat reglarly. Now I am so much heathier I look back and ask myself why did I eat something I didn't even like for so long. Since becoming so much healthier, I only ever eat things if I realy love them (which incluudes most foods haha) and I love and enjoy food now more then I ever have before!

Yesterday morning I went to make my usual bowl of oats to have with my toast but I was really dissappointed to find that the milk had expired and I couldn't use it. I decided to make my oats with water instead of milk as this is always how I used to eat then whilst I was sick and I was shocked by just how awful they tasted.  They were testeless and also had a awful consistency, which reminded me a bit of clag glue. Even when I added some extra berries to try and make them a bit more flavoursome, they still tasted awful. So never again will I be eating oats prepared with water, as they really are gross!

Once again, looking back I still can't believe that I ate those awful oats so much when I was sick and am so glad that I put other things before calories when making food choices now, like what I feel like and enjoy most. Every food option I ever made was based upon number of calories and fat content once, but now none of them are and it feels great. I know now that I dont have to choose salad with dressing on the side everytime I go out to a restaurant and instead I can order something I love like chicken schnitzel with chips and salad or even a ceasar salad.

So please, dont waste any more of your life eating the 'safe' option if there are other things that you could be eating and that you enjoy much more. Once you make the change and start eating the foods that you truy love, instead of just the things that your norexia makes you eat, I assure you that you will have a much better relationshipp with food and it will makee you feel great! There is nothing wrong with treating yourself to foods you love or making your food taste better by adding things like milk, oil, sauce or sugar. Yes, this may add some calories but those calories cant hurt you and it is well worth it if it means you will enjoy your food even more!

Eating intuitively to gain weight

Today I got asked aboout whether I followed a meal plan whilst I was eating proper recovery amounts and gaining weight or if I just ate intuitively. I thought that this was a great question so I thought I would write a post on the topic :)

While eating intuitively is something I am now working toward, I honestly dont know if it eating intuitively whilst you are trying to gain weight is a good idea or not. Perosonally, I know that I woud not have eaten enough in recovery to gain weight if I had not folowed a meal plan. I guess this is becausse when you are gaining weight, you actually need to eat an excess amount of food than what your body is necessarily telling you that you need at the time.

Perhaps the only time that eating intuitively would work in order for you to gain weight is if you were experiencing extreme hunger and were strong enough to give into your hunger cures 100%, but I honestly dont think that many anorexics would be strong enough to ddo that early on in their recoveries anyway. I honestly think that following a mel plan is the best way to recover and gain weight, but of course that is just my opinion. I would be realle interested to hear whether other people have been able to make full recoveries without meal plans or counting calories. :)

As far as counting calories goes, I would avoid it if you could as it really is an awful and destructive anorexic behaviour. Counting calories seriously nearly drove me crazy and I am so happy that calorie counting is no longer such a big part of my life. While I still do keep track of the approximate amount of calories I eat, eventually my goal is to not worry about calories at all and to just eat completely intuitively.

While it is better not to count calories in recovery if you can avoid it, to a certain thing it may be necessary. For example when I put my meal plan together, I designed it so that it contained a certain amount of calories, so that I knew I was reaching an acceptable intake each day. I think that the best thing to do if it was possible would be to get a dietician or a similar specialist to design a meal plan for you. This would mean that they can do the calories counting for you to ensure that your meal plan is suitable without you having to worry about numbers of calories yourself.

So while eating intuitively may be a fantastic goal for you to have one day, it may not be suitable for you to try and do that whilst you are gaining weight. Just as following a meal plan is not a healthy thing for you to do for the rest of your life. I guess you just have to do what is best for you in your particular stage of recovery and do what allows you to reach your goals and be healthy and strong!

Extreme calorie counting

Looking back, I still cant believe just how bad my calorie counting was and how obsessed I was with calculating the exact number of calories that everything I ate contained. I would weigh absolutely everything I ate so that I could calculate the exact number of calories and refused to eat anything prepared by anyone else. Even though I would weigh each thinng many times before eating it, I would still often freak out when I was half way through  meal that Imay have made a mistake or that the scales may not have been working properly.

