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Butterfly
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05 Sep 2012, 6:02 pm

I'm currently on my quest to get officially diagnosed with AS and have been doing a lot of thinking about some of the difficulties I've had in life that have always been chalked up to some sort of psychological illness. (Bipolar, Schizoaffective, Borderline Personality Disorder etc.)
Based on my and my mother's research and experience I am most definitely an aspie but now that I'm going about getting an official diagnosis it prompted me to think about the ten years I suffered from Bulimia Nervosa.

I've read some literature about the link between Anorexia Nervosa and Asperger's Syndrome and while it was informative, the research wasn't very detailed or extensive in scope. It also only discussed Anorexia Nervosa and didn't mention anything about Bulimia Nervosa. So this got me wondering, are there any other female aspies who have or have had eating disorders? What triggered your eating disorder? Do you think there is a link between AS and eating disorders at least for some people?


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questor
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05 Sep 2012, 8:51 pm

I have the opposite problem. I could get a job as the Good Year Blimp. :( My biggest food vice is salty snacks. Although I do like pastries and candy, I like fruit even more, so I am able to keep from pigging out on sweet junk food by eating fruit a lot. Unfortunately, there is no healthy substitute for salty snacks. Besides I have always suffered from an acid stomach and salty foods tend to help relieve that some what. Almost eliminating greasy foods from my menu also helped reduce the stomach acid a lot, too.

While I don't like being fat, I also don't want to look like a walking skeleton, like people who starve themselves do. I would prefer to be in a normal weight range. Unfortunately, unlike with drugs, if you give up eating, you die. This is why it is so hard for people to loose weight. You can't simply go to a cabin and wait through withdrawals to get through the weight problem. :( On the plus side, over the years I have been gradually altering my menu to add healthier foods, and healthy substitutes for some things. It's hard for me to add new foods, as I have always been a picky eater, but I will keep at it, at my own pace. It's better than doing nothing. :D Unfortunately, due to several health problems, including bad knees, exercise is no longer a viable option for me. Should have kept up with it years ago, before the knees went bad. Well, I'll just keep tinkering with my menu. Every little bit helps.



Dots
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06 Sep 2012, 5:32 pm

I'm not female, I'm transgender female-to-male, but I have Asperger's and also suffered from anorexia and bulimia. My special interest is theatre, and as a young adult I attended a very high pressure theatre college. I felt really overwhelmed and lonely and isolated, so I latched on to food restriction as a coping mechanism.

I never thought I was fat in the beginning, I started restricting because it just felt good to control something, and also because I felt I wasn't good enough, and by functioning on very small amounts of food I felt accomplished. I didn't have any desire to lose weight.

But eventually the effects of starvation made me more conscious of my body and I started getting obsessed with my weight and shape and cut my calories lower and lower. Have you read about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment? It was an experiment done as an alternative to war and men were put on semi-starvation diets so the doctors could test the best way to refeed a starving person, and the men started showing eating disorder symptoms as a result of starvation, when there was no pre-existing eating disorder.

Once the "fat is bad" mindset of anorexia settled in, it was hard to get rid of, and after I went through treatment for anorexia, I became bulimic.

I know my Asperger's helped keep me entrenched in the eating disorders. It became my special interest for a time, and I was obsessed with the numbers. I was also socially isolated, and had problems communicating, so I used my body to communicate for me.


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meems
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08 Sep 2012, 3:29 am

I've gone through bouts of anorexia nervosa but never so servere as to bring me to the edge of death. I go through bouts of BED and exercise bulimia. I guess they aren't set apart. I'll eat way too much or even a normal amount and then run for three hours and do so much weight training I begin to feel like parts of my body are just giving out.

I don't know what it is, but I do know it has nothing to do with wanting to be skinny or whatever.



Chaos23
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10 Sep 2012, 12:29 pm

I do suffer of Selective Eating Disorder since childhood, so i think in my case could be a genetic cause. I'm also OCD when picking food: i'm obsessed if something looks dirty or have a weird texture. I simply can't eat it.

