I just read a parent’s thread on Laura Collin’s FEAST website called “Eating Too Much”. It made my hair stand on end. And it clearly resonated with more than one parent on the FEAST site.

It is the old story of a weight restored child with anorexia nervosa continuing to eat a lot and moving up way past their weight goal. Both the child and the parent are panicking.

I feel like the person who has been yelling: “Don’t drive down that road it ends in a cliff! Don’t drive off the cliff! Don’t drive off the cliff! Don’t drive off…!!!” as I watch them go off the cliff.

One voice of moderation and experience replied to this concerned (read: “worried sick”) mother: “In the MN Starvation Experiment, the ‘normal’ men allowed to eat on their own gained an average of 10% more than their original body weight, but this drifted back down over the course of a year until they reached their natural set point. Is it possible that your d is listening to her body cues…that it wants some assurance that the famine is truly over before it trusts the constant intake of food again?”

Being “allowed to eat on their own” is not something we support at the Kartini Clinic, for this very reason. I have repeatedly told our young patients “I will not let you get fat”….and I mean it. So I am very distressed when they are allowed (by their family) to eat in a way that virtually assures they will pass their weight goal.

Several respondents referred the mother to my blog about the meal plan and ordered eating. Like anyone who deals with weight restoration of starved individuals, we at Kartini Clinic deal with excessive weight gain—but only in children who eat off the meal plan.

Since this “eating off the meal plan” within the first year after diagnosis is almost always with the permission/participation of the parents, I am at a loss to know what more to say.

Don’t drive off the cliff!