Recovering an eating disorder...?

okay, so plain & simple, I've stuggled (and still do) with anorexia. Now I'm trying to regain weight in a 'healthy' fashion. I've been eating much more than I used to but I haven't seemed to gain a 'huge' amount-is this an average healthy food intake?

1 陆 cup MultiGrain Cheerios with 陆 cup fat free milk
1 Banana
Few Peanuts
1 Vanilla Ensure
1 Pria Bar
small bag of carrots & celery
1 apple
1 cup of crispex cereal
1 pita sandwich (turkey, lettuce, and mustard)
1 chocolate chip cookie
1 pear
Few Pretzels
1 Panini (chicken, Cheese, Pepper, Zuchinni)
1 banana
1 Healthy Choice Chocolate Fudge Bar

Is there a reason why I'm not gaining back weight as fast as I thought I would/should?

ok. so I'm 18, 5'6 1/2 and about 109lbs. (since I've tried to stop weighing myself)
and I do dance 2-3 x a week if that helps any
and thanks for the advice so far!

Good for you!!!!!! Beating anorexia is very tough, and your diet looks quite impressive.... I can tell you are quite smart... :)

In short, the diet above is near perfect, so you will not gain weight back while on it. If you want to gain it back a little faster, then replace the fat free milk with 2% milk. Also, try drinking some extra milk on the side. Once you get your weight where you want it, then just reduce accordingly until you get what you want..

Maintaining the diet above will certainly give you long-term almost the perfect body... Quite impressive...

I think thats plenty of food, make sure that you are definately eating it all and not hiding (I know all the tricks! believe me) and how much exercise are you doing - if you are still exercising you might find that you won't gain weight very quicly because you are burning off the cals.

If it is down to the exercise drop it back a little.

Good luck - it's a long hard slog I know.

Best Wishes
Kez x

It's good to see that you've realized you need to gain weight. However it doesn't look like enough food for a normal person to maintain his/her weight, I'm not sure about your activity level, age, weight or height, so it is difficult for me to tell how much you need, but if you don't gain weight as fast as you want to, I guess it is obvious that you have to eat more.

A way to calculate your calorie need is to take your BMR multiplied by your activity level. You can do this by:

655+(9,6 X weight in kilo) + (1,8 X height in centimeter) - (4,7 X age in years)

Then you have got your basic metabolic rate (BMR). After that multiply by:

1,2 (if your activity level is similar to low or no activity)
1,375 (if you walk slowly 1-3 days a week, rest of the time you sit or lie in your bed)
1,55 (if you have a moderate activity level and do moderate exercises 3-5 days a week)
1,725 (if you're activity level is very high and you exercise 6-7 days a week)
1,9 (if you're extremely active and exercise daily with high intensity)

To illustrate this, let's take a woman named "Y" as an example. Y is 165 cm tall and weight 65 kg. She is also 30 years old. To find her BMR we take:

655 + (9,6 X 65) + (1,8 X 165) - (4,7 X 30) = 1435, Y will in other words burn 1435 if she sleeps all day. To calculate how much she will burn with her activity level, we need to multiply by 1,55 as she got a moderate activity level.

1435X1,55=2224,25 calories a day does she need a day

Keep in mind that this calculator is based on people above the age of 20. If you're a teenager, you will most likely need more calories. The calculator also only give you the number of calories you need to maintain your weight, not how many you need to gain. To gain weight you need to eat a higher amount of calories than the number you get. Underweight may decrease your metabolism though.

Good luck:)