Strangest Diet Restrictions Ever?

[quote]Sabastian525 wrote:

[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:

[quote]Sabastian525 wrote:
Deception? Really? Did this site become V-Nation while I was gone?

-Sab[/quote]

Sorry, what’s your point?

BBB[/quote]

We’ve resorted to lying to a grown man to force him to eat veggies against his will. That’s the most un-Testosterone thing I’ve ever heard. Besides, the rest of his diet is top tier. Leave the dude alone.

-Sab[/quote]

Someone asked for advice and he got it. There is nothing morally wrong in my book about feeding the guy veg by deceptive means. High functioning autistics/aspergers tend to fixate on certain things or ideas and do not/ cannot deviate from them regardless of how irrational they may be. Calling this ‘un-testosterone’ makes no sense. What is even meant by your concept of ‘un-testosterone’? What would be the ‘testosterone’ thing to do?
I worked with an aspergers kid who would shit himself when he needed to go to the toilet. Was it ‘un-testorone’ of me to remind him that he had to use a bathroom if he wanted to take a crap and that he could not just do it on the spot whenever he liked?

Something that might help is that you try to get him to “get the idea” of trying a new food by himself. He might have a big aversion to anything other people suggest. If that is the case, if you say “You should really eat X” he would instantly disapprove of it just because HE did not come up with it.

Oh and when I read your OP, I thought “What kind of drug is V8” until I figured you ment fruit-juicing ;p

At the risk of trickery, why not try purees? If he eats spaghetti sauce, puree carrots, zucchini, squash, broccoli etc. and add it to the sauce. Same with Mac & Cheese if he eats that. You can add pureed cauliflower to almost any sauce without it affecting the taste, as well as to seasoned mashed potatoes.

[quote]Chushin wrote:
May be a stupid question, but is he in treatment / therapy for the OCD /OCPD? (BTW, they are often found together).

Much progress has been made with such trxt. Is he on any meds? The right SSRI might attentuate his responses.

Then again, if he himself sees no problem…[/quote]

As it is told to me, he is considered “Permanently Disabled” by Washington State and on the GAX program. The way the state handles mental health issues is really bizarre. They don’t seem to pay for much of anything really. His family gets 339$ a month and he has medical coverage, but it’s incredibly limited treatment wise. He’s seen several different psychologists, each of them gives a different recommendation for treatment and most of them contradict each other. He’s not on medication at the moment because in the past he had been put on medications that he had a bad reaction to and two doctors proscribed medications that created some toxic combination that nearly killed him even though they both knew exactly what he was on when they proscribed them to him. He has a tough time trusting Doctors.

They don’t really do anything for him about his OCD/OCPD, his family tries to manage his anxiety issues as best they can and he’s become rather adept at managing them himself. Usually his method of management is by avoidance. Because of the nature of his dietary issues he doesn’t eat out, he doesn’t eat with friends, when he goes to other peoples homes if they aren’t aware of the issues he just turns down offers of food and drink. For family any get together, BBQ’s in the summer and holidays his food has to be prepared for him a certain way, usually he takes care of it, and if not his mother prepares what she knows he likes. Though sometimes they mix things up. At the most recent Thanksgiving we traveled and they seemed to have forgotten about him. He ended up eating less than 8oz of food in a 24 hour period and instead of complaining about it he just. Dealt. He doesn’t really throw fits like some of the Autism spectrum people you see on TV, when he gets nervous or has a panic attack he gets quiet and paces and obviously looks agitated.

In some ways he’s astonishingly intelligent and intuitive, in others (like social interaction) he’s just…blind. The biggest part of the problem is how it’s been portrayed in pop culture, people just don’t understand and if you spend time around him you can tell how much it frustrates him that he can’t be “normal” like other people. As I understand it, when he is doing something repetitive and can’t stop, he KNOWS what he is doing is abnormal, he just can’t stop himself, and when people get angry about it it just increases his own frustration and he tries to avoid interacting with people in the future. He KNOWS its wrong, he KNOWS he should stop, he WANTS to stop. He just can’t. I can’t even imagine how that must feel. I watched him attempt to wash a pan by hand for three hours once. It was clean, I suspect a part of him knew that, but every time he looked at it he would see something that would make him soap up and start scrubbing it again. His family knows not to bother trying to force him to stop. He’ll stop eventually.

