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Autistic trait or something ese?

Autistic_bookworm

Hello everyone,

Even before I was diagnosed with Autism in 2021, I have always had a bad relationship with food.  I was overweight in my teens, bulemic in my 20s and now in my 30s im overweight again.  I try and eat healthy but i always go back to the foods I know I will enjoy. 

I have tried Slimming World and calorie counting but doesnt seem to work.  when I do these if I go back to how I was I would feel guilty and low then I would take drastic action and either not eat or eat very little.  I'm not sure if this is a neurotypical trait or a neurodiverse trait.

Sorry for my spelling I have never been good at it.

Yours

Autistic-bookworm

  • I have issues with eating too, I never eat enough food, and I can just sit there starving for hours, because I am concentrating and obsessed with my personal interest, and I find eating a chore to do. I do enjoy eating food, but I like working on my personal interest more than I enjoy eating food.

    I think that many people struggle with food and weight, and they struggle a lot more than they care to admit, but there's a large market for it, so there's a large amount of people struggling with it. 

  • In NT society, there's food porn, comfort eating, foodies... the list goes on. We can turn to it when we're sad, bored, angry, deflated, but it's also the element which communities, families and date night are met around. 

    Then there's people like me who are on an extreme side of it and have struggled with unknown allergies most of their life. Not getting enough nutrients, not sure what I can eat, not able to digest things properly and slowly taking more and more things out of my diet when they become life-threatening. I feel like I've had to do a bit of research.

    With nutrition it can be useful to simply take a multi & stay hydrated (not forcefully tho). Learning to listen to what the body might actually want (pineapple juice instead of sour gummies or cocoa nibs instead of Dairy Milk). There are real things in food sources which we need, some which we can have difficulty digesting or some which will cause serious harm. Eating "healthy" doesn't work for everyone - I'm allergic to grains, legumes & cruciferous veg. So I have to be creative.

    Maybe just exploring nutrients contained in the foods we enjoy, or even the signals it might be telling the body (fruit flavoured candy) can allude to what the body is actually craving. I find when I eat right for my biology, I function better. Ones diet can be unique (though it seems there's quite a bit of genetics at play too.)

  • in reply to Martin

    I’m totally the same! Not long ago all I ate was homemade vegetable soup. I too starve myself on occasion 

  • I cannot diet, but I can starve myself, on a number of occasions I have had no solid food for up to 6 days straight. It's like I have a switch, eat normally/over eat, or eat nothing at all.