Weight gain is not negotiable if you want to recover

In order to recover from a restrictive eating disorder, you WILL NEED to gain weight (especially if you are currently underweight). As much as we would like this to be untrue, if you are not willing to gain weight, you will not recover as this just shows how unhealthy your mindset is. It is only when you challenge and overcome this type of unhealthy mindset, that you will be able to continue making recovery progress and actually make a full recovery. As well as needing to reach and possibly exceed a healthy weight in order to recover mentally, you need to do this is order to recover physically too. Whilst starving yourself, your body weakens and stops functioning as it should in order to conserve energy. Your energy reserves run dangerously low and all of your internal organs and bones are at risk of severe damage also. The following article explains the toll that anorexia or other restrictive eating disorders have on your body due to starvation. 

(http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/eating-disorders/anorexia-nervosa/features/anorexia-body-neglected#3)


What happens exactly? Here's a look at what anorexia does to the human body.

The first victim of anorexia is often the bones. The disease usually develops in adolescence -- right at the time when young people are supposed to be putting down the critical bone mass that will sustain them through adulthood.

"There's a narrow window of time to accrue bone mass to last a lifetime," says Diane Mickley, MD, co-president of the National Eating Disorders Association and the founder and director of the Wilkins Center for Eating Disorders in Greenwich, Conn. "You're supposed to be pouring in bone, and you're losing it instead." Such bone loss can set in as soon as six months after anorexic behavior begins, and is one of the most irreversible complications of the disease.

But the most life-threatening damage is usually the havoc wreaked on the heart. As the body loses muscle mass, it loses heart muscle at a preferential rate -- so the heart gets smaller and weaker. "It gets worse at increasing your circulation in response to exercise, and your pulse and your blood pressure get lower," says Mickley. "The cardiac tolls are acute and significant, and set in quickly." Heart damage, which ultimately killed singer Karen Carpenter, is the most common reason for hospitalization in most people with anorexia.

Although the heart and the bones often take the brunt of the damage, anorexia is a multisystem disease. Virtually no part of the body escapes its effects. About half of all anorexics have low white-blood-cell counts, and about a third are anemic. Both conditions can lower the immune system's resistance to disease, leaving a person vulnerable to infections.
Anorexia Damage Starts Early

Even before a person with anorexia starts to look "too thin," these medical consequences have begun Many young women who begin eating a severely restricted diet stop menstruating well before serious weight loss sets in. Since so many people with anorexia are teenage girls and young women, this can have long-term consequences on their ability to bear children.

Gaining weight will allow your body to function more optimally again and to reverse most of, if not all of the damage you inflicted on it whilst your were starving yourself. Even if you manage to partially recover mentally so that you can live like a relatively normal person, if you are still underweight your body will not be able to function properly. The chances of you conceiving a baby are reduced if ever you want to become a mum and you are more likely suffer from illnesses or infections as your immune system will not be as strong as somebody who is a healthy weight. Also if you are underweight, this indicates that you are still not eating enough  (as otherwise your body would return to a healthy weight) which suggests you are probably missing out on particular nutrients and minerals that your body requires. This puts you at risk of things like Anemia (due to lack of iron) and osteoporosis (due to lack of calcium).

In my experience, I was not able to make any real recovery progress until I gained a significant amount of weight. The hard thing about gaining this weight is that you need to do it when your anorexic thoughts are still incredibly strong and overpowering. It isn't until you get closer and closer to a healthy weight that these thoughts begin to fade and are replaced with healthier'and more normal thoughts. There is no real secrets or techniques to making these thoughts go away. As hard as it is, you just have to push through them and remember that by fighting these thoughts you ARE getting closer to having the life you want and deserve. I suggest trying to stay busy so that you have other things to focus on and just have faith that if you continue fighting your anorexic thoughts, in time they will fade. And how do you gain weight? You basically just do the complete opposite of everything your anorexia tells you to do. You limit or stop your physical activity, you eat more then you ever have in your life and you stop doing all of those destructive things that you have done in the past.