I would make sure that I ate the exact same number of calories ever single day and I wouldn't let myself go over this amount by even a single calorie. Preparing food took a long time as I had to weigh out absolutely everything I was using and then also do the math to calculate the number of calories and add it into my calorie counter. I would reweigh things that had the nutritional values already writtten on them so that I could calculate the EXACT amount.

There was no type of food that I would not weigh (except liquids like milk which I would measure out with a measuring cup. I would even weigh things like pieces of fuit, salad and vegetables. I will use breakfast as an example of my extreme calorie counting. I would weigh the slices of bread that I was going to use for my toast and then also the spreads that I was going to be putting on them. If  I had something like apple and custard oats I would weigh out the oats and sweetner I was going to be using, weigh out the custard and then cut up an exact weighed amount of apple to stir through.

I honestly dont know how I did what I did. Just the thought of doing this insane calorie counting whilst preparing food and planning what to eat seems like such a huge waste of time and effort. I suppose at the time I ddn't really have anything else happening in my liffe to concentrate on but I still don't know how Icould have been bothered to go to all that effort, just so I could know that I was eating an exact number of calories each day.

At one stage I was also counting macros which was even more awful as I didn'tt only need to eat an esact number of calories eah day, but I had to eat a mixture of foods that would fit perfectly into my macronutrient goal too. The amount of time I have wasted in my life with this useless calorie/macro planning and counting really does make me sick and if you are currently living the sae way, I highly encourage you to try and get out of these unhealthy behaviours now. Life really is to short to be spending so much time doing these absolutely pointless things and letting go of these behaviours is very important for your recovery.

Even though I still have a fair idea of the amount of calories I eat as I like to make sure I am reaching my minimum calorie target each day, I have no idea of the exact number of calories and I also have no idea about how much of each macronutrient I eat. Letting go of these behaviours was one of the greatest challenges in my recovery  but I am proud to now say that I have managed to do it and I know that you can do it too. It feels so good to now have the freedom to eat exactly what I feel like, despite how many calories grams of carbs, fat or protein it may contain.

Mindful eating

To me, being fully recovered will be when I can comfortabely eat mindfully or intuitively while staying healthy. I found the following article on the Recovery Warriors website and thought I would post it for you all to read as it explains the basics of mindful eating well.

Just out of curiosity, is being able to eat mindfully a goal most people recovering from Anorexia have or do some of you have other recovery plans?




BY CAITLIN GAYNOR MIND JULY 29, 2015

THE POWER OF MINDFUL EATING


According to Oxford Dictionary, mindfulness is “a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations.”

Dr. Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, states that the average person makes around 250 decisions about food every day. However, most of the decisions we make, we cannot explain.

How does mindfulness relate to eating?

Mindful eating is an increased awareness of eating choices and their effect on hunger/fullness rather than calorie content. It requires asking questions before making choices, and during eating:
Where is my hunger level?
Am I making balanced choices and including all food groups?
Am I choosing food based on a specific emotion (ie. need for comfort) or physiological hunger?
Am I choosing foods based on a diet mentality (ie. lowest calorie option, or “lightest” option)?
Am I eating at a moderate pace and enjoying and noticing the taste of the food?
Am I distracted while eating?

Mindful eating helps individuals to let go of “good foods” and “bad foods” and focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle while enjoying food and nourishing the body.


There is no such thing as failing at mindful eating, each meal and snack presents an opportunity to practice and increase awareness.

https://www.recoverywarriors.com/the-power-of-mindful-eating/

Realising that exact numbers of calories do not matter

Something that took me a really long time to truly understand is that our bodies are not calorie counting machines. There is not an exact number of calories that our body needs in order to maintin our weight. If we eat more on one occasion, this does not mean we will necessarily gain weight, just as we do not necessarily lose weight if we eat a little less on any one day. If you really think about it, our bodies truly are amazing in adapting to our energy intakes.

The same thing goes for exercise. Just because a person misses exercise on a single day does no mean that they will necessarily gain weight and just because a person exercises more on one day does not mean they will lose a significant amount of weight either. If we learn to properly listen to our bodies, we will be able to realise when our bodies need extra food or not so much and can eat accordingly.

