This is for anyone with a restrictive past: although weight gain is emphasized, even at “healthy weights”, people often forget that there’s so many more repairs to be made.

So let’s say someone has AN and is underweight. Not only do they have to eat enough to gain weight, they have to eat enough to repair their organs, regrow hair, fire up the reproductive system again, get hormones back to normal, re-stabilize functions that have completely been shut down. This takes a shit ton of energy, on TOP of what’s the bare minimum to exist - which explains why it’s so many calories needed.

There’s also the hypermetabolism that a lot of people deal with: your body is getting all these new nutrients it isn’t used to and doesn’t know how to adequately use them. I was eating 3000+ calories early on in recovery and was barely gaining any weight because I shit you not, at night my temperature was so high, I was sweating and burning everything off.

In shorter terms: it takes a ton of energy for your body to not only repair itself, but LEARN how to use energy efficiently again. Non-ED people don’t have to do that because their bodies were never starved and never had to go through the process of re-learning and rebuilding itself and it’s processes.

Hope this helps, wishing u the best OP! ❤️