Eating disorder and ASD

Hi,

I have recently received an ASD diagnosis. For the past year I have been having problems with my eating and referred to lots of different people, I am currently with SEDS (specialist eating disorder service). They have been struggling to treat me, and now with my diagnosis they are putting my eating problems down to the ASD and don’t think I have an ED (eating disorder)

For a bit of background, I have always been a “picky” eater but last year when COVID began I started to restrict my intake and became very obsessive with my weight. I am still struggling with my eating, still have bad thoughts and still losing weight. 

The SEDS have now referred me to autism services and are about to discharge me, even though I still have characteristics of someone with an ED. They believe it is all to do with my ASD and wanting control. 

I am putting this post out there to see if anyone has any related experience or advice, anything would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Parents
  • could be normal? .... i mean if you feel your getting fat then the logical conclusion is perhaps to cut back on eating to cut the calorie intake to make a difference that way, otherwise all your left with is the hard work of exercise and thats much harder to do than just cutting a meal here and there isnt it? lol so cutting meals generally is the smart logical easy way that comes to mind for weight loss for anyone really. and yes its a control thing as ofcourse the goal is to control your body weight right? which is reasonable as no one wants to become overweight. when someone else controls what you eat they dont have your body so they dont know and thus they make you fatter with their choice of what you should eat and how much. therefore i dont really see eating disorders as much but rather self maintainance of your own body. ofcourse it becomes problematic when you think your fat but your actually drastically under weight, then i suppose it becomes a disorder. but that is rather one of perception, if you saw yourself in a picture in that situation youd agree that you need more burgers instead lol such as when i was 6 stone myself and feeling fat then saw a picture of my body and saw my back bones sticking out of my shirt which kinda made me feel ok to eat more as i saw that i was clearly underweight.

  • OK...this is rather triggering. Eating disorders are psychiatric illnesses, not a natural, normal way of controlling the body. They are two totally different things. It's the blurring of the two that society perpetuates that, at least to an extent, causes eating disorders to be so normalised.

  • but yet this way you do control your body right? and you do succeed in not becoming fat right? but despite that you always still feel fat dont you, which makes you continue doing that until you get dangerously underweight. in which case you need to be made aware at that point and see it from other peoples view by camera shot or something which i said.

  • tbh though id advise anyone drastically under weight to lift weights lol
    it builds healthy muscle mass and can really help you cut any eating disorder habbits. especially if your weight based classes are perhaps martial arts, then you get competitive with others and feel shame of being in such a noncompetitive state. it sorta fixs the problems with competition with others and working out to better oneself compared alongside others. martial arts fixed alot of my bad habbits and mindsets. and now i sound like a jehovas witness lol

    edit: i guess it changed my mindset of rather valuing less of what i think i look like, and valuing more of what my body is capable of and what it can do...or what it can do to others lol... and in that i sorta ended up visually looking miles better anyway and thus achieved a good look anyway by discarding the going for looks/appearance/feel and going instead for function and ability. with the pursuit of bodily function and ability you passively attain the optimal looks. if you go just after looks then you fall to your perception and feeling that will always be negative and tell you that your too fat all the time. i guess you ignore the negative that comes from only thinking on appearance by focusing instead on the desire of functionality.

  • i guess for me it was always a perception disorder i guess rather than a eating disorder for me personally. then again i always wanted to look cool, look ideal. i didnt like much food at first anyway because the texture always put me off and made me imagine what other horrible things would taste like that on the tongue. started eating more foods later on when i started planning to become homeless. which made me force myself to like more food anyway. and ofcourse my perception of myself changed when i saw a horrible photo of how thin i actually was. 

    in the end i feel it paid off though, as i took up weights and so on and the low weight made my muscles show through easier and pretty much put me in a position of low body fat % that most people who wanna lift weights want to achieve. still i skip meals here and there and still feel fat, which just drives me to lift more weights and excercise more now mainly. i skip meals though still as i dunno, i feel the amount of meals we have is fabricated and westernised and all to be capitalised off and to make money for production industry.... i feel i can do with 2 meals a day, just breakfast upon waking up and a main meal later. i feel thats pretty much all thats needed. the third meal, and supper and snacks, i feel they are all capitalist creations to make us consume more and spend more cash personally. history kinda shows so. but then again historically we did have lower lifespans lol so perhaps our increased diet might make us live longer i guess on the flip side.

Reply
  • i guess for me it was always a perception disorder i guess rather than a eating disorder for me personally. then again i always wanted to look cool, look ideal. i didnt like much food at first anyway because the texture always put me off and made me imagine what other horrible things would taste like that on the tongue. started eating more foods later on when i started planning to become homeless. which made me force myself to like more food anyway. and ofcourse my perception of myself changed when i saw a horrible photo of how thin i actually was. 

    in the end i feel it paid off though, as i took up weights and so on and the low weight made my muscles show through easier and pretty much put me in a position of low body fat % that most people who wanna lift weights want to achieve. still i skip meals here and there and still feel fat, which just drives me to lift more weights and excercise more now mainly. i skip meals though still as i dunno, i feel the amount of meals we have is fabricated and westernised and all to be capitalised off and to make money for production industry.... i feel i can do with 2 meals a day, just breakfast upon waking up and a main meal later. i feel thats pretty much all thats needed. the third meal, and supper and snacks, i feel they are all capitalist creations to make us consume more and spend more cash personally. history kinda shows so. but then again historically we did have lower lifespans lol so perhaps our increased diet might make us live longer i guess on the flip side.

Children
  • tbh though id advise anyone drastically under weight to lift weights lol
    it builds healthy muscle mass and can really help you cut any eating disorder habbits. especially if your weight based classes are perhaps martial arts, then you get competitive with others and feel shame of being in such a noncompetitive state. it sorta fixs the problems with competition with others and working out to better oneself compared alongside others. martial arts fixed alot of my bad habbits and mindsets. and now i sound like a jehovas witness lol

    edit: i guess it changed my mindset of rather valuing less of what i think i look like, and valuing more of what my body is capable of and what it can do...or what it can do to others lol... and in that i sorta ended up visually looking miles better anyway and thus achieved a good look anyway by discarding the going for looks/appearance/feel and going instead for function and ability. with the pursuit of bodily function and ability you passively attain the optimal looks. if you go just after looks then you fall to your perception and feeling that will always be negative and tell you that your too fat all the time. i guess you ignore the negative that comes from only thinking on appearance by focusing instead on the desire of functionality.