u/PixelPawss

TW WEIGHT AND CALORIES!

Im 160cm, and roughly 44kg and have been gaining on around 2100-2200 (my weight stabilised on 2000 after 2 weeks - that is to say after the first week of increased weight, the next week I didnt gain anything) … my current activity is getting 10k steps a day, with volleyball 1x a week. If I bump up my intake to 2500, after the initial gain, will it balance out after a while? Is this recommended? For context I am 15 and havent had a period for nearly 8 months due to under fuelling for a couple months.

Im having trouble with getting different ideas for snacks and feel like im just reaching for the same things every time as they are “safe”. Usually I go for a couple dates with pb and a square of chocolate, a yogurt/fruit bowl, ice cream or some form of chocolate cereal…I feel like these foods are helping calorie wise (except maybe for the fruit/yogurt) but arent really helping nutrient wise??? Does anyone have any good ideas for snacks that helped you? Same thing with meals. Im also trying to combat my tendency to reach for more high volume foods to feel more satisfied when I know I should just be eating the amount I want. Any tips on how to deal with this?

Hi! Im having a bit of trouble with meal timing and tracking. I am trying to move away from tracking because I think its not good for my mental health and I feel like if I dont stop now, it will just keep me tied down.

Its not that im not hungry (I am), but that I honestly just dont know what to eat and choosing something and thinking about calories while I make it (and thinking “is this normal?”) is just driving me crazy and I feel its slowing my progress.

Did/does anyone struggle with this, and have you found anything that helps? For me I feel like if I had a meal plan that I HAD to follow it would be a lot easier for me, but I dont know where to find something like that.

Does anyone else have an unusually low heart rate? I measured mine and its like 48-50 bpm. I know elite athletes usually have a lower bpm, but the only exercise I get at the moment is walking (no cardio, except I do play volleyball).

What does a low heart rate mean in the HA context, if it means anything at all?

Hi this is my first post ever on reddit so sorry if I’m doing anything wrong, I made sure to tag weight and calories.

For background, Im 15, and 160cm. I have never really told anyone about this (though my mum has noticed a bit, and has talked to me about orthorexia before), and Im still sort of in denial that I have disordered eating habits (I feel like it hasn’t gotten “bad enough” for me to name it as an ED…I know thats really bad). I really just need to tell SOMEONE. My parents are aware of my lost period and we have seen a GP but she said all my hormones and stuff are normal. I lost my period back in September of 2025 for I suspect a couple of reasons:

1. My family started hosting 2 exchange students (for the course of a year) and one of them had trouble settling in, and this caused me a lot of stress.

2. I started homeschooling after attending traditional school for 2 years, so I had a lot more time on my hands so I started doing volleyball, and started swimming laps in the pool. I did volleyball 1x a week and usually swam 2x a week each time doing a km in about 25-30mins as a beginner swimmer.

I also started doing at home bodyweight workouts every day and sometimes only had 1 rest day a week (these workouts were usually only 10-15 minutes though).

And lastly for exercise I started walking my dog a lot more and usually went on at least a 30-50min walk a day.

3. I also started being more food conscious in the summer (e.g: I would skip the “unhealthy snacks” at the gathering, started checking the calories on packets, but nothing too obsessive). Come September/October I started logging what I ate after some meals into chatGPT and asking for calories…this went on until I was tracking every meal, every day (started eating around >!1900!<, that dropped to >!1700!< and then eventually down to >!1200-1400!< as the months past, and as well as that I would not, or at least I would be very anxious, eating anything that wasn’t weighed, as I started weighing my food as well for a more accurate caloric value). I stopped eating chocolate, cheese, milk, and basically anything that was low volume, high calorie (I was volume eating at every meal - rice cakes, veg, canned tuna). At one point I was even afraid of FRUIT and limited myself to 2-3 pieces a day. Oh also I had no snacks if I could help it even before/after swimming/sport. This behaviour went on, developing from mid September to January/February, and I went from ~>!49kg!< down to my lowest weight, >!42.5kg!<.

What I am doing now:

1. as of February, I have bumped up my calories and I ate >!1800!< for over a month, and still didn’t gain any weight (during this month I took part in a 19 day religious fast from sunrise until sunset, no food or water - this probably didn’t help at all but I really wanted to do it as it was my first year eligible - I also got >!10k!< steps a day during this fast, but no other exercise).

After that month I moved to >!2000 calories!< and gained >!0.9kg!< in a week, but then the next two weeks gained nothing. So now Im in the middle of week 1 of >!2100 calories!< but honestly, Im so tired of tracking, but I get very anxious when I dont track and Im afraid ill under eat.

2. I have reduced all exercise to volleyball 1x a week, and then getting my >!10k (usually 10-12, but sometimes it can get up to 15 but thats occasional) steps a day.!<

3. I have started eating more of my “fear foods” like pasta, cereal, chocolate and ice cream. The only thing is, I still don’t have a lot of high calorie low volume foods aside from those things.

I just want to be healthy and grow!!! I can’t keep living like this, and I want to fix it now so that these eating habits dont grow with me.

Any advice would be much appreciated <3