Gaining Weight in Eating Disorder Recovery: Why It Feels Like a Setback

You eat in a more balanced way, maybe in the middle of recovery from an eating disorder. You exercise less, or at least more mindfully, no longer just to punish yourself.

Your period might be back, and people around you tell you that you look healthier.

And you? You feel overwhelmed, exhausted, drained and unsure. Maybe even worse than back when you ate less, trained on an empty stomach and had nothing but black coffee in the morning.

Fear often comes on top of that: disgust, shame, restlessness, and the feeling that you are not at home in your body.

I know that thought from my own life. I have a long eating disorder history behind me: from anorexia through competitive bodybuilding to bulimia. Here you can read more about my story.

It always went from one extreme to the next, into other addictions and other forms of control, such as eating vegan. And when I started to let go more, suddenly a lot came up: problems with my thyroid, my heart, my gut.

My period was back, and I thought: health-wise, it can only go up from here. Instead, gaining felt terrible.

It felt like a huge loss of control, and as if I had been healthier back when I still ate less. Maybe you know that thought?

Here I will explain why it can feel like that, and why it does not mean that you are not making progress or getting sicker.

Often it is a sign that your body finally has the capacity to work through things again, not just mentally but physically too: through your nervous system and your hormones.

Gaining in recovery rarely feels like liberation

To put it clearly: most people reading this do not want to gain. I felt the same. But gaining is often a necessity so you stay alive and your body can repair things again.

In recovery, you do not think: how lovely, I am gaining, I feel amazing in my body. You do it because you have to. Your body is striking: your cycle stays away, your strength is gone, your digestion is severely impaired, your blood pressure is low, and you can barely get out of bed. Maybe your mood is low and your libido is gone.

Because your body or the people around you are pushing you into it, it does not feel easy. It is not liberation. It's uncertainty: I am losing control. I do not know who I am. What if I gain and cannot accept myself?

Those thoughts were very present for me. And honestly: I could not accept myself. I was in clinics several times. Afterwards I escaped into exercise and ate vegan to have an excuse: I cannot eat that, I am vegan.

Eating disorders are not weight disorders. Just because your weight is in the normal range does not mean you are healthy.

Can I get my period back without gaining weight?

I hear this question very often, and I understand it well, because I felt the same. Honestly: for many women, the period only comes back once the body gets enough energy again, and that often also means that the weight goes up.

Your hypothalamus does not look at the number on the scale. It checks whether there is enough energy for everything your body has to do, and as long as there is not, it turns down the signals to your ovaries.

What your path looks like in detail is individual and belongs in medical care. But you do not have to carry the fear of gaining weight alone.

A returning period does not mean you are healed

Your body can repair some things quickly. Blood and hormone values improve, and so does your sleep. Your digestion works again, and you no longer have a bloated belly all the time.

Your cycle can come back, too. Sometimes it is just spotting at first. Or you think: my period is back, I am healthy, I do not have to gain anymore.

For many, it slips then. The second period comes late, the third even later, and then it stops again. Careful. Because the little bit of safety your body gets back is not automatically there for you as a person, for your system. Why a period goes missing in the first place is explained in my article on the 5 cycle killers.

Healing, recovery, whatever you want to call it, does not just mean repairing your body. You are also reprogramming your nervous system. And that is the hard part.

So many people think they have a problem with food. But there is so much more buried in there: experiences, trauma, everything that sleeps in your body and subconscious. You are allowed to go there first, so your system can feel safe again.

Your nervous system does not know the new

Why does gaining scare you at all? Your nervous system does not think rationally like you do. It does not say: gaining is healthy, so let us do it. It only asks: am I safe or not?

If you lived restrictively for a long time, ate little, held yourself back, set yourself rules and got caught in control, then exactly that became predictable for your system.

Your rules are predictable. The numbers you cling to are predictable. So are your rituals and compulsions.

Your system knows: I know exactly what happens now and how I will feel afterwards.

Whether the behavior is extremely destructive and does not do you any good, your system does not tell. It only tells: known or not known.

Now comes recovery: you eat more. Your body holds more fluid. Your digestion is working, your digestive tract is full.

