anorexic weight gain recovery- help!

As long as you avoid processed, high fat foods such as fried potatoes and chips, foods such as avocados and nuts will do a lot of good for you. You may have a nutrient issue, so inadvertently eating a lot of calories one day won't be bad at all. Also, I have no clue, but I'm wondering if those high density foods such as nuts may be better, because they have a lower volume??

Maybe if you spread them out during the day, your body will process them without much discomfort? A few during breakfast, some near lunch, a few a night?

I'm thinking you might want to talk to your doctor about how quickly you can increase your calories. If you go too slowly, your body will be nutrient starved and that might continue a plethora of issues, but if you jump too high you might not be ready for the rapid changes, nor your body. It sounds like you will choose healthy foods and that you're probably on the right track.

You should see your doctor and get a referral to a specialist. It is often not as simple as eating more as people who have been severely restricting and significantly underweight need to be careful about what foods and and how quickly they reintroduce them back into their diet.

Good luck with your recovery.

First, I am happy to see you taking steps to overcome the disorder and build a healthier you.

Sara is correct. Most doctors will have you reintroduce varying levels of macronutrients, electrolytes, minerals, etc, through stages so that your body accepts what you are feeding it. In fact, if memory serves me right, most refeed programs focus on fats during the first phase.

If your weight got down to 77 lbs, you will gain most of your weight back from fat mass since only a small percent of lean body mass will be recovered. You can talk to a specialist about it, but lifting weights will help increase the amount of lean body mass recovered. This increase in lean body mass will also aid in recovering your Resting Metabolic Rate faster, allowing you to eat more without gaining excessive fat mass.

If you ever need to talk, here's a good crisis line number that I know: 1(877) 803-7577. Good luck to you!

A doctor will help you along the way, Vaironika. They will assess whether reintroduction of exercise in general at this point will be a benefit with low risk of engaging in aerobic activity, which can cause a relapse in undesirable behavior. If anything, the doctor will allow you to do resistance training and nothing else to help increase the recovery rate of lost lean body mass - assuming you are indeed increasing calories to adequate amounts. Again, that is something they can help you with along with your nutrient refeeding needs.

You may enjoy reading this lady's story about recovering from anorexia and how weight training helped with the process, both physically and psychologically:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hunger-artist/201101/what-weight-lifting-can-do-former-anorexic

I am recovering from anorexia. And it warms my heart to see so much support. I struggled through my recovery process as well. Following a clean unproccessed diet and lifting heavy weights a couple times a week brought on weight in beautiful muscle, not fat. Almonds actually burn body fat, as well as avocados. So eat up and lift heavy!

I have been in recovery from anorexia for over 2 years now. I've been weight restored for about a year and am working on the mental aspect of my illness now :]

One thing I DO want to say is that calorie counting in recovery AND worrying if something is "healthy" or not are both disordered behaviors. I am not saying DON'T do it, because I am aware that it's hard to meet calorie requirements for recovery, but if you can see a dietician/nutritionist, they can put you on the right track. I was on a ~3,000 calories/day mealplan. Typically you need anywhere from 2,000-3,000 calories a day in recovery, because your body needs the extra calories in order to repair itself. My mealplan was by exchanges instead of calories, so I didn't have to worry about counting them, because that almost always triggered a relapse.

The binge eating is very normal, I did it too. You've deprived your body for so long and you're right, your hunger signals are no longer working properly (my dietician told me that they tend to "shut off" when you restrict for so long). It takes a while for them to normalize, but so long as you eat regularly (try to eat on a schedule, usually 3 meals with 3 snacks every day) they will return!

Also, professionals don't recommend exercise (not even weight lifting) until you reach a specific weight, usually quite close to your 'goal weight'. This is because it's (obviously) harder to gain weight while exercising, because you need to eat more, which can be difficult when recovering from anorexia. I think there is way too much focus on being super healthy in recovery and eating healthy foods. This is a GOOD thing, but it can also get to the point where it is obsessive (ie. worrying that you've eaten too much nut butter or something).

I don't know, it bothers me when people get caught up in "got to gain weight by building muscle and eating super healthy foods!" because that doesn't lead to a normal relationship with food. All my therapists/dieticians/doctors told me NOT to worry about that until I had reached BMI ~17.

Please talk to a professional, because there are a lot of factors in recovery that can be harmful, for example, refeeding syndrome. It's also totally normal to be super bloated for a while (do NOT restrict again just because of this!). Don't worry, it's just water weight as your body gets used to the larger amount of food. The weight gain will also redistribute overtime (it takes a LOT of time) so don't freak out if you find that you've gained a lot of weight around your stomach.

Feel free to add me if you want to talk

I just want to congratulate you on the decision to turn your life around and start recovering. And I want to add that on top of the fat, you need protein. The number one source of that for vegans is tofu. Try to intruduce a little of that in your food for variety. With smoothies, healthy fat and vegetable protein, you and your doctor should have a good start to rebuild your strength.