Hi.
I'm trying to eat at the moment but I can't, even though my stomach is rumbling. I'm really depressed and anxious at the moment but I don't think I've eaten enough since around February this year. I'm autistic.
I put trigger warning instead of "do i have arfid" because I could only pick one. The trigger warning is for talking about body weight and is in the next paragraph.
I've always had a low BMI even when I eat a lot. I've been tested for a few things but no reason has been found so doctors always said it's fine. Foods high in some types of fats seem to go straight through me - full fat milk is the most extreme. Oddly, peanut butter - which is also high in fat - doesn't. So basically, there seems to be something strange about my metabolism but I don't know what it is.
So I might have some kind of metabolic condition that makes it hard to gain weight, but I don't know what condition.
In addition to that, sometimes I find it really hard to eat. I've been in one of those phases for most of this year, with it getting better at some times and worse at other times. It's really bad right now.
Sometimes when I try to eat I can't swallow and sometimes food comes back up. The taste and texture of food feels really bad at the moment. But since it's mostly an issue when I'm depressed (I am very very depressed right now) idk if it's ARFID.
When I'm not in one of these phases I usually eat two eggs and two pieces of toast for breakfast, a bottle of Ensure Plus a few hours after breakfast, a bowl of cereal with low fat milk for morning tea, pizza or burritos or pasta for lunch, and something with lots of vegetables, carbs, beans, and cheese for dinner.
I'm a vegetarian and there's a lot of foods that I like but also a lot of foods that I don't like. As an adult looking back, I'm not sure whether some of the "no" foods are for psychological reasons or physical - for example, I can't stand most bakery items, but most bakery items are possibly high in the type of nutrient mentioned in the trigger warning paragraph that I possibly don't digest properly?
Today I've eaten a bow of serial, picked at a slice of pizza, eaten a couple of chips, an drank a bottle and a half of Ensure Plus.
Ensure Plus only has 300 calories and I work a physical job so I'm getting a little scared that I can't eat enough.
In addition to wondering if I have ARFID, I was wondering if anyone knew foods I could try to eat that are high in calories and easy to swallow. I'm going to go and buy some chocolate yoghurt soon but I could get other things too. AI estimates that the diet I follow when I'm healthy is about 2,200-2,800 calories so I guess I'm aiming for about 1,200 calories in food and the chocolate yoghurt only has 100 calories per pottle :(