Autistic Burnout and Weight

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TL;DR: I have Autistic Burnout, but have not been able to find anything on how being obese affects Autistic Burnout.

Recently, I've come to learn that I'm suffering from Autistic Burnout. I'm currently unemployed after I got squeezed out of a position, partly due to merger/re-org, and partially due to my inability to cope combined with a likely-autistic manager who didn't know her limits, and was able to more or less do her own job, but unable to communicate. I now understand that throughout my life, I've burned out numerous times, but this one feels worse. I have a hard time getting up in the morning, and once I've sat down on the couch, it's sometimes hard to get up. My short-term memory has deteriorated, and I'm exhausted all the time. The only times that I feel energetic are when I'm out hiking with friends (can't really go out to eat due to COVID), or sort of when I go to my parents' house. I've read up a lot on Autistic Burnout, but I haven't seen anything related to weight. I'm 30 years old, 6'3" tall, and about 305lb.

Every few years, I've suffered from some burnout. I now recognize that I had mild burnout in high school, more significant burnout my sophomore year in college, a bout of it about 18 months into working, and another bout a couple of years ago. I didn't know I was autistic until 2016, when my ex girlfriend just sort of blurted it out one day and then I started doing research. Previously, I had been diagnosed with anxiety, and I had thought that I had ADHD in college. I've since had my autism self-dx confirmed by friends who are either on the spectrum themselves, or are in social work and psychology and have knowledge of ASD professionally. A whole lot of things make sense now, like why I can succeed at a career, physical fitness, a relationship, hobbies, education, and other things, but never really more than one or two of them at a time. I worked as an Engineer for 5.5 years, went back to school and got a Masters to go into IT, now I'm unemployed. Now that I know myself better, I know the type of environment that I need to create for myself, but I haven't yet been able to do that, due to being stuck in a "temporary" apartment that was supposed to be for 4-6 months, and here I am about 18 months later, still in a tiny apartment that's driving me nuts. Interestingly, the best period that I had was living with roommates in a house where I had several different spaces for different activities.

Over the past 12 or so years, my weight has fluctuated, but generally, it has gone up an average of 7 pounds per year, year after year after year. In the past year, I've learned a lot more about hiking, which I was always interested in, but never knew much about beyond casual day hikes. A combination of a friend recommending some YouTube channels and seeing how walking 75 miles on a 10 day trip last fall improved my fitness, and I'm hooked. Now, I believe I can lose and maintain weight using my passion for hiking, but I can't figure out how to get over the initial hump of losing the first 50-75 pounds. I'm going on a hiking trip for fat people in the fall, but one week alone isn't going to solve my weight problem, and travel is fairly limited right now due to COVID.

Is there any research or experience with how weight affects Autistic Burnout? I know that Autism and Obesity have been researched, and there is a clear correlation, but I haven't seen much on how Autistic Burnout factors in. I feel like being obese is making burnout 10x worse, because everything takes more time and energy, and I have accommodate the fact that I currently can't do some of the things (harder hikes) that I want to do, on top of scheduling, weather, etc, etc. In addition to that, I probably have some sleep apnea from being obese, and don't get good sleep as a result, which could further feed burnout? Just to be clear, I don't think obesity is the sole cause of Autistic Burnout, but I wonder if it contributes/compounds it and makes it harder to recover from?

Meanwhile, I'm looking for a new job, but getting less and less effective at doing so in what is a brutal job market, even for careers that theoretically aren't affected by COVID.

Obesity can only negatively affect any other health problems.

Welcome to Wrong Planet.

Cycling also keeps the weight down.

Burnout... Difficult. I found for the first couple of months I was not really able to walk that far. Took me quite a few months before I could cycle.

A good way to lose (or maintain) weight is to count calories. You measure out your food, portions, etc and stick to a caloric intake that you think would be good for you (to lose at least 1 pound a week, otherwise you may feel you aren't making any progress). You can use online calculators to get an idea, although they may yield somewhat different numbers. Exercise is not the most important factor here, although exercise can be very good, and is important for overall health. You can lose a huge amount of weight and never have to do any exercise, since your body burns calories on its own everyday. If you deprive it of the calories it needs to maintain itself, it will start to eat away at itself (and fat will go first, but eventually muscle as well). Exercising is just a way of having your body burn more calories, so you do get to eat more (or burn the weight away faster, if you eat the same amount), but that's really it. Exercising can make you hungry, so sometimes it can be a challenge to stick with a diet. It's all a matter of how much hunger you can endure. Make those numbers add up right and you'll lose the weight.

I don't see a correlation between autistic burnout and weight gain. I know that when I am stressed, eating comfort food seems to get my mind off the stress and that produces weight gain.

As I became older, the pounds kept adding on and I became obese and the obesity was negatively affecting my health. I was taking 5 types of prescription medicines daily and the meds fell short is solving the problem. So I underwent gastric bypass surgery and I lost 120 pounds in less than 8 months. I went from a size 46 in pants down to a size 32; from wearing 3X shirts down to a size small. All my medical issues were resolved and I have been off my meds for almost 7 years now. Those conditions included high blood pressure, type II diabetes, sleep apnea, GERD, and even asthma.

I can relate to you totally.

I lost my job in March to Autistic Burnout, and I am still struggling to get out of it.

It's really annoying me that I have so much support from people right now, but I feel that it really is just not helpful.

A long time ago I worked in a medical clinic as a secretary. The doctors frequently talked about what they called an “allergic march”. If a person had asthma, any allergies were more likely to bother them, and if the allergies were not controlled, the person would start having frequent upper respiratory infections. The body can’t fight off problems at all fronts. So they would work on getting one thing under control, and then the other problems would improve and become easier to treat.

Autistic burnout will make you tired and demotivated. So will carrying excess weight. The combination can paralyze you (figuratively). Choose one thing and get control of that, and the rest will be easier to deal with, or perhaps even solve itself.

The last I looked, not much was being researched in regards to adult autistic wellness, which was one of my own research areas.