Recently I acquired an iPod Touch. I've had a portable dedicated MP3/music player for several years now (an indispensible item when one works in Cubicle Country) and initially couldn't see how the Touch differed from something like that, but after playing a bit with one back in May, I found myself tremendously intrigued.
To make a long story short, I have one now (a second-generation 8 GB model) and I love it. Love love love. I find iTunes to be somewhat obnoxious and I am definitely not one of those who valorizes Apple or thinks they can do no wrong (I've never even owned an Apple desktop or laptop computer; just iPods), but the Touch is definitely a big win for me.
Anyway, though, I've downloaded a number of applications at this point, from the practical to the musically adorable to the inane but strangely compelling.
But there's one thing in particular that I think would be perfect for this platform that I've not as of yet been able to find. I don't know whether it exists and I am just not finding it, or whether maybe nobody has developed anything like it yet -- in any case I figured I might as well send this query out into the Web-aether and see what came back.
What I am looking for is a sort of "writer's assistant" program geared toward people attempting to write fiction (as I have been for...well, a long time). Its main focus would be character development, and given that I carry the iTouch pretty much everywhere with me these days, it would be wonderful to be able to use it in the manner I have in mind.
Now, of course I know that there are many ways in which a person might utilize regular computers, simple notepad applications, or even a plain old paper-and-pen setup to hash out their writing ideas. Moreover, there may well be something like this for some other hand-held computing device (I haven't looked). So it's not like this kind of thing would be a "necessity" app -- it would be more like a convenience, and hopefully for people like me, something that might encourage and enable us to work on character development for our stories on the bus, in waiting rooms, etc.
Somewhat amusingly (or perhaps frighteningly?), the closest thing I've been able to find in the App Store to what I'm looking for is something called Little Black Book, which is, as near as I can tell, a kind of interactive journal geared toward the kind of men who might actually take the Seduce and Destroy infomercial from the film 'Magnolia' seriously. You use it to track and store information on your "romantic conquests", I guess, and (because of course you probably don't want your mom finding this stuff) its data isn't connected to the iPhone's inbuilt contact list.
And...I actually might have been willing to try that app for this character-development thing I have in mind, if not for the fact that the "instant phone-number dial" stuff was so prominent and that it didn't look like it had a flexible enough interface to actually put in all the info I'd want for a character. Obviously my fictional characters aren't going to have phone numbers so it would be an annoying distraction to have the phone number field sitting there all the time, but not other fields that actually might be useful.
So in summary, the Writer's App I Am Seeking would have the following features:
1. Ideally it would permit the user to create entries for each of the characters in a given story which might include a picture (either from an included avatar-maker or from a photo or drawing you import) of how they imagine the character to look.
2. Fields for the character's name and various "stats", such as age, interests, personality traits, etc.
3. A built-in "notepad" page associated with each character where you could practice writing things in the character's "voice" (something I have a terrible time with -- right now every character I attempt to make seems to sound exactly like me, which isn't really a good premise for an interesting story...).
4. An indexing system that consists of a page where different stories you might be working on are listed, and then sub-sections within each story where you can add multiple characters (possibly sorted according to categories like "protagonist", "villain", "supporting character", "sidekick", etc.).
5. Like the "Little Black Book", this app would not import from or export to the device's main contact list. (There are a number of "address book" apps available, but the majority of them seem to be designed to automatically interface with your main contact list, and hence I rejected those I came across as I don't want imaginary people inter-mingling with real people in that way...would be too confusing).
So...if anyone happens to know of anything like what I'm looking for here, please feel free to comment or email if you do have suggestions. Mind you, I am only looking for iPhone/iTouch applications (not interested in either paying for or learning to use any other PDA-like devices at the moment), and not ones you need to "jailbreak" your device in order to get.
Also, if there really and truly is not anything right now that exists like what I am looking for, I would be curious about knowing whether there might be some way to get in touch with an app developer. I don't know any personally (that I know of), and I don't have a Mac to develop on myself (you seem to need one for developing iPhone/iTouch apps), so again, throwing this out into the Internet in case someone might have some input!
