Long days and food

A little under two weeks ago, I was on holiday with my family in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was the end of the afternoon, on what had been a long day. We’d spent some time at the Museum of Childhood, seeing children’s toys down the ages. We’d also seen some street performers taking part in the famous Festival Fringe – including a couple of chaps who juggled firey clubs between themselves whilst one of them was balancing on a ladder and the other balancing on a six foot unicycle. As an armchair juggler, I can tell you it was impressive stuff.

After lunch we’d caught a bus that took as to the Ocean Terminal to see the Royal Yacht Britannia – the former sailing vessel of the British Royal Family.

By late afternoon we were still at the Ocean Terminal, the kids were hungry, and we were on the other side of town from my mother in law’s, where we were staying. We decided to buy the kids their dinner in a restaurant, and that we’d eat later, after the kids were in bed.

My brain was screaming at me – “eat something!”.

I didn’t though – my wife and mother in law were adamant that they weren’t eating at the restaurant, and so my instincts told me that it was best to follow the status quo, rather than potentially appear to be rude.

After we fed the kids, we caught the bus back towards Princes Street, in the vicinity of which we hoped to get a second bus back to the house.

Edinburgh’s roads are all being dug up at the moment in preparation for a new tram system that will be up and running in a couple of years time. We battled the traffic until we were about half way up Leith Walk. Then the bus stopped in road works, and well, didn’t move at all for the next ten minutes. When it then did move, it moved about half a car length each time, often several minutes apart. I felt exhausted and my brain was telling me that I should eat, and that I was a fool for not having eaten with the kids. By now, about half the passengers on the bus had got off and started walking the half mile or so back towards the centre.

I suddenly felt we had to do this too, and in a grumpy and clearly stressed manner told my wife. So we walked. The bus overtook us about half way. Bah.

It took us well over 90 minutes to make the five mile journey back from the Ocean Terminal to my mother in law’s house.

When we got back I collapsed in a chair. I felt dazed and exhausted, and my brain was screaming at me. “You’ve only eaten about 900 calories today! What are you playing at?”. It was at about this time that my wife started talking about dinner again. She wasn’t feeling very hungry. She and my mother in law would have a bit of a salad once the kids were in bed. Would that do me?

NO! It jolly well wouldn’t! I need proper food! I should have eaten at the restaurant!

Now – I don’t know if you are seeing a pattern here yet. My symptoms were all of sensory over-stimulation. It had been a very busy and long day and we had seen and done a lot. My senses had taken in more than they can manage for one day. But my brain was telling me something rather different. It was telling me that the problem was that I needed to eat.

Why might it do this? Well, I think it’s a learnt behaviour that is wide of the mark. I have of course experienced these sensations of feeling dazed and exhausted following busy days my whole life. Long before I learned about Asperger’s, I had to put some sort of a label on why I ended up like that, and what the cause was. I decided that the problem was that I hadn’t eaten or drunk enough over the day, and that my blood sugars were low. From my reading of Wikipedia, I can see that this sort of extrapolation is pretty common in people who think they know what low blood sugars means. At the time I acquired the label, and until very recently, it felt like this scenario fitted very well. After all, the exhaustion would come towards the end of the day, and if I stopped, sat down and ate, then after an hour or so I would feel much better again. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

So, on that day, as on many others, my brain was telling what I thought I knew – that I hadn’t eaten or drunk enough, and now my body was crashing because of it.

Wrong wrong wrong.

The real reason for my feeling dazed and exhausted was simply the AS-related sensory overload that I was experiencing after a full-on day.

It’s interesting to note that despite the way I was feeling, I could have walked miles effortlessly if I had needed to. As it was, we briskly walked a good half a mile up hill to try and outrun the bus, without it feeling a strain.

Of course I feel better after I’ve sat down for a while and eaten some food and drank some water. But it isn’t the food and water that are having the magic effect – it’s the proper rest. I wrote recently how on another family holiday I started to sense how I was over stimulated at the end of each day, and how time was the healer – an hour or ninety minutes restored me. Well, this is the same thing.

The problem is that I’ve been wrongly viewing my feelings of exhaustion as a signal to eat for many years, and in that time I’ve put on quite a lot of weight.

And do you know the real big give away that should have told me long ago that the problem wasn’t hunger? I frequently don’t feel hungry even when my brain is telling me that I need to stop and eat. How can I possibly have missed that?

This week I’ve started trying to pay more attention to what I’m eating. I’m trying to trust my own judgement about when I’m actually hungry, and not just to stuff my face when I feel overloaded. It’s difficult, but on a couple of of days worth of evidence, it’s working so far.

Whether it will continue to work remains to be seen.

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