AS and Anorexia??

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Ok, here's my theory.. "NT"s with eating disorders are great at hiding them and great at lying. They say they do something occasionally, they do it constantly. They say they think about something once a day, they think about it once a minute. They say they do something for one reason, it's really because of their eating disorder. So when eating disorder professionals evaluate someone, they multiply everything they say, to make up for the amount they're assuming that the person is understating it. So if you went in being honest, they assumed you were incredibly eating disordered because an NT with a milder eating disorder would never even end up in front of a professional to begin with.
Trying to be honest with eating disorder professionals just doesn't work because they assume that you're not being honest. I think that's what happened to me. That and my parents exaggerated things in hopes of getting me "more help." Which of course ended up meaning getting all the WRONG help.
"NT" anorexics tend to be incredibly socially proficient, so there are massive social games going on in eating disorder treatment. It's all about giving the right answers, understanding what the questions mean.. there's no tolerance for social issues because non-autistic anorexics are so great at the games.

[BTW, "criteria" is the plural. The singular form is "criterion." Like bacteria and bacterium. Sorry to nitpick.. just noticed the red line under "criterias." ]

Arizona? Nope.. I'm from the east coast.
Heh, they did blame my parents for a lot of it, too.. But I don't think my parents played nearly as much a role in my problems getting really bad as the awful professionals did. My parents biggest mistake was to trust whatever the professionals said. Even when it was obviously and blatantly wrong.

People don't understand that, while we have free will, a lot of our basic behaviour is biologically routed. You were probably born "obsessive", and the people describing you as "clueless" are idiot sheeple themselves, if they expect a "correct" answer. The very fact that you can give an "incorrect" answer shows you at least think for yourself, a virtue which is impossibly rare, and entirely positive .

{rant}The sad thing is, we live in an incredibly covert culture of fear. By saying anything "Unorthodox", you may be subject to ostracism and social exclusion. We are social creatures; exclusion is a very real and intimidating threat to us all (barring aspies ). The autonomous exclusion is a defence mechanism that the hive mind (ie, those of the exact same preferences, ideas, and "morals", 95% of your country) uses to purge itself of the "cancer" that is Individualism. Without thinking individuals giving the "incorrect answer", society is...secure. Democracy won't be questioned, neither will welfarism, political correctness, fashion, anti-intellectualism, or any of the worlds evils. Happy 1984 {rant/}

I developed an eating disorder in my 20's. I guess it was a form of bulimia. Ironically, I had read a book on fasting and tried to lose 20 lbs. that way. I quickly fell into this fasting and (then when I couldn't stand the hunger) binging pattern and then sometimes after the binging a purging or two. It was a totally insane time in my life I didn't lose 20, I gained 30. I gained it so fast I felt like my body wasn't my own. Every attempt to diet brought on the same cycle. I didn't know what my body's relationship to food was anymore. It wasn't until I said 'OK, I'm fat, f#*k it'-that I started to lose weight. I related it to an OCD thing.

Oh! I was misreading 'Phoenix' under your name for your location. Ditz moment. But yeah, I'm from the southeast, and I'm only glad I'm going for diagnosis as an adult (and got my ADD diagnosis as an adult too) so I can decide for myself if these professionals are full of it or not. I should be able to bail on them if they start pulling pseudo theories and treatments out of their erm...pockets. I already have a prepared intro speech about not promising to do any time wasting junk like keep a day journal, meditate about some happy place, or even breathe deeply. And if I get told the psych-speech equivalent of "suck it up and walk it off, you're just a lazy, antisocial bish', I'm outta there.

I had anorexia nervosa from my late teens to mid-twenties. By that time I was already an expert on nutrition and fitness, having been obsessed and studying it for years, and my anorexia evolved into a more health-based, rather than thin-based, obsession. I wanted to have a baby, so I had to get my periods going again, and I wanted to be healthy - fit and thin, not emaciated and unhealthy. This worked out fine, thanks to my hyperfocused determination. I had my baby, and stayed obsessed, in a healthy way, with fitness and nutrition for many years. Fortunately my anorexia had never gotten so bad to cause serious health problems.

I'm no longer obsessed with nutrition/fitness like I was back then - much more balanced now. But I am still, as I've always been, ritualistic about food - these days that just means eating the same thing every day and ordering the same meals in my favorite restaurant... narrow tastes, no experimentation, picky, etc.