I remember some nights my thoughts would be so strong (in regards to the fear of and actually gaining weight) that I just had to go to bed and cry myself to sleep. But I never gave into my anorexia and always just woke up the following day and ate everything on my meal plan, limited my exercise and went against everything my anorexia told me to do. I knew that I couldn't give into my anorexia by listening to its demands as this would be like giving it ammunition it needed to beat me. Once I gave into my anorexia once, I knew it would be so easy to continue giving into it and this would not allow my thought processes to change. So I stuck to my guns and consistently beat my anorexia and that is how I got to where I am today. So no matter how hard it may seem, just remember that it is possible and you can do it. No matter how loudly your anorexia screams at you and how bad it makes you feel, it cant actually hurt you. That pain is just temporary. And by enduring that pain now, you will be able to have a lifetime of happiness in the future.

I know that gaining weight as slowly as possible seems like the best way to gain weight to someone with anorexia but from my own experience I do not think this is the best thing to do. To be honest, gaining weight incredibly slowly just draws out the painful process of weight restoration and means that you are just inflicting extra suffrage on yourself. I was gaining about 500-700g per week when I was actively recovering and I found that this was a good rate to do it at. I feel it was a good rate of weight gain as I could adjust to my physical changes without relapsing while still keeping a good momentum. Gaining weight at this rate also made it obvious to me whenever I needed to increase my calories (due to my weight gain stopping). If I was gaining less then this per week, I think I would have been more likely to just brush off failure to gain weight in any particular week which would have stopped me from moving towards my goal of complete weight restoration and recovery. 

I believe that gaining weight is not the only thing you need to do in order to recover, in fact it is only the beginning. But it is one of the first essential things for you to do before you can make any other type of real recovery progress. So I highly encourage you to start doing it as soon as possible. As you do manage to gain weight, your body will start functioning properly again and you will also start thinking more clearly too. And I know it probably feels like accepting your body at a higher weight is impossible but I promise you its not. I am currently about 15 kg heavier than my lowest weight (which I couldn't bare to leave at the time) and I love my body more now then I ever have before!  The truth is you will never feel ready to start gaining weight so you just need to make the decision and start. I promise you it will be worth it!

My honest opinion on 'gaining weight slowly'

I have heard so many people who are trying to recover from anorexia say that they want to gain weight, but they want to do it really slowly and are terrified off gaining weight too fast. I can completely see where everyone is coming from who says this as I too had these exact same feelings and thoughts. For years I had this type of attitude and therefore did not eat proper recovery amounts and made almost no recovery progress at all.

I know that if you are currently experiencing these thoughts, this is probbably the last thing you want to hear but I feel as though I need to be really honest with you. You need to understand that while you are so terrified of gaining weight 'too fast' you are still just being controlled by your anorexic thoughts. I honestly cant reccommend anything other then eating proper recovery amounts as otherwise you will not be providing yourself with enough energy to properly repair.

In my experience, I really dont think it is possible to 'gain weight slowly' and make a full recovery. When Iwas trying to 'recover' at first whilst eating lower amounts, I only gained a kilogram or two in 18 months. Now I look at that time as wasted years of my life as duriin that time my life still revolved completely around my anorexia. The only regret Ihave from myy recovery is that I didn't do it sooner so that Icould have been enjoying my liffe like I currently am, all those years ago.

Try to think about it this way. If you are serious about recovery, you would know that eventually you will have to be a healthy weight. So why spend years getting to a healthy weight when you could do it in a few months. I actually found it so much easier gaining weight fast as it seemed to happen before I really even realised that it was happening. It was like one day I was extremely skinny and the next I was healthy. And because I was gaining as much as 100g per day, the shock of getting on the scale and seeing I had gained weight soon dimished.

So you can try to gain weight really slowly but I hoestly dont think that this is a good choice and I am not even convinced that it is possible. As while you are too scared to eat proper recovery amounts you are actively still listening to your anorexia and therefore giving it strength and power. It is only when you start fighting your anorexia at ever chance you get that recovery really becomes possible.

What is going on?

I was incrediebely shocked when I weighed myself this morning as my scales told me I had lost 500g since my last weigh in only 4 days ago. This makes no sence at all to me. Over the last few weeks, I have been consistantly gaining atleast 100g per day so to now start losing weight is a huge mystery. I have been eating the exact same amount and have not been doing any extra exercise so I really cant explain this dip in my weight. I know that I should not feel dissappointed in myself for this result as I havent done anything wrong and had no way of knowing it was happening.