Suddenly you feel feelings, suddenly you are more present. And your nervous system says: hold on, we do not know this. This scares us. We stop right now.

Everything your system does not know, it first rates as possible danger.

That is why this phase is often accompanied by fear and inner restlessness, by sleep problems, drivenness, low mood and urges to control. It also brings the feeling that this is the wrong path, that recovery is the worst thing that could have happened to you, because you feel worse and worse.

That does not mean it is. It means your system is allowed to learn what safety is again.

The health that is coming does not mean danger. It can become your new safety. So you can get out of the old narrowness and be yourself again.

First survival mode, then repair mode

A lot of people tell me at some point: Lina, when I ate less and trained on an empty stomach, I felt better. Now everything feels harder and I am so much more exhausted.

I can tell you clearly: that does not mean you are getting sicker. It is completely logical.

Your body was in survival mode for a long time. It worked and functioned for you, because it only ever wants the best for you. It wants to keep you alive.

But it was also in saving mode for a long time. It is like a phone with three percent battery while you keep saving the next period tips on Instagram. At some point it shuts off from one second to the next.

That is exactly what happens in your body. It turns processes down to get through:

• Digestion gets throttled: a bloated belly, going to the toilet less often and less well.
• Your cycle stays away or gets irregular, hormones shift, libido drops.
• You barely feel your emotions, or you cannot make sense of them.
• Repair processes get minimized: skin heals worse, hair and nails become brittle.
• Muscles can waste away and bones can become more brittle. Pain and problems with movement can come on top.

That's completely logical stress physiology. Your body is not working against you and does not want to destroy you. It just can't do any more.

When you eat more again, let more into your system and eventually arrive at a healthy range, your body switches from survival to repair mode. Repair can feel like this:

• extreme tiredness
• digestive chaos that seems even worse at first
• water retention, edema, swelling
• mood swings, because your hormones are regulating again
• noticeable pain your system suppressed for a long time
• inflammation, an infection now and then, the feeling of being sick

That is exactly why many people doubt their recovery. But very often your body is simply taking the rest it never had. Before, it had to function to keep you alive. Now it finally gets to repair.

That does not mean you should ignore symptoms. On the contrary: get help from a doctor and from a health coach.

I am glad to be there alongside you, too. But it helps to know: your body's timing is logical.

Recovery is like rehab

For most people, recovery is also the hardest phase mentally. It is like rehab after surgery: only once the repair begins do you feel everything that hurt.

Especially with severe underweight, eating more can lead to refeeding syndrome. That needs to be checked by a doctor. But edema and a bloated belly can also appear without any refeeding syndrome. Then it feels as if you are suddenly gaining explosively and your belly is suddenly much bigger.

Of course, your body holds more water, and there is more food in your digestive tract. That is physiologically explainable.

Still: be careful with edema especially, and get medical support.

Years later I still developed problems with my heart and my kidneys. I wish I had never let it get that far. So my advice to you: get help as early as you can.

More body often means: more feeling

More weight does not just mean more body. Many people feel as though they are suddenly taking up a lot of space and are too much.

You feel more present, more seen. Many people are afraid of that, and of feeling their needs and feelings more strongly again.

This life by rules, this striving for perfection was not just "I control my food". It was also a way to keep feelings small.

For me, everything broke open after I allowed myself to eat more. Only then did I have the strength to work through trauma at all.

When you eat more, your feelings come back too. And with your cycle and your hormones, something soft returns that had no room for a long time: your femininity.

And if you regulated yourself through hardness, perfection and performance for a long time, that feels terrible at first.

Then questions come up like: who am I without control? Am I even lovable anymore? Will I still be seen if I stop making myself invisible? Am I allowed to take up space? Do people see me when I am healthy?

Maybe you never found yourself along the way, or lost yourself completely. You are allowed to go there now. Your eating disorder is not your identity.

Even when healing does not feel good at times: this is the right path, believe me. You are not weak, and you are not losing control.

You are allowed to learn now that your nervous system can feel safe again. And you do not have to go through it alone. I am here.