Thanks to all who responded!!

Does anyone have both AS and an ED as of now???

Sorry for a repeat offender, I had a feeling it might've already been mentioned, but didn't feel like going all the way back into finding the post since it was so late when I joined last night.

I think I recovered from it now thanks to my pregnancy. I just stick with healthy foods like fruits or vegetables. Occasionally I will eat something else like boxed mac n cheese. I read too much of the wrong foods makes you gain weight, not baby weight.

This, I think, is another problem with standard eating disorder treatment for someone with an ASD.. treatment was all about focusing on the unhealthy, because the goal is to get people to stop obsessing. But for most of us here, not obsessing about things is just not a viable option.
Plus, since I wasn't "succeeding" in treatment, I had this feeling like maybe if I were better at my eating disorder, I'd fit in better. Fit in both in the eating disorder world and the high school world. When my eating disorder was really obvious, I was tormented less in school. While I didn't have friends, it was like I'd been "figured out" so they didn't need to make fun of me so much. Popular girls understand, or think they understand, eating disorders. But also, from being in eating disorder treatment, I learned to relate, on some level, at least, to other people on that basis. Other girls in an eating disorder treatment center will at least try to be nice. And even though I wasn't relating nearly well enough for anyone to care, it was probably the most I had ever related to other people before.. so all I knew about relating to anybody was on an eating-disordered basis.
The whole thing compounded the issue pretty badly.

My counsellor thinks that I have an ED & has referred me to a specialist. I disagree with her though. Yes I do some things that might be considered 'disordered' but it's not because I am obsessed with becoming thin.
I have also been diagnosed with AS.

Be careful.. unless the person is a specialist in eating disorders in people with ASDs, it could be really counter-productive.

They aren't specialists in treating people who have both. In what ways could it be counter-productive? I will talk to my counsellor about it the next time I see her because I want to make sure now that I wont be wasting my time.

Even though I'm not officially diagnosed with AS, I'm slowly getting treatment for it, and I was diagnosed with Anorexia when I was 16. However, I didn't really do it because I was obsessed with my weight. Although it did start off that way when I was about 12, but by 13-14 I was more interested in how I could control my surroundings and myself and my life by how I ate, or rather, how I didn't eat. I liked how it was something that was constant because being in junior high is anything but constant. I also liked how I felt it gave me some sort of identity, if that makes sense.

Partly the fact that if they don't know about AS, they won't know what is and is not progress for you. And while therapists in general tend to have a very social/NT mindset, eating disorder therapists do ever more. And since anorexics are usually so good at playing social games, if you can't play them, they'll think there's something wrong with you for that. Like how they multiply your symptoms to find out what's "really" going on, so that if you're honest, they end up thinking you're way worse than you are. They also tend to work on the assumption that if you just have the courage/drive to say what you need, you'll be able to express it correctly.
Whenever I look back on eating disorder treatment I was in, it seems like it wasn't me that they were treating, if that makes sense.
There's all this stuff about "finding your voice" that assumes that you have a communication problem based in neurosis. So how can they possibly treat someone who has a neurological breakdown in communication?
They kept getting frustrated and figuring it was my fault that the wrong therapies didn't work.

My doctor knew I had AS and he still labeled me with anorexia. He wasn't an eating disorder professional. He was just a doctor at the health clinic I'd see for check ups. Then the other one I saw was a therapist who also agreed with him I have it. She also knew I had AS. They just followed the criteria and checked three things and said I have it but I was not underweight even though my therapist thought I was very thin and slender.

I just updated the Wikipedia article on Anorexia Nervosa to better reflect the latest research that links Autism and Anorexia Nervosa.

During writing he section I realised that AN is a co-morbidity of Autism or Autism like conditions. Over half of people with teenage onset AN had a childhood onset neuropsychiatric disorder e.g. ASD (23%), Tourette's Syndrome (27%) and ADHD (17%) ... before they developed an eating disorder.

Wentz, Elisabet; J. Lacey, Glenn Waller, Maria Råstam, Jeremy Turk, Christopher Gillberg (2005-12-01). "Childhood onset neuropsychiatric disorders in adult eating disorder patients. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 14 (8): 431-437. doi:10.1007/s00787-005-0494-3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorexia_n ... _to_autism

and here is an interesting article in Time Magazine http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 99,00.html

Well I hope this helps.