There are a lot of myths about autism and eating disorders out there. Some of these myths are obvious – for example, that you need to be “underweight” to have an eating disorder, that only teenage girls struggle with eating disorders, and that autistic people only like bland food.

However, most of the myths are not so obvious. These are the myths that many people are convinced are the absolute truth. And when we don’t see another way, well, then we literally get in our own way!

If you’ve participated in any of my courses, whether this is my Autistically ED-Free Academy, extreme hunger course, or any of my coaching programs, you know how passionate I am about shifting limiting beliefs, that is to say, taking the stories that are no longer serving us and transforming them into the story we actually want to be part of. Limiting beliefs (which are basically limiting stories) are self-fulfilling prophecies. What this means is that the story we tell ourselves about what we are capable of (or in this case, not capable of) is the story that narrates our life.

And because I want to help you write an empowering story – the story in which you are living your unique version of freedom from an eating disorder as an autistic person – I wrote this post to debunk the following 3 myths I hear as an autistic ED recovery coach:

1. It’s harder for an autistic person to recover from an eating disorder
2. You can’t diagnose someone with autism if they have an active eating disorder
3. Autistic people can’t eat intuitively

Obviously, we have a lot to get into, so let’s dive in!

Myth #1: It’s harder for an autistic person to recover from an eating disorder

Let me start by asking: According to who? The truth is that it’s only harder if you’re trying to fit a mold not created for you. Traditional treatment models tend to focus on “normalizing” eating behaviors, assuming neurotypical sensory processing and executive functioning abilities. Well, this doesn’t just make recovery discovery hard – it makes it impossible!

By contrast, when you invite curiosity to what freedom looks like for YOU as a unique individual (or, if you’re reading this as a caregiver, your loved one), the path paves itself. Nothing is “harder” because you create something that has never been created before. This is your own, unique path to freedom; one that honors your sensory sensitivities, need for predictability and routine, PDA (pathological demand avoidance, or rather, pervasive drive for autonomy) and all the other traits that make you the unique human that you are.

Unfortunately, because autistic traits often manifest as “ED behaviors,” many autistic people are traumatized by traditional treatment approaches. Their requests are written off as “the eating disorder talking” and they are labeled as “defiant” and “manipulative” when they push back against the “protocol.” What’s more is that the possibility of an individual even being autistic tends to be disregarded entirely, which leads us to myth number 2.

Myth #2: You can’t diagnose someone with autism if they have an active eating disorder

To be fair, I understand where this conviction comes from – because the truth of the matter is that “ED behaviors” (especially anorexia behaviors) often mimic autistic traits. After all, I have yet to meet someone with anorexia that doesn’t follow rituals and routines, prefer predictability, panic when the plans change, or is so restless that they constantly want to move!

That being said, many clinicians claim that you cannot diagnose someone with autism while they have an active eating disorder because the traits could just be “symptoms” of the ED. Honestly though, this is the biggest load of BS, because, excuse me, but have you ever heard of reflecting on someone’s childhood? Reflecting on the person they were before the ED? Anyone with a proper understanding of neurodivergence (better yet: lived experience) will be able to differentiate between temporary eating adaptations related to malnutrition and lifelong behavioral patterns.

Now, you may ask: but what if the autistic traits weren’t there before the eating disorder? This is yet another myth! What’s actually happening is that the traits were always there, but they were either masked and/or they took on a different manifestation during the ED. Take rigid mealtimes, for example. Someone may not have had rigid mealtimes before their ED, but the underlying need for structure was always present – it just found a new way to express itself. If you want to dive deeper into this topic, check out my post What if My Autistic Traits Weren’t There Before My Eating Disorder?

Myth #3: Autistic people can’t eat intuitively

The third and final myth we’re going to be debunking is quite a big one, and that is the myth that autistic people can’t eat intuitively. Not only is this topic very significant to understand for neurodiversity-affirming ED recovery, but as you can imagine, it’s also very nuanced. For this reason, I write extensively about intuitive eating for autism and how to create your unique version of food freedom in my book How to Get Out of Quasi Recovery, so I thought it would be fun to give you a preview of the audiobook by sharing two chapters! Below are Chapter 31: How do I eat without a meal plan? and Chapter 32: Freedom Eating, which is basically the term I came up with to replace intuitive eating for neurodivergent people! So if you like what you read and you want to learn how to create your own version of freedom eating with practical tools and lived experience guidance, grab your copy ofHow to Get Out of Quasi Recovery and the accompanying Discovery Workbook at livlabelfreebooks.com! Of course, if you want even more support on your autistically ED-free journey, schedule a discovery call with me for 1-1 coaching here. And now, without further ado, into the book preview!