For a long time I was terrified of increasing my intake as even though I was under eating, I was still managing to maintain my weight. I was so pedantic about the number of calories I was eating and always made sure I ate the EXACT same amount every single day. I would not even eat 5 calories more or less (knowingly anyway) as I thought it would make me gain or lose weight. I now know that our bodies do not calculate calories in this way and that there is actually quite a large intake range that our bodies can maintain on.

Throughout my eating disorder, my  body has managed to maintain my weight while eating 1800 calories, then 2000 calories, 2200 calories, 2500 calories and even up to 3000 calories. And this is because my body has cntinuously adjusted depending upon my intake. So please, just because you may be maintaining your weight at a lower weight, do not think you will never be able to eat any more then that amount in your life without gaining weight because you will be able to.

There is no magic formula to work out exactly how much you need to eat in order to lose, gain or maintan your weight. Our bodies are incredibely complex and we cannot always control them closely as we think we can. It is only since my mind has started to recover that I have been able to think so much more rationally and have been able understand dfferent things like this. Understanding this has helped me so much to get out of my bad eating disorder behaviours such as weighing everything I eat so that I can calculate the exact number of calories a food contains.

For example, I just use the nutritional values on the backs of packets to make sure I eat enough each day. While this means that I may actually be eating a little more or a little less then what it says on the packet, Iknow tha I am eating around the right amount that is all that matters. My body does not count every calorie that it uses and I therefore dont need to count every single calorie I consume either. I just need to trust that my body will use the energy I provide it with to look after me.

I cant wait until the day comes that I learn how to eat intuitively and no longer need to count calories. I am so excited about the prospect of trusting my body enoough to maintain a healthy weight without needing to eat a particular amount. Our bodies are so smart that if we learn to properly listen to them that they can really look after us, without us having to worry about it at all. Once this was the way everyone lived and this is the way that things should still be now in my opinion. We just need to sit back, enjoy life and trust our bodies to sort the rest out for themselves!

Eating an unknown number of calories

Since I was working late tonight and it is so cold, I was planning on having a tin of hot soup as well as fresh bread and butter for tea. My nan came into the supermarket  while I was working to say that she had left me some homemade soup at my house for my tea. My instant thought was that I wouldn't eat it as I had no idea how many calories it would contain but of course I thanked her anyway. After my nan left, I started to think about how delicious the soup she had made sounded. 

This will probably freak you all out but it was actually Roo tail and vegetable soup (you may not realise but country people in Australia often eat kangeroo meat.) I had mixed feeling about what I should do. I could have either stuck to what I was confortable with, a tin of soup I knew the calorie content of or I could eat what my nan had made for me which I had no idea the calorie count of. I decided that this was a perfect opportunity for me to step out of my comfort zone and face one of my biggest fears. 

I got home and warmed the soup up my nan had made me while I buttered myself three slices of fresh wholemeal bread. The soup smelt delicious and tasted even better but I couldnt help but feel incredibely anxious. I had no idea if my tea had more or less calories then it usually would have had and this really scared me. I made myself feel a little better by rationalising with myself. I told myself that if I was eating a little less then usual (which I highly doubt) it was ok as it was only a one off. I also told myself that it did not matter if I ate more calories either, as the extra energy could not hurt me in anyway. 

While I cant eat meals like this too often in recovery as I need to make sure I am eating at least a certain amount of calories, it is still good for me to occasionally eat something made by someone else that I dont know the calorie content of. My anorexia hates it when I eat something with an unknown number of calories in it which means that doing this just creates another opportunity for me to fight my anorexia. Afterall, I believe you can only make progress in your recovery while you are actively fighting your anorexia.

Since my goal is to learn how to eat intuitively after I become weight restored, it is good if I can become a little more comfortable with eating food with an unknown number of calories in it now. I am hoping that if I am able to learn how to eat intuitively in the future, I will never have to count calories again in my life. To me, this would be a dream come true.

Day 12: what are 3 things you would like to change about yourself.

