Suzanne Graham

My Darling Daughter, who has been too thin for almost a year, has lost five pounds since she went off to school. To recap her situation (which I’ve blogged about before) she does not like her pear shaped body type. In her sophomore and junior years, she put on a few extra pounds. The summer before her senior year she decided to take them off. She got super serious about the Blood Type Diet, and by October she looked great. But a taste of success made her decide to try to get the thin legs she admired in her apple shaped friends. I think the attention to healthy food that she learned from the BTD kept her from being ensnared by a serious eating disorder. She did become compulsive about portion sizes and exercise.

Last spring and summer DD could admit that she needed to regain some of her lost weight, but she didn’t really want to. She had her thin legs, and she wanted to keep them. She would get within a pound of our agreed on target, and then lose a pound or two. She tells me that she didn’t intentionally sabotage the plan, but that she would get scared and exercise more. I had hoped that when she went off to college away from me and around girls eating normally, that she would be responsible for changing her own behavior. That did not happen.

She may be compulsive about exercise, but she is open and honest with me. We talk on the phone every day and now that she has a scale in her room, she reports her weight every morning. Two weeks ago when she hit a new low, I told her that I was worried about the damage she might be doing to her body, and I was worried that there might be some underlying physical cause for the continued weight loss. I said, “I’m making an appointment with our family doctor. If you gain a half a pound this week, I’ll cancel it. So if you can gain weight, this is the time to do it.” She put on 6/10s of a pound, then the day before she was to come home she called crying. She had lost it all.

We were two sad people at the doctor’s office. She has had friends who were diagnosed with anorexia. We both knew what could happen – high fat diets, birth control pills, antidepressants, hospitalization. Our doctor has known our family for ages and delivered DD 19 years ago. He was the right mix of firm and compassionate. He warned her what she was doing to herself. He gave her until Thanksgiving to put on 3 pounds. He wanted her to go in for counseling at school. She did not want to bring in an outside counselor, so I cautiously agreed that she could try to manage this herself and put on ½ pound a week for the next 3 weeks. If she can’t do it, then she will get counseling.

Here is where I need your help. It is hard to put weight on with the Type A diet. We went over all of the recommended portions, and while she is eating on the low end of the range, she is eating according to the diet in all areas except oils and grains. She has increased both of those areas this week. She eats a lot of vegetables, but most higher calorie vegetables seem to be avoid for Type A. She has nuts and fruit for breakfast. She eats 3 ounces of fish or turkey one meal a day and a nut butter sandwich the other meal. She drinks a protein shake every afternoon, and has a power bar made with nuts and fruit mid morning. She feels like she is eating all the time, but she is not gaining.

I would think that she is sabotaging again, except that my husband is experiencing the same thing. When his blood work showed an elevated sugar level, he got scared, then he got rebellious, then he got serious about the BTD Diabetes plan. I don’t have neutral grains in the house any more, and I limit his beneficial grains. He is a thin man to begin with, and he has lost 5 pounds. He eats three good meals a day and snacks on nuts while he watches TV at night.

Type As tell me: Do you continue to lose weight when you follow the diet? What high calorie beneficial foods do you enjoy? What can DD do to gain weight in a healthy way? What can HH eat to keep his blood sugar low, but not lose too much weight?

DD knows I am posting this blog, and she has signed up for her own Forum account so she can read your answers. I hope you can help and encourage her.