I dont know loads about it, so instead here is some info & links.
edrecoveryprobs said:
Minnie Maud is a set of guidelines for recovery that have been proposed by a treatment advocate named Gwyneth Olwyn at YourEatopia based on scientific information about recovery and nutrition. All articles about it can be found on that site, as well as other scientific information about recovery. It’s called Minnie after the Minnesota Starvation experiment, which gives us much of the scientific information about the biology of starvation and recovery from starvation that we have today, and Maud after the Maudsley Method, a highly evidence-based treatment protocol for eating disorders that focuses on family based treatment.Although the author is not a dietician, she compiles many scientific articles and draws conclusions in the form of guidelines. As a biologist, I tend to think that most of her posts are drawing solid conclusions from the literature, but keep in mind that all of this is not yet widely implemented.Here are the three main principles, although many people focus primarily on the first one as the most important biologically and psychologically:The intake levels that are proposed may surprise many people because we are often told that much lower levels are appropriate. To avoid posting calories, here’s a link to the guidelines for calorie intake— just scroll to the bottom of the page. It’s important to remember that refeeding can be dangerous for some folks and recovery should be overseen by health professionals. Some guidelines for how to get up to this calorie level healthily are here. Another reminder is that most recommendations that you hear have been developed based on self-reporting of what people eat, and most people without restrictive eating disorders under-report the amount that they eat, especially because there is cultural pressure to do so. People are eating more than you think and you need to eat more than you think.Minnie Maud cites that many of the psychological symptoms of eating disorders, such as preoccupation with food, anxiety, and depression are directly reflective of inadequate nutrition. This has been shown to occur in healthy individuals who are underfed for a period of time. It also proposes that people who have been put on a recovery weight gain meal plan that is too low often do not complete the physical recovery process. They don’t get enough steady nutrition to reach and maintain at their body’s actual set point (which is often above BMI 20). They also do not get enough extra nutrition to repair the cellular damage that has been done through restriction. Your body needs extra energy in order to complete the maintenance on your organs and tissues that it had to neglect in order to keep more essential functions going. This insufficient nutrition can cause individuals at “normal” weights to still experience the physical effects of starvation such as fatigue, cold extremities, anemia, loss of menstrual periods, dull skin and hair, etc. Minnie Maud argues that failing to provide someone with an adequate nutritional goal or getting them to their actual set point leads to an incomplete recovery, where many symptoms may still be present.Trying Minnie Maud can be a huggeeee shift for a lot of folks because it is very contrary to a lot of what treatment professionals do and it might seem like a lot of food. You owe it to yourself to provide yourself with the best possible chance to be happy and recovered. It’s a way to refuse to live the rest of your life with any limitations.
