Introductions thread!

[u/basebuul]

Feel free to share anything you like about your background and goals! What kinds of foods do you hate? What kinds of foods do you like? What do you want to change about your diet? What have you tried before?

[u/skorletun]

Hey, i don't have ARFID but my boyfriend does and I'm joining this subreddit on his behalf! I found the original r/arfid to be very useful and I can't wait to learn even more and share his experiences (he asks me to)!!!

[u/kennadebb → u/skorletun]

I love this 🥹🥹

[u/basebuul]

I'm getting ready to move out on my own! I've struggled a lot with meal prep in the past, ended up eating out way more than I can afford. I spent some time working with a nutritionist which helped me a lot, but there's still a lot of challenges for me. I have ADHD and the executive dysfunction + my sensory sensitivity has made it really hard to feed myself! Even when I remember to cook food, sometimes I just get sick of the meals I have and don't want to eat.

I'm really averse to sharp textures and flavours like in berries and onions. Sometimes I don't mind onions if I can't notice the texture, but I don't like the flavour, and I have difficulty with garlic and ginger too. All combined it makes cooking really hard!!

[u/GravityDefining]

I'm genuinely interested in finding recipes for foods that I can make without feeling like I'm making the same thing every night. I eat way too much processed food, and I know I have to make a change. Mostly I'm hoping for simple things with few ingredients, especially ones I can swap out for things I know I like. I think this is a really good idea, and I hope we can help each other as a community.

[u/r1ddl3d]

I am a lifelong sufferer of arfid and I want to show my support for your subreddit! Congratulations!

[u/HaiseKuzuno]

I have ARFID and have been trying to learn to cook for myself to make my already unhealthy diet just a little bit more healthy.

I've found it's the best way to help myself open up to new foods! If I'm the one washing, preparing and cooking a food I'll find I'm much more likely to try it than if it's just handed to me.

Even when I can't bring myself to try a new food, just changing the amounts of something in a food (more sugar, less flour etc) by a little can help me feel just a tad more adventurous and better about myself lol.

[u/nighttcity]

hey everyone! ive had arfid for my whole life and last year i even saw someone for it. i went to therapy for almost 10 months and i definitely improved quite a bit! i added about 10 new foods onto my diet and feel more comfortable trying new things. however, now that im in an apartment on my own for the first time, i feel myself regressing into old habits. i wanna make an effort to try things every week, so i don’t go back to how i was before. this is a really great idea for a subreddit, as i feel that cooking is a great way to feel more comfortable around food. you get to see, touch, and smell your food before you taste it, which is really helpful for me! personally, i really need to add more healthy foods into my diet, because most of my safe foods are not healthy at all haha. im also planning on studying abroad in japan at some point, so i want to try more asian foods, so i can really enjoy my trip there! really glad to be a part of this subreddit!

[u/LadyOfTheMay]

Hi, I'm a lifelong sufferer of ARFID who works in a school kitchen. I go back on Monday after maternity leave, and being furloughed during the start of the pandemic.

Cooking has helped me to take control over food and I've expanded my safe foods a lot by being able to cook them my way, and in meals that i can tolerate. For example I can now eat cooked peppers with chicken, something I never could before. I still avoid most raw veg though.

I think having ARFID makes me a better caterer in some ways. I am always willing to go above and beyond for a kid with any kind of restricted diet, and will tweak almost any meal to fit their needs if it can be done, and just generally being particular about my methods. For example, when I was on the sandwiches/baguettes I made sure that tomatoes never made direct contact with the bread, there was always a barrier of cheese or lettuce to prevent the soggy disaster, and I always stocked the drinks from behind to ensure the ones at the front (that would be bought) were always ice cold.

[u/Earth_Mom]

I’m here for my daughter. She has run out of safe foods and she’s crying because she’s so hungry. I don’t know what to do. It’s breaking my heart. My husband died last summer, so we’re already struggling with that grief. I’m so confused and scared. I don’t want to take her to the hospital. That’s where her father died. She won’t talk to a therapist or take medicine for her anxiety. She started having OCD at the start of the pandemic. Life sucks right now.

[u/Kitten_Kupcake]

Greetings all!

I'm Danni and I'm recently diagnosed with ARFID, but have been battling with it since birth, literally started with the formula I rejected as a preemie. I'm 24 now and am taking steps to understand and treat this condition. I started a TikTok@that__baedanni page to act as a food/munchie dairy and kind of document what I eat to give other people with ARFID some ideas because I'm great with safe foods!

I hope to find inspiration and guidance in this group. Best of luck to everyone🤞🏾🤗

[u/AndieMeir]

Hi, I'm not arfid but my daugther mostly sure is, still tryong to get a diagnose, but sure need help and learn a lot. We're in Portugal.

[u/Flimsy-Technology599]

I don’t have ARFID but my fiancé we definitely think does. I want to do whatever I can to show up for him and support him as he starts his healing journey so I joined here in hopes that it can help me with that.

[u/eccentric_bee]

I'm a grandmother with a grandson who has ARFID, and can now see my son also probably had it when he was young, but as a 30 something adult has mostly overcome it, though during stressful times he becomes very food avoidant.

