Entry by Doctor Liara T'Soni:
Shepard's biotic re-acclimation and training was more difficult than she made it out to be. At first, she could only use her biotics in anger. She had to get really worked up in order to use her potential with any power. The first time we worked with her, it took hours for her to have any power, and even then, it was only her building frustration that eventually pushed her past her own psychological blocks. So most of that first week was spent helping her get over her issues and finally gain some semblance of control over her abilities.
And yes, Shepard was losing quite a bit of weight in that first week. You see, biotics fueled by anger burns more calories than regular biotic use. Anger tends to fuel adrenaline, which burns more energy, and when add biotic training to that, it can be a dangerous combination if you're not eating enough.
Wrex was the one who noticed that she was getting winded far quicker than she should have been, even with how hard she was pushing herself, and it was Kaidan's recommendation that Shepard be weighed and examined daily for a while, and we discovered the weight loss before it did any harm. Which is why Doctor Chakwas put her on double her allotted calorie intake for a time, though we'd managed to cut that doubled calorie intake by half, so she was only eating one and a half times as much as she should be for a biotic, instead of twice. We weaned her slowly down to a standard diet for a biotic, and as she gained more and more control over her power, she was burning less and less calories.
But it took a couple of weeks to get there; she had to get through a LOT of pain before she was able to use her biotics without tapping into her anger. Kaidan and I talked to her a lot, helping her push past the anger she felt at herself that caused the initial block in the first place, and to help her stop channeling dark energy under duress; that too was causing the excess calorie usage.
It wasn't until the geth incursion into the Armstrong cluster that we felt she was ready to use her biotics for anything more than a Barrier; Wrex was right about her having a defensive mindset with her biotics would do more for teaching her control than anything else. Kaidan and I helped her work through her issues in addition to helping her use biotics for telekinesis, but having her use Barriers first and foremost helped her get past her mindset that biotics were violent and dangerous.
Kaidan also used some unorthodox methods as well; he had Shepard "play" with her biotics. He would gather things like paper, datapads, screws and any other odd items and just had her float them around the room. And while biotic use for asari is mundane, I can understand where Kaidan was coming from; biotics are not common among other species, and giving Shepard the chance to use them in a way that hurts no one really affected her mindset in a positive manner.
All of our efforts finally broke through Shepard's psychological blocks and gave her the control she needed to use her biotics in combat. But as she said, her abilities were very wild in the beginning. I spent so much time teaching her to focus her power on one target at a time, because she was extremely dangerous when using them early on; more than once she sent me, Ashley or Kaidan flying because she wasn't in full control yet. Thankfully Wrex, Kaidan and I were prepared and ensured no one got hurt when Shepard had an accident.
Thankfully Shepard powered through it, knowing that all she needed was time and training to gain the control she needed. And she made progress; by the time we had finished with the Cerberus missions, she was no longer catching us in her mass effect fields. And her drive to gain more control over her power was inspiring, in a sense. She never gave up when she was frustrated, never lost hope when she had a setback, never complained when we pushed her to new heights. We actually had to force her to slow down at points so she didn't hurt herself. And according to Kaidan, she seemed to spike higher than those with L2 implants, but I think that had more to do with her drive to get stronger than anything special about her implant.
But she never argued when we made her stop; she knew that, while she was powerful, she didn't know her limits yet. She knew that when we made her stop, it was to ensure she didn't injure herself. She likened it to weight lifting; that her body needed to rest as much as it needed to be put to its limits for it to remain healthy.
Anyway, it needed to be illustrated that things were not as easy as Shepard made them sound. Those six weeks, as well as the months to come, had a lot of hard work and effort on all our parts. She managed to gain full control over her biotics by the time we got to Virmire, but it would still take a lot of training and effort between when she wrote that log and when we got there.