Weight gan-MAJOR

Yes, water retention will cause bloating and the appearance of weight gain/puffyness. It'll go away.

Text is a poor medium for conveying tone sometimes, so please read the following keeping in mind that I am trying to say this nicely, and am concerned for you.

Please consult your doctor. Get a referral to someone who you can speak to about eating disorders. Do this soon, while you are still feeling like reaching out for advice.

I'm recommending this because you are giving off flags that you have an undiagnosed eating disorder. Not being diagnosed before does not mean you don't have a problem. Here is what I'm seeing...

1) You mention right off the bat that you haven't been diagnosed. You are anticipating we will think you have anorexia. I would guess you may have had to rebuff the question from concerned friends and family. A proactive defence on a subject is one way in which we protect and distance ourselves from an uncomfortable truth.

2) You have come up with coping strategies to deal with a health issue, and the language you use to describe it makes it seem like you have a system.

3) You feel powerless over food.

4) You exercise a lot on days you eat very little.

5) The way in which you eat now is causing negative physical health effects

If you saw someone else say the above what would you think they should do? Please, go to your doctor, let them help.

I think the weight gain and the constant trips to the loo is likely because your body doesn't know what the heck to do with itself. Your stomach probably doesn't know whether it's coming or going so is going to be very sensetive.

If you are already seeing an ED specialist I don't really have any advice to add but just wanted to say try not to freak out too much over the weight gain. Best of luck for the future, I hope with the help of the specialist you can get a grip on your eating habbits and have a happy and healthy relationship with food in the future. Take care :flowerforyou:

Ah sorry I misunderstood. From what you have said here I would definitely think your need some guidance and support, probably more than an online community can offer. It certainly sounds like you don't have a good relationship with food, so in my opinion you would be best to push and get some extra help, however only you could do that. Maybe you could show your psychologist your opening post here as I am sure she would agree that it's not a standard way to look at food.

Are you seeing a psychologist or a psychaitrist? There is a big difference between the two. Please go see an ED counselor. Regardless of who you are "seeing" now, this needs attention. As someone that works in the mental health field, that has done extensive research on eating disorders, I can't say I agree with your current Doctor's recommendation to not seek help for ED.

get a 2nd opinion re whether you need to see an eating disorder specialist. You sound like you have exercise bulimia, which is an eating disorder, i.e. you really sound like you already have one. I'm not qualified to diagnose anyone, but i would advise getting a 2nd opinion.

as to how it's possible to gain so much weight in 3 days... when you starve yourself (which is what you've been doing) you lose a lot of water weight. you can gain a lot of this back again in a very short time. You may have gained some fat too, as all of this starving yourself has basically put your body into a state where it's going to store fat at every opportunity.

Here's what's going on with your body from a scientific point of view:

- you're eating very little and burning off the calories you eat - you are leaving your body *nothing* to run itself with. It's like trying to drive a car with no petrol/gasoline in it. Your body is made of cells, cells make up organs... every cell in your body needs energy just to stay alive. The cells in your organs need energy for your organs to function properly. You are not giving your body this energy. The amount of energy your body needs just to keep all your cells alive and your organs functioning properly is around 1300-1900 calories a day, depending on how big you are... for some people who are very big or very small, the numbers will be outside this range. I don't know what you understood about calories when you started eating so little and exercising so much, but it seems you didn't realise this. Calories are a unit of energy, just as centimetres are a unit of length. Your body needs energy to function, and calories are not the enemy. Calories are the energy your body needs to stay alive.

- your body is an expert in survival.... as far as it's concerned, the reason why it's getting so little energy is because you're in the midst of a major food shortage. As far as your body and physiology is concerned, we're still in the stone age. your body doesn't understand dieting... it only understands that you need to get enough energy to survive, and it gets this from food. The reason why you are going on these binges and you crave food so much, is because it's a basic survival response to eating so little. Your body thinks it's still the stone age, and the reason it's not getting energy is because you're not succeeding at catching any food. You do all this exercise but still eat so little, so it thinks there's a severe food shortage. It does two things in response. 1. makes you extremely, ravenously hungry so you eat and eat and eat as soon as you get the chance, and 2. it stores fat whenever it can, so you can make it through the food shortage. Another thing that happens, is it slows your metabolism, i.e. tries to run your body on as little energy as it can, and it burns lean tissue to get extra energy, which also means it needs less energy to run in the future. Your body will keep doing this until you die, because as far as your body's concerned, you're going to die if you don't get food soon, so it's just trying to cling on as long as possible in case the food shortage ends.

So this is what you need to do:

1. eat properly and stop trying to burn off every calorie you eat. this does not bring your body into balance, it puts you in *severe* energy shortage as it leaves your body *nothing* to run itself on. Your cells and organs need energy. I can run your numbers through a calorie calculator for you, but I'd estimate your body needs around 1300 cals a day just to keep your cells and organs working. Then you'll need to add more than this to account for your daily activity, so maybe as much as 1600 cals/day for that. Note: *this is before you start exercising! If you exercise as well, you'll need to eat even more!!* - note, I'm just guessing a bit with these numbers, but you can get a more accurate calorie calculation with all your data (age, weight, height) and get more precise numbers......... i just want to explain to you how much energy human bodies actually need, so you can see what a huge shortfall you're giving your body. You think you're "balancing" your energy budget by burning off every calorie you eat, but in doing that you are giving your body nowhere near enough energy, and you're starving yourself!! All the other symptoms you mention are symptoms of starvation... yes even the bingeing.

2. once you understand how much energy your body actually needs, start eating properly, from all the food groups, and you should find that your desire to go on 4000 and 5000 calorie binges goes away, and all the other symptoms such as diarrhoea and everything else. Don't exercise any more until you are eating enough to fuel your body. Only after that start to exercise again, you'll need to do weight training, eat lots of protein and eat even more calories (i.e. more than you burn off each day) in order to regain the lean tissue and bone density you will have lost from starving your body so much.

3. if you cannot do this by yourself, because you can't cope with the idea of eating more, then you absolutely do need to see an eating disorder specialist so seek a second opinion. If it's simply that you didn't realise how much energy your body needs and you can fix it by yourself and you can start to eat properly and understand that being "in balance" means eating enough calories to support your body and also eating back exercise calories, and to gain the lean mass you lost and get your body working properly again you need to eat even more than this........... then do this. Forget fat loss for now. Calculate your TDEE calories, i.e. how many calories you need to support your body and the exercise/activity that you do, and eat that. If you can do that without medical help then do it. If you can't, then get that 2nd opinion.

Oh Dear, Your should aim at a healthy daily Calorie intake so you don't binge like that.. Your starving my dear and that won't help you lose weight it will help you get into an early grave.. Sorry for being so blunt but super concerned about you.. Start out at 1200 calories and go from there. I even find that is too little and if I stick to that for too long my body goes in starvation mode and I don't lose any more. You won't look good when your skin and bones but you will look good if you fit and healthy!! Good luck. Feel free to send me a message if you want.

get a 2nd opinion re whether you need to see an eating disorder specialist. You sound like you have exercise bulimia, which is an eating disorder, i.e. you really sound like you already have one. I'm not qualified to diagnose anyone, but i would advise getting a 2nd opinion.

This. Most definitely.

Third.

I don't know what you have specifically but what you are describing is disordered eating and if your current health care professional is not equipped to handle it or even to diagnose it, technically, you should see someone else.