I wish that I could be more confident in myself so that I could stop doubting everything I do. This occurs no matter what I am doing, whether I am serving a customer at work or leaving the house to take my dog for a walk. For example, after I serve a customer at the bank, I start doubting myself even if I have been given absolutely no reason to do so. Suddenly I begin to panic that I may not have entered the correct value into the computer or that I could have given out the wrong amount of money and I will not be satisfied that I didnt make any mistakes until the end of the night when my computer terminal balances and I have no funds outstanding. It is also common for me to feel the need to go back and check that all my powerpoints are turned off and that the door to my wood fire is definetely closed numerous times whenever I leave the house. Of course, everytime I go back I always find that everything is just as it should be but as soon as I think of any possibility of what I may have done wrong, I instantly start convincing myself that it is true.

I wish that I could stop worrying about food, calories, exercise and weight. I really do wish that I could just go back to the time in my life when I still didnt know what a calorie was. I wish I could still eat a meal without thinking about how many calories it contains as well as how eating that meal will effect my weight. If someone gave me the option of wiping my memory from the last 5 years, I would definetely do it, just so I could rid myself of the knowledge I have developed about calories and food. Afterall, It was only about 4 or 5 years ago that I never worried about what I ate at all.

I distinctly remember something a boy said as we were making our lunches one day at the boarding house. As I was making myself a wrap, the boy said to me, 'you are like the only girl I know who doesnt care about what you eat.' I looked around the room and realised that most of the girls were filling their wraps with healthy fresh salads however I didnt feel like salad. I felt like chicken, cheese and BBQ sauce, so that is exactly what I had. He wasnt being awful or anything, he was just pointing out the fact that I never thought about what I ate, and he was completely right. If I felt like something, I ate it no matter how healthy or unhealthy it was. I wish so much that I could go back to having this relationship with food again.

I wish I didn't have such high expectations of myself all the time. If I wasn't as much of a perfectionist my life could have been very different. I would have better self confidence and better self esteem as I wouldn't have spent my whole life feeling like a failure in everything I did. I would have been able to study and still have a balanced and healthy life as I wouldnt have felt the need to study every minute of everyday to try and get perfect marks. I probably would have never become so unhappy with how I looked and therefore would not have felt the need to start trying to lose weight.

Even now, expecting so much of myself all the time still effects my life Significantly. I find myself being too frightened to try new things that I dont think I will be able to do perfectly, as I know I will only end up feeling like a failure. I now realise that nobody is perfect and that I shouldnt expect as much of myself. It is a part of my personality however and I dont think I can really change this completely. I can however try to use it as a poitive thing instead of a distructive personality trait.

Eating food with an unknown number of calories

It would be an understatement to say that I am terrified of eating foods that I have not prepared myself or that I can not calculate the approximate number of calories within. This is my biggest fear and will no doubt be the hardest thing for me to overcome whilst recovering.


When I know how many calories are in what I am eating, I feel as though I am in complete control of what I am eating. Surprisingly I do not only feel anxious that I may eat too many calories, I feel almost just as anxious that I may not eat enough. This is why I scrape food containers really well to make sure I get the entire contents out and why I always completely finish everything I have cooked and dished up on my plate.

This is also why I start panicking if I ever spill some of what I am eating as then I feel as though I have not eaten enough. For example if I was cooking oats in the microwave and they started to over flow a little, I would freak out that there would no longer be the right amount left in the bowl. Sometimes I would even start again with a completely new sachet of oats so that I know I am getting the right amount.

While needing to know the amount of calories in what I am eating is still a really big problem for me, I have made some progress with this in my recovery so far.  I no longer feel as though it is necessary for me to know the exact number of calories a meal or snack contains therefore do not feel the need to weigh everything I eat. Although it was painful to make this progress, I hope that with some more hard work I can continue to improve until eventually I dont feel the need to count calories at all.

I know it is not logical for me to be so scared of eating 'too much' whilst I am trying to gain weight but I still am, just as I am scared of eating too little. Its like not knowing what I am eating is what scares me as not knowing feels like losing control. I guess it makes sense that I am so scared of losing control of my food as it was the thing I chose to control when I felt as though I had no other control in my life.

