Recently one of the main foods i’ve been able to eat is fruit roll ups. I could have them while at camp and eating them gave me a lot of comfort. I just got home a couple days ago, and had a couple leftover to eat but I recently ran out and i can’t find them anywhere. After driving back from the store with my mom, she made fun of me for being upset that i couldn’t get them and asked how i could’ve gotten eaten the few i got sent home with already. This really upset me, i used to struggle with anorexia and it felt like a jab at how much i eat(even though i am pretty severely underweight). i’m now crying in my room because i feel like i cant eat anythiny other than this one food and i don’t know what to do. Is this like a normal arfid thing? or am i just like over emotional?

Mostly a vent but TW for mentions of body weight & just being a generally negative person.

It’s so embarrassing for me, I feel like a privilege piece of shit bc oh you have access to food image if you didn’t, but it’s like I can’t eat. I can’t.

And I’ve been doing liquids more but I hate those too and I hate water and I don’t want to do any of it. I have to go class. My head hurts and I’m dizzy and my stomach hurts and I’m hungry and I want to cry because I can’t eat anything I don’t want to eat anything. I need to eat something. Because I need to drive. But I don’t want to eat. There’s nothing I want to eat.

And people are like oh if you were hungry enough you’d be willing to eat anything, but that’s not true bc last time someone told me that I wound up severely underweight and was severely malnourished and in a program for six months.

Digestion is a whole sensory nightmare and I’d rather not deal with it at all, water included. I wish I was a plant and could just photosynthesize.

I was just diagnosed as pre diabetic and my doctor gave me some medicine to help manage my blood sugar levels but I just don’t know what to do, I have a good amount of safe foods like most chips, crackers, I like chicken tenders and nuggets, pizza stuff like that I like crunchy stuff for the most part which makes it really hard for me to like fruits or vegetables sense they’re really mushy and I don’t really know what to do about being pre diabetic and I’m freaking out a little because I didn’t even really think I ate a lot of sugary things like I’ll have a little sweet treat here and there and I do drink a couple sodas a day but I dunno I’m just worried

I'm autistic and I have ARFID (duh) and I am having a hard time with meals lately. I am really eager to cook and try new foods all the time. Food usually doesn't repulse me, I actually really want to try so many new things that I think would be delicious.

The problem is that it never tastes how I imagine and the texture isn't what I expected and it ends up grossing me out. I can never take more than a a few bites. I feel a bit cursed sometimes, like there's so much I want to enjoy, but it never works out, like my tastes/senses are just messed up. It doesn't work out and I go back to my safe foods, which are snacks, not meals.

I love to cook, but I usually just end up giving the food to my family because I can't eat it. It makes me really sad that I can't get myself to enjoy things that seem so awesome.

Would love to hear if anyone relates to this. ARFID sucks.

When I was little, all of my memories of mealtimes are really traumatic. Crying and shouting, forcing me to go hungry, horrible textures and no effort to find a middle ground with me. I would sob through mouthfuls of meals I found truly disgusting most days.

I hated all meat except processed sandwich slices, I hated mash (especially the cooked type on shepherds pie or cottage pie which for some reason my family made ALL the time), I hated vegetables. I would refuse to touch or eat any seafood except seafood sticks and fish fingers, if we got fish and chips I would order battered sausage instead.

I also really hated cake and most sweets too, which was easier because there was no pushback. I find sweets and most desserts insanely sickly. I used to have a tray bake flapjack with candles in it for my birthday (no idea why I don't find flapjack sickly!). I absolutely despise coffee and even the smell of it to this day.

As a teenager I flipped through the same meals over and over - Quorn wraps because the texture wasn't unpredictable like with real meat, ham toasties with no cheese because I didn't like it, and fajitas with no vegetables except lettuce. I remember eating a lot of plain tortillas as a snack or just toast.

When I was 18 (ten years ago), I met my partner who is a chef and he changed my life. He'd make food for me and never get mad at me if I didn't like it or want it. He would tell me every single ingredient and how it was prepared and I could remove anything I wanted. I went vegetarian which removed the stress of turning down 99% of meat offered to me at people's houses.

He spent years preparing mushrooms in different ways every couple of months so there was less pressure. He would boil them before frying them to remove the moisture and reduce sliminess. In the end I realised I will never like chestnut mushrooms and that's okay! But I found out I was fine with oyster mushrooms specifically, and no other type. I would never have known this if not for his patience and care.

It turns out I liked way more foods than I thought, and that the way my food was being prepared repeatedly in the same way I didn't like and getting exactly the same results was exacerbating things.

I don't know if this would count as ARFID because I know some people's experiences are so severe. I'd never even heard the term "safe food" until I was in my early twenties, so there was no education on it. I finally got diagnosed with autism 2 years ago.

Sometimes I go through phases where I can only eat the same meals again and it makes me really sad, it's a specific brand of microwave pasta and I have to eat it every night for weeks, and I struggle a lot with breakfast and lunch. I can't even think of what I eat for breakfast, and it's usually just toast for lunch in these periods, and I know it malnourishes me but there isn't anything else I can do when I'm really stressed and burned out. I'm not even very tolerant to gluten or dairy so it hurts my stomach too.

So I feel like if I had it, I'm mostly recovered, but I have huge blips here and there - is that a thing? Do I still have ARFID but in "recovery" or something? I eat extremely adventurously now when I'm not in those phases. Curries, sushi, hotpot, summer rolls, teokbokki, spicy food (!!!), etc.

I feel sad because I'm vegetarian and I would love to go vegan like my partner, but I can't. It doesn't make sense to people outside of our relationship because they see me eating such varied and interesting food all of the time, but they don't know that there will be at least a month spread across the year where I can only tolerate my safe foods which are just not vegan. And they say to try a different brand, or to make a vegan version, but it feels like they just don't get it. It has to be that one brand, exactly how I've always prepared it, or I would starve.

P.S. once I unfortunately I told a friend that my least favourite food was cottage pie and she "surprised me" by making her vegetarian version of it that was "way better". I surprised her by sitting there in absolute disgust, saying absolutely nothing complementary and leaving 80% of the dish I hadn't forced down completely untouched. Lesson learnt lol 😆