Quote:
SED is common in young people with autistic spectrum disorders, this is likely caused by Sensory Integration Dysfunction. It is also found with other special needs adolescents. It is commonly accompanied with severe refusal behaviors when non-preferred foods are presented. SED can be caused by an extra sensitive taste sensation caused by more Fungiform papillae than average, this is the most common cause of SED. It is also found in people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. People with the Autoimmune disorder Coeliac Disease are often picky eaters. This disorder should not be confused with food avoidance emotional disorder (FAED) (a childhood avoidance of food brought about by emotional difficulties and not related to body image) or anorexia nervosa (a disorder characterized by a fear of food due to issues related to body weight). SED shares similar characteristics with "food neophobia", an avoidance of the consumption of novel foods


Wikipedia



JohannaReid
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18 Feb 2013, 12:55 pm

I am currently battling bulimia nervosa and have been since December 2011. It's hard to say what triggered it at the time, or whether it had to do with my AS. I have also been struggling from chronic depression since before I became bulimic, so maybe the depression led to it.



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03 Mar 2013, 7:11 am

I have suffered from anorexia nervosa, restrictive type, for over 10 years. I am much better now, though it is like being a sober alcoholic - you can very well refuse a drink but you can't have just one.



o0Mackintosh0o
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03 Mar 2013, 11:08 am

I'm male and I have all sorts of issues with food when I was in high school I would make my self throw up if the food upset me in any way to the point it became obsessive. I am 29 years old I will be 30 this July and I still have issues with food if the texture of food is weird I can not stomach it. I have actually gone hungry because if the texture does not "feel" right I can't eat and foods I cannot eat are tomatoes, bananas, fish, shrimp, crabs, carrots, nuts, poultry, any meat still on the bone, pecans, cherries, raisins, and the list could go on forever. My doctor worries about my eating habits but I just can't bring myself to eat certain things no matter how much therapy I have had.



natoli
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04 Mar 2013, 5:43 pm

im a male and have always had a hard time eating. i guess what started my most recent thing is i was 12 and had the Herpes(not the STD its the name of the appliace) so the herpes appliace which made it impossible to eat solid food. after a year of that i lost 10% of my body wieght and never gained it back. now without medicine i cant eat except maybe maybe a couple bites a day everything else either gets spat up once its in my mouth or i cant even get it into my mouth. yes medicines help but you got to find what will work for you.



pinkgurl87
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01 Mar 2014, 2:19 pm

I have an eating disorder started around age twelve, was anorexic for a while than switched to bulimia at around age 20 and have some binge eating issues. I think the anorexia first with the rigidness of Asperger's. Though it switched to bulimia because my body was starving myself and needed food, a lot of time now when I purge it isn't so much because I want to lose weight but a sensory thing, I don't like the feeling of feeling too full so I feel like I have to purge to get rid of it, not so much get rid of the calories per say but get rid of the uncomfortable feelings.


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Your Aspie score: 140 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 63 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie
Eye test score: 21
AQ test score: 40.0 , AQ-10: 7.0
(RAADS-R): 183.0


ReticentJaeger
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01 Mar 2014, 4:32 pm

At the moment I'm suffering from the stupid choice I made last night and this morning. I have terrible digestive problems, and one food that just murders my stomach happens to be my favorite kind of chips.

I was fully aware of what I was doing, and I hate myself for it.



beneficii
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01 Mar 2014, 5:41 pm

ReticentJaeger wrote:
At the moment I'm suffering from the stupid choice I made last night and this morning. I have terrible digestive problems, and one food that just murders my stomach happens to be my favorite kind of chips.

I was fully aware of what I was doing, and I hate myself for it.


I know how you feel. I'm like that with chocolate and spicy foods, like soup where I put shichimi togarashi ("seven spices," Japanese seasoning) on it.


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