Expert: Rev. Ke`ala Richardson - 2/28/2004

Question
Hi, I'm a 18 year old girl who has struggled with weight... I was 120lbs and 5'2", I guess I wasn't really fat, but chubby nontheless. So I decided to diet two years ago and now I'm only 82lbs... I'm not anorexic, but I have this unrealistic and unrepressable fear of being fat, so I'm always on the watchout for what I eat, counting calories and refusing to let any "fattening food" enter my body. I usually have 1200 cals aday but I think I really need to gain some weight. What is the best way to do so? I don't want to put on pounds and pounds of fat on my body, how much should I eat a day and what kind exercise should help?
Thank you for listening to me, and looking forward for ur advise^^  

Answer
Aloha, gaining weight is really a hard task after restricting for a long time. So it is best to take the attitude that it is going to take a little while.
What you need to do is protein and lot's of it. Protein shakes with flax seed oil will help. YOu also probably need to do some weight bearing exercises to help rebuild your muscle mass.
Ignore calorie counting as much as possible, eating out or having some else prepare your meals will eliminate the self sabatoging of counting cals.
Please go to our self help web site and try the Nueral lingual programming - that should help the fear of fat and just keep doing it over and over again until you just simply don't care any more about fat.
Remember your thoughts are your reality..... so think healthy, think active, think you are beautiful inside and out and so shall it be.
Good luck and let me know how it goes..
here is our self help pages..
http://eating-disorder-recovery.com/selfhelprecovery.htm
Aloha Keala