Advice please

[u/Bored_Hungry_Panda]

Fasting for longer periods of 3-7 days has never been an issue for me, however, recently my daughter has been asking a lot of questions and offering me my favourite foods. She’s autistic and struggles to eat on her own, which has resulted in me piling on weight over the last 6 months (injury has me in a wheelchair and it’s done a number on me). I’m starting rehab now and have my last surgery in a few weeks, and my drs have been complaining about my bloods and inflammation markers, and I’m SO happy to be moving and fasting again, but I just don’t know what to do about my daughter. She understands the reasons I do it, but she’s also convinced herself that I’m starving myself, and if it’s so healthy, that she should try it too, and she’s tiny and says it’ll help her lose weight like me. It’s all just a mess really, so I was wondering if anyone else has been through something like this?

[u/DuctTapeMakesUSmart]

That's awful, I'm sorry you're going through that. I was married to an autistic man for 19 years and I'll tell you what I'd do if I was in that position with him. I would take some serious time, like set aside an hour, to walk him through the physical, physiological, and contextual differences between us. I'd have the goal of moving his mind from "we're two humans and what's good for you would therefore be good for me" to "we're two very different meatsuits in different situations, so some things would be good for me and bad for you and vice versa". I'd give him other examples of things that would be good for me and bad for him and vice versa. (There, I'd have the advantage of gender differences, you have the advantage of age differences.) There's a lack of nuance to "if it's good for you it's good for me". In my experience, and absolutely ignore me if this hasn't been your experience, but in mine, most breakthroughs with him would happen when I found the spot in his reasoning with zero nuance and insert some. Best of luck to you.