Autism & Eating Disorders

Since my autism diagnosis at age 23, I have spent a great deal of time sifting through my life experiences and trying to understand how they might be tied to my diagnosis. One of the final puzzle pieces that recently fell into place was the eating disorder I began struggling with in high school, and how it related to my undiagnosed autism.

Growing up, I always knew I relied on grades as an external measure of validation, especially since I couldn’t count on consistent positive social feedback from my peers. What I hadn’t realized until recently was how much I also relied on an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise to control how I wanted to be seen by the world around me. Social dynamics—like flirting or expressing interest in others—were confusing and intimidating for me. Even now, flirting feels like a foreign language. But I could control how much I ate and how much I exercised.

When I started public school in sixth grade, I first understood that body size was linked to popularity. The popular girls were thin and flat-chested. I developed earlier than most and didn’t fit that mold. To be clear, I didn’t and don’t harbor negative feelings toward my peers—we were all trying to survive. But in eighth grade, I restricted food intake for the first time to lose weight, and the results were strangely exhilarating. Around that time, my parents bought an elliptical machine, and a new pattern began: restrict, eat foods I’d deemed “unhealthy,” then exercise excessively to “make up” for it. I would count calories and then try to burn them off.

I’m pretty sure no one in my house realized how obsessively I was doing this. There’s a family joke about my grandmother once commenting that another relative had an eating disorder (they didn’t), and meanwhile I was quietly struggling with one myself. Because my weight stayed within a “normal” BMI range, no one looked twice. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but there was a time when after eating fried chicken, I used the elliptical for almost two hours. Looking back, I see now that I was exerting extreme control over my body because I couldn’t decode the high school social structure—but I was better at appearing thin.

Even when I was at my thinnest in high school, someone was always thinner and got more male attention. The finish line always moved. I bring up my experience with my eating disorder because women with autism are more likely to struggle with one. The layers of complexity that can surround a relationship with food for someone with autism and a history of disordered eating leave every day feeling like a minefield. Healthy foods I would like to try aren’t friendly to my sensory issues. A lot of foods that are friendly to my sensory issues aren’t healthy. Finding foods that won’t hurt my body and that I can enjoy, sensory-wise, has been a long process. I have also made peace with the fact that some of the ways I eat aren’t the “healthiest,” but it’s how I need to eat to get veggies into my system.  

Ideally, I wouldn’t have to put pasta sauces on zucchini spirals and spaghetti squash, but it’s a reliable comfort food. I have to watch the portions of the sauces I use, but I’ve tried not using the pasta sauces, and then I don’t eat vegetables. Some recipes weren’t made in my household because they used breadcrumbs. Turkey meatloaf keeps me fuller longer than other recipes I used to make. I am still working on fully healing my relationship with food. Years later, once the restriction had died quickly in college, a mental health crisis brought to the fore a new disordered relationship: binge eating. It was very strange at the time to have experienced such restriction and then to swing to the other end of the spectrum. I’m grateful that I’m now in recovery from my disordered eating. I want to encourage parents of children with autism to be intentional about how they help their children build their own relationships with food and their bodies.

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As I continue to heal from my history of disordered eating, I practice gratitude for my body. I do my best to practice gratitude for my body even when it’s not looking or feeling how I wish it would. When it comes to food choices and autism, I would highly recommend that parents don’t label foods good or bad. If parents educate their children on nutrition and how human bodies process excess sugar and processed food, then they will have a foundational knowledge of nutrition. Instead of labeling foods “good” or “bad”, I’d recommend labeling foods as “foods we can eat more of” and “foods we eat less of”. It would have been helpful for me growing up if someone had talked to me about different body types. I would feel so upset when my stomach wasn’t flat even as a child. As I’ve gotten older and my weight has fluctuated, it tends to be around my waist. Parents must speak positively about their bodies and the foods they eat. By demonstrating a healthy relationship with food and body image, parents can take the first step toward having an open dialogue about a child’s relationship with food.