Diet and Autism (formerly the 'My Diet Hell' thread)

Could be both - as in it might make one person sleep better, another less so. And only your own anecdotal experience can then be relied upon. What's important is what's true for you, over time. Google definitely likes to confuse us. 

Modern Life Is Rubbish (Part 99736):

I don't drink alcohol but wanted to try a glass of white wine each day for the supposed health benefits. Naturally this means that I'll be selling my body for Toilet Duck within a week. Anyway, this is a moan about unreliable information on the internet - a revelation that will no doubt shock you all. Typically, I was shocked by the conflicting info about white wine's benefits and drawbacks; for example, two of the first Google results claimed that white wine is bad for sleep...and good for sleep. Doh.

TL;DR  Twit surprised by internet.

More moans as I wake to the 21st century.

TBH I knw the answer to

Steven said:

Is this claim irresponsible?

the moment I read www . dailymail....
The answer is yes.
They're not known for journalistic integrity.

I'm still recovering from reading this:

'Nobody wants an autistic child'.

But, my personal and, perhaps, biased views aside, the article reads like a disguised advert. And I think it's telling when comments aren't opened on potentially contentious pieces.

There is so much wrong with this article I don't even know where to start.  So much negativity and misinformation.  But then it is the Daily Mail, so that's not surprising. 

They also make a bunch of other claims, like another sign of autism is dark circles under the eyes.  ???  I've heard we often have sleep issues, but they attribute this to diet as well.  

My theory is that he may have been withdrawn because of digestion issues that he couldn't communicate, and the diet helped reduce pain.  And also the changed attitude of his mother who now makes an effort to support his development instead of bemoaning his existence. 

Is this claim irresponsible? A woman claims that her son's autism was cured by a change of diet; as far as I'm aware, there *is* no cure...

www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Autism-diet-cured-son.html

A mysterious divide between one year and another supposedly making them recognisably different

And people dread it

I’d hoped to get out for some walks this Christmas- one of the few times I’d have the spare energy. As it is, I came down with something horrible - chest infection/very heavy cold - on Christmas Day that won’t relinquish its hold and I can see that I’ll only be turning a corner with it as the holiday ends. On the one hand, it’s definitely suppressed my appetite so I haven’t gained weight over the break. But nor have I lost any - not a single pound in either direction due to lack of calories but also near total immobility, and getting even fractionally below 12 stone had been a sort of hope for the end of the year. The start of the next stage of the slow path. Ah well. 

I just wanted to be bigger and more difficult to be pushed around by bullies. Throughout school I was always the smallest in class with no stamina. It changed. 12 stones when you look thin makes bullies reconsider physical hostilities. Though after 40 I started to eat slightly less. Hopefullly my weight will stay at that 12.3 stones. I can live with that.

That was me for a while in my 20s. Very thin to the point where it was negatively remarked on. Seems you can’t be too much of anything without comment! I tried a milkshake and Mars bar diet for a while then after reading you could put on weight fast that way, and I just wanted to not stand out. It helped a bit but wasn’t a remotely healthy tactic. Then the old metabolism changed drastically anyway. These days just looking at food puts weight on me. 

I love it. Chips receipe is from Jamie Oliver's website

sounds amazing :) 

Sweet potato fries + halloumi + chipotle mayo. Cumin, cinamon, paprika, cayenne pepper, black papper and salt, and a bit of rapeseed oil for chips. One layer of chips on a pan. Flip after 20min, add halloumi slices on top, and 20min more in the owen. Sometimes I make steamed broccoli with green beans to top it up. 1kg of sweet potatos and a block of halloumi makes two meals

Thanks :) it's a good idea to put snacks on the desk. I used to try and do really big meals but I struggled with that so I also tend to aim for frequent smaller portions. I have barely ever had sweet potato- maybe I will give that a try :) 

one big and many small, every 2h preferably. bowl with nuts next to PC for continuous snacking. I like sweet potato a lot, and I would eat a kilo everyday but I don't or I would lose taste for it most likely, banana+other fruits smoothies, it goes with spinach too