(And, for the record, even in the absence of this app I have made some headway on what I hope will be Anne's First Science Fiction Novel -- it's probably going to be a YA book, and it will involve brain implants, scary schoolmasters, antiques, hidden doors, and industrial espionage. I've actually got the plot structure down pretty well, I just really need to do something about these characters and making them individuals...)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 3
So, say you've managed to figure out that a certain "weird" sensation in your head most likely means you are either hungry, thirsty, or both -- or that (on the less optimistic side of things) you've once again found yourself practically falling over at your desk because somehow nine or more hours have managed to pass since that energy bar you had for breakfast.
At this point, figuring out why whatever unpleasant thing is happening to you is happening is only one part of the equation -- the other is determining how to do something about it.
Three major components may come into play at this point:
- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you may not have the "brain bandwidth" or cognitive energy (or whatever you want to call it) at that point to initiate anything beyond a short, simple set of steps, if that.
- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you may not be able to readily task-switch from whatever else you happen to be doing at the time you realize this.
- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you might be missing some cue or environmental prompt that you generally need in order to actually prepare and/or eat food.
Needless to say, all of these components can factor into one's nutritional-intake challenges, though people will certainly vary in how intensely they experience any one of them, or in whether they ever experience just one or all three or different ones at different times, and so on. But they all essentially deal with the situation described above: that is, the "OK, I'm hungry, now how the heck do I get to food?"
Now, everyone alive probably experiences transition issues to some extent.
But I am mainly gearing this piece toward people who can relate to things like, say
...having a refrigerator full of food but ending up skipping dinner because you are in the living room and the fridge isn't where you can see it,
...or going "WTF, brain?" upon realizing you've managed to read half a book and build up a Lego kit but somehow can't figure out how to make yourself a sandwich, even though you've made sandwiches before and know intellectually what steps are involved.
...or repeatedly going "I'll eat right after I finish [thing]", even when [thing] ends up stretching over a period of many hours, as you know that you risk losing a ton of work and not being able to jump back into the task readily if you take a break.
If you've never experienced anything like this then you might have trouble imagining how anyone could (without it being something as simple as a "willpower issue"). But if you have experienced it you will likely know exactly what I mean when I say that transition issues are not really related to willpower (and can actually be exacerbated by trying to "push" too hard in a particular direction), and that they can exist even when someone is totally intellectually aware of the importance of proper nutrition, and highly motivated to live in a healthy manner.
In other words, I am writing this from the standpoint of someone who has been in the position of having figured out I'm hungry, knowing full well I should eat, knowing that I need a certain amount of water and nutrients to survive and function optimally, and having tremendous motivation -- and yet still not eating well. Clearly if a person is in that situation, the issue is not going to be addressed by reading a book on willpower or studying up on vitamin ratios! But what will it be addressed by?
Well, personally (meaning the usual "this applies to me but may not to you" disclaimer applies) identifying transitions and inertia (in the cognitive sense as opposed to the physics sense) as factors impacting multiple areas of my life has been tremendously helpful in giving me a starting point for dealing at least partly with problems that seemed frustratingly recurrent prior to this realization.
I.e., I've learned that when I am able to minimize the number of transitions I experience during a given time period, I am:
- More effective at doing any individual task
- Better able to make sense of my environment (e.g., less likely to experience cognitive/sensory overload)
- Better able to gauge my actual ability at doing certain things (as I am not burning up all my energy dealing with transitions)
- Better at dealing with unexpected transitions
And so on.
In terms of specific eating-related advice, again I cannot emphasize enough that this will not apply to everyone, but I've found the following useful to keep in mind:
- Prepare meals in advance (and in quantity) when possible
Now this could be you preparing the meals if you have the ability to do so, or it could be someone else (i.e., a carer, personal attendant, or parent), but in any case, if preparation is not something you can do yourself or get help doing on an everyday basis, it can be extremely helpful to (for instance) have all your lunches for the coming week packed and sitting in the fridge by Sunday afternoon.
