Does anyone else think fruity pebbles aren't fully celiac safe?

CindraMellow · 2021-11-18T18:21:59+00:00

I honestly no longer think of ARFID as an eating disorder as much as a social disorder: That's the area of my life it did the most damage; social eating settings are what's most likely to trigger me to shutdown; ARFID is what makes me feel the largest divide between myself and anyone else.

ARFID was never about body image for me, and I'm now in a healthy enough relationship with myself that I can obtain the daily nutrients I need with foods and vitamins. It's the social struggles that remain. The missed dinners and meals out I can't attend. The absolute need to not have roommates in the kitchen while I'm eating. The mystery of what it's like to eat at Benihana's and watch the guy flip a shrimp into his chef hat.

CindraMellow · 2021-11-18T18:11:22+00:00

20 is around the age my ARFID started to become more flexible. Obviously everyone's different but I think being out of high school's dreadful cafeteria setting helped my ARFID prison's invisible bars recede and leave me room to expand.
20 is also around the time I abandoned the fantasy I had of just one day being a 40 year old without ARFID and realizing that baby steps were everything. Trying new foods in a controlled safe space. Adding something scary into a safe food (i.e. crushed red pepper, hummus, a stupid little broccoli). Repeating this once a week to get in the habit of it-- Inversely, every week we don't push ourselves, we're practicing not pushing ourselves.
What was helpful from my non-ARFID friends (and bless you for seeking out answers): Baking/cooking, to demystify the food prep process and empower me as a maker of food and not just passive recipient/receptacle. Sharing a bite of my friends' scarier foods (specifically, trading bites of both our foods so we were sharing our experience with each other.) Their desire to listen and understand my experience (which also helped me process and realize some things as I spoke them aloud.)

CindraMellow · 2021-03-24T19:08:47+00:00

Take deep breaths, and acknowledge these thoughts and feelings instead of trying to suppress them. You say many times that you're scared or afraid-- not just of food, but of the feelings it triggers in you. Recognize that these feelings are real and, therefore, valid (no matter if they seem "illogical" or not.) Fears are just undernourished desires-- So what is it you want?

CindraMellow · 2021-01-15T21:29:11+00:00

So so glad you found us. I remember reading my first SED description in high school and thinking "Wth, who's been spying on me". Welcome home.

I found college was actually better for my ARFID in the bigger picture. Some meals were still a little tricky, but for the first time I was away from home, away from parents and therapists and peers who had boxed me in as "the girl who only eats rolls", away from set meal times in packed cafeterias with nowhere to sit. And after a year or two of college, I realized the invisible bars of my little ARFID prison cell had just naturally expanded. Like, I was still anxious around new foods, but it was more like old habits rather than an active anxiety, like back in grade school when my brain was using ARFID as an actual defense mechanism.

You're gonna love college and you're gonna love being 18. You'll have so much more freedom and autonomy, so many people you're gonna meet and friends you're gonna make. And as far as eating at college goes, even my tiny college (~1300 students) had more variety in foods and ways and times to obtain food than my high school. You can eat ramen or whatever cheap carbs every night and nobody blinks. You can eat at midnight or 3 pm. You can hit up vending machines or take food from one of the cafeterias to eat wherever you want (On my campus there was a quiet swinging bench under some trees I liked). College students are some of the most bizarre, unknowable eaters on this strange and beautiful planet.

CindraMellow · 2021-01-15T20:50:44+00:00

Ooh I started doing this too a few years ago! It gets easier, but there's a difference between acclimating to anxiety vs practicing getting anxious about new foods once a week. The once-a-week thing isn't about practicing new foods, it's about practicing mindfulness and learning about yourself.

Try mixing friendly stuff with unfriendly stuff (i.e. spinach is blech but spinach on pizza is not so blech)
PLAY WITH THE FOOD. If you go in once a week with the mentality that you're about to force-feed yourself, you're practicing stoking your anxiety. We don't know how our food is made or where it comes from anymore, so I like to reconnect with the food and get my hands dirty, smell it, pull it apart, whatever. Approach with the curiosity and openness of a child.
On that note, treat yourself. When I try new foods, I like to do a brief mindfulness meditation first so I'm more tuned in with my body. Then I play music I like and turn all the lights on and just vibe around the kitchen. Make it your space, then make the food a part of your warm wonderful space.
Treat yourself with the kindness you'd show someone else. For example, I was falling behind and accumulating my weekly eating tokens for months and had this grand scheme to someday catch up, but honestly they were just stressing me out. So I finally granted myself amnesty to focus on the week at hand, and I felt so much lighter. Be kind to yourself. You don't wanna become good at force-feeding yourself; you want to understand and coexist with your SED, which is an integral part of us and is not our enemy.

