Excellent suggestions from the other ED mums

I knew I could depend on 'my mums' on the Around The Diner Table Forum to rally round with advice. It's months since I posted anything - I haven't needed to - but it's the good old mums who 'know me' who responded, the mums who were immensely helpful when I first joined.So, coupled with my own gut instinct, this is what I plan to do...


For the time being we're putting Dr J 'on hold' and seeing if we can bring in the private dietician we saw back in the summer. Ben got on very well with her. He liked the 'scientific' approach far more than the 'talking therapy' approach. Science equals indisputable facts. Talking therapy equals airy fairy boll*cks.

In his opinion at any rate.

Also, a dietician might be the right person at the moment given that he needs to be convinced that his weight won't spiral out of control now that he's weight restored. He needs to know the science about why his body will be changing at his age, and will continue to change for some years to come, and why this may mean weight gain. It's perfectly normal, because bodies change as we grow older and become adults. Teenage boys 'bulk out' into men. The weight increase is usually down to muscle rather than fat - and it's a natural thing. You can't stop yourself turning into the adult you are meant to be. You can't hold back time. Just as I can't stop my middle-aged body turning into a post-menopausal body, sans waist! It will happen, whether I like it or not! But, in Ben's case, it doesn't mean his weight will spiral out of control given that he's not exactly over eating.

The dietician talked about this last time we saw her. I believe a little more discussion on this topic wouldn't go amiss right now.

Also more talk about how the body behaves once it's reached its 'set weight' - and how this is the weight it will always attempt to aim for, whether that's up or down. And how, over the first year or so of being weight restored after a lengthy period of starvation (as with anorexia), the body takes quite a while to 'settle down'. During this time the weight can spike up and down quite dramatically as the body gradually adjusts to a set weight where it attempts to stay.

Or something along those lines.

In other words, from what I remember the dietician saying earlier in the summer, once you reach your set weight and you've been that set weight for 12 months or so, there's far, far less likelihood that your weight will suddenly shoot up, or shoot down. It will stay around the same level.

And the more it stays around the same level, the more the post-anorexic brain gets used to being like this.

This is my interpretation of what the dietician said earlier in the summer, at any rate. And I'd like her to go into this again with Ben, to help put his mind at rest and help him move forward without anxiety - and with less risk of relapse as a result of the fear and anxiety of his weight potentially spiralling out of control.

It was one of the mums on the Forum that suggested we bring in a dietician again. And the more I think about it, the more sense this makes. Other mums agree, too.

Oh, and I forgot to say, when I weighed Ben this morning (for the first time for three weeks or so) his weight was static. Unsurprisingly, his mood has lifted quite a bit...