Is rubbish food better than nothing ? So stressed ARFID and ASD

[focusonthenumbers]

Dd (4) has such a rubbish diet. I know I need to listen to her dietician and doctor that all that matters is calories. Not to see any food as good or bad just as calories and to have enough each day but it just feels wrong and I get so stressed 😩

She drinks ice cold baby formula ( 10 oz morning and evening) - they said that’s good as it’s got vitamins etc in. She likes either crunchy hard foods or purées and absolutely everything has to be chilled. So her diet is basically baby purées (only carrot,parsnip apple or mango yogurt ones , smooth plain Greek yogurt, breadsticks, crackers, rich tea biscuits and crisps that’s it. We have to give her a liquid vitamin each day which she hates so much.

Her weight is ok, her bloods are ok but I keep worrying about long term, about her arteries etc as she eats crackers and crisps but the dietician just says don’t worry it’s all calories and that’s what matters . I just wish it wasn’t like this

Until 13 I only ate about 4 foods. I am totally fine. Def afrid never an.

Have you tried peanut butter? Jammed with nutrients.

As someone said to me, what good is worrying about healthy eating if you don't get enough calories to survive. It's blunt, but very true. It's hard to let go of the mum guilt though.

Sounds like she is getting her vegetables/fruit from the baby purées.

As hard as it is I think you need to let go and listen to the dietician. You can’t force someone with ARFID to eat something that they don’t want to.

I have ARFID it’s a process. I’ve had times when it gets better and times when it’s worse. Stress exacerbates it I’ve realised.

Stressing about your child is just going to make you sick. She’s in good hands with the dietician and Dr.

Just focus on having as much fun with your child. The junk food thing may be a phase. My ARFID was junk food when I was a kid then extreme “healthy”eating with when I was a teen.

Sounds fine, you are doing a great job by the sounds of things!

Yep. Crap food is enormously better than no food.
Eating a junk food diet might put her at risk for heart disease etc in middle age.
Eating no food will kill her within weeks.
Don’t worry about clogging her arteries. If she doesn’t eat her body will start breaking down her own tissues, including muscles like the heart, to sustain her.
Calories matter more than micronutrients.

If she is eating something then that’s the main thing, what you don’t want to happen is for that to stop.

Ds is 11 now (diagnosed with autism aged 3) and for the first 5 years of his life (well mostly) he would literally only eat dough balls and tuna sandwiches cut into fingers. That’s it. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. And snacks. Dough balls (those ready made pizza express ones you put in the oven) and tuna sandwiches.

It nearly drove me crazy as I worried so much but the dietician just said don’t make a thing of it. Keep giving him what he will eat and just eat different things yourself and keep offering a tiny piece of what you have. So we’d give him a tuna sandwich (with him on the sofa watching stuff on the iPad as that’s the only way he’d ever eat - table was too confrontational, eye contact etc) and we’d put a small plate of whatever we had next to him. Didn’t even mention it. Gradually (and I do mean over years) he slowly started trying more things and we never made a fuss either way. Just let him eat whatever. And now aged 11 he pretty much eats most things….! Even the odd bit of broccoli and curry…. Or whatever else we could NEVER imagine he would ever eat.

So change is possible. Just go with the flow.

My son is 10, he has ARFID and ASD. It's so hard.
At the moment all he eats is McDonalds fries, half an apples, 4 sticks of carrot and a couple of animal chocolate bars a day. He also has vitamixin sprinkles that we put in apple juice.
His diet is terrible, but food is food. He's normal weight and height at the moment but I still worry everyday about his eating

ARFID is so tricky. But you are absolutely doing the right thing, maintaining intake through use of safe foods. The risk if you listened to the idiots criticising you is that she'd eat even less. I do wonder if I had ARFID as a child: my mum swears blind that as a toddler I survived on milk and bananas...and the bananas had to be fed to me by the right person. It was definitely much more about texture than flavour for me. As an adult, I still have some limitations, but in other ways have become a bit of a foodie. Hang in there.

I've been where you are, though we were living without diagnosis. The judgement around food is the problem here; she's 4! She's not clogging her arteries and some of the attitudes on MN are just bonkers (I keep seeing that fruit has too much sugar for kids, for example). She's actually doing a good job of meeting her nutritional needsfats, carbs, proteins, fruits, vegetables! Your daughter and her dietitian are both telling you what she needsjust listen to them :)

Her diet sounds ok OP, not ideal maybe, but she’s getting plenty of good stuff in, just trust the professionals.

Fwiw I had a complicated childhood, my mum being a bit unable to cope, and my many years younger brother would throw a tantrum every time she dared cook other than junk food (the real full junk food diet, nothing like your LO’s). So she’d panic and he grew up on that until the pre teen years when he started expanding due to peer pressure mostly. He’s a very tall and completely healthy 26yo now, and loves world foods!
Not the same situation exactly I know, but just to reassure you maybe.

Edited to add : definitely more than 1 pack of crisps a day (I couldn’t say how much as I was still young, and she just left those big packs out available for peace, while watching TV. He’s done fine academically as well, really you’ll be fine.

For a restricted diet I don't think that is that bad, as in you have some vitamins and minerals in there, some dairy. I know that it's easy to worry but if she is a healthy weight and her arteries are not going to clog at 4 for eating too many packets of crisps. :)