Throwing some ideas around...

Lorjon1

Many speak of EatmoreToWeighLess as a way to restore one’s metabolism. For some that means crash dieters (like me) who are trying to maintain--but they are maintaining at such a low caloric intake that it’s impossible to continue on that way. For others it means they aren’t losing any more weight at a low caloric intake and are also hoping to reset their metabolism so they can continue losing weight.

Anyways, I’ve been connecting anorexia to extreme-calorie restriction. Someone that has gone on a crash diet or restricted their caloric intake might experience several anorexia symptoms (fatigue, dizziness, low sex drive, hunger) and a lowered metabolism,but the psychology behind the anorexia is lacking. During the anorexia recovery (correct me if I am wrong), but the patients, who are at a unhealthy body weight (usually), have to overeat (eat A LOT higher than their TDEE) to gain back their weight and stabilize their metabolism. They end up gaining weight at a very high rate, yet their weight and metabolism stabilizes at a healthy weight. After recovery, they are eating at a normal level and at a healthy body weight (ie. they don’t become obese during their recovery, but settle at a target weight). In addition, I was reading about obese patients who became anorexic and then underweight. After they recovered from anorexia, they stayed at a healthy body weight, much lower than their previous, before-anorexia weight. http://www.today.com/health/200-pound-anorexic-obese-teens-risk-disorder-its-often-unrecognized-4B11216388

This can be compared to EMTWL and eating at TDEE (or more than TDEE), since in both instances, people wish to reset their metabolism so that it works normally and isn’t in starvation mode (which happens in anorexia AND in dieters). The difference is, it is people with anorexia’s goal to GAIN weight, but for people like us it is our GOAL to maintain our weight. Either way, it seems that eating above TDEE is scientifically proven to stabilize one’s metabolism eventually (seen in anorexia studies and in people like you). The downside, on the other hand, is that it is also proven to make one gain weight. People with anorexia can afford to gain that weight because they are underweight. We however, don’t wish to gain that weight. Perhaps then (at least for maintainers like me) we should seek to go under our target weight (not too much so) so that during a eating at TDEE phase (for stabilizing the metabolism), we gain but end up not much over our target weight when our metabolism is fixed.

The only problem is, we’d need to find out more about the recovery for anorexia patients. How long should we eat at TDEE (or more), according to people who have experience stabilizing anorexia patients’ weight and metabolism?