Aspergers and Anorexia/Eating

Post Reply New Topic

Hi there, this is my first post (aside from my one the other day introducing myself) and I hope that I won't be breaking any rules asking about this. Is anyone willing to share their experiences with anorexia/eating please?

I'm thinking this for myself: from a young age, I have always had very strange ways of eating to the point that I ended up having a very low weight. I mean, when I looked in the mirror I never seen anyone overweight and yet I could *feel* weight on me quite easily and I was conscious of it very much that I didn't like eating very much. And I also fancied a particular number of pounds or kg to keep myself to being the weight of and I'd work towards that because it felt satisfying to be in control of something.

Even at that, I always liked to keep a consistent number all the time so therefore I'd ensure that my calories were below a certain amount and never above. It was more about the number. But also, I never really liked very much on my plate at all. Actually, normally the one type of thing on my plate was all I could bear. So instead of having a meal that's meat and 2 veg I could only face eating what's on the plate if it was simplistic to the point of the one type of thing. Maybe just the type of meat, or even a burger in a bun I threw away the bun to have only the burger.

I was deemed anorexic when I was younger because my weight plummeted with these kinds of routines/preferences. I was always trying to explain to my mum/anyone that I knew I wasn't fat. I looked in the mirror and no-way could that person be fat. But it was the other things I preferred that made me that way. I hope that makes sense?

I'm just wondering if anyone with aspergers went through the same thing as myself because I'm wondering if I was just being strange. But tbh even now I still have routines/preferences like above, but not to the same extent. Let me know if possible please. Thanks.

You're not weird--it's really common for girls with Aspergers to be first diagnosed with an eating disorder. https://spectrumnews.org/features/deep- ... -anorexia/

Those first first two paragraphs are very much in line with how I felt in college, though I'm not exactly autistic..

Even now that I am trying to gain weight and muscle, I am very aware of the feeling of fat on my body and dislike it. I've read that one symptom of anorexia is often discomfort in the body.
Being thin feels nice to me, at least up until it makes me feel too wobbly and dehydrated in the joints and muscles.

I'm the exact opposite of anorexic. I have been disgustingly obese my entire life. I feel like I'm the only aspie who is, but it must really be that hideously obese aspies that make other people nauseous just looking at them are in the minority. Of course I don't want to be anorexic and slowly starving to death either, but when you're fat it's always completely your fault, you're weak and stupid and eat too much, while anorexics have a disease and are pitied.

Sometimes I just feel like grabbing a knife and sawing off all the flab on my disgusting hideous stomach. Of course that would end up killing me but I'm practically a psychopath who has nothing to live for anyway.

I have both gained a large amount of weight to the point of being in the 91st percentile (obese) for my gender, age, and height, and lost a large amount of weight to the point of being in the 19th percentile (normal) for my group.



Both times were not my intention and were entirely out of my control. No one has shown much concern, or noticed that it is a small example of a bigger problem: I cannot feed or care for myself.

_________________
31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

It happens.


The subject is covered in one of the televised presentations from The Tuke Centre, part of The Retreat hospital in York, England

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pz-vAQ8KlI

At the moment, I eat the same thing every week, to the gram. I have some days built into the week where I eat exactly half my (arbitrary) daily allowance, and some where I have nothing. I also have set times within each day between which I have to eat. If I miss them, I can't, even if I'm hungry.

My initial intention was to get more in control of my disordered eating. I don't freak out about food when I do eat it now, because it's all planned in advance and I feel OK about it, which is really good. Major progress.
Less good though, I can feel the anorexic tendencies starting to influence the autistic controls. Everything I set up to help myself is now weaponised against me, and I'm trapped in it again. The allowance is too low to sustain my daily activity, and the set days of less or no food I negotiated with myself are an obvious weak spot.

My plan was to eat 8500 calories a week, 67% of my time fasting. This week will be 7350, 76%. I do not feel good, tired and unsafe, but I don't know what to do.

I am getting better at realising which parts of my behaviour are autistic, and which bits are anorexia.
For example, I know the weighing food and writing everything down looks like the latter, and my parents really don't like it, but actually it appeals to my autism I think. It's so that I can eat something, not so I can't. In theory it should be helpful, and it has been; I do love the feeling of eating something and not hating myself. I hadn't felt it in over a decade.

There's just something I can't get past, and I think it's a mix of autism and eating disorder. The more rules I set myself, the more restrictive I become, because I love the structure and the challenge of them. I'm hyper-aware of what I eat and how I feel, it's a total obsession, and I hate that part.

Some things are just stupid rigid thinking though. For example, a while ago I used to buy these sachets of hot chocolate. My favourite had 39 calories, but since their was another with 38, I wasn't 'allowed' the one I actually enjoyed. I did that for 2 years. 1 f*****g calorie.
I had an epiphany one day of just how idiotic that was, and I let myself have the 39.
Yesterday I put 4 leaves of spinach back in the fridge, because they were over the grams I'd allocated myself.
One step forward, two steps back.

I am not officially diagnosed with Aspergers yet, but I'm pretty sure I have it. Anyways, I developed anorexia in my early teens. At first I was just trying to eat healthier, then eat less, then use laxatives and excessive exercise to purge. Soon, I could see my backbone. I wasn't skinny enough to be hospitalized, but trust me, I wasn't in a good place. The funny thing is, I WANTED to GAIN weight! I wanted so desperately to gain weight. I would eat a king sized candy bar with a giant spoon full of peanut butter every night, trying to gain weight. But I was still restricting my food and over exercising. I was scared (and still am scared) of over eating. I am at a healthy weight now. I'm about five foot five and a half inches, and 130 pounds. I used intuitive eating to gain back my weight.


Looking back, I realize just how many rituals I had. Not just about food, but about exercise, too. I HAD to take a walk every single morning. Sometimes I missed church because I had to walk. I would eat my meals at certain times every day. I got very upset if my routine was interrupted, and I still love routines.

Geez I can't imagine how rough it must be to have an eating disorder. I mean I have a fast metabolism, so I just need to eat a lot to stay at my weight. I can't even imagine how hard it'd be exercising all the time. I get the struggles with gaining weight though. Like for me it is really hard to gain and keep any weight at all. It took me a year to get from 135 to 150 pounds. Even then I'm like 6'3", so I am pretty underweight.

Eating disorders often co-exist with Asperger syndrome. I have had fluctuations in weight but, thankfully, I haven't been at either weight extreme. My mature weight has ranged from 115-135 on a small 5' 1" frame. I was up to 150 when I had severe water weight gain in 2011, but that was really a strange, bizarre circumstance.

BTW, I love your username. I had a cat named Samantha. She was a Siamese.

In my pre-teens and teenage years I had an extremely limited food intake, but I didn't have an eating disorder in the "normal" sense. For me it was somewhat about control in an world that was confusing, but also about my sensory issues since I hated the feeling of being too full and I was scared of being nauseous and vomiting. I have since then been underweight, although my eating habits are much better.

I have always been obsessive with what I eat and am very strict about my food. I only really ever broke that a little since I took up weightlifting last year. Now there is a direct link to food and muscle growth/energy and I think about it a little differently. I don't find it easy to take on all the protein I should for weightlifting, as eating excessively still makes me feel negatively and it is not good for my mental health, but there is definitely a shift now to what there was in the first 37 years of my life!

I tend to overeat. My nickname is Big Baby Schultz because of it. I love food. I think I'm cute and cuddly. :O)

also, I am obsessive about exercise too. If I don't do a back walkover every few days I will feel bad. If I miss going to the gymnastics gym or miss lifting weights I feel depressed and angry with myself.