I found the following article from this site sums up the relationship I developed with food due to my calorie counting really well so decided to share it with you. If you want to read more about reasons to stop calorie counting from this writer, follow the link I have provided above.

I used to count calories. It was part of my training as a dietitian – one of our homework assignments. It seemed everyone in my class was really good at it, like they had memorized the calorie content of a bunch of foods. I treated the project as more of an experiment. I mean, if this is what we’re supposed to have our patients do, I should be able to do it.

The funny thing is, the more I counted calories, the less I was paying attention to the food in front of me. It was like looking at a spreadsheet on a plate. All you see is numbers.

I’d choose the less tasty entree because it was lower in calories, even if it didn’t sound appealing. If I got hungry after the meal, I’d second guess myself. “But I ate 700 calories!? That should be enough!”

It was like a battle between the calculator and my stomach. The calculations said I needed a certain amount of calories per day. If I went over, it was a “bad” day. If I went under, it was an excuse to eat junk food. I’d think to myself, “Well, these chocolates are only 90 calories…”

I’ll admit, I failed miserably at counting calories and gave up within a few weeks. I never really enjoyed it and I felt restricted, like I was going to develop disordered eating. I questioned the accuracy of all the calculations. There are a number of formulas to choose from and they all give you different answers. I couldn’t memorize the nutrition facts like my classmates, and frankly, I got tired of feeling like I belonged in the remedial nutrition class

Day 2: What have you done to help yourself with your eating disorder?

Something I have realised throughout my battle with anorexia is that recovery will not happen unless you actively make it happen. I spent years sitting around hoping that I would one day wake up free of my anorexia but it obviously doesnt happen like that. In order to recover you need to make changes and see them through no matter how painful they may be. Here is a list of 5 changes I have made since starting to recover. These changes would seem very easy to normal people but for me they were incredibly hard.

1. I have stopped weighing everything I eat
For me this was a huge change that I thought I would never be able to overcome. My anorexia hated me not weighing my food because it meant that I couldnt be sure exactely how many calories I was eatimg. I would weigh absolutely everything including things like muesli bars, slices of bread, icecream bars, spreads like peanut butter or jam, fruit and vegetables, biscuits, slices of ham and cereal. I even weighed out amounts of things like stevia sweetner that had practically no calories in them anyway. I would not trust the weights written on packets of food portions either so would re -weigh everything once I had unpacked it and then calculated the exact amount of calories based upon its true weight.

While there are a few foods I still weigh like rice and pasta, I can honestly say that I no longer feel the need to weigh most of the food I eat. I still do keep a basic track of how many calories I eat to make sure I am eating enough, but I no longer feel as though I need to know the exact weight and calories contained in what I am eating. This change didnt happen over night and it is something I have had to work really hard at but I am so glad I did because I feel as though a huge weight had be taken off my shoulders.

2. I Started my recovery blog
I have allready talked about how starting a blog has helped me in my recovery and you can read it here.

3. I have increased my calorie intake, ALOT
At the moment I am eating so much more
then I ever have before. Increasing my intake is not just something I have done once to help myself to recover, but something I have done many times. Every time I weigh myself and see I have not gained enough weight I increase my intake no matter how many reasons my anorexia comes up with of why I shouldnt increase. Over the last few years I have increased my calories from starvation amounts however I still refused to eat even a 'normal' amount and wondered why I couldn't gain weight. Now I eat a lot more than the average person, something I never would have dreamed of doing before. I have not only managed to increase my intake to the recommended minimum recovery intake of 2500, I have exceeded this amount by quite a lot and I feel great for it.

4. I started taking medication for my anxiety
Ever since being diagnosed with anorexia, my gp has tried really hard to get me to agree to taking medication for my anxiety. She told me that my underlying anxiety was making trying to recover too difficult as making changes caused me unbarable anxiety. And when I say unbearable, I mean it. I never did anything that I knew I was not 'allowed' to do as how I felt for going against my anorexia was so awful. When I was at my sickest if someone had told me I had to either risk my life and jump off a bridge or eat a block of chocolate, I definetely would have jumped off the bridge. Dont get the wrong idea, I have never been suicidal or suffered from clinical depression but not listening to my anorexic thoughts was a scarier thing for me then dying.

