Aspies and Poor Diets?

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I'm just wondering whether there's a link between AS and poor diet, or a poor lifestyle in general.

I don't know if I have AS, but looking at the list of symptoms, I tick alot of the boxes. I have a pretty poor diet, and virtually no exercise. Whenever I go to eat something, usually crap, a loud voice in my brain is saying stuff like 'high cholesterol', 'heart attack' or 'stoke', but I still shove it in my gob. And when it comes to exercise, I know I can go for a long walk a few times a week at the very least, but can't summon up the motivation to drag my increasingly fat behind out of the door.

Do you think this has something to do with the life Aspies lead? Is it the underlying depression that most people with Asperger's suffer that prevents them from grabbing the bull by the horns and making changes?

On the other hand, can AS be helpful for a healthy lifestyle, in that you tend to want to stick to strict routines and have control over your life and what goes on?

What's your lifestyle like, healthy or unhealthy? Have you tried to make changes, and how successful were you? Would you say your success or lack of it had anything to do with your AS?

whats a poor diet for one person is the healthiest diet for another.

For example, I really can't eat any fruit and decent amount of common vegetables without increasing my seizures. Eating a really high fat diet helps stop my seizures. I can drink caffeine free diet soda without the slightest problem - I can't have any fruit juice.

i try to be healthy... unfortunately, i do eat a lot of fried foods. i try to eat as much fruit as possible and a salad whenever i can, but I'm generally pretty unhealthy. lots of chips and fried rice. i do avoid gluten though, which is very helpful - no more of those chronic headaches i used to take for granted!

i exercise around 1-3 times a week unless i'm busy, but i do walk a lot from living in a city.

i don't think AS has anything to do whether you're healthy or not, though a lack of motivation may result in laziness... also, crappy foods make you feel like crap, and this applies to anyone.

I don't think there's any correlation at all; the kind of lifestyle one leads and food choices is down to the person, not Aspergers.

Personally I eat an obsessively healthy diet and lead an obsessively healthy lifestyle. Why? Well, natural health is my main obsession. So that would make sense.

I only eat healthy if I have to. I'd rather eat sweets strictly.

I think it depends on different factors

- Whether the person has any food allergies/addictions that cause them to comfort-eat these foods

- Whether a person has healthy living as a special interest. If they do they will eat very healthily.

- Otherwise their interests could absorb them and cause them to neglect their diet and eat a lot of convenience foods.

and anything in between....

Last edited by zen_mistress on 02 Oct 2008, 10:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have a horribly poor diet, though I try to eat stuff like fruits and cottage cheese and such on a daily basis, I eat far too much junk food. I have the same thing you described about my mind saying, "Don't eat that, you fool!" but I shove it in my mouth anyway. Also, I'm so extremely picky about what I eat because of my sensory issues with taste, I have very limited options. I hardly exercise, because I get extremely exhausted and feel like I'm going to collapse when I do. I do go on very long walks sometimes, but not for the exercise, I do that because I never got my driver's license, and I don't live in the city, where everything's conveniently right next to your house. Also sometimes just to get out of the house or to clear my head.

i like to eat lots of junk foods

As far as what I eat goes, I have a fairly healthy, vegetarian diet. My problem is that I eat infrequently, often skipping breakfast and lunch, but eat too much later in the day. Coupled with a lack of exercise (though I was keeping a routine for a little while) and irregular/difficult sleep, I often feel very lethargic and sore.

You've hit the nail on the head there. I tend to miss out lunch, eat a full dinner and snack all day. My sleep is irregular, sometimes I don't get any sleep at all at night, and I just feel dull and useless alot of the time, usually with a headache, sore muscles and a bloaty stomach all the time (ironically, as I write this, I'm feeling pretty good, despite having had 3 cups of tea two biscuits/cookies and nothing else!) It has been like it for years, and the question is, how do you drag yourself out of it?

Well, just make sure you don't buy terribly unhealthy foods. If you eat alot of convient food then buy alot of healthy snacks and such. Basically, you can't eat unhealthy if you don't buy unhealthy foods. Oh an if you work or go to school pack a lunch to avoid having to get fast food. I don't know if that was helpful probably painfully obvious lol. One thing I found to feel better is to excercise. At least 20 minutes a day(i should take my own advice), even if your diet isn't the greatest you feel good after a quick run or something physical.



As for my diet, it sucks. I'm in between jobs right now so I eat what I can get. My mom buys nothing but crap food so if I can't avoid it I usually end up having to scarf that processed crap down my throat. But I don't really know how to cook very well in the first place so I need to get on that.

In short, I have a poor diet.

I think many/most people in the west eat unhealthily to some degree or other; I just think that AS are particularly sensitive/susceptible to the effects.
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There's no link to it. A person with AS can be susceptible to convenience foods. But a determined aspie can change his/her intake habits, and then the healthful becomes routine.

I have very healthful eating habits, but I haven't always. Once I researched and discovered what was bad, I made abstainance of it into a personal routine.

The #1 thing that will benefit most who have "guilty" eating habits is to abstain from injesting anything that contains high fructose corn syrup. Going without sodas may seem challenging at first, but if you stick to it, you'll stop craving them.

After that, you can go further by cutting enriched flour. Cut fruit juices. It's OK to eat raw fruit - that's what I've used to replace soda enjoyment.

It's important to avoid artificial sweeteners too.

Exactly. Convenience food is often where people are getting high fructose corn syrup and enriched flour. There are some fast food franchises that offer healthy alternatives. Panera offers whole grain bread for their sandwhiches. Papa Johns Pizza offers a whole grain crust for their pizzas. Taco bell offers lots of food that's free of enriched flour, if you choose the corn tortilla instead of the flour one. Even corn though is probably not great, since it's the type of feed used for fattening up livestock. Packing a lunch is definitely my preferred choice, but it's good to know that there are restaurants with healthy offerings.


My routine is 1 hour, every two or three days. The exercise needs to be enjoyable, otherwise it's hard to stick with it. Since I love skating, I look forward to the times in my schedule that I've dedicated to it.

Vegetarian here - now it's just another quirky habit of mine.

I don't think there is a link.

Although most of my eating habits come from my mom's side of the family (which, unfortunately, has a history of heart disease).

no link, depend on what you put in your body and how much exercise you do.