It would have made more sense to me if I had started maintaining my weight, but to suddenly start losing weight, at the same rate I was previously gaining it is very strange. While I cant explain this weight loss, it still does not change the fact that it has happened and I therefore need to make some changes accordingly. Something we need to remember is that our bodies are not calculators or machines. We can never determine exactly what weight our bodies will gain or lose by consuming a certain amount of calories.

My anorexia is screaming at me that I dont need to make any changes as it must be some kind of mistake. It is telling me that perhaps the weightloss is only due to fluctuating water and fluid levels in my body. Or perhaps my scales are giving an innacurate reading as they occasionally have done in the past (although considering I got the same reading 10+ times, I doubt this very much). My anorexia could be right but by making no changes at all to my calorie intake, this would mean giving into my anorexia, which is something I know I cant do. Every time you give into one of your anorexic thoughts or demands, no matter how small it is, you are giving your anorexia strength.



So now I just need to decide on what changes I will make. Afternoon tea is probably the meal I feel as though I could increase as some of my calories are only made up from a drink. Perhaps instead of eating a medium piece of fresh fruit, Instead I can have a portion of dried fruit as dried fruit is something I enjoy and it is also much more calorie dense so I would not feel as though I was eating more. I will see how I go over the next 3 days and if I go back to gaining the same amount I was, (approximately 100g per day) I will keep eating this new intake amount. If I start gaining weight at an even faster rate, I may consider cutting back to my regular meal plan (without the driedfruit). Of course if I fail to gain enough weight or lose weight again I will know I need to make a more dramatic change to my intake.

What do you think about the weight loss I have experieced and the change I have decided to make?

Weigh in Wednesday

I cant believe another 4 days has already passed since I last weighed myself. I am very happy to report to you all that I have managed to gain another 500g in the last 4 days. The fact that I am gaining weight at a much faster rate now does scare me ALOT but I know that the sooner I am weight restored, the sooner I can start working on the rest of my recovery as well.


When I first started to really try and gain weight my weight was not increasing by a significant enough amount between each weigh in and if I had continued to gain weight at such a slow rate, it would have taken me far too long to become weight restored. Now however I am getting closer and closer to reaching a healthy weight every single day. Obviously the reason I am now gaining weight at a faster rate is because I am eating more and also exercising less.

I am starting to notice visible differences in my body which obviously makes me uncomfIrtable but I am not allowing this to effect what I eat. My jeans are getting tighter and my anorexia is giving me a difficult time but I know that I need to gain more weight in order to recover. Negotiating with my anorexia simply is not an option as this will only prevent me from recovering.

Last night, for the first time I was extremely tempted to skip my bedtime hot chocolate. I was still really full from the chocolate self saucing pudding and icecream I had eaten only an hour earlier and didnt feel like anything else sweet at all. My anorexia told me that I had already eaten plenty for the day, especially coonsidering the fact that my exercise time has been cut in half. But I made sure I stuck to my meal plan. No matter how scared I get as my weight continues to increase I have made a promise to myself that I will not cut my meal plan down at all until i have reached a healthy weight. No matter how awful I feel, I will keep eating what I currently am now.

I have gained almost 3 kg in the past month which is quite scary but it hasnt had as much of an effect on me as I thought it would have. Sure my anorexia is angry and I feel anxious about it but so far it hasnt felt like anything I havent been able to handle. I think that this is because my mind is starting to repair as I am gaining weight. This has allowed me to accept the weight gain better then I would have once been able to do. I really can feel my non anorexic thoughts getting stronger and clearer each day and my anorexic thoughts getting weaker.

I know it can seem really scary but I highly recommend trying to gain weight at a faster rate if you are only increasing very slowly. I know it can feel much 'safer' to gain weight as slowly as possible but ultimately all this does is draw out weight restoration so that you have to battle through it for longer. I know it is different for everone but I felt just as anxious whilst I was gaining half a kilo per week as I do now that I am gaining a kilo per week, so it is obviously better for me to be gaining at a faster rate. Give it a go, you may find that you dont cope at all and that you need to slow your weight gain down a little, or you could cope better than you thought you would, like I did. Either way its worth a try. Stay strong and keep fighting. :) x

New meal plan

Breakfast
~1 sachet of Uncle Toby's flavoured oats prepared with 1/2 Cup of milk and
topped with 1 small apple/banana
~2 slices of wholemeal toast with extra thickly spread nut butter

