Sensory defensiveness and eating well

Post Reply New Topic

Hey, everyone.

I want to improve my diet but I have a problem. My AS came with severe sensory defensiveness, and this makes me a SUPER picky eater. If I eat food I don't like the taste of, then I'll feel like s**t for a while, won't be able to get the taste in my mouth, and if I REALLY hate something, I might even find it so overwhelmingly awful that I vomit.

The problem is that most of the food I DO like isn't particularly healthy. I'm not at all obese, so that's not an issue, but I DO consume a LOT of sugar. Even most of the healthy foods I like (such as some fruit) is sugary in some form. The only vegetables I can tollerate (such as carrots) are the most sugary of them. Because there are so few foods I like in general, I can't just limit myself to the "healthy" foods because then I would get totally sick of them. I already get sick of so much of what I eat because there are always so few things to choose from; having to limit my diet anymore would be a nightmare. Sometimes I hate the fact that I have to eat because it's just so stressful trying to figure out what!

Since I have a few of the symptoms of high blood sugar (constant nausea and excessive thirst and the fact that I'm so thin, mainly), I went to the doctor's to get my blood sugar checked recently to make sure I don't have diabetes. I haven't heard back so I don't know if I do, but since it's been a week I assume that if I did they'd have called me to let me know by now. That said, even if I don't, then it'd still be best if I improved my diet so that I don't develop it in the future. But I don't know how to do that. And what if I DO have it? Then I still wouldn't know how to improve my diet because my taste buds are so damn picky.

What should I do?

Is it the taste of things that you cant tolerate or the texture? If it is texture based you can try changing the texture of things - like pureeing vegetables with milk or roasting them to make them crunchy (brings out the sweetness too). With regards liking sugary things, can you add sweeteners instead of sugar to things that otherwise you might not like - this is not as good as just eating less sugar, but if you cant tolerate things not being sweet then sweetener is a second best (better for your teeth too). If your diet is too high in bad fats (hydrogenated oils or animal fats) then you can try both cutting down on fat and changing to using things like olive oil which is actually good for you (e.g. chips home made with a little olive oil). Anyway, liking carrots is a start - there are many different ways to eat carrots, so no need to get bored (try roasting, pureeing, cooking then frying with a little chilli, lemon juice and coriander, soups etc).
I hope this helps and good luck with changing your eating patterns.

just stop eating, at least you'll die skinny.

merrymadscientist: Sometimes it's the taste, sometimes the texture, sometimes the smell, sometimes the way it looks (yes, that is enough to disgust me)--usually a combination of all those things. Also I usually only like things a certain way--so I can say I like pizza but only a certain way from a certain place. Same goes for carrots--roasting? Ew. Pureeing? No thanks. Cooking then frying with a little chilli, lemon juice and coriander? EW EW EW! Soup? No please no. lol. See? >.<

Likho: lol.

hmmm, well you could always take vitamins..... have you tried sweet potatoes? they are sweet and a bit like carrots. I hate cooked carrots for the texture.... Hmmmm, sounds like you have a sweet fang. You could always cut back on the processed sugar and try to substitute with honey or agave syrup. Then again i am not sure about your tolerance. There are a lot of hard squashes that are really good when they are baked with a little butter and salt. I could eat those year round. try butternut, or acorn or sweet dumpling. they are all delicious and high in fiber and beta kerotine. Have you tried grilled zucchini? perhaps some fresh cooked turnip greens? or spinach..... uncooked in a salad... or peas!! ! peas are so versatile. you can eat them flash blanched, and they have a completely different texture... they kind of pop when you bite them. or you can cook them down and make pea soup.

I don't know about the sensory defensiveness angle on it, but I do know that when I was a total bread and cheese and chocolate and coffee and sugar junkie I had great difficulty eating anything other than pizzas, bacon cheeseburgers, mars bars, (etc), and maltesers, almond paste croissants, toasted pitta breads, and more pizzas.

My diet got narrower and narrower as i got more and more hooked.

Vegetables and fresh fruit ( except for melons and cherries) almost never passed my lips.
I thought an apple was disgusting, green veg were repulsive, (except iceberg lettuce), oranges were fit for the dustbin, and red meat was absolutely out of the question, ( except the pappy, predigested kind in burgers). I quite liked potatoes, baked, or with grilled cheese on top.

