I’ve been thinking about fasting– not in the sense of “considering whether I should do it,” just thinking about the topic– and I think I can now (months after I started thinking about it, yeah) explain why the idea fills me with Nope.
So. Eating, actual meals, regularly, is something I struggle with executive-function-wise. In fact, it’s one of the few situations in which I actually feel… vulnerable / helpless / not-able-to-cope re: being autistic, is when I’ve gotten hungry enough that it impedes my ability to get myself food.
Why does hunger impede my ability to get food.
- physical fatigue/weakness
- on top of executive dysfunction, makes getting up & doing things even harder
- executive function goes down
- makes it harder to stop doing other things & start looking for food
- makes it harder to follow a long series of instructions to get / make food
- sensory issues / need for familiar things goes up
- limits my choices for foods I can eat
- makes it harder to get / make food (going to a noisy store, touching unpleasant textures)
- general emotional fragility
- makes managing my phobia harder
- which may further limit my food choices and may also make cooking & eating take longer
- makes me start fucking crying instead of just going “ew!” when I touch an unpleasant texture, which is not fun
I didn’t used to have as extreme a reaction to low blood sugar as I do now, I think, but… I do now. It affects my mood pretty dramatically, and it also makes me physically weak, a lot faster than I think it should at least.
tl;dr I associate not-eating with meltdowns.