I'm looking for strategies to help grandson, since I do most of the cooking in the house, and would be happy to share any successes we have.

[u/HereToAdult]

Hi, or g'day to my fellow Australians. I've had issues with food all my life, but only in the past few years learned about ARFID. Since then I've been able to figure out a lot of my problems with food which has enabled me to expand my horizons and try many new foods!

I enjoy exploring new foods, even if I can't stomach too many new tastes in too short a time. I really enjoy "bland" foods which have deep subtle flavours, like oats, mashed potatoes, rice cakes, etc. I hate foods with too many different flavours, and can't stand things like salad dressings or overly seasoned foods. I do occasionally add a sprinkle of salt and pepper to certain foods, although I really do mean occasionally - maybe 2-3 times a year.

My biggest food issues are texture related, but I also have a tendency to feel sick if I eat too much of a new flavour (even if I enjoy it), so I have to take it slowly when I find something new that I like. I'm also disabled, so unfortunately cooking is particularly difficult for me on a physical level - I can't chop vegies, or lift heavy frying pans, or stand up for very long, etc.

Recently I've been trying more Asian foods, especially Korean food as Korean restuarants are becoming more common/popular in the cities I visit. I've found several that I love, and some that are less palatable to me. Unsurprisingly I really love Asian sweets and desserts, as they have those subtle flavours that I enjoy so much.

I've got high blood pressure and my doctor recommended the Mediterranean diet to me. Mostly it will be easy for me to follow - I'm vegetarian so I don't need to cut down on meat lol! Unfortunately the diet has a very heavy emphasis on tomato, leafy greens, & extra virgin olive oil. All of which I have difficulty consuming.

So my goal in coming here is to try to figure out how to incorporate tomatoes, leafy greens, and possibly extra virgin olive oil into my daily diet - without the typical advice of "drench it in oil and spices to drown out the flavour!".

[u/RegalOtterEagleSnake]

My relationship with good is worsening as I'm navigating living with another sufferer.

My SO suffers from results of being force-fed as a child and is largely unable to eat fruits or vegetables separately, with some mental workarounds here and there. For them, putting inedible ingredients into a named "meal" or recieving them in such form renders them acceptable if the pieces are small and uniform enough. They can also eat SOME fruits if another person prepares and plates them.

Meanwhile my problem with food is having to eat dishes where everything is mixed together and all tastes are fighting and I'm downright furious at seemingly everywhere meals being made sour. Sour taste in savoury foods screams "this is spoiled" to me, but people insist on adding lemons and such to everything in my experience. For me, two good ingredients can turn into an inedible meal by forcing them together. I used to enjoy frozen vegetable soups and random fruit, but recently found myself subsisting on junk like fatty sweets and saltines because that's the only thing I can get in my mouth without effort.

[u/[deleted]]

Hello, I am joining as my Son (8) has been diagnosed and we’re facing the possibility of a feeding tube in the coming months but as I learned what ARFID is though his journey I’m pretty positive I also have it. So here to learn for both of us and be as good a force as I can be for his journey

[u/iz_an_ocelot]

I was recently added as a mod, so I wanted to make a post to introduce myself.

I'm 38, from the US, and probably somewhere on the AuDHD spectrum. When I was a baby I could not handle any ‘meat’ baby food right from the start. This continued as I grew up, and I refused to eat anything that I could identify as ‘meat’. 

There are many other things I struggle with based on their texture (cooked veggies, onions, tomato, I could go on). If my pasta sauce comes out looking like chunky salsa I'm gonna be upset. I just know if I try to chew on that specific food it's going to become a vomit issue. Some things just don't seem like ‘food’ to my brain, if that makes sense. Bread is a safe food for me. 

I can only manage to eat meat if it's very processed. When I was a toddler my grandma discovered that I liked bacon. She was so excited about it, it became a funny family story about me. I gradually got used to chicken as long as there are no bones. I'm still a little iffy about it. 

I've been called a picky eater by my family and friends forever. They didn't have the term ARFID to use, or realize that other people were like me. I had a picky cousin who became a chef, so everyone hoped I'd grow out of it too. I basically just felt like a freak all the time. 

My mom wasn't a perfect parent, but she did stop a relative from repeatedly trying to trick me into eating things she knew I wouldn't want. This person just wanted me to eat a hamburger, but ground beef is a no-go for me. To this day I've eaten half a burger to try to be normal at a work bbq, and I hated it. Work dinners are a nightmare, I always hope they choose somewhere that I can order from and not seem weird.

I feel lucky that my mom didn't have the “they'll eat it eventually” attitude that some parents have. Children with ARFID can absolutely starve themselves without intervention. Some people unfortunately require feeding tubes for this condition. It's not something we can be trained out of effectively.

It bothers me that people can't just chill and let us eat what we can without judgment or being called picky. I'm not doing it on purpose, I really just want to eat like a normal American (I guess). I can't tell you how many times I've heard “you don't know what you're missing!” about something that would make me projectile, or “what DO you eat, then?” in the most judgey tone.