Underweight aspies?
I was underweight for a lot of my life, most of it really. Some of it seemed to be just how I was (and I was born a little small), and I also never liked eating very much until I was... I don't know how long, but I know in elementary school I did not like to eat (in retrospect, I think it was physically painful and I was also heavily constipated). And when I did not get enough to eat in early adulthood I was very underweight. For me. I think I was still supposedly weight-wise within the bottom end of the "healthy" range, but I could feel my bones everywhere including just trying to sit down. I seem to have heavy bones or something, so those calculations by number don't work on me. I know I was underweight, and according to others I "looked anorexic", but I didn't weigh as underweight just by calculation.
Then after I finally got, not even enough to eat, but a little bit more to eat, suddenly I shot from underweight to fat, and I've been fat ever since (which, believe me, I prefer to being underweight). My staff all knew that I had been near starvation before I got services, so they always made sure to tell me how much better I was looking because it was a sign I was eating, even if I still wasn't eating enough, they were great about not being anti-fat.
Interestingly, at this point, like some other posters a lot smaller than me have said, my weight does not fluctuate by how much I eat. Sometimes I forget to eat for a long time. And when I was on Prednisone I gorged myself for months. And I have stayed exactly at 195 pounds the entire time. (I'm 5'2".) I'm currently in one of my periods where I forget to eat and dislike eating. (I'm not anorexic, I just find eating painful due to a bad jaw and severe reflux that makes it go into my lungs, as well as the ever-present constipation, and I'm no longer on Prednisone to give me an appetite; the moment I got off Prednisone I started completely forgetting to eat again.)
I'll now bow out of this discussion unless I find something else to say about my previous underweight, because I'm no longer underweight.
_________________
"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams
My BMI is 18.5, just about hanging on the 'normal' range which is 18.5 - 24.9.
I've been said to have a bug in the stomach and hollow legs, though I can still sometimes lose appetite; I had none up until age 10 or 11 and was very thin. I'm not anorexic.
My routine is to eat three meals a day and sweets at ten and three, but no sweets for ten if I'm too full from breakfast as I don't want to miss my meals. Almost every meal of mine consists of some protein, some vege, and some starch, because the ideal eating chart at school said so; except for breakfast where I eat pork, egg, toast, coffee and a piece of fruit (or juice in summer). I love breakfast.
I can go on but I'll stop for the fear of killing ppl with boredom.
6 foot, 150 lbs, which is at the light end of the normal range. I have to do some pretty dramatic things to get my weight to change, and even then the change is minor and rapidly goes back to where it was before.
I eat lots of food all day long but I also run a lot, so it tends to balance out. Both sides of my family have been on the lean side for generations.
mmaestro
Veteran
Joined: 6 Aug 2007
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 522
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
I was very, very underweight while at High School and through the start of University. I'm 5'8", and I weighed less than 110lbs. Most of that, I attribute to anxiety. From age 13, I was unable to keep food down in the mornings at all, and had to have a very light lunch or I'd throw up. It wasn't intentional, it was just nerves (how much food I could keep down varied depending on how much stress I was under at the time).
For the first couple of years of university, while I put a little on (I was a lot less anxious, University was good to me), it wasn't much, then into my 3rd/4th year of Uni, I started drinking a lot more (lots of fat) and eating more fatty food, and I put on a lot more weight, peaking at around 185lbs. I lost that after graduating, but not a lot of it, and now I'm eating more healthily and exercising more, I'm around 135lbs. I'm still a little chubby - my body naturally doesn't carry a lot of muscle, but it's around about what seems like an ideal weight for me.
I expect a lot of the odd weights we're seeing here are due to anxiety in some form or another.
_________________
"You're never more alone than when you're alone in a crowd"
-Captain Sheridan, Babylon 5
Music of the Moment: Radiohead - In Rainbows
6'3" 298lbs on a very large frame. How large you ask, well the last time I was at 200lbs, I still had a 50" chest and I looked horrible.
I first put on the weight after my parents divorced when I was 7 and I developed bad eating habits to cope with the depression and stress. I still tend to have the bad eating habits, but even when eating healthy, I cannot lose weight easily.
This is not the heaviest I have ever been, I have went as high as 350, but I prefer between 225 and 245 which usually leaves me with a BMI of around 25. Going below that, I tend to look sallow, gaunt and just generally unhealthy.
_________________
And the world is queer
And the human is strangest of all
I have no interest in my own weight or mass or whatever it is but all i know is Ive lost a lot of weight over the last year. Ive never been overweight but i am now finding it hard to keep the right size clothes long enough.
OK so i dont eat greens and stuff but i am the sort that if i am busy with my interests before say going to work i will just not bother with food as it just gets in the way of what i am focused on. Its a bit like having to sleep or getting dressed, those real mundane things that people take for granted or some even enjoy that just distract from my route of interest.
AlexUK
Sedaka
Veteran
Joined: 16 Jul 2006
Age: 42
Gender: Female
Posts: 4,597
Location: In the recesses of my mind
5'5" & and a half.... 120 lbs... with a lot of muscle 11.5" biceps
edit: i identify with abuend's forgetting to eat... or going through periods (usually depression) where i just have no desire to eat... though i always force myself to... have always been about this weight so whatever my food-mood swings, they're not too impactual. think i eat ok, though could always eat more healthy stuff.
_________________
Neuroscience PhD student
got free science papers?
www.pubmed.gov
www.sciencedirect.com
http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl
LogicAndJeans
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Age: 43
Gender: Female
Posts: 66
Location: Australia
I'm not so bad now, because I've been lazy and haven't been doing enough exercise, but I still get called skinny. When I was in high school though I used to get teased for how skinny I was and always got underweight on all of the average body weight tests... My little sister was always like that too... She just used to forget to eat though.
Similar Topics | |
---|---|
Finding other Aspies at college? |
11 Mar 2024, 2:30 pm |
Accommodations for Aspies in Court Litigation |
11 Apr 2024, 3:32 pm |