Eating Disorder Vs Disordered Eating
- rachelh1311
- Nov 4, 2022
- 2 min read
An eating disorder is challenging enought to support but you throw autism into the mix and it can push you to breaking point!
The more I have worked with my daughter on the path to recovery, the more we have both better understood the parts that autism have had to play. Being autistic can often mean needing routine and a lot of structure, this can be both positive and negative if the person also has an eating disorder. My daughter found that being able to control her eating through having strong routines and structure to her days, meant it was very easy for her to then stick to not eating or only eating set things at set times. It made it a lot harder for her to break the structure when wanting to incorporate new foods or try eating at different times of day. However, once she had improved her eating with foods, she then found it easier to stick to these as they quickly became a part of her normal daily routine.
There is also the sensory problem with foods which means an autistic person may not be able to eat or be around certain foods and texture which can start the process of restricting what they are happy to eat. But again, once they do know what they enjoy, they will stick to these foods.
Autism plays a part in the person having disordered eating. This can be through only eating freezer foods or packaged goods due to them always tasting the same and looking the same. My youngest daughter, Isabelle always eats beans and cheese with every dinner and smarties for pudding. She has done this for about four years now. Some people may not want to eat meals and prefer snacking or only eat foods when they are prepared a certain way. All these things are a form of control over their eating habits, but it is not an eating disorder. That comes when the need for control becomes greater than the person and they give their control over to the eating disorder voice in their head.
One of the biggest things I realised that could have impacted my daughter’s susceptibility to having an eating disorder was her lack of diagnosis until she was a teenager. As she didn’t understand a lot of what she was feeling or why she found it harder to socialise or handle her emotions, this then meant she turned to food as her way of being able to feel in control of something in her life. I know CCAHMS are very aware of the increase in eating disorders within autistic individuals and the importance of getting a diagnosis at a younger age. I’
m not saying that all children who have a later diagnosis will go through what we did but I think it is good to be aware of the impact that not understanding
themselves can cause.
Our personal experience was with anorexia nervosa.
Below is a link to a You Tube video that I was shown when at a training evening at CCAHMS and really helps you to better understand how to flip the negative autism trait into a positive one when recovering from anorexia.
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