rapid weight gain during anorexia recovery

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_Jo1ene
_Jo1ene Posts: 7
in Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
So I just started my recovery about two weeks ago and gradually increasing my calories from 800 to 1300. but today I ate a lot a lot probably around 4000 cal. I made a wrong decision and weighed myself before sleep. it was almost 2kg up. I know it could be water weight but still kind of worried.

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  • Graelwyn75
    Graelwyn75 Posts: 4,404 Member
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    Real weight gain does not happen that fast. Weight of the food, fluids and any retained water, basically. Should you even be checking your weight in recovery? that will likely only act as an obstacle in your recovery, speaking from experience.
  • Janet72285
    Janet72285 Posts: 230 Member
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    Do you have a therapist or support group/person you can talk to?
    Until your relationship with food is repaired you may want to stay away from the scale.
    It seems like it may be a trigger for you.
    I wish you well on your road to recovery!
  • parrillr
    parrillr Posts: 16 Member
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    Hi there I feel your pain. I'm trying to recover and it is so hard not to get hung up on numbers. Right now I sit at 5' 5.5" and roughly 100 pounds. Everyone keeps telling me to gain and gain which drives me nuts! I am seeing a psychologist which helps but I get the out of control feelings and start binge eating just to gain weight and make people happy! UGH!
  • stephe1987
    stephe1987 Posts: 406 Member
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    In the future, I don't think you should weigh yourself before bed. Weight is known to fluctuate throughout the day, and the end of the day you have a bunch of food and water that you've eaten throughout the day. I would suggest weighing yourself first thing in the morning after using the restroom. Not multiple times per day and probably not more than once per week.

    4,000 calories in a day will probably make you gain about 1/2 pound. To gain one pound, you have to eat 3500 calories above your TDEE and there's no way your TDEE is 500.
  • yogaveg
    yogaveg Posts: 68 Member
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    for me, in the beginning stages of my recovery from anorexia it was necessary to throw out my scales and stop calorie counting. i know it's scary but you have to let the control go so you can make room for life. your body has been starved so it' completely normal to eat 4000 cals, i was doing that regularly in recovery. it's scary, but i suggest reaching out for help from trained professionals and maybe entering a treatment program. going to the right treatment programs saved my life, twice.
  • typicallystrange
    typicallystrange Posts: 29
    edited October 2014
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    in recovery, do not worry about how many calories you eat, no amount is 'too much'. in fact, it's super normal to 'binge', in fact, you should. when i decided to recover and started eating, i would feel ravenously hungry, and craved food on a full stomach, and ate a lot! but that was just my body trying to get me to eat more, because it desperately needed the energy/nutrients. i'm 2 and a half month into recovery and that ravenous hunger or need to binge has been completely gone for over a month, so it's okay to binge, you won't do that forever, the weight you gained is just water weight, it'll be gone in about 3 days or less, also don't worry about any bloating, that'll go too! Once you're further along in recovery, that extra weight and bloat will be gone when you wake up or maybe the day after that. your 'weight' on the scale can go up whenever you put anything in your body- food, water ect. if you have a lot of salty food your body tends to retain more water, and some foods cause bloating. also fluctuations in hormones as a woman can mean that at times the scale says you've 'gained' weight when really it's just water retention. also depending on when you last used the bathroom, you can weigh less or more. at the end of the day i weigh 1-2kg more than when i woke up, and when i retain water at certain times of the month i seem to gain another kilo. it's natural and i always end up back at my original weight. also, the weight that you do gain in recovery is not there to stay! it tends to overshoot, for example, i gained X amount of kilos in recovery, eating the same amount every day, but at one point, i just didn't gain any more, and then i slowly started to lose weight. if you must weigh yourself, only weigh yourself in the mornings, it's more accurate, and if you seem to have gained 1+ kg overnight, it's not actual fat, it's just water. in recovery, the body needs the water for cellular repair and the normalization of both liver and kidney functions. so if you experience a large weight gain, it's just your body trying to repair itself, it won't last forever. this is a really good resource and it helped me realize that what i was going through in the recovery process was normal, and made it less scary. http://www.youreatopia.com/blog/2012/11/23/phases-of-recovery-from-a-restrictive-eating-disorder.html
  • donut556
    donut556 Posts: 1
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    I found beating anorexia a really difficult mission in life. But somehow, someway I was able to eat 100 cheeseburgers. Got around ~40,000 carlories. Please add me if you would like me to show you the way to an enriching and enjoyable life style.

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