Quite recently, for a variety of reasons (in particular more transitions than usual...), my own lunch regimen went pretty horribly downhill -- a few weeks ago it had gotten to the point where I was scarcely packing anything at all in the morning and consequently ending up going the whole work day on perhaps a granola bar or two. Yipe! When I realized that was going on, I took it as yet another reminder that it is beyond silly for me to just assume "oh I'll make myself a lunch" every evening the way I was doing.
It is one thing to have intentions, it is quite another to actually be able to follow through with them, and for me, having to deal with choosing, preparing, and packing a lunch every single morning or evening is way too many transitions. So, as of about three weeks ago at the time of my writing this, I've been packing my weekday lunches into small re-usable containers as shown:
...and this is working quite splendidly. Essentially I've eaten the same lunch (raw mixed vegetables, hummus dip, multi-grain pita chips, and an apple) every day for the past three weeks, but as I don't tend to tire of things I like easily, this has been no problem. And I've gotten in a decent amount of midday nutrients since I started doing this again. Eventually I will probably want to rotate in some other victuals, but regardless I will definitely try to keep to the "prepare lunches all at once on the weekend and put them in the fridge" routine.
Anyway, if you are going to try this, you will need to acquire some containers (I use the re-usable plastic ones as shown, but have been considering getting a few bento boxes) for putting the actual foodstuffs in, an insulated lunch bag of some sort if you plan to be taking your lunches anywhere, and of course, food!
Again of course the foods you eat will have to take into consideration what you can tolerate (taste-wise, texture-wise, in light of any food allergies or medical conditions, etc.), so I would not be able to give a definitive list of specific items here, but I can suggest that you acquire things that are going to keep for at least a week in the refrigerator. E.g., fresh raw hardy vegetables like broccoli and carrots, soup, rice with a separate sauce, or anything else you can eat that isn't super perishable or likely to be unappetizing by the fourth or fifth day.
If you don't have regular access to a refrigerator you can look up dehydrated or other highly sturdy items but I don't have a lot of experience in that department aside from the fact that I have actually manage to survive some of the toughest food intervals in my life practically on trail mix alone!
- Keep (healthy, conveniently packaged) food and liquid within reach
If you find that you tend to hang out in one area a lot (e.g., your desk or a particular room), and that one of your main challenges to eating regularly is that this room does not happen to be the kitchen or pantry, then it would logically follow that it makes sense to put food closer to where you usually are.
Not all your food, mind you, but enough (and enough that isn't nutritionally void -- you cannot in fact thrive on Sweet Tarts and Mountain Dew for very long, LAN parties notwithstanding) so that you don't sit there for hours knowing vaguely perhaps that you "should" eat but not having enough sustenance for a gnat in your immediate vicinity. The key is to avoid the vicious circle in which you sort of figure you ought to be eating and then end up not doing so for much, much longer than you might have otherwise because your brain is getting lower and lower on fuel.
E.g., at work I usually keep trail mix or an energy bar within arm's reach of my desk at all times, and at home (though I often need reminders if I am going to be home alone for a bit, which happens infrequently enough such that I don't really have a routine for it), food is usually at least close enough to get rapidly. And I now take a water bottle out with me every day as a matter of habit (though at work I find it's pretty crucial to make sure and take it out of my lunchbox before getting really absorbed in something, lest I forget it exists!).
The diagram below shows a potential "easy-nutritional access layout" (with bonus dish area and wastebasket for clutter-management).
- Watch out for potential nutritional imbalances caused by making a particular thing too available
While most of my own issues have tended toward not eating enough due to task-inertia or brain-stickiness or whatever you want to call it, I've also noted and at times personally experienced the "eat it all because it's there" phenomenon.
Sometimes a particular food (or food-like substance, as certain highly processed items might more properly be called) can be a kind of awesome sensory delight unto itself, leading to your consuming it in quantity even if you aren't very hungry. Other times, it could just be that once you start eating something, you just don't stop until whatever you can see is gone.
Anyway, I have found that in these sorts of situations, I can actually engage in a sort of "intertial hijack" due to being aware that if a package is closed up and in another room, I will likely not deplete its contents rapidly no matter how yummy they are. E.g., I really really really like dark chocolate, and if you put a bag of dark chocolate chips in front of me, I can pretty handily devour the whole thing and not even realize it until my eyeballs start vibrating (from all that caffeine and theobromine!) a while later.
