Autism and Never Feeling Full

My relationship with hunger and fullness has never been a simple one. As a child, I do not remember ever feeling particularly hungry in the way my classmates would exclaim “I’m starving!”

At the same time, I remember being able to eat much more than them without resonating with their “I’m full!” because the fact was that I never really recognized fullness until I was too full - until I had surpassed my fullness threshold.

At the age of 11, when I started learning about health, nutrition, BMI, puberty, and everything else that is part of the education system in a society of diet culture, I believed I needed to go on a diet. The fact that I would secretly eat boxes of mac n cheese by myself or entire batches of boxed brownies without knowing when to stop made me believe I was “unhealthy.” Things needed to change.

Because I was taught that “sugar causes diabetes” and “eating past fullness causes ob*sity” I practically cut out the majority of my caloric intake. This led to rapid weight loss and paved the path to an almost decade long battle of complete distrust with my body.

Throughout my years of disordered eating, physical hunger was absent while mental hunger was raging. I thought about food ALL THE TIME, but distracted myself out of fear “I couldn’t be trusted” around food.

When I committed to full recovery, it was as if I had been overtaken by the hunger wave. The deep, gut-wrenching desire for food was so persistent I had no other choice than to eat everything but the kitchen sink…plus more. Peanut butter, cookies, Nutella, cake, frosting, and anything else that contained fat and sugar was devoured within seconds. When my stomach was so distended that I couldn’t move, the wave of hunger turned into an even bigger wave of guilt and shame. I definitely couldn’t be trusted around food!

To hear my full story with hunger and fullness as an autistic person, grab your copy of my book How to Beat Extreme Hunger!