I learned pretty early on in life that too much food makes you fat. And I very much dislike carrying weight. It makes me uncomfortable. I don't like the feeling of excess body, it's so hard to explain, but I almost feel like my body invades my own personal space when I am carrying too much weight. I don't like the feeling of fat rolls, skin touching skin, the thought of someone else touching this excess fat (insert relationship issues here), clothing feeling snug against excess fat, thighs touching too much. I don't like that feeling of "puff" bloating gives you, that squishy fluidy layer over your body. YUK. When I bend my arms and legs I don't like feeling squishy excess body getting in the way. I always knew my issue with body fat was more complex than just not wanting to look fat, I mean growing up I just wanted to fit in and look like the other girls, and I certainly never wanted to be the fat kid, as fat kids stood out and were taunted. I just wanted to blend in. But my issue with body fat is more about "feeling". I don't like invading my own personal space. I learned during my diagnosis process that my issue with my body was sensory. It's that simple. I have sensory issues with excess weight. Learning that was a HUGE relief. Unlike all my other sensory issues however I have struggled to come across anyone else with the same issue. Someone to relate to. Perhaps there are other people with ASD who do have the same issue but they have never talked about it, I know for me it is extremely hard to describe this whole topic, the feelings associated and the impact it has on all aspects of my life.
I've seen both a GP and a psychologist about disordered eating, low self esteem and what was assumed to be body dysmorphia, but it was only my assessing psychologist last year that I was able to be fully honest with and try to explain my issue with the feeling of body fat. Body Dysmorphia didn't relate to me. I truly believed and still do that I am what I see in the mirror. Again, it's not so much how I look that's the issue, it's how the excess weight makes me physically feel. One Psychologist I saw (many years ago) asked me if I thought I was fat, do I see a fat person in the mirror, at the time I was a healthy body weight and I knew it. I stated so. I pleaded that I didn't see a fat person in the mirror, but felt like she didn't believe me. I told her that my reflection wasn't the issue but I struggled to tell her what the issue was though. I just couldn't find the words and when she tried getting it out of me I just kept saying "I don't know". To be fair, at the time I really didn't know. I often left those sessions feeling worse than I arrived. Very exhausted and frustrated.
When I am carrying more weight than I am comfortable with I become very anxious. I have the same reaction that I have with other sensory triggers. Just as too much noise makes me feel overwhelmed, panicked, suffocated, trapped and can often lead to a meltdown the feeling of carrying too much weight results in the same feelings. However, with noise the feelings build and build and I can either catch it in time, put my headphones on or remove myself before the inevitable explosion (meltdown) or I can't. Either way there is a relatively quick outcome and I can move on quite quickly.
With excess body weight it's usually crept up on me, I slowly become uncomfortable and the discomfort builds, the rumination over my increasing weight begins then one day I pass the point of tolerance, I all the sudden feel HUGE. I'm suffocating. I'm bumping into things as my external boundaries have changed, spacial awareness has been thrown, maybe I become more clumsy as my center of gravity is thrown? I don't know. I'm taking up more room in my seat. My clothes have become tight and I am uncomfortable beyond belief. I can't bare it. I can't close my legs as close as usual. My arms don't fit as close to my body. When I sit I can feel a fold in my belly and skin touches skin. If I am bloated I find the balloon feeling in my tummy horrific, restrictive, I want it gone NOW! I feel constant anxiety and panic. My thoughts are consumed with the discomfort, I can't concentrate at work, in the gym, at home, I can't absorb anything anyone is saying to me as my mind is obsessing over my ever expanding body. I become depressed. I don't enjoy anything, except food, which comes with feelings of frustration as that's what got me to this state of misery in the first place. But unlike my other sensory issues, there is no quick fix. I will feel this way until I lose the weight. Now.....I am not talking 20kg here. Not even 10. I am talking 5kg MAX! Probably not even that much. 2-3kg weight gain is a sensory nightmare for me. I think I have subconsciously learned to not let it go further than a few kgs. I may sit with the extra