So, knowing this tendency, I now store anything chocolate-chip-like in the kitchen and if I happen to be in there and decide I want some chocolate goodness, I will pour out a small quantity into a bowl, close and seal the bag, and then quickly leave the kitchen, bowl in hand. That way, I get the satisfaction of tasty chocolate but am generally too inertial to go back and get more out of the bag within a given span of time!
- Transition issues and perfectionism can really feed into each other, so it's important to watch this carefully if you tend toward both!
E.g., if you're like this you probably want to avoid using food as an "incentive". You wouldn't tell yourself you needed to finish an assignment before you were allowed to breathe, after all, and food is as essential to animal life as air.
This doesn't mean you want to be eating non-stop or that you should be rushing to the refrigerator whenever the mere idea of food occurs to you -- just that you should never make eating at all contingent on finishing an assignment, writing a paper, etc.
If you tend to be inertial, you are going to have enough of a challenge getting up to eat as it is -- and if you have gotten to the point where the only way you can come close to finishing your work, etc., is by delaying basic biological necessities until you're done with the work, you can probably take that as a warning sign that something is seriously wrong with the way you're scheduled!
- Consider Prompting and Cues
A "cue" in this context might be considered something like: being able to see food or drink, being able to reach food or drink, having someone else in the room, having someone else leave the room, etc. etc. A "prompt" might be someone telling you to eat, a checklist item telling you to eat, etc.
It can be difficult to know what kinds of things cue or prompt you into eating and some people may need assistance in figuring this out, but in any case if you can figure it out it's a good thing to take note of.
E.g., I've determined that I need to be extra-systematic about my eating at work because there's so much about that environment that seems to be not conducive to even remembering food exists (similar for when I'm home alone), but when my partner is around I don't need to be quite so vigilant about either checklists or routines because for some reason even just having him sitting across the room for me makes it more likely for me to recall that I have a tasty snack in the kitchen I could presumably go get.
And I don't entertain visitors often, but whenever someone does come over I find that for some reason a "politeness program" kicks in and I am compelled to offer food to the visitors, meaning I am more likely to actually eat something myself!
In terms of actually using this, mostly it has helped me know when I might need to be more or less vigilant, or what situations might tend to lead to needing more reminders, etc.
- Your Plan (and your life) should be Sustainable!
Now, I am quite interested in sustainability in the sense of using natural and industrial resources wisely and with a view of the long term in mind. However, that isn't the kind of sustainability I am referring to here -- rather, I am referring to the measure of how well one can actually maintain decent eating habits over time.
For me and a lot of others who might be able to relate to the kinds of experiences I've discussed herein, one thing that's taken me ages to learn is that there are some things you just shouldn't compromise on, even if you occasionally can. Eating (and moreover, eating well) is one of those things, and I've definitely found that it's very easy to slip back into bad habits if I try to cram too much (and particularly too many transitions) into my life at once.
For example, that period in college wherein I was supposedly peeing out evidence of musculature in the process of being digested, I had actually managed to completely neglect the notion that food was even a priority. I did not build any time for meals into my own schedule, and hence they became an afterthought at best. And I've done similar things even since graduating and getting a job, and I now consider that I will probably need to "watch" these tendencies in myself indefinitely in order to avoid really serious issues from cropping up.
Frankly it was only actually experiencing various levels of "crashing" and serious unpleasantness that got me to realize that I couldn't sustain the kinds of levels I felt like I "should" be sustaining, based on various cultural expectations I'd absorbed coupled with my own perfectionism.
I actually felt guilty almost constantly for the first few years out of college when I started working because I wasn't going out if my way to try and attend night classes or do other Symbolic Gestures of Career Commitment the way some of my co-workers of similar age were -- but the thing was, I just could not summon the...power or energy or whatever necessary to even begin to set up after-work classes, let alone actually attend them. And it took me a long time to determine that part of the problem with this would be that it would entail way more transitions than I could manage, which would impact everything from sleep to food to cognitive regulation.
