How to deal with Aspergers and food textures

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I have had issues with eating certain textures or combinations all my life. I tended to be thinner than normal before, but, now, I have taken up an interest in what I call "extreme hourglassing" meaning that I want to obtain a more feminine shape, which would probably require better eating. However, my anxiety leaves me unable to eat most meats and I can only tolerate Boost or Ensure while at lunch at school. This is bad for my hypoglycemia, and I often end up binging on my special foods like ramen or Mac and cheese when I get home. I have been trying to avoid my tradition of losing 4-7 lbs during every other winter or so, which wouldn't go back on until summer when my stress is down. Right now, I am about 5 feet, give or take an inch, and somewhere between 112-118 lbs, but, a few years ago, I was down to only 84 because of textured eating. Any tips to overcome this battle?

I struggle with this myself. Most vegetables and fruits -- but not all -- provoke a really severe reaction in me. I don't know that you could adapt my strategy for meat, but what I do is make sure that veggies have been cooked to the point of basically having no structural integrity whatsoever. Then I don't get that crunch/breaking feeling when I bite down, or I can slurp them in one go. I can eat entire bowls of vegetable soup that way with relatively little difficulty.

I managed to start eating strawberries by going verrrrry slowly and having my fiancee with me for support. It's rough, and a little humiliating, staring down a berry like it was my darkest foe, but with time, I've been able to slowly acclimate myself to some of these foods some of the time. I still resist eating them, and sometimes they still provoke an extreme reaction in me. But I'm discovering I can deal with sometimes if I work it right.

What do you mean by textures? Is the food dry, crispy, bumpy, slippery smooth?

It depends on what textures bother you. There's different ways to cook foods to make them passable.

For the longest time I would not eat vegetables whatsoever. I could taste the dirt on them and could not swallow due to their crunchiness. As I got older I made myself follow the rule that I will at least try everything once, and I found out I have zero to no problems eating cooked vegetables. Like somebody said, they loose their crunch and weird taste.

Still have some trouble with anything too green though. And I can't stand salads of any type. I also can't stand beans or anything too sand like except joining nacho chips with 3x the amount of cheese, I haven't found a way to cook these differently. I had a problem with dry meat until I started cooking it myself, cutting it up, adding a bit of oil and some flavoring to make it juicy.

I don't know where you're from but in my country they have these special soups (just google translate it, it's wheat semolina with added vitamins and minerals and healthy stuff). I've seen them once in the US sold by the pound but it was gross. Anyways it contains a bunch of good stuff, it's easy to makes, and it's sort of like a really heavy creamy soup (dry it looks like sand but turns into really tiny mushy particles) and tastes like whatever flavoring thing (never learned the word for those salty square things) you put in it. Maybe find a healthy soup recipe that's just a bunch of things crushed in a blender almost?

It all depends on what textures you can't stand.

Also I'm not sure if you want to loose weight, gain it, or keep it steady? Your current weight seems healthy (don't know your age though) I never had weight problems but when I've had to do diets for other health reasons I've turned them into sort of rituals. I get up, eat this, this for lunch, this for dinner. If I 'm allowed to indulge, I set aside a day for that.

My son has pretty strong sensory issues with food - left to choose his own food, he would live on bread, cheese and tomato pizza, macaroni cheese, crisps, chips, biscuits, cake and ice-cream.
In order to include some iron and protein into his meals, I make pasta bake and either cut up very small chunks of chicken breast and include it or combine very small pieces of minced beef. I also make soups and curries and puree the meat and vegies or mash them up very finely.

Also, I am a vegetarian so we eat a large amount of vegetarian protein, lentils, beans. quinoa, oats...

Most of my veggies come out of either a Prego jar or a V-8 can. I take vitamins to help ensure I get enough nutrition. After I ws all grown, I realized that the only veggies I actually like are well cooked, and weren't classified as veggies when I was growing up -- I was never forced to eat them.

I like Muscle Milk brand protein shake It's especially tasty when I've been working out and am hurting.

I've identified my life-long problem with beans of any description as a texture problem. I don't care for the taste, but that could be remedied with spices and other additions, but texture can only be fixed with a blender O:-) I'm working on that.

Because of my dislike of beans, I make my chili with potatoes instead.

_________________
If it don't come easy . . . .
. . . .hack it until it works right

Aspie score: 142/200 NT score: 64/200
AQ Score: 42
BAP: 109 aloof, 94 rigid and 85 pragmatic

Ha, yeah, I can't tell you how many times relatives told me as a kid 'you'll grow out of your picky eating soon enough, every one does!' Nope. I feel you though; last year I seriously got into bodybuilding and the calorie consumption necessary to gain muscle mass is incredibly difficult for me to achieve with my reduced appetite due to anxiety and strong dislike for almost anything containing protein. For some reason, if I put a piece of meat in my mouth, I chew it for ages before I feel capable of swallowing it. Like CuriousKitten said, some protein supplements might be a better fit for your diet (than ensure) if you find liquid calorie consumption far less likely to cause the texture issues. Due to your hypoglycemia, I'd recommend shopping around for supplements that primarily feature complex carbohydrates to keep the insulin spike at bay and keep you from binge eating or crashing. If you're really looking to replace meals, there's supplements called 'mass gainers' that include relatively high calorie counts and could keep you from dropping that weight for winter. Again, a lot of them feature 'maltodextrin' - avoid those because though it's advertised as a complex carb, it still has a massively high glycemic index like most sugars. Anyway, I hope you figure it out and get to a weight you're happy with!

I've never been able to handle fruit or vegetables except for broccoli & tinned tomatoes (which is weird as kids never like broccoli!) And it is only recently I've realised it is the texture that disgusts me, not the taste. I'm having some success now with pureeing carrot & onion and adding it to tomato sauces. Beans and peas I quite like as long as they are cooked so they are still quite hard. I never had spinach as a child but my ex-housemate cooked it a lot in pastas & on pizza and I've found I like it.

I'm a very picky eater due to food textures and smells. It's easy to just not eat these things though! There are lots of different foods in the world I don't eat meat or fish and pretty much no dairy. I subsist off a lot of beans and bread and the same few fruits and vegetables. Like someone else suggested, take some vitamins/supplements. I do this.

I'm not sure why you are you so thin. I'm overweight myself.

There is no particular texture that bothers me. What gets to me is if the food has a different texture than what it should have. If it doesn't have the proper texture, I can't eat it.

For example, a few weeks ago, a co-worker left me a loaf of banana bread. The problem was that it was a little undercooked and thus had the wrong texture. When I took my first bite of it, I was spitting everywhere because of the texture. I threw the rest in the trash.

On Thursday, I was going to eat some meat loaf for lunch. One bite and I threw it all away. The texture was completely wrong for meat loaf.