So eventually I started taking some medication for my anxiety and it was around that time (about a month before starting my blog) that I started to want recovery more. The reason I started taking my medication was actually because I was starting a new job and I knew that I needed to be more confident and stop doubting myself to do well. I reccommend trying medications like these for anyone trying to recover. While I still do feel anxious, now I feel as though my anxiety is much more barable. It even surprises me how strong I can now be when I stand up to my anorexia and I know that my medication is partly responsible for this. There is nothing wrong with getting help when you need it and this does not make you weak in any way. Does it make a cancer patient weak for having chemotherapy treatment if that is what they require for them to survive? Of course it doesn't. I dont care if I have to be on this medication for the rest of my life if It allows me to stay happy and healthy.

5. I stopped giving in to my anorexia
While I still hear my anorexic thoughts loud and clear, I dont let myself listen to them anymore. As I continue to fight my thoughts, I can feel my anorexia getting weaker and the real me getting stronger. Every day my anorexic thoughts get a little bit quieter and easier to ignore and therefore everyday I am getting closer to recovery. While it feels impossible at first, know that it does get easier but only if you stop listening. If you continue to give into your anorexia, you are only feeding it and making it stronger.

Recovering without professional help

I have tried to get help in the past for my anorexia but I never found any of it helpful at all. I honestly think that this is because there really is no one specialised in eating disorders in the state that I live in and no one really understood how they could help me. 

While the staff at the hospital I was an inpatient at forced me to eat and gain weight, no one actually tried to help me with what was going on inside my head. The whole time I was in hospital I was secretly exercising and planning how I could lose the weight again when I got out. I have spoken to psychologists but found that they were not able to offer any real advice either. While it was good to talk to someone and get everything off my chest, it wasn't really helping me in terms of recovey.     

One person I went to who claimed she had dealt with anorerxics before actually told me after a few sessions that there wasn't any point in going back if I wasn't willing to fight my anorexia. The thing was, It wasn't that I wasn't willing to fight my anorexia, it was that I didn't know how. No one had ever actually given me any advice about how to be stronger then my illness and I felt like I had no choice but to listen to my anorexia.

So for me, recovering without professional help has really been my only option but I wouldn't reccommend it. Perhaps recovering without professional help wouldn't be so bad if you had a really supportive family that were able to help you but unfortunately my family were not able to help me. I didn't even have close friends that I could rely on for support as I was so socially withdraw and the friends I did have didn't know anything about eating disorders and had trouble understanding.

The best thing that ever happened in terms of my recovery was that I started reading recovery blogs online. Seeing other peoples achievement and recovery journeys has shown me that recovery is possible. The advice and support that I have been offered through reading other peoples blogs has been so helpful for me and there is no way I could have made the progress I have without it. I also think that starting my own blog has been a wonderful motivation for me in my recovery.

There are a few things that I really don't like about recovering on my own. One of these is the fact that I still need to count calories. If I had a professional design my meal plan for me, I wouldn't even know how many calories I was eating and therefore essentially would not be calorie counting anymore. It was obviously necessary for me to design my meal plan around a specific number of calories so that I could be sure I was eating enough to gain weight. My first goal once I am weight restored is to stop counting calories all together and to learn to eat intuitively.

Something else I wish I didn't have to do while recovering on my own is weigh myself. While I am gaining weight, I honestly would rather not know how much I weigh as it makes me feel so anxious. All of this week I have been too scared to weigh myself as I am scared to see the weight I have gained. I know that I need to weigh myself this wednesday (in two days time) so that I make sure I have gained enough weight since last wednesday when I weighed myself. I know that this is essential as it is the only way I can tell wether I am eating enough to gain the weight I need to, but I would much rather to a blind weigh in with someone if I could. 

I know that different methods of recovery are better for different people but I would reccommend accepting good professional help if you can. Recovering on your own is really hard and will probably take longer than recovery with profession help. 

What does everyone else think? Have you found recovering on your own or with professional help easier for you? 