When I first started excluding dairy and sugar and gluten from my diet the most extraordinary things started happening. I began to like food I would not have dreamed of eating before.

dawndeleon: vitamins wouldn't help, the problem isn't that I don't have enough healthy food, the problem is that I have too much sugar. I eat plenty of stuff that has some nutrition, it's just that most of it is very high in sugar as well, as is most of the not-so-healthy stuff I eat. I'm not eating actual sugar, just stuff that has lots of sugar in it. I loath sweet potatoes and squashes and zucchini and all of that type of stuff. It all REALLY grosses me out.

ouinon: that's interesting, maybe I should give it a try. I wouldn't know how to start, though--how did you get started doing it?

I'm afraid to frighten you completely but what I did, almost had to do, was go cold turkey.

I went on an exclusion diet/fast. That is I ate nothing for three days apart from segments of raw apple, which believe me tasted like nectar in that state, and then plain brown rice with lentils and green salad for the three days after that. (salad, or fruit, or baked potatoes, or rice cakes with veg paté would probably have done just as well for that stage).

I stayed home, saw noone, drank water. The first day was hard; i wanted to eat and started feeling very stressed, irritated, depressed.

The second day I began feeling suicidal and paranoid, and imagining strange important meanings and "spirit" life in the shapes of the folds in the sheets on my bed, and shapes between things on the wall. This was actually quite scary.

I got a headache.

That night ( the second), i couldn't sleep and started feeling sick. This is when I ate my first piece of apple, and it was like heaven. And the nausea passed.

The third day I was zombified, slumped, calmer, but like knocked out, tranquilised.

The morning of the fourth day I woke up and it was incredible. There was peace. I only realised after it had stopped how i had been living with an internal cacophony equivalent to living on an airport runway next to a building site with a disco going all the time. It was all gone.

Another thing was that I felt happy, happier than I had done in years. I felt very young; it was odd. As if I was a few years old. And my nose felt sensitive and smooth and unblocked.

Two days later I had the experience of noticing that the world was actually outside my head rather than the other way round. And fruit, and veg, and salads, and brown rice , and fish, and stuff I had loathed/disdained/recoiled from, seemed increasingly delicious.

I gather that a perhaps gentler approach is to begin by forcing yourself to eat two big mixed salads on a friday. Lots of fibre, grated carrot, that sort of thing. Then nothing but hated fruit on the saturday. On the sunday nothing, and by monday you'll be over the worst and ready to begin experimenting. But I didn't even want to eat salad, fruit, etc, before i'd quit, so...

Good luck.

PS: Prepare yourself for a personality change if you do it.

Wow, I have the same problems as you.

Anyway, I'm on a multi-vitamin, and I eat a healthy breakfast.

Well, I got the results back. Despite all the sugar I get, my blood sugar is GREAT--exactly where it should be! So apparently my body just...wants a lot of sugar? lol. I could still end up getting diabetes later on in life though so I'd best be careful and not go overboard.

ouinon: oo, man. Yeah, I'd prefer a gentler method. Hah.

Delerium: A multivitamine! Ah! I hadn't thought of that, but it's a good idea.

gluten and casein free(a2 milk is okay) has worked for me, also eliminating soy, chocolate, peanuts, saturated fats, citrus and salicylates(fedupwithfoodadditives.com) eliminating these help sooooo much make you less sensitive

including:
eggs a wonderfood
omega 3 avocado
bannanas
carrots
nuts(walnuts are easiest and healthiest)
probiotics(drink,capsule or a2yoghurt)
multivitamin
rice
corn
beetroot
all good

any veggies or fruit are good really except potato

Stop eating processed food, MSG and gluten.

IT causes you to have OCD over food, i Swear. MSG especially makes you forget food without it tastes good.

You eat unhealthy, it's no wonder you don't like any healthy food. Force yourself, it's your health. Would want diabetes?

America complains too much about how hard it is to lose weight. stop eating junk, end of story!

Have you considered things like protein shakes? or something like that? My son is like this, so I'm interested in things that have worked for other people.

We were told by one doctor that zinc deficiency can interfere with the ability to taste. My daughter had been having very strange taste/ food sensory issues. A GI confirmed that she did indeed have a zinc deficiency. When she takes her zinc pills then her food taste/sensory issues are not as extreme.

Murphys law, the zinc pills taste horrible.