Chapter 31: How Do I Eat Without a Meal Plan?

A common question I receive from individuals in recovery is “How do I eat without a meal plan?” My response: Who says you have to? Chasing a prescribed definition of food freedom is yet another one of those endeavors in which we tend to lose our way by looking for a map. A common misconception is that you can only call yourself a true “intuitive eater” once you can eat like the influencers who claim to perfectly honor their hunger and fullness cues. When I was recovering from my own food struggles, I was under the impression (or rather, delusion) that food freedom was the equivalent of being so spontaneous around food that all structure could be thrown out the window. Yet there I was, clinging to my meal plan for dear life because I couldn’t fathom how I could ever fulfill the expectations of intuitive eating.

I believe the confusion (and perception of failure) in achieving food freedom lies in the fact that intuitive eating – which, in its purest form, aligns eating behaviors with one’s unique intuition – has been turned into a label itself. In their 1995 book Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch coined this term and created what they called a “revolutionary program that works,” outlining ten principles of intuitive eating. These include rejecting the diet mentality, honoring your hunger, and feeling your fullness, among others.

When my eating disorder started, I simply didn’t feel hungry – that was part of the reason I began restricting. At the time, I believed a lack of hunger meant my body didn’t need food; why else wouldn’t it signal hunger to me? It wasn’t until years later that I discovered how a lack of interoceptive awareness and hyperactivation of the sympathetic nervous system can dampen biological cues.

Interoception, also known as the eighth sense, is your body’s inner thermostat. It helps you monitor your internal state, balancing the need for change with the need to stay the same. In need of food? Hunger cues are sent out. Too hot? You get an urge to take off that fuzzy sweater. Bladder full? Gosh, I really should get up to pee…

Many neurodivergent people lack interoceptive awareness, making the advice to “honor your hunger” and “feel your fullness” quite ableist. While I’m sure Evelyn and Elyse have only the best intentions and the appreciation they have received is well deserved, it’s important to remember that no one approach – no matter how revolutionary – works for everyone.

Aside from those of us lacking interoceptive awareness, most people develop eating disorders as an adaptive response to stress. As explained in chapter 22, perceived danger activates the sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for fight-or-flight mode. When you’re in a sympathetic state, all of your energy is directed to the bodily systems that are most likely to help you escape danger. Your heart rate speeds up to deliver more oxygen to your muscles, your pupils dilate to improve vision, and you may feel antsy and restless as your body prepares to run away. Because digestion – an energetically costly process – would lessen your chances of survival in the short term, the body shuts off signals that support eating and feeding behaviors. If you were being chased by a tiger, your body’s last priority would be to ponder whether you should pause and grab a snack!

The combination of interoceptive difficulties and chronic overactivation of the stress response is common in individuals who are neurodivergent and/or struggling with disordered eating. Therefore, the expectation that you should sense and respond to hunger and fullness may cause heightened stress, which obviously makes attunement to your bodily cues even more inaccessible. In this sense, “intuitive eating” becomes counterintuitive, and your endeavor to achieve the state of “intuitive eater” is like trying to play tennis with a golf club – you’re making the game much more difficult than it has to be.

There’s a lot of debate around meal plans in eating disorder recovery. Most treatment facilities say they’re a stepping stone to healthy eating patterns, while other people say they’re a form of restriction. As with everything, meal plans can be both. The danger in making any claims regarding meal plans lies in the lack of nuance. For me, having a meal plan at the start of my recovery journey was incredibly helpful. It provided me with structure, which satisfied my autistic desire for predictability and routine while simultaneously supporting my nourishment back to health. But when extreme hunger kicked in and my body demanded much more than my meal plan, it became a barrier to full food freedom. So where do we draw the line?

The question of whether someone “should” have a meal plan or not is a pointless one. Because there’s no single way to find freedom, using words rooted in judgment such as “should” and “need” works in opposition to the intention behind them. A more helpful question is: How do I want to eat and what tools will help me get there? At one point, the meal plan was a tool for me. Down the line, it became an obstacle – just like the eating disorder once served a purpose and now no longer does.

The essence of life is impermanence. Nothing is ever set in stone. So why try to drill contradictory opinions about meal plans into the wall? There needn’t be a drill because there is no wall. The path to freedom knows no bounds, which is precisely where the desire for a plan enters the picture.