Hence, I know first-hand how difficult it can be to challenge the prevailing "only people who work 80 hour weeks are responsible and ambitious" mentality that seems to especially proliferate in certain sectors of the USA. But if at all possible I would recommend that you take stock of your life, your schedule, and the number of transitions...you don't want to have to end up melting down in a manager's office babbling about how you "need to learn to emulate human behavior" or semi-incoherently finding your way back to your desk after nearly falling over in the lab due to a crash in blood sugar.
That kind of thing is preventable, and shouldn't happen very often at all if your life is set up in a sustainable manner -- which for many of us can entail making sure we are not tiring ourselves out so much with transitions that we can't find our way to the refrigerator in the evenings! Remember that there are many, many options for pursuing hobbies, projects, and career development (especially for those of us with Internet access and, heck, library access) and that a lot of the time you might very well be able to find a non-standard path toward even a rather ambitious goal that doesn't mean sacrificing your nutritional consumption or any other aspect of self care.
At this point, figuring out why whatever unpleasant thing is happening to you is happening is only one part of the equation -- the other is determining how to do something about it.
Three major components may come into play at this point:
- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you may not have the "brain bandwidth" or cognitive energy (or whatever you want to call it) at that point to initiate anything beyond a short, simple set of steps, if that.
- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you may not be able to readily task-switch from whatever else you happen to be doing at the time you realize this.
- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you might be missing some cue or environmental prompt that you generally need in order to actually prepare and/or eat food.
Needless to say, all of these components can factor into one's nutritional-intake challenges, though people will certainly vary in how intensely they experience any one of them, or in whether they ever experience just one or all three or different ones at different times, and so on. But they all essentially deal with the situation described above: that is, the "OK, I'm hungry, now how the heck do I get to food?"
Now, everyone alive probably experiences transition issues to some extent.
But I am mainly gearing this piece toward people who can relate to things like, say
...having a refrigerator full of food but ending up skipping dinner because you are in the living room and the fridge isn't where you can see it,
...or going "WTF, brain?" upon realizing you've managed to read half a book and build up a Lego kit but somehow can't figure out how to make yourself a sandwich, even though you've made sandwiches before and know intellectually what steps are involved.
...or repeatedly going "I'll eat right after I finish [thing]", even when [thing] ends up stretching over a period of many hours, as you know that you risk losing a ton of work and not being able to jump back into the task readily if you take a break.
If you've never experienced anything like this then you might have trouble imagining how anyone could (without it being something as simple as a "willpower issue"). But if you have experienced it you will likely know exactly what I mean when I say that transition issues are not really related to willpower (and can actually be exacerbated by trying to "push" too hard in a particular direction), and that they can exist even when someone is totally intellectually aware of the importance of proper nutrition, and highly motivated to live in a healthy manner.
In other words, I am writing this from the standpoint of someone who has been in the position of having figured out I'm hungry, knowing full well I should eat, knowing that I need a certain amount of water and nutrients to survive and function optimally, and having tremendous motivation -- and yet still not eating well. Clearly if a person is in that situation, the issue is not going to be addressed by reading a book on willpower or studying up on vitamin ratios! But what will it be addressed by?
Well, personally (meaning the usual "this applies to me but may not to you" disclaimer applies) identifying transitions and inertia (in the cognitive sense as opposed to the physics sense) as factors impacting multiple areas of my life has been tremendously helpful in giving me a starting point for dealing at least partly with problems that seemed frustratingly recurrent prior to this realization.
I.e., I've learned that when I am able to minimize the number of transitions I experience during a given time period, I am:
- More effective at doing any individual task
- Better able to make sense of my environment (e.g., less likely to experience cognitive/sensory overload)
- Better able to gauge my actual ability at doing certain things (as I am not burning up all my energy dealing with transitions)
- Better at dealing with unexpected transitions
And so on.