couple of kilos for a few weeks, depressed, consumed and having increased meltdowns and relationship problems with my family as I take my frustration and feelings of discomfort out on them, but it never seems to go past a few kilos and I tend to lost it relatively easy, thanks to one of my special interests being exercise, mostly in the form of weight lifting/strength training. That along with my ridgid routines, borderline clinical OCD and black and white thinking results in an ability to lose the weight easier than I believe many NT's can. I like to eat the same foods every day. Same breakfast every single day, I have a handful of lunches and dinners I have on rotation but can often go weeks eating the same everyday. I take comfort in weighing ingredients so my meals are always the same. I use an app to track my calories, I believe I do this as a way to self regulate as I don't believe I have the feeling of being full like other people and I experience hunger more intensely than I feel is normal. So, if I am eating the same foods all the time, weighing and tracking everything how do I gain weight. Well I cheat of course LOL. It starts off as adding a dollop of peanut butter to my dessert one night as a treat then turns into doing it every night, and I either don't add it into my app or I don't add as much as what I am actually consuming. A dollop of peanut butter is usually way more than 10gm. Or I start having an extra meal a day, usually crackers with nut butter, which I will add into my app.......but then go back for another helping, then maybe another and NOT add that helping in because I know it will tip my allowed calories over and I don't want to see that. Sometimes when I eat I enjoy the sensation of chewing so much I just keep going back for more, I can't stop, I want more and more and more of that feeling on my gums. It's like scratching an itch. I think that's the best way to describe it. If I am eating when I am not hungry it's not out of boredom, it's out of sensory pleasure. Another contributing factor is simply sometimes my portion sizes get bigger without me actually documenting the increases into my app. This is also why I like to weight and measure my food.
Then there's routine. I am so set in my routines that even if I am not hungry I will have my set meals. That said, during the day the lack of hunger is never an issue but sometimes by the end of the day, after dinner I am actually feeling full. But I will still have my 8pm dessert. 80gm frozen blueberries defrosted and mixed with 25gm protein powder and 80gm coconut yogurt. It's routine. So much so that if on a rare occasion I go out for dinner I still have my blueberry pro-gurt dessert when I get home. When I am out as the night wears on I become anxious about missing my bedtime routine of dessert then bed. There's been times where it's coming onto 10-11pm at night and I still feel I must have that dessert when I get home, it's all I think about, people will be trying to talk to me and I can't concentrate on what they are saying as my mind is consumed with my routine being so thrown out. It's my routine. The day doesn't feel complete without it. So I will also eat out of routine.
I remember one time cutting my thumb quite bad while preparing my dinner. It needed gluing at the very least, maybe a stitch, but I had this internal battle going on in my head. I need medical attention, I should go to the ED. No, It's dinner time, I need dinner. If I go to the ED I will have to wait for ages, away from my home, and miss dinner. I chose to stay home and have my dinner. That damn thumb took FOREVER to heal. Now see......I have strayed from my topic of my body issues again, Oops.
It's a really hard one for me to explain, my body issues. It's something that has however caused ongoing frustration and even tension in my relationship with Arthur so I am hoping that at the very least this blog post, however messy it is, will perhaps help him have a better understanding of why I am the way I am about my body. He has just watched me ruminate over a work issue for an extended period of time, when I am not feeling comfortable with my body the exact same thing happens, I ruminate over it until I fix it.
This blog post has been a work in progress, It's taken me many sittings to get it done due to the complexity of the issue and the fact that while doing it I was bloody ruminating over that work issue (see last blog post). Pushy Pea brain does not yield good writing at all. While I am not entirely happy with it I just don't think I can work on it anymore. It really is such a hard one to explain and I really struggle to find the words. Maybe one day I will have a better understanding of the topic of my body issues and I will come back to this.
P.
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