How Many Calories Should I Eat in Anorexia Recovery?

I’ve been wanting to write this post for quite some time now, because this question comes up frequently in the context of autism and eating disorders: “How do I know how much to eat?” I had this question myself during recovery. I believed I couldn't trust my body, which is why I stuck rigidly to meal plans. The rules were clear. All I had to do was follow the map, and I couldn't “fail” at eating.

I believe this idea of not knowing how much to eat is elevated when we develop the eating disorder at a young age. If you’ve read my book Rainbow Girl, you know I was just eleven years old when it all started. When I decided to recover, I was nearly a legal adult who obviously had very different needs. Not to mention, I had a ton of energy debt to pay back, which you can read all about in my book How to Beat Extreme Hunger.

Clearly, I am an author at heart and I absolutely love writing books because books allow me to go deeper than I ever could in a podcast episode, blog post, or coaching session. But one reason I will forever continue with live coaching is that I learn so much from my students and clients. They help me stay curious and inspire me to articulate concepts in new ways.

And that's exactly what prompted my writing this post today. I'd been turning this question of “How do I know how much to eat?” over in my mind for months, so you can only imagine how magnetically pulled I felt to finally articulate everything I'd been thinking when I received the following message: “What would a typical day of eating look like for you when you had extreme hunger? I'm just trying to figure out how much to eat and it would be helpful to have an example!”

Oh my goodness. I cannot even begin to express what a tornado my mind took me in with this one. Just reading the message over again – I'm just trying to figure out how much to eat and it would be helpful to have an example! – I am practically transported back to the time when I was obsessed with watching “what I eat in a day” videos, constantly searching for permission to eat everything I was thinking of. Because surely, other people didn’t want to eat an entire jar of peanut butter? Surely, other people didn’t hasten to the store to buy seven discounted pastries only to eat them in solitude on the kitchen floor?

Well okay, I’m sure other people did do that – but those were the binge eaters. Those were the people who had lost control. And I wasn’t about to let that be me. (I’m aware of how terrible these thoughts sound, but they’re the truth. I know this because my sessions are safe spaces where people are invited to bring their honesty in a judgment-free space. This is the reality of fear. It makes you think and believe things that most people wouldn’t dare say out loud. Hence why the topic of eating disorder superiority is rarely talked about.)

My first thought when I read this message about wanting to know what a typical day of extreme hunger looks like for me is that there IS no “typical” day of extreme hunger! Now, I didn’t actually reply that – I ended up replying what encompassed the actual fear. For trying to figure out “how much to eat while having extreme hunger” defeats the entire purpose of honoring extreme hunger.

Honoring extreme hunger in its entirety means releasing all labels around food – from types of food to portions of food to what one must do to “burn off” food. And this label-free mindset simply cannot coexist with a predetermined amount. I do hope you reading this makes you realize how ridiculous that belief – that you can fully honor extreme hunger while having already decided what that even means – even is. Of course, this is what makes honoring extreme hunger so terrifying: precisely because there’s no map. Precisely because it’s unpredictable and you don’t know what or how much you’ll end up eating. Terrifying for anyone, exponentially so for the autistic mind.

And this is precisely where the latter half of the message comes in: it would be helpful to have an example! Why would it be helpful to have an example? It wouldn’t actually be helpful at all. Because with an example, you’re still trying to follow a map that doesn’t exist.

Even if I did tell you that I ate over 20,000 calories in one day (true story) that still wouldn’t change anything because I’ve already shared my extreme story at length in How to Beat Extreme Hunger. If just knowing how much I ate would change things for you, it already would have. So what did I end up replying to the message? This: what you’re looking for isn’t more “knowledge” but permission. Permission to eat everything you are thinking of. Because it’s the very “trying to figure out how much to eat” that’s keeping you stuck.

To keep going here, the sentence “It would be helpful to have an example!” could be replaced with I want to know that how much I want to eat isn’t “wrong” or “too much.” Because this is the real fear: that your mental hunger wants you to eat “too much” and that’s why you can’t trust it. And if you can’t trust it, well that’s why you need a how to!

Let’s be honest about what's really happening here. The “not knowing how much to eat” question is almost always rooted in the fear of weight gain. Otherwise, you wouldn't be erring on the side of caution and undereating right now – you know, “just to be safe.” The irony is that for your body, “just to be safe” is actually the complete opposite. True safety comes from eating in abundance.

The real problem with the “how much should I eat” question is that it’s looking at recovery through the same limited mindset that’s keeping your eating disorder alive. It’s what our autistic friend Einstein said: you can’t fix a problem with the same thinking that created it.

When I was deep in my extreme hunger phase, I had to confront this uncomfortable truth: my body needed amounts of food that seemed objectively “excessive” by any standard comparison. But that’s because my body wasn’t operating under standard conditions. It was in emergency repair mode.

Your body doesn’t care about what your friends eat, what influencers show in their “what I eat in a day” videos, or what society deems “normal.” Your body only cares about one thing and one thing only: your survival. After prolonged restriction – especially when the eating disorder began in childhood – healing requires an incredible number of calories (way more calories than you think). So the real question doesn’t have anything to do with needing to know how much to eat. The real question is: When will you claim the permission to fully honor your mental hunger?

Want answers to the top 10 questions about extreme hunger? Enroll in my free 10-day email course here!