Redoubled efforts

A picture of our local park that I took in early Autumn.

Thank you to my various commentators uniformly coming across with the message that I have to take this ED more seriously - that's exactly why I wanted to start this blog:  to hear advice from others who have direct experience and/or knowledge.

You will be glad to learn that I have redoubled my efforts and Waif has eaten enough food to sink a battle ship these last 3 days.

I have ordered a pair of scales (as recommended, ironically by Weight watchers) which I am picking up tonight from our local Tesco store. Waif wanted digital so that there were no disagreements about readings and parallax errors and also because she (wrongly) confuses precision with accuracy.  Nonetheless, these were the most obviously accurate scales I could find with a digital readout. We are supposed to weigh on a Monday morning but the base reading will have to be tomorrow (Tuesday).

I was particularly pleased to receive a link in one of my comments to some incredibly informative videos by an expert about caloric needs in recovering anorexics.  Apparently, whilst ordinary people need between 20 and 40 kcal per day per kg of body weight to maintain a steady weight, a recovering anorexic needs about 50 kcal just to maintain weight.  Waif at about 40kg therefore needs 2,000 kcal a day just to remain as thin as she is, without allowing for weight gain.  This explains how she seems (genuinely) to be eating more than anyone else in the family and yet not gaining weight.  The extra is thought to be burned up as heat and patients often report being burning hot at night.  Now that I understand that, I am aiming at more like 3-4,000 kcal a day.  That takes some doing especially when there is still resistance to fatty foods (fried foods, cream sauces etc).  That resistance is also normal -apparently anorexics develop a dislike for fatty foods whilst developing a craving for the sweet.   Waif also seems to be buying into the idea that she must recover more quickly, not least as we have talked about how she needs to have had 2 years at a normal weight before she can live away from home and she is keen to follow her older sister to her world famous outstanding boarding school for the sixth form.