Chapter 32: Freedom Eating

You cannot have freedom without constraints. In a sense, the popularized method of intuitive eating is a meal plan in and of itself. (Maybe this is just my version of semantic entertainment, but technically, anything involving food and an approach to said food could be considered a “meal plan”...but I digress!) Someone who relies on a meal plan because they are too disconnected from their body’s internal cues may be considered an intuitive eater in their own right because they’re using awareness of themselves to eat in a way in which they stay nourished. Food freedom doesn’t have a look. Some may rely on tummy rumbles, others may depend more on structure. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way – there’s only your way.

Although I obviously cannot provide you with a pamphlet on how to find your way, I can offer insights based on my own experience with food and eating. To properly understand where I stand now – and why I consider myself an intuitive eater – it may be helpful to backtrack a bit.

Growing up, I was a careless eater. Picky, yes, but I never thought twice about whether food would make me gain weight or if it would make my pants (for all my UK readers: trousers) feel tight. For ten years straight (okay, minus the years I was a baby and ate puréed food), my diet consisted of sugary cereal, bagels with cream cheese, boxed macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, and chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. I never received comments about what I ate, which can probably be attributed to my naturally fast metabolism. I cannot even imagine what my childhood might have been like had I eaten that type of diet while inhabiting a larger body.

My dependence on what society has labeled as “junk food” was sidelined the moment I started learning about health and nutrition at age eleven. I swapped all my usuals for what I’d learned was “healthy” and I created an exercise regimen to achieve the “recommended” number of daily movement minutes. Little did I know that my bright and shiny special interest would become so maladaptive that it nearly killed me. Within a year of starting my new life – one where I believed my behaviors perfectly fulfilled my purpose of being healthy – I was admitted to the hospital with a dangerously low heart rate. On that same day I was given a meal plan, which became a new manifestation of that purpose for the next seven years.

One of the greatest misconceptions about eating disorders is that they’re about food and bodies. Well of course they’re about food and bodies, but only because food and bodies are tangible entities through which mental transcendence into the eating disorder story becomes possible. On a surface level, my latching onto a meal plan may have appeared as a form of food restriction, but it went much deeper than that. I was living an anorexic existence so that I didn’t have to face the endless possibilities that accompany living without a map.

It was only when I claimed the permission to ask how I wanted to live the rest of my life that I could be honest. Even when I was physically healthy, my soul was deprived of being all that I could be. I hadn’t come this far and endured all this hardship and trauma to remain shackled to a piece of paper with carb counts, fat grams, and protein goals. As an autistic person, I knew I would always thrive on structure to some degree, but I also knew that this structure could encompass vastly more freedom. While doing the exercise from chapter 25, I realized my intuition had been there all along – it was now up to me to trust it.

Even though I counted calories and weighed food throughout a majority of my eating disorder, most of the restriction was intuitive. Measured or not, I knew exactly what I had to eat to feel just barely full and how much I had to exercise to exhaust myself just enough not to collapse. The constant mental hunger was torturous, but my obsession with recipes and food photos satisfied me just enough to make it manageable.

I knew how to intuitively maintain my eating disorder, so why shouldn’t I also intuitively be able to maintain my healthy self? Perhaps it was the very fear of maintaining health that caused me to cling to an external eating plan; if I screwed up, I didn’t have to blame myself. But what if this wasn’t about blame? What if I could simply explore – perhaps even have fun (!) – as I learned to align my intake and movement with my body’s unique signals? Deep down, I knew I could do it. It was about whether or not I was willing to jump into the unknown to make it happen.

I kept my structure in place but practiced eating at slightly different times. As this became easier, I switched foods between mealtimes to provide my mind with evidence that food isn’t processed differently depending on the time of day. Gradually, I allowed more freedom to creep in. I went out to eat and was pleasantly surprised to find that the cloud of anxious thoughts – the cloud filled with worries about how I was going to “balance out” the chaos of what I had just eaten or was going to eat – was gone. Before I knew it, I was that intuitive eater I previously believed I never could be.

Just like recovery doesn’t “work,” intuitive eating isn’t a one-and-done solution. It’s because these labels will not save you; only you can save you. Only you can walk the path of discovery and invite curiosity to the signals of your being. As I learned that my body was a clever cookie and I began to trust its ever-changing needs, I also acknowledged the fact that times of stress caused confusion. It was in such times that my intuitive glasses became cloudy, and falling back on an eating structure acted as temporary lenses. Don’t get me wrong, I was often frustrated when this happened. But by staying humble and open, I accepted that, like everything, eating was impermanent.

To this day, I follow a rough eating structure – but don’t we all? I eat when I’m hungry and have learned what sensations align with wanting to stop. And yes, there’s a very deliberate reason I’m not using the word “full.” But before we get to that, it’s worth unpacking the definition of hunger.

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