In terms of specific eating-related advice, again I cannot emphasize enough that this will not apply to everyone, but I've found the following useful to keep in mind:
- Prepare meals in advance (and in quantity) when possible
Now this could be you preparing the meals if you have the ability to do so, or it could be someone else (i.e., a carer, personal attendant, or parent), but in any case, if preparation is not something you can do yourself or get help doing on an everyday basis, it can be extremely helpful to (for instance) have all your lunches for the coming week packed and sitting in the fridge by Sunday afternoon.
Quite recently, for a variety of reasons (in particular more transitions than usual...), my own lunch regimen went pretty horribly downhill -- a few weeks ago it had gotten to the point where I was scarcely packing anything at all in the morning and consequently ending up going the whole work day on perhaps a granola bar or two. Yipe! When I realized that was going on, I took it as yet another reminder that it is beyond silly for me to just assume "oh I'll make myself a lunch" every evening the way I was doing.
It is one thing to have intentions, it is quite another to actually be able to follow through with them, and for me, having to deal with choosing, preparing, and packing a lunch every single morning or evening is way too many transitions. So, as of about three weeks ago at the time of my writing this, I've been packing my weekday lunches into small re-usable containers as shown:
...and this is working quite splendidly. Essentially I've eaten the same lunch (raw mixed vegetables, hummus dip, multi-grain pita chips, and an apple) every day for the past three weeks, but as I don't tend to tire of things I like easily, this has been no problem. And I've gotten in a decent amount of midday nutrients since I started doing this again. Eventually I will probably want to rotate in some other victuals, but regardless I will definitely try to keep to the "prepare lunches all at once on the weekend and put them in the fridge" routine.
Anyway, if you are going to try this, you will need to acquire some containers (I use the re-usable plastic ones as shown, but have been considering getting a few bento boxes) for putting the actual foodstuffs in, an insulated lunch bag of some sort if you plan to be taking your lunches anywhere, and of course, food!
Again of course the foods you eat will have to take into consideration what you can tolerate (taste-wise, texture-wise, in light of any food allergies or medical conditions, etc.), so I would not be able to give a definitive list of specific items here, but I can suggest that you acquire things that are going to keep for at least a week in the refrigerator. E.g., fresh raw hardy vegetables like broccoli and carrots, soup, rice with a separate sauce, or anything else you can eat that isn't super perishable or likely to be unappetizing by the fourth or fifth day.
If you don't have regular access to a refrigerator you can look up dehydrated or other highly sturdy items but I don't have a lot of experience in that department aside from the fact that I have actually manage to survive some of the toughest food intervals in my life practically on trail mix alone!
- Keep (healthy, conveniently packaged) food and liquid within reach
If you find that you tend to hang out in one area a lot (e.g., your desk or a particular room), and that one of your main challenges to eating regularly is that this room does not happen to be the kitchen or pantry, then it would logically follow that it makes sense to put food closer to where you usually are.
Not all your food, mind you, but enough (and enough that isn't nutritionally void -- you cannot in fact thrive on Sweet Tarts and Mountain Dew for very long, LAN parties notwithstanding) so that you don't sit there for hours knowing vaguely perhaps that you "should" eat but not having enough sustenance for a gnat in your immediate vicinity. The key is to avoid the vicious circle in which you sort of figure you ought to be eating and then end up not doing so for much, much longer than you might have otherwise because your brain is getting lower and lower on fuel.
E.g., at work I usually keep trail mix or an energy bar within arm's reach of my desk at all times, and at home (though I often need reminders if I am going to be home alone for a bit, which happens infrequently enough such that I don't really have a routine for it), food is usually at least close enough to get rapidly. And I now take a water bottle out with me every day as a matter of habit (though at work I find it's pretty crucial to make sure and take it out of my lunchbox before getting really absorbed in something, lest I forget it exists!).
The diagram below shows a potential "easy-nutritional access layout" (with bonus dish area and wastebasket for clutter-management).
- Watch out for potential nutritional imbalances caused by making a particular thing too available
While most of my own issues have tended toward not eating enough due to task-inertia or brain-stickiness or whatever you want to call it, I've also noted and at times personally experienced the "eat it all because it's there" phenomenon.
Sometimes a particular food (or food-like substance, as certain highly processed items might more properly be called) can be a kind of awesome sensory delight unto itself, leading to your consuming it in quantity even if you aren't very hungry. Other times, it could just be that once you start eating something, you just don't stop until whatever you can see is gone.
