Help please

Hi guys, I'm newish to this forum but I would like some urgent help.

I am trying to recovery from an Eating Disorder (Diagnosed as Anorexia with Bulimic tendencies)

I need to know how many cals I need to consume in order to gain.

My stats are 5"2', 17 year old female and I clock in at around 100-102lbs, I walk most afternoons at a moderate pace and lift weights 3x per week as well as hit the gym every friday for some sweat-breaking cardio (approx. 1.5hrs)

Does anyone have some concrete number I can use because I've hit over 2000cal the past 2 days and I am struggling to decide whether that's too much or too little or just right.

Please help me out, I'm at a tug-o-war with my mind at the moment.

The best way to figure out how many calories you should eat is to use the "tools" button on Calorie Count. There is a "burn meter" button under that which will tell you how many calories you burn a day. To gain weight you're going to need to eat more. You could also use the "calorie target" button under tools. There you can enter in your current weight and a weight you'd like to be. It will tell you how many calories you need to consume to reach your goal and when you'll reach it. 

Good luck with getting healthy!

Based on your stats your BMR should be some where between 1800 - 2100 calories per day.  To gain 1 pound, you will need to create 3500 surplus calories.  If you eat 2300 to 2600 calories a day you should gain about 1 pound a week.  At this rate, you should be able to monitor your progress and go into a maintenance mode without fear of gaining too much.

With the fact that you are exercising so regularly and lifting weights, I would throw away the scale and grab a body fat caliper and tape measure to judge the results.  If you end up putting on muscle, the muscle will weigh more than fat and you may end up with a body fat percentage that is too low.

As a young female, you need body fat for proper hormone production and bone density. If your storage fat levels are proper, you will have the correct vitamin levels for optimum health.  If you go below the essential fat level, then your body will start to shut down.  Here are a couple of things I learned from a fitness website.  I think this is the website http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/

Storage Fat -- This consists mainly of fat deposited just under the skin or subcutaneous fat. Storage fat for men and women is fairly similar. For the average man 12% of bodyweight is storage fat and for the average woman 15% of bodyweight is storage fat.

Essential Body Fat -- For the body to function normally and healthily a certain amount of body fat is required. This is called essential fat. For women the average amount of essential fat is 12% of bodyweight and for men it is 3%.

ive honestly never seen anyone recovering from an eating disorder gain under 2500 , and 2500 being the baseline-minimum. shoot for 2700-3000. if you lose weight up it by 500-750. if you gain, it is most likely mostly water weight and continue eating, the weight you see in two and a half to three weeks should be a true-gain weight (when the water weight resides)

there are other threads like these:

http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/post/109 591.html

and here are some links to some sight that show that recovering anorectics/bulimics have abnormally high calorie requirements to gain weight.

http://caloriecount.about.com/users/meeshmees h/213334.html

bigdad - thank you so much, I was actually afraid I wasn't active enough and that it would all turn to fat! You have quietened my fears  About the scale... I weigh seldom nowadays, maybe once every 2 weeks or so, I'll try to not weigh anymore but curiosity killed the cat!

meeshmeesh - yesterday I wentr to 2200cal and felt so crabby ... any ideas on how to quieten the "voice"? I'll continue trying to boost my numbers to 2500cal, I don't have the overstuffed feeling many complain of because I have already switched to calorie dense foods such as trail mix, avocado and pasta.

Thanks all for your input, I guess now it's just a matter of convincing myself that I do need more cals to gain weight.