Inevitably, things got much worse on these orders and, just before I reached a size where I could wear a Cheerio as a bracelet, I was taken to the hospital, extremely underweight, malnourished and diagnosed with what my friends would later delicately describe as ‘ manorexia‘. However, when they had contacted a doctor for advice, they were initially told to just wait and when I was hungry enough I would come crawling back (little did they know how stubborn an autistic pre-teen can be). Of course, this didn’t go down well with my family and resulted in dramatic weight loss. This got so bad that, in my naive mind, I thought I could overcome this permanent nausea (and gain back some control) by stopping eating altogether. I was vomiting a lot at this time as, like some kind of gross lizard seen on the Discovery Channel, my reaction to the threat of anxiety has always been to chuck up my guts. This all started after the breakup of my family meant that I was forced to move out from the house I had grown up in leaving behind all sense of control as well as the nest of a routine I had spent years creating there. While I have never had a particularly great diet, predominantly living off bacon and shepherd’s pie for most of my early life (and even liquidized bacon sandwiches when I first got my braces), the lowest point of my dietary battle came in 2007, when my restrictive eating (or lack of) resulted in me being hospitalised with an eating disorder. This is not the end of the challenges autistic people have when it comes to eating, however, as there are also many other autistic quirk related factors which play a role in unhealthy diets: including those who are susceptible to pica (eating non-edible objects) and those with obsessive personalities, who may calorie count.
equivalent is called Tylenol – although I can’t confirm). This arose after he had conditioned himself to believe that only pink food was healthy, due to the link he had made between wellness and the U.K.’s favourite children’s medicine: Calpol (I think the U.S. One example of this is a boy who would only eat pink foods. This is something which has always affected me and while, in recent years, my tolerance to sensory disturbances has improved, it used to be the case that a variety of senses would affect my meals such as restaurants with electronic bathroom driers or even waitresses with too much makeup.īut while sensory problems are the most common reason for fussy eating on the spectrum, they aren’t the only one as many autistic people can struggle to eat something due to the connotations we have made with that particular food. This is because, when we sit down to eat, our minds don’t just register the flavour and presentation (as most people do) but also every other sense and stimuli in our surroundings – from the sounds we hear to the sights we see. What causes Food Problems in Autistic People?Īlthough it might not seem so, autistic people are often the ultimate foodies.
#Autism pica syndrome how to
With this in mind (and with Eating Disorders Awareness Week beginning this Monday), today, I wanted to share my own experience of suffering from an eating disorder and give some insight into how to overcome restrictive eating in people on the spectrum. However, unlike our often-restricted diets, the causes and solutions can be much more varied.
#Autism pica syndrome full
While many families with autistic children will struggle to get someone on the spectrum to eat (due to a diet consisting of solitary or limited food groups), many others will have their hands full, trying to stop an autist from constantly having their mouth full – yes, it’s not uncommon for autistic people to be in a constant food fight. People with autism have a complicated relationship when it comes to food.