text: i wnat to be fat how can i reach my goal?   i like the looks of fat people! try this!....  disclaimer  the following section is cobbled together from various readings and research, dealing with my kid's allergies and nutritional difficulties, and my own experiences with refeeding, digestive problems, orthorexia and pregnancy. i did not keep track of all the sources. i do therefore encourage you to take any information you may find in here and look it up yourself so you can make your own decisions and reach your own conclusions. please keep in mind that i'm not a medical or nutritional professional of any sort.    refeeding  -or-  how to gain weight     this one seems like a no-brainer, eh? how do you gain weight? you eat. you cannot gain weight without eating... in the exact opposite of losing weight, actually, you cannot gain weight without consuming more calories than you burn off.   the bigger question, in our weight-loss worshipping world, is why would you want to gain weight? fact is that sometimes we become too thin, dangerously so, to the point where we begin to suffer all these negative side effects and eventually death. sometimes gaining weight is a pretty attractive option by comparison. being at a healthy weight helps every system of our body function better, allows us to heal from damage, and gives us reserves as protection against stress or illness as well.   the tougher part of weight-gain is how to do it in a healthy manner. just as rapid weight-loss can be dangerous, so can rapid weight gain. many eds who go through rapid recovery end up with too high a bodyfat percentage, too much fat stored around their internal organs, compromised health, and high cholesterol. this is in part because traditional anorexic "recovery" diets are aimed at bulking up the patient as quickly as possible by fat-loading everything they eat with no thought for the health quality of the food being given.   it's safer to aim for a gain of one or two pounds a week so as to not put undue stress on your recovering system and to know that you're rebuilding bone, muscle, and nutrient stores instead of just frantically storing fat. it's more important to restore your body's protein, elemental, vitamin, water, fat and sugar balances than to simply send the numbers on the scale up. once you do this, given sufficient raw materials your body will rebuild itself more strongly.      in the beginning  if you're deciding to gain weight, odds are it's because you're underweight. if you're underweight, barring a purely illness-related weight-loss problem which should really be addressed by a doctor instead, you have probably not been eating enough. if you haven't been eating enough for a while, your digestive system will need to be retrained. same goes for extended or extensive purging... it screws with your entire system, and there will need to be plenty of time devoted to patience and healing.   extended periods of time with insufficient solid food intake causes your entire digestive system to slow down and lose efficiency. amounts of digestive chemicals in production may drop, and the tiny fingerlike cilia that absorb foods in your small intestine may become paralyzed or die off. the peristaltic muscles that move food through your system may weaken or atrophy. large meals or a lot of food at once may confuse your stomach and intestines to the point where they cramp up and have trouble remembering what to do at all. all this will need to be repaired slowly, given time to reaccustom itself to the concept of processing and utilizing food again.   start with liquids. rehydration is extremely important, since without food our overall water content drops significantly, and the digestive process requires a great deal of water. in the first few days of refeeding you may notice a sudden gain of several pounds... this is most likely, if you're doing everything right, your water balance trying to straighten itself out. 