5 minute read
(sensory seeking, dopamine seeking, emotional overwhelm, mental health, food shame, sugar addiction, emotional eating, accessibility, sensory processing, chronic stress, nervous system regulation)
People talk a lot about autistic people having “safe foods.”
And yes, that's a real thing.
But autism and food are a lot more complicated than a list of beige foods we're willing to eat. For some of us, autistic food traits don't show up as restriction at all. They show up as binge eating — a topic that gets far less attention, despite how many autistic people struggle with it.
What they don’t talk about is hiding wrappers at the bottom of the garbage can so nobody sees them.
Or waiting until everyone leaves the house before eating everything you secretly bought for yourself.
Or feeling so overwhelmed by existence itself that sugar becomes less of a craving and more of a life raft.
I’ve been binge eating for most of my life.
Not in the casual “I ate too much ice cream” way people joke about. I mean the kind where eating feels compulsive. Urgent. Necessary. The kind where your brain locks onto sugar like it’s medicine.
And honestly, maybe part of it is.
Because when you’re autistic and living in a world that constantly overstimulates, confuses, exhausts, and dysregulates you, your nervous system starts searching for relief anywhere it can find it.
For me, that relief is sugar.
Sugar gives me dopamine.
Sugar gives me comfort.
Sugar gives me a brief moment where my brain feels quieter, softer, more manageable.
The problem is that the relief never lasts. Binging on sugar results in perpetually increasing pant sizes and blood sugar levels that flirt with diabetes.
But I keep chasing it.
And eventually, I find myself hoarding food and eating in secret and restricting calories the next day to “make up for it.” I promise myself I will stop. Then I binge again the second life becomes too loud, too demanding, too emotionally indescribable.
That’s part of the problem, actually.
I still don’t have words for the feeling I’m trying to escape.
It’s not sadness exactly. Not anxiety exactly. Not stress exactly.
It’s just… too much.
And I think a lot of autistic people know exactly what I mean.
Research increasingly shows that autistic people are significantly more likely to develop eating disorders than non-autistic people. Some studies have found particularly strong overlaps between autism and disorders involving restriction, compulsive eating, and rigid food-related behaviours.
About 15 years ago, I finally worked up the courage to ask for help.
I was admitted into a publicly funded binge eating disorder program.
The problem was that it was group therapy.
I attended one session and left feeling worse.
Not because the people there were unkind. They weren’t. But sitting in a room full of strangers, being perceived, expected to speak, emotionally exposed in a group setting — it amplified whatever unbearable feeling already existed inside me.
So I never went back.
And honestly, I think this is another thing that gets missed with autistic adults — especially autistic women.
A treatment being “available” does not necessarily mean it is accessible.
Recently, I started taking a GLP-1 medication.
And yes, I’m less hungry.
But the sugar cravings are still there.
Because I’m starting to realize that for me, this was never just about hunger.
It was about regulation.
Dopamine.
Comfort.
Stimulation.
Relief.
You can suppress appetite, but that doesn’t automatically heal a nervous system that has spent a lifetime trying to survive itself.
I don’t have a neat ending for this post. I’m not writing from the other side of recovery with a list of inspirational lessons.
I’m writing this from the middle of it.
But I do know this:
A lot of autistic people are carrying profound shame around food and eating. And many of us developed these behaviours long before we had the language to understand autism, sensory regulation, dopamine seeking, burnout, or emotional overwhelm.
Sometimes what looks like “lack of discipline” is actually a nervous system trying desperately to cope.
And maybe understanding that is a good, compassionate place to start.
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