Increasing calorie intake without gaining weight? Please help!

So I'm going through a stage right now well for the last 6 weeks and ive only been eating 400-650 calories a day. I really want to eat like a normal person again i hate surviving on fruit and salad all day everyday . I want to increase my calorie intake to what it normaly should be so i can repair my metabolism but my friend told me that if i increase it my body will store all the xtra caloires and make my gain 2x the weight i am now and i really dont want that to happen. Is this true ? should i increase it in small amounts?

Im 14 and weigh 37-38 kg and am 148cms which is short but still. Ive just noticed my ribs stick out quite bad and i cant fit any thing!

Hey, i'm really glad to hear that you've convinced yourself you want to eat better again, as i know this is really hard. Just to say your friend is wrong. I suggest just eat what your family eats, if you think that they're appearance is okay. If not ask a friend you know that doesnt have issues with their eating habits. Eating that tiny ammount of cals a day wil begin to do you serious harm. I know this from personal experience, so please carry on wanting to stop. Use some of the tools on here to work out how much you should be eating, and then try and aim to eat that much a day. You wont balloon, i promise. Remember they say that eating 2000 cals a day is meant to MAINTAIN your weight, not make you become overweight.

Hope this helps

It's strange, I just wrote about this sort of thing on my site the other day. Check it out, I hope it's useful to you: http://secondhelpingonline.com/?p=417.

Friends, family, and many more people tend to offer advice that *sounds* really nice but can really be harmful when all is said and done. It can go either extreme: you're losing too much/too little weight, you're not doing it right, etc. Opinions nonstop, and most of them contradict each other.

Wandy's got an excellent point that you yourself realized -- you can do serious harm eating well under your target caloric intake.

And it sounds like you're listening to the two most important things of all -- your body for one, and yourself for two.

In terms of getting your eating sorted out and your metabolism where it should be, a nutritionist sounds like exactly what you need. I wouldn't leave it to friend or family. Internet programs like this are great for general purposes, but transitioning out of a calorie level that low needs some professional know-how.

Look for a professional who's *advice you trust* (key words there). If you don't trust them, look for someone else until you do.

Hope this helps! And congratulations for listening to yourself -- it's an extremely brave and awesome skill. You and your body will be just fine.

Onward!

Ru