Navigating Weight Gain While Recovering from Anorexia

Recovering from anorexia is undoubtedly life-changing and often life-saving, but it can also be a difficult journey. Committing to treatment has the power to improve the lives and well-being of both the individual and their family, yet it’s important to recognize the common challenges that may complicate this process. For many, the hardest part of anorexia recovery is coping with weight gain.

Gaining weight during recovery can be extremely tough on physical, psychological, and emotional levels. Understanding why weight gain is essential in anorexia treatment can help reduce the worries and discomfort that often come with it. Learning ways to cope can also make the process easier. Below, you’ll find information on why weight gain plays a key role in anorexia recovery and strategies to help accept and tolerate it.

The importance of weight gain in anorexia recovery

Full recovery from anorexia requires adequate weight gain, making it one of the most critical aspects of healing. Weight gain can be seen as a process of healing both the body and the self, helping individuals regain strength, social connection around food, and a sense of normalcy.

However, gaining weight during recovery isn’t easy for many. Challenges include emotional and mental overwhelm, losing a harmful coping mechanism, and navigating a society obsessed with thinness. For some, weight gain feels like losing control, especially when societal messages suggest gaining weight is wrong. Physically, it can also be uncomfortable or painful due to digestive difficulties that sometimes occur during nutritional rehabilitation.

The good news is there are various ways to manage these challenges. Building coping skills, seeking supportive people, and setting boundaries with diet culture can all help ease the weight gain process.

Why weight gain is necessary

Weight restoration is crucial for both short- and long-term mental and physical health during eating disorder recovery. Not everyone who needs weight restoration appears severely underweight, and some may require it even if they don’t look thin.

For young people, falling off their natural growth curve signals the need for weight gain, regardless of appearance. For adults, tools like BMI are flawed markers for health and don’t always indicate when weight restoration is necessary. People may have a “healthy” BMI but still be below their body’s natural set point, which can perpetuate eating disorder behaviors. Even those with atypical anorexia—who don’t fall into the underweight category—often need weight restoration.

Being below one’s natural weight carries serious health risks such as heart problems, low blood sugar, dizziness, fatigue, feeling cold, digestive issues, headaches, anxiety, and even death. Breaking the cycle of restriction allows the brain and body to relearn hunger and fullness cues, which are critical to overall health and development.

Weight suppression can worsen the mental symptoms of an eating disorder, whereas gaining weight tends to quiet these symptoms. For some, weight gain means confronting the fears the eating disorder has created and challenging those beliefs to progress in recovery. It also brings physical and mental health benefits like better sleep, more energy, and improved emotional regulation.

Why weight gain feels so difficult

Weight gain is tough for many because of the societal link between weight loss and personal value or morality. For those struggling with anorexia, this difficulty is even greater.

Weight gain challenges occur on multiple levels:

• Emotional: Regular eating and gaining weight can feel unfamiliar and distressing. Acting against the eating disorder’s influence is emotionally exhausting. The fear of weight gain can cause anxiety, worry, and anger. Letting go of clothes that no longer fit can also be a painful experience.

• Social: Living in a society that glorifies thinness and stigmatizes larger bodies makes intentional weight gain feel unsafe and hard to accept.

• Psychological: Restriction impacts the brain’s ability to recognize hunger signals, making it difficult to trust and respond to body cues. Regular eating by schedule can help retrain the brain, even if it initially feels uncomfortable.

• Physical: Feeling full quickly or experiencing digestive discomfort is common as the body adjusts to eating more. This physical discomfort improves over time with consistency.

  
  

Making weight gain more manageable

Although everyone’s recovery journey is unique, several strategies can help make weight gain easier to handle:

• Practice self-compassion and mindfulness to reduce judgment and increase kindness toward yourself during tough moments.

• Use calming exercises, such as humming to stimulate the vagus nerve, to help your nervous system relax before meals.

• Create a sense of comfort and safety during meals, such as using heating pads for stomach discomfort or engaging in distractions like listening to music.

• Build a support system of people who understand and validate your struggles, especially during difficult times like shopping for new clothes.

• Wear clothes that feel good and comfortable, and consider removing tags or donating clothes that cause stress.

• Adjust your social media use to follow body-positive and diverse accounts, and take breaks from triggering content.

• Follow a structured meal plan developed by a dietitian to ensure consistent nutrition, including carbs, fats, and proteins. Avoid drinking too much liquid at meals to prevent feeling overly full.

• Consider gentle movement like walking or restorative yoga to support emotional and physical well-being, but discuss this with your treatment team.

  
  

Professional support in recovery

Recovery requires a team of specialists:

• Dietitians help set target weights based on individual factors, adjusting plans as needed. They use weight ranges rather than specific numbers, recognizing that bodies fluctuate.

• Therapists provide a safe space to work through difficult emotions, body image issues, and develop coping skills using various therapeutic approaches.

• Medical professionals monitor vital signs and lab values during weight gain to ensure safety and manage risks like refeeding syndrome.

Tracking progress and looking ahead

Weight gain brings many positive changes such as increased energy, better sleep, improved mood stability, and healthier vital signs. Keeping a journal to note these improvements can help you recognize progress beyond the scale.

It’s usually best not to track weight yourself to avoid distress, but rather rely on your treatment team to monitor it safely. You and your dietitian can decide the best way to track progress and how to handle weighing.

Accepting and appreciating your body over time

Though weight gain can cause distress, this is a temporary and necessary phase of recovery. Tolerance of discomfort is the first step, followed by acceptance of your changing body with support from your team.

Respecting your body, even if you don’t fully love it yet, is crucial. Some ways to foster body respect include:

• Describing your body neutrally when looking in the mirror, focusing on simple facts rather than judgments.

• Noticing negative body thoughts and recognizing them as just thoughts, not truths.

• Appreciating what your body allows you to do daily, focusing on function over appearance.

If you need help healing your relationship to food and body, please reach out to us via the contact page. 

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