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

Steven

I attended an ASD advice session a couple of weeks ago and, amongst other questions, I was asked if I obsessed over anything (it was put more gently than this, of course). I'm often a bit slow to realise obvious things, so I couldn't come up with an instructive answer.

Hours later, it dawned on me that I'm needlessly over-concerned with losing weight. I am 5-foot-9 and exactly 11-stone which, as far as I'm aware, isn't over-weight anyway; so why the obsession? It perhaps doesn't help that I'm truly terrible at everything from basic mathematics to understanding weighing-scales in an ordinary fashion (I frequently think of '11-stone' as '11 o'clock', and can't get out of the rut of thinking that mistaken way). Obviously, this obsession features the usual calorie-counting routines and fretting about the *enormous* calorific legacy of adding a single sweetener to a cup of coffee. All this is difficult to explain because, like most people, I defiantly tell myself that I don't care what others think of me or my appearance...while secretly worrying about what others think of me or my appearance...and vice versa.

Anybody else have this or similar problems?

Parents

  • 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…

  • in reply to Shardovan

    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

  • in reply to Mariusz

    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. 

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  • in reply to Mariusz

    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. 

Children
  • in reply to Shardovan

    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.