WEIGHT GAIN IN ED RECOVERY – How I Dealt With It and How You Can Too!

I’ve gotten several questions on weight gain in recovery that I’d like to address altogether:

One was:

Can you make a video on weight gain in recovery? How you dealt with it and what the process was for you?

Another was:

What was your weight gain like? Did you overshoot then lose or readjust? I’m trying to put my faith in the fact my gain will drop away further on in recovery. I’m four months in and feel super uncomfortable in my own skin..

And others similar..

So personally, within my eating disorder, I went from 119 lbs, up to 140 and then down to 135 in my fitness modeling / bikini competing days, and down to 90 freakin lbs in my raw vegan days..

Throughout my recovery, I ended up settling at 159. This is my set weight point where my body always goes to and wants to be.. It could always change in the future. That’s life.. This is where I feel my healthiest. My sex drive is high, my energy levels are high, my brain power is great, my moods are good, and I just feel healthy.

In recovery, I overshot to 185lbs. I’m 5’7” .. So overall.. my weight readjusted and my mind eventually readjusted to this as well.. I didn’t get back to 130 pounds like I was when I was a teenager .

At 185 lbs, I overshot my set weight point by 25 lbs in recovery.. It gradually came off over 4-5 months at about the year and a half mark in. I didn’t weigh myself at all during this period of the weight coming off. But one month, I just decided to weigh myself for the hell of it because I felt good and was curious..

I made sure I was going in with the intent to not get hooked on the number nor make a habit out of it.. and I was surprised to see I had lost 25 lbs..

Simply from letting go of the focus on the weight gain.. and continuing to live my life, go out with friends, date a guy, give and receive love, laugh, eat what I wanted, when I wanted, without ANY restrictions.. and also to exercise moderately..

Exercising moderately: meaning maybe I’d take a week off if I was traveling or if I was too fatigued and my body was asking for rest. When I had tons of energy and felt the urge to get out and move my body – I’d go for it. I’d go for a run, a hike, a swim, bike ride, or do 30 min of bodyweight exercises or regular weights.

[click to watch the video here!]

How did I deal with the weight gain?

Well,

• I literally had to let go of the number,
• stop weighing myself,
• and constantly make an effort on not trying to focus on my weight.

This is very hard and I know hearing this stuff might be leaving you feeling like wtf that’s all?!..

but it’s part of the challenge..

• I was following body positive anti-diet podcasts, instagram accounts, books, blogs, youtube accounts, you name it.
• I got help from a coach who helped me along my journey as a stepping stone to keep me on track. [So pretty much just saturating my mind with body positive, self acceptance, anti-diet, anti-dogma thoughts, ideas, and words..]

This helps rewire the brain for new healthy mindsets, habits and thought patterns around body ideals, both personally and for others in real life or in the media..

It’s as if we’re slowly taking off fog goggles that distort our perception on what a body should look like.

We weren’t born with the fog goggles.. But growing up in modern environments within the modern diet and beauty culture, the fog glasses are screwed on tightly right under our noses..

In recovery, the challenge is to begin to really take in the fact that all bodies should be different like snowflakes.

Maybe some have a resemblance to one another, but really, like all things in nature, everything is so unique and thats the beauty of it! Man tries to control, conform and make everything so linear and black and white.. nature is more flowing, chaotic, contrasting, and colorful.. us humans are apart of nature, even if we’ve become more separate over the domestication of our culture – at the end of the day, we are not separate..

I know the feeling of how uncomfortable it feels when the weight keeps climbing. Mine was quick! Within the first week..even though it was edema and necessary fat gain..it was horrifying regardless and my eyes didn’t have time to adjust or adapt; I quickly wanted to revert back..

And I did a couple times in an attempt to try to control the weight gain.. but that didn’t help of course.

My body wouldn’t release the weight even if I tried to go back to restricting at this point..

So eventually, I had to completely let go and just fully 110% embrace the process of letting go. Something finally clicked in my head and I was able to fully dive in to recovering fully.

Of course it wasn’t perfect from there on out, and I had my ups and downs, bc that’s life and it will always will be like that.. but that’s the challenge in life we have to always deal with.

You have to become strong in your new ways in order to stick to them. You can’t get away from diet culture and photoshopped magazine photos for the time being… (hopefully one day the media gets away from that.. but for now, it is what it is, and developing an inner strength will keep you going and to successfully recover and stay recovered..)

I have to also throw this in here… the more you focus on weight gain, the longer it will [seem to] take.

The more unreachable it will seem..

• It’s almost as if your body is holding onto the weight for a deeper purpose further than healing and starvation..as if it’s supposed to be a learning lesson for us to be able to find acceptance for ourselves “at our worst” (supposedly), or at a higher weight.
• This experience forces us to feel uncomfortable and to define our value outside of our weight.
• It also allows us to realize we can still have fun, be loved, receive love and give love at a higher weight.

Of course we don’t want to see it as this, and want to write it off as being too “esoteric”.. but the reality is, we are spiritual (or religious, depending on your belief system) beings. Regardless of if we think it’s cheesy or not, our emotional body is just as real as our mental and physical body, and they are all interconnected.. when one’s out of balance, it will affect the other.

Looking back now, I can see that the weight gain was of course for healing: as a rebound effect for being in starvation mode for so long. But I also realized it was for a time of growth, to empower myself to the reality that I am more than my weight and the more I focused on the redistribution of the weight and the weight loss, the longer my body held on to the weight..

Xx 

Kayla Rose

Holistic Nutritionist

P.S. I’m hosting a free masterclass specifically for people who want to stop feeling obsessed around food and truly heal their metabolism and you’re invited! Click here to sign up.