Morning Tea
~1 large serving of cake (i.e. lamington, muffin, slice)
~1 Up and Go meal supplement drink

Lunch
~1 sandwich made with 2 slices of wholemeal bread, butter, protein (i.e. thickly cut belgium, ham or cheese) and Thickly spread tomato Relish
~1 dairy Dessert (i.e. Lerice creamed rice, Danone full fat yoghurt, Custard Snak Pack)
~1 large serving of fruit (i.e. 1 large Banana, 1 cup of grapes, 1 large pear)

Afternoon Tea
~ Chocolate bar (Picnic, Violet crumble, Kit Kat)
~ fruit (Apple, orange)
~ 1 Just juice fruit juice
or
~Chocolate bar (Twirl, Time Out, Aero)
~Vanilla yoghurt
~1 tub of apple puree or sultanas
or
~Nut bar
~Fruit Tub
~2 sweet biscuits (anzacs, custard creams)

Tea
~Meat (chicken, fish, silverside, Duck, Venison) or casserole
~Mashed potato
~Vegetables
~Sauce
or
~Large serving of pasta or rice
~Vegetables

Dessert
~Pudding (i.e. Lemon, chocolate, sticky date)
~2 scoops of Vanilla icecream
or
~1 tub of vanilla custard and (Peaches or apple)
~Honey comb hot chocolate with milk

Dessert tonight (hot lemon pudding and icecream)

Increasing my intake again

Usually I wait until Saturdays before weighing myself and then increase my calories if I have not gained any weight but today (Wednesday) I decided to increase my intake a few days early. I was doing some reading online this morning while doing some research for a blog post and came across the suggested intake for recovering anoerexics.

The site stated that I neded to be eating a minimum of 2500-3000 calories if I am sedentry to gain weight and provide my body with sufficient energy to recover. While I have been eating within this range, I am not completely sedentry as I walk my dog a couple of times per day (something which is unavoidable) so deep down knew I should be eating even more.

I have read articles with these figures many times before and have just presumed that somehow I was an exception and that I was eating enough. Today however I felt different when I read these facts. Suddenly I realised that I was not eating enough and that I still need to be eating more.

This morning I weighed myself and saw that I still have not gained any weight, even after increasing my calories on Saturday. I began to worry about what I would write on my blog if I failed to gain weight again this week. I don't want people reading my blog to think that I am not actually serious about recovery so I want to prove to everyone, including myself that I want to and can gain weight.

I could have waited until Saturday to make another calorie intake increase but what would be the point in that? Something else I read this morning by some recovered anorexics is that once they were recovered, they wished that they had gained the weight more quickly instead of taking so long to become weight restored. I have already wasted so much time being underweight and if I am going to become weight restored, I may as well gain the weight sooner rather then later.

While it was good that I made the increase on Saturday, today I felt ready and strong enough to make a more sifnificant increase. Today I increased my calorie intake by a further 250 calories and I am excited about the new plan I have created ( If you want I can post my new meal plan in a separate post). I am confident that I will be able to gain weight on this new intake and I actually feel pretty good about it. I can't believe how rationly and clearly I am able to think at the moment.

People have always told me that no one else can really make someone suffering from anorexia recover, except for the sufferer themselves. For someone with anorexia to recover, they need to be ready and decide that they want to get better. I can now say that I completely agree with this and that I think this break through moment has finally happened for me. For the first time, I really do want to gain weight and I really do want to recover. All of a sudden I can see a light at the end of the tunnnel and I feel as though recovery is possible.

My weekly weigh in

It is exactly one week since I weighed myself and increased my calorie intake so I knew that I had to weigh myself again this morning to see if I had gained weight. I was feeling really hopeful as I have been reaching my new calorie goal everyday and have not been compensating in anyway.  I stepped on the scales and was very dissappointed to see I weighed exactely the same as I did one week ago. Firstly, I felt bad about myself, like I had let myself down. After thinking about it for a while I realised that I wasn't really being fair to myself.