Hi :) I'm also in a constant battle to gain weight- it is such a struggle for me.... digestive issues don't help and by this point I have a lot of anxieties around food and I also seem to have super fast metabolism and just do not gain weight easily... Exercise used to help me too to boost appetite etc but sadly I've been unable to do much for a while now due to injuries... I'm glad you seem to have figured out a way to maintain your weight- out of curiosity- how do you manage the 4-5k calories a day- do you have quite calorie dense food? Do you have large meals or many smaller ones? I'm just curious as I am basically also aiming to get as many calories as possible ideally in a reasonably healthy way that doesn't upset digestion too much...

Something like it but I don't know if I would consider it a problem per se'. I know I used to be very concerned with my place on the BMI scale and one day it started to look very bad despite me feeling very healthy, in fact more heathy and stronger than ever before, and that was because I had been weight lifting for some time so despite my food portion sizes only marginally getting bigger I couldn't account for the seemingly disproportionate weight gain until I reaslised that muscle weighs more than fat and I'd been converting the extra fat ito muscle. I'm at a weird placve now where losing weight has me worried as it usually means I've been sedentary for too long so started to lose the muscle. To paint the picture (and hopefully this helps explain by way of context) I'm 5 ft 7 inches and 75kg, but I leg press 150kg which is twice my weight. So at this point weight loss for me eqautes to strength loss since my size is actually stable regardless for the first 2-3 weeks I stop my home gym activity.

My problem for most of my life was the opposite - to gain weight, 

At the age of 18 I was 5foot4 and only 8.2 stone. I couldn't get my weight up even though I was eating. At least until I started working in a factory and doing heavy lifting there. Thanks to  my 15 years of work slavery I managed to get my weight up to 14 stones. But last year I started cycling to work again after 5years break from it. During December and January, cycling15min to work and 20min back I lost almost 2 stones in a month. I was terrified. Good it stopped there. Keeping steady 12.3 stones for few months now. But I can and do eat a lot, wintertime my diet oscillates around 4-5k calories daily

I’m five foot eight and presently 12 stone exactly. It’s taken me the entire year to lose half a stone at a glacial pace. The only way to achieve it was to make it a low key private obsession. A similar thing happened exactly a decade ago when, having hit 13 stone (my slowing metabolism sort of snuck up on me and when a regular customer at work pronounced ‘youre getting very fat’ - he had No filter apparently- I knew I had to take action.) My rationale: ‘ I’m bald, I’m ugly, I’m overweight. There’s only one of those I can do something about.’ (I’m less about the ‘ugly’ these days, as while I’m no oil painting i think I had BDD for quite a while - in fact I must have because I was objectively and with certainty the ‘world’s ugliest man’ in my own mind for many years, barely able to go out some days except I had a pay cheque to earn). 

Anyway, over a year on that occasion I got down to ten stone and a half - the ideal for my BMI. I have that in my sights once again, but my metabolism is twice as slow now  - taking Venlaxafine for a time, just to survive, seemed to cause catastrophic and permanent results there- so I don’t know how that will go. 

im not one of life’s great exercisers. A stranger yo the gym, I prefer the odd walk instead. So my weight loss battle is really with modest restriction of calories - nothing more dramatic is feasible for the long haul. If I stay under 1700 calories in a day, I lose a fraction of a pound. If I stray over, I gain the same or more. The kitchen scales and carefully reading boxes/wrappers are the only ways to be precise enough to be sure. I’d like to win my battle again, and sustain a heathy or optiimum weight as before, this time not letting emotional damage bring me back onto meds that cause such rapid gain.

So yes, I can identify! But fixating on the numbers does seem to be the only way, so not too unhealthy overall I think…

The tendency to obsess can be dangerous: at one point, I was frantic about eating 100 calories a day and, even now, fret about reaching 300 or 500c. As much as I really enjoy it all, a diet of yogurt & fruit & mixed vegetables is a bit insubstantial. I've been lucky to avoid real health as a result of this regime.