My biggest obsession

For the last few years, my life has has revolved around various obsessive behaviours and compulsions, but the worst of these for me has been calorie counting. When I say I counted calories, I mean I took it to a whole knew extreme. Every piece of food I placed in my mouth had to be weighed so I could calculate the exact number of calories it contained and if the exact number of calories of a food couldnt be calculated, I would refuse to eat it. I would not be satisfied with just reading the nutritional values on packets of food either as I didn't trust them and knew that most portions were actually bigger than stated on the packaging. I also couldn't eat a food like sultanan bran (breakfast cereal) as I would be too anxious about the composition of ingredients that ended up in each serve. For example if the ingredients stated that the cereal was supposed to be 10% sultanas and 90% Bran flakes, I would be worried that there was actually 15% sultanas and only 85% Bran flakes which would slightly alter the calorie content. I obviously don't refuse to eat foods like these anymore and can now see how silly I was being but at the time it absalutely terrified me.

Every food you can think of I would weigh. Even once I stopped starving myself and eating considerable amounts of food I still continued to obsessively count calories. For example to make breakfast I would weigh two slices of bread and then toast them before weighing out the correct portion of spread. To make cereal I would weigh out the cereal, milk, yoghurt, fruit or anything else I may have been putting on top of it. Every piece of fruit and every serving of vegetables needed to be weighed and I would weigh any snacks like muesli bars, biscuits, icecream bars and chocolate. If i ever weighed out a portion prior to a meal time I would always re-weigh it just before eating it in case I had made a mistake and I would still feel anxiety while eating it as I would be paranoid I had missread the scale somehow. At one point I was not only obsessed with ensuring I had the perfect amount of calories each day but also that my macro balance was what I considered to be perfect too. Each day I made myself eat 35g of fat, 310g of carbohydrates and 70g of protein. It was actually very time consuming to plan my following days food as I would have to search for a foods that would fit into my macronutrient and calorie goal. For example if I found that I needed to add more fat and protein to my day, I would have fewer vegetables for tea and add an egg instead. Or if my Carb intake was too low, I would have jam in my sandwhich instead of Peanut Butter at lunch. As you can see I never actually got to eat what I felt like and this was an extremely unhealthy way to be. Luckily I have improved enormously since then.

Now I am much less worried about exact calorie counts. While I still keep a basic count of calories to ensure I am eating enough, the weighing of most foods has stopped. For example, I don't weigh each piece of fruit or each slice of bread I eat anymore and I do not weigh snacks like chocolate bars or muffins to make sure I know the exact number of calories they contain. I dont weigh butter or spreads like I used too and feel as though I can use generous amounts of spreads without feeling anxious. I dont weigh the belgium or ham that I put in my sandwhiches anymore and it doesn't really worry me anymore not knowing exactely how many calories I eat each day. As long as I know I am eating enough to allow my body to recover I am happy. I always refused to eat anything that I had not prepared myself as I couldn't be sure of how many calories were in it but now I have the freedom of going out for tea with my family to restaurants and eating food prepared by others. While doing this still makes me a little anxious, I don't feel as though the anxiety is anything I cant overcome.

I am going to be honest and admit to you all that there are still a few foods I weigh and this is because I feel anxious while serving them up and think I would eat too little if I didn't weigh them out.  For example, when I make pasta salad, I weigh the amount of dry pasta I add and I do the same with rice in rice dishes I make. Hopefully one day I wont feel the need to do this at all but I honestly think that if I didn't do this I would end up eating far fewer calories as my anxiety would get the better of me and I would add too little of something. For example if I am putting grated cheese on a pizza I weigh the cheese as otherwise I would feel anxious about the amount I was putting on and not put on enough. I also weigh icecream as I am serving it up for dessert as by weighing it, the anxiety disappears and I am free to dish myself up a more generous and adequate portion that meets my calories needs. As I said I hope that one day in the not so distant future I no longer feel as though I need to weigh any of the food I eat but for now, especially while I am trying so hard to gain weight, I think that it is necessary. What are other peoples views on this? Do you think that what I am doing is wrong or can you understand where I am coming from? What experiences have you all had with weighing food and counting calories?

my late supper tonight (I have had a yoghurt as well since tea)