Recovering - Eating Disorder Recovery Message Board

violette_777 · 12-14-2002, 11:41 PM

For 5 years now, I have struggled with eating. I have been very slim,and it's really hard to gain weight, I'm getting sick of the comments on my appearance. I have went to Doctor's and they told me to just eat 3 meals a day according to the Food Groups, but I still don't gain weight, is there anything else that can help ?

ldy06 · 12-15-2002, 06:49 AM

Hi there,

Welcome (I'm pretty new myself).

I would think that if you lost weight because of an eating disorder that you would return to a healthy wait by resuming regular eating patterns. I'm not a health professional, but most nutritionists seem to recommend eating 4 to 6 small meals a day instead of 3 large ones. I find that if I only eat 3 meals a day I'm always hungry, even if they are large meals. I can't go more than 3 hours without eating something. You should definitely follow the food guide and maybe consult a nutritionist (if you haven't already).

Good luck!

12-15-2002, 08:15 AM

hiya, i am not sure if you mean you struggle with gaining weight as you don't like it, or your body just doesn't want to gain. If its the second, the best thing is to do a high Kcal diet and just slip in extra calories when ever you can, like when eating soup, melt some butter into it. Melt butter over potatoes, or add an egg and milk into mashed patatoe. Add glucose powder to things like jelly/jello, use full fat milk and try and drink a pint of it a day with a couple of spoons of skimed powdered milk in it. You won't notice these things when eating but it will give you more of a chance of gaining

lilrayofhope · 12-15-2002, 08:22 AM

Welcome to the board!!!

First I'd like to applaud you for wanting to get help, that's wonderful. I'm not real sure if you do indeed have an eating disorder because you just said you 'struggled with eating'. Whether you did or didn't the fact that you know you need to gain weight is a rather wonderful step. Personally...I don't think eating 3 meals a day will really help you to gain weight. Sure, it'll help, but actually get the scale to go up? I doubt it. You might want to try counting calories. My dietician told me that I need 2200-2800 calories a day, maybe you could try that. Or a supplement to drink, such as Ensure or Boost. Each can has about 250 calories and all the vitamins you need. It's a real energy boost for sure. Ensure actually makes an Ensure Plus that has even MORE calories/vitamins. (Lol, I've had to take a whole lot of them. So yeah...I know a lot. I like Ensure High Calcium Chocolate the best as far as taste.) Anyways, might also try a protien bar or something. Gaining weight sure isn't easy if ya want to do it the healthy way. I mean, some people might just say "Eat junk food" but then you'd be gaining all fat not musceles or anything. Plus it'd be very unhealthy. Definetely follow the food pyramid as a guide line, maybe try to do weight training as a means to 'boost' your musceles and since muscele weights more than fat...you should see a weight gain. Anyways. I think the best advice would be to see a dietician or nutritionist, they can tell you what YOU need to do based on your body. Hope this helped. Good luck.

-Carlie