Anorexia Nervosa: The Wish to Change- 30 Steps- Part 3
How to Gain Weight- STEPS 22-26
STEP 22
Set yourself a target weight. Your target weight should be the weight of the average person in our population of your height and sex and, we suggest, of the age that you fell ill. We recommend this since it is at this age, emotionally speaking, that you need to pick up life again.
STEP 23
Once again, you are more likely to find gaining weight easier of you eat several times each day an consume a reasonable number of calories on occasion. You will need to build up to an amount which will lead to weight gain in the context of normal but not excessive exercise. For the moment you should walk no more than two or three miles per day at the most and not engage in other contrived exercise. Your calorie needs are determined to an important extent by your present weight and height and you will need to slowly increase your present calorie intake.—we recommend you to do this in a controlled, precise way. You will need to preserve with the tasks of controlling any bingeing, vomiting and laxative abuse.
STEP 24
An almost universal fear is that if you relax your restrictions on diet you will gain weight rapidly and then non-stop. You therefore need to weigh yourself weekly- more often may give you misleading information, and weighing yourself too often is probably a symptom of your anorexia. Plot your measured weight (don’t cheat) on a chart. We would recommend a weight gain of about 1 lb (0.5kg) per week. Less than that can be hard to monitor. More is likely to outstrip the changes that we think you need to make in parallel with gaining weight – you may then panic and rebound into losing weight.
If you have been vomiting, using laxatives or restricting how much fluid you drink then you will be dehydrated. Therefore, if you give up these behaviours you may well initially gain weight more quickly than 1 lb a week. This will mean you are “rehydrating” (taking water back into your body to bring it back to normal). This is not as same as gaining weight through eating, but can be equally terrifying. The rate of weight gain will not continue once you have rehydrated- the process will take a couple of weeks to stabilise (if you give up vomiting etc. Completely).
STEP 25
DO NOT LET people/parents tempt you to eat too much. It will be a long while before you can take control for granted.
STEP 26
Most people with anorexia fear that once they start gaining weight they will not be able to stop. Having reached your “target weight” it is very important that you stop gaining. Gain much more and you are certain to panic and probably feel the need to resort to a low weight again.