The truth is, although I didn't gain weight this week, I still made progress in my recovery. I still managed to reach my new calorie goal every single day. I probably ate more calories in the past week than I have in any other week of my life and this is something I should be proud of. Sure, it would have been better if I had gained weight but atleast now I know that my body needs even more food to continue repairing. I am not going to let this dissapointment get me down, I am just going to keep fighting which is all I can do. I am quite used to eating big portions and I can currently eat all of my meals without feeling too full or uncomfortable afterwards. While it is nice to be able to eat all of my meals comfortably, I know that recovery wasn't ever supposed to be easy and if eating even bigger portions and making myself feel a little uncomfortable is what I need to do to gain the required weight, then that is what I will do.  

I know that I eat a lot of fruit throughout the day and while I enjoy it and fruit is really good for you, I am planning on substituting one of my serves of fruit with a higher calorie option. Usually for Morning Tea I have some fruit as well as some type of cake (muffin, lamington or slice). From now on I plan to to still have the cake but instead of having fruit with it I will have an Up and Go meal replacemet drink. I love fruit and enjoy eating lots of it each day but considering I generally have it as a part of my breakfast, lunch, afternoon Tea and dessert as well, I shouldn't miss it too much. I think 4 serves of fruit a day, is still plenty ;).

While it is good to eat fear foods in recovery and they can help you to gain weight, I also like to eat healthy foods with them. That is why I have generally always had a sweeter more 'unhealthy' option like cake or a chocolate bar along side a piece of fruit. It was my way of eating a large number of calories while still eating a relatively balanced diet. This is why I also eat lots of vegetables and lots of dairy products which are rich in calcium. I think It is important that I give my body all of the vitamins and minerals that it needs so that it can be repaired, as well as just lots of energy in the form of calories. 

I don't feel really extremely scared about once again increasing my calorie intake and I think that it is because after being underweight for so long, I am finally ready to recover. I know that it's not going to be easy and once I start getting closer to my goal weight I will feel more and more uncomfortable with my body but I am determined not to give up. I deserve to be free of Anorexia and enjoy my life. Up until now, I haven't felt as though I was strong enough to recover but now I do. Blogging has really helped me to find the extra strength inside of me that I needed to really kick anorexias arse, and that is exactely what I plan to do!

Why gaining weight scares me

I think that the reason I have been underweight for so long and why I struggle so much to gain weight is because I remember how unhappy I was before I lost weight and am scared of feeling that way again. Most anorexics explain that while losing weight, they are never satisfied with how they look, no matter how much weight they lose. this was not the case for me however. I know that my idea of the way a body should look is very distorted but the truth is, I am satisfied with how I look right now. I like my body. And that is why I find it so hard to change it.

Before I initially lost weight I would spend so much of my day worrying about how I looked, comparing myself to others and literally hating myself.  I would compare myself to every person I met in the street and feel so envious of the girls that were skinnier then me. The truth is, now that I am happier with how I look, I don't think about these things anymore. I never try on a pair of jeans and think "I look fat in these" and I don't spend any time looking in the mirror and checking my body. Infact I havent looked into a full size mirror for over two months (since moving into my own unit) as I only have a tiny mirror in my bathroom that is just big enough for me to do my makeup in.

Not only did I compare myself to everybody I met, I would also worry that everyone was judging me and thinking that I look fat or bad. I no longer think this when I see other people. I used to hate going clothes shopping as I hated trying on clothes and being dissapointed with how they looked on me, but now I don't mind so much as I am happy with what I see when I look in the mirror. I dont want anyone to think that I am going to let these thoughts stop me from gaining weight because I know that gaining weight is something I need to do regardless but I just wanted to share my thoughts on why gaining weight is so terrifying to me.

I know that while I am 6kg underweight, my body can not function optimally. I also know that while I am underweight I probably wont be able to think rationally and get rid of my anorexic thoughts which is something I definetely want to do. Even though I like the way I look, I know that I do not look necessarily healthy. I know that other people see me as too thin and even unnattractive which is something I would like to change. I also want to gain weight for the people in my life who I care about. The people who love me and want me to get better. So even though I have lots of fear about gaining weight, I also have more reasons why I should gain weight.

Hopefully when I do gain weight I don't feel the hatred and disgust in myself that I felt before I lost weight. But If I do start to really struggle with my body image, I am not going to try and fix the problem by losing weight again. Instead I will work on learning to love myself for who I am. Bloggers like Izzy have offered wonderful advice about how to love yourself and I plan to follow this advice until I truly do feel good in my own body. I know that it is normal to feel self conscious and insecure sometimes but I just need to learn how to cope with these feeling without relapsing.