In some ways it’s incredibly amusing to watch him watch people interact, in others its sad. He watches people intently, gauging, analyzing, absorbing, and if you spend enough time around him you can see him trying to apply what he’s learned, but it’s just a bit off because it doesn’t come naturally to him like it does to the rest of us.

I know he has lived on his own several times in the past and worked full time jobs. Something always seems to happen to send him home though. My understanding is that he ends up neglecting himself in favor of helping other people.(Allowing homeless people to live on his living room floor etc) They even had to take his food stamps away because he ended up feeding two homeless gentlemen with them instead of himself. That doesn’t really fit with what I know about people in the autism spectrum though. Other times he has confrontations with people that don’t understand his peculiarities and it sours interpersonal relationships.

Note: The state will only pay for him to see a psychologist when it’s time for his 6 month or 1 year “review”. He may or may not see the same pyschologist twice in a row. That is pretty much the extent of his “treatment”. Other than that they do something through Compass Health which seems to only provide mental health evaluation and medication administration. His family is concerned that some asshole is going to have him involuntarily committed to some kind of institution. He doesn’t need an institution, he just needs people around him who are educated. He can live a normal life, just because it’s different than what we experience doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to be given the same chance to live a life.

[quote]dianab wrote:
At the risk of trickery, why not try purees? If he eats spaghetti sauce, puree carrots, zucchini, squash, broccoli etc. and add it to the sauce. Same with Mac & Cheese if he eats that. You can add pureed cauliflower to almost any sauce without it affecting the taste, as well as to seasoned mashed potatoes. [/quote]

That’s a good idea, fits very well with the juicing idea as well. These are the kind of excellent ideas I was looking for thank you :slight_smile:

[quote]
Hell, why not just put superfood into caps? I would think that 4 size ‘OO’ gelcaps would contain a decent size serving.

I suspect that the reason your friend likes the exercise is because it becomes a kind of moving meditation, allowing the brain to calm down, by warrant of focussing its previously-hectic over-activity onto a relatively simple mechanical task.

BBB[/quote]

Well, I didn’t even know about Superfood until it was recommended in this thread. I’m definitely looking into it though. I had taken a break from T-Nation (actually, the internet in general) for a while due to personal RL issues and I only recently returned to do research for my own use. I know from past experience that the people here are generally very well educated, well read and interested in helping other people. I figured if anyone could provide the kind of insight I was looking for I would likely find those people here. I’m not really looking for major mental health advice, just a bit of advice on how to improve his diet a little bit. I know the lack of certain vegetables and minerals in his diet has to be wreaking havoc on his body, that’s been common knowledge since we were in grade school with the food pyramid being shoved down our throats. So if I can find a way to introduce those things in a way that his family can sustain into the future then I might have helped him avoid some medical complications that might improve his quality of life. I can’t be around forever, but maybe together we can have a positive impact on him for years to come.

Edit: Also, I’ll be honest, as you can see from my tag on the left I’ve been reading T-Nation for almost 6 years now. (More than 6 if you count lurking time before I registered for the forums) But I’m still skeptical about buying supplements. I don’t have the kind of income to support it and quite frankly neither do his parents. If I can find a way to introduce raw veggies and stuff that’s a bit easier to budget for and easier to convince them to buy than some of the stuff in the T-Nation Store. I’m really going at this alone and have always used a home gym setup so I don’t have other local gym-going people who use or have used this stuff in the past to verify that it’s legit and worthwhile. I don’t mean to offend people who do use it with great results, I’m just a skeptic by nature I guess.

I did want to thank everyone for their interest, insight and suggestions. I really do appreciate it. I’ll be in and out of T-Nation in the months to come as I design and modify my (and by extension his) workout routines and take advantage of the vast wealth of information gathered here. I’ll stop by the forums periodically to see how things are going or note progress (or failure).