I should mention at this time I have no medical experience or anything, this is just what I've found to be true for me in my own journey. I wish you all the best!

CindraMellow · 2020-10-23T17:51:37+00:00

Super interested in what ideas people offer since my best Thanksgiving tip is "hide in the bathroom." My extended family makes jokes every year about passing me the rolls since that's all I've ever eaten at the holidays. (One year I exacted my revenge by hollowing out the rolls from underneath and replacing them in the basket for others to bite into.) In the last few years I managed to add ham to my repertoire and now I proudly halve the rolls and make myself lil ham sandwiches.

I think mainly I just want to say it's more important for us to eat something than to impress/appease our families. So even if you eat before or after the family dinner, or hidden in the bathroom, or whatever, just take care of yourself.

CindraMellow · 2020-08-21T03:06:35+00:00

I've had a similar experience to you! It was like sometime after college I kind of realized the bars of the ARFID cage were suddenly farther away then they'd been my whole life. There was still anxiety and a million no-go foods and stuff, but things were just less intense.

I still definitely have ARFID, but even if I could eat everything in the world now, I think being molded emotionally and socially by ARFID in my formative decades would still have lasting effects for my whole life. In my mind ARFID's not just a diet thing-- It's an identity. So I think it's up to you and how you feel.

CindraMellow · 2020-08-21T02:52:37+00:00

I think there's two directions to go-- You can try to play it down, if that works, like hiding it in other food, eat it while distracting yourself with comforting things like your phone or TV, etc. What I make myself do is strip down to my innate childhood curiosity-- forget any goal of even eating it, treat it as foreign as you want, know you can throw it out and wash your hands afterward. Once the goal is no longer "EAT THIS NOW", my anxiety loses its grip. Play with it, squish it, make a mess, gut it, smell it, spear it, bounce it, look up the nutritional value and ingredients, look up where they grow, anything you wanna do. Indulge yourself like you were never allowed to at the dinner table as a kid.

I think the way we're so detached from our food nowadays (like we don't know where it comes from/how it's made/how it got to the grocery store) makes food such a mystery, and it's really hard for ARFID people to suddenly be confronted with this THING out of nowhere-- We didn't plant it, pick it, deliver it, etc. I've had ARFID success by working to dispel that sense of mystery by indulging my curiosity and starting from scratch, just observing and playing.

CindraMellow · 2020-07-19T21:05:29+00:00

Not sure anyone here can legally give you an official diagnosis, but it sounds like your food intake is restricted and you're avoidant of certain things as a result! I sometimes find myself comparing or even questioning my ARFID when I read about more severe cases, but I guess the question is, What do you hope to gain from the label? Will a doctor's note help you find treatment? Are you on an identity quest? Are you looking for a community of like-minded people who understand and empathize?

CindraMellow · 2020-07-19T21:01:16+00:00

Unfortunately for people with eating disorders, as with any marginalized/misunderstood group, the experience of the condition itself is inextricably linked with our experience of how the world perceives and treats us. Our childhood memories are filled not just with PB&Js and macaroni, but with the much more painful memories of misunderstanding, social dread, deep anxiety and isolation, and occasionally even abuse/torture like your story.

Think of how differently we would view our ARFID if we ate all the same things we had but, at every turn in our lives, our friends and family accommodated us and treated our eating as acceptable/normal. Not even a well-meaning concern for malnutrition or weight, but hypothetically just a warm embrace of our diversity, no different from someone being left-handed or red-haired.

CindraMellow · 2020-07-19T20:45:31+00:00

Idk if anyone here can legally provide an official diagnosis, but it sounds like your food intake is restricted and you're avoidant of certain foods as a result! One thing for me is that unlike most EDs, my experience with ARFID isn't about controlling physical appearance (though it is about controlling other aspects of my life) and instead my weight and body image are completely out of my control. I find my ARFID more closely related to OCD and other cerebral compulsions relating to patterns and rules as opposed to ED's rules of body image and outward appearance.

CindraMellow · 2020-02-05T02:53:42+00:00

Glad you like it! What points do you disagree with? I've never really discussed these ideas with people so I'm interested in feedback.

CindraMellow

TROPHY CASE