Eating more both in and after recovery

You may find, that in order to gain weight early on in your recovery, you dont have to eat that much food. As time passes however and as your metabolism gets faster, you will most likely have to keep increasing your intake in order to keep gaining weight.

As explained ithe science of eating disorders website;

'Weight restoration is a crucial component of anorexia nervosa treatment. It is a challenging process for a multitude of reasons. Adding to the complexity and the challenge is the fact that during weight restoration, individuals with anorexia nervosa tend to require increasingly more calories to maintain the same rate of weight gain.'

Even though continuously having to increase your intake can be really hard, I think that you shoud consider this as a good thing as it means your metabolism is repairing and functioning properly again. Even after you reach a healthy weight, you will most likely have to eat more then others around you in order to just maintain your weight.

This was also explained in the same article;

'After achieving a healthy weight, individuals recovering from anorexia nervosa still typically need to eat more calories to maintain their new healthy weight — more than healthy individuals of the same weight who do not have eating disorder histories'

This is why I have to take particular care to ensure I am always eating plenty now, even though I am only trying to maintain my weight. It also explains why I accidentely lost some weight a couple of months ago, even though I was eating the same amount as those around me. To be honest, I enjoy having a fast metabolism now and am glad that I am now able to eat so much, without gaining weight.

If you find you are able to keep gaining weight on a low intake of food in your recovery, I would reccommend increasing your calorie intake anyway. Otherwise there is a chance that your metabolism wont repair which will mean you will be stuck eating small amounts of food forever. And eating normal portions once you are weight restored may lead to weight gain.

Why I recommend Blogging

To say that blogging has changed my life may seem like an exaggeration, however I believe this to be 100% true. I honestly dont think I would have been strong enough to recover, if it wasn't for Blogging. Firstly, it was only through reading other peoples recovery blogs that I realised recovery from Anorexia was actually possible.

Before this time I really did believe I would be sick for the rest of my life and that recovery was impossible. It seemed as though no one could help me and changing my ways seemed far to painful. So I suppose throigh reading other people's blogs, I found hope that I would someday recover, which is perhaps the first stage of recovery.

As I could see others making progress and getting better first hand, I started thinking, 'well if they can do it, I can too.' And since I was totally fed up with living the way I was (although I really wouldn't call it living, more like barely existing), I finally made the brave decidion to try and change.

As I started to make changes, I was overwhelmed by just how painful it was and felt completely alone. No one else could even begin to understand what I was going through so I took great comfort in reading other peoples blogs. I could relate to what these like minded people were saying and this stopped me feeling quite as alone and like such an outsider.

While I feel as though reading other peoples recovery blogs really did get me in the right frame of mind to want recovery and change, actually making these changes was a different story. I made a little progress, very slowly, but did not make any great progress until I started writing my own blog.

Once I started my own blog, I felt as though I didn't only need to recover for myself, but also for those people who were fighting anorexia themselves and reading my blog. I knew I could not fool my readers into believing I was in recovery, like I had been doing to myself for years, unless I truly was. I knew that whilst blogging I needed to take action and start actively recovering. So that is exactly what I did.

I still had moments of desparation when I felt as though everything was just far too hard, but then I remembered all of the people who believed in me and this gave me the extra motivation and strength I needed to fight my anorexia fully. I knew that if I just gave into my anorexia that I would not be showing my readers that recovery is possible and that is the message I wanted to portray the most.

Of course, I also dont know that I would have been able to recover if it wasnt for the encouragement and support that I recieved from my readers. Just seeing my blog views meant a lot to me but actually talking to others just like me helped me so much. I developed many special friendships and really cant thank those people who helped me through my recovery enough.

So If your trying to recover, I highly recommend reading other peoples recovery blogs as it can be extremely helpful. Also, reaching out to other people who understand what you are going through can be incredibely helpful too. Even though starting your own blog is a big step, I have never regretted starting my own blog and like me, this could be the key to your recovery. So if you think it could help you, please give it a go!

brave girl eating

Since getting anorexia, I have read various books on the topic but the most amazing book I have read is 'Brave girl Eating'. In fact, over the past few years I have read it three times. Brave girl eating is written by a lady called Harriet Brown. While Harriet Brown has never suffered from an eating disorder, her daughter Kitty has.


Harriet Brown writes about the struggles that her daughter went through while battling her illness as well as how it effected the entire family. Something I found truly amazing is the amount of knowledge Harriet Brown has about eating disorders, even though she has not personally suffered from one. She did a lot of research on the topic and has included this research throughout her book which I found really interesting.


Harriet Brown was able to explain exactly what I have been thinking and feeling over the past three years better then I have ever been able to explain it myself. I came accross many similarities between the authors daughter Kitty and myself which is another reason why I felt connected to the book.

I highly recommend reading this book if you are suffering from an eating disorder yourslef as it really helped me understand why I was feeling the way I was. I also highly reccommend getting your family to read this book if you have anorexia as I think it will really help them to understand what you are going through. I tried so hard to get my mum to read this book as I thought it may be able to help her understand but unfortunately she refused to.



I have always believed that no one can understand what anorexia is like unless you have been through it yourself but I think that Harriet Brown is an exception to this, I think that she does truly understand and that comes through in her writing.
If you are interested in reading this book but want to find out a little bit more about it before buying it, go to THIS SITE.