Anyway, I have found that in these sorts of situations, I can actually engage in a sort of "intertial hijack" due to being aware that if a package is closed up and in another room, I will likely not deplete its contents rapidly no matter how yummy they are. E.g., I really really really like dark chocolate, and if you put a bag of dark chocolate chips in front of me, I can pretty handily devour the whole thing and not even realize it until my eyeballs start vibrating (from all that caffeine and theobromine!) a while later.
So, knowing this tendency, I now store anything chocolate-chip-like in the kitchen and if I happen to be in there and decide I want some chocolate goodness, I will pour out a small quantity into a bowl, close and seal the bag, and then quickly leave the kitchen, bowl in hand. That way, I get the satisfaction of tasty chocolate but am generally too inertial to go back and get more out of the bag within a given span of time!
- Transition issues and perfectionism can really feed into each other, so it's important to watch this carefully if you tend toward both!
E.g., if you're like this you probably want to avoid using food as an "incentive". You wouldn't tell yourself you needed to finish an assignment before you were allowed to breathe, after all, and food is as essential to animal life as air.
This doesn't mean you want to be eating non-stop or that you should be rushing to the refrigerator whenever the mere idea of food occurs to you -- just that you should never make eating at all contingent on finishing an assignment, writing a paper, etc.
If you tend to be inertial, you are going to have enough of a challenge getting up to eat as it is -- and if you have gotten to the point where the only way you can come close to finishing your work, etc., is by delaying basic biological necessities until you're done with the work, you can probably take that as a warning sign that something is seriously wrong with the way you're scheduled!
- Consider Prompting and Cues
A "cue" in this context might be considered something like: being able to see food or drink, being able to reach food or drink, having someone else in the room, having someone else leave the room, etc. etc. A "prompt" might be someone telling you to eat, a checklist item telling you to eat, etc.
It can be difficult to know what kinds of things cue or prompt you into eating and some people may need assistance in figuring this out, but in any case if you can figure it out it's a good thing to take note of.
E.g., I've determined that I need to be extra-systematic about my eating at work because there's so much about that environment that seems to be not conducive to even remembering food exists (similar for when I'm home alone), but when my partner is around I don't need to be quite so vigilant about either checklists or routines because for some reason even just having him sitting across the room for me makes it more likely for me to recall that I have a tasty snack in the kitchen I could presumably go get.
And I don't entertain visitors often, but whenever someone does come over I find that for some reason a "politeness program" kicks in and I am compelled to offer food to the visitors, meaning I am more likely to actually eat something myself!
In terms of actually using this, mostly it has helped me know when I might need to be more or less vigilant, or what situations might tend to lead to needing more reminders, etc.
- Your Plan (and your life) should be Sustainable!
Now, I am quite interested in sustainability in the sense of using natural and industrial resources wisely and with a view of the long term in mind. However, that isn't the kind of sustainability I am referring to here -- rather, I am referring to the measure of how well one can actually maintain decent eating habits over time.
For me and a lot of others who might be able to relate to the kinds of experiences I've discussed herein, one thing that's taken me ages to learn is that there are some things you just shouldn't compromise on, even if you occasionally can. Eating (and moreover, eating well) is one of those things, and I've definitely found that it's very easy to slip back into bad habits if I try to cram too much (and particularly too many transitions) into my life at once.
For example, that period in college wherein I was supposedly peeing out evidence of musculature in the process of being digested, I had actually managed to completely neglect the notion that food was even a priority. I did not build any time for meals into my own schedule, and hence they became an afterthought at best. And I've done similar things even since graduating and getting a job, and I now consider that I will probably need to "watch" these tendencies in myself indefinitely in order to avoid really serious issues from cropping up.
Frankly it was only actually experiencing various levels of "crashing" and serious unpleasantness that got me to realize that I couldn't sustain the kinds of levels I felt like I "should" be sustaining, based on various cultural expectations I'd absorbed coupled with my own perfectionism.
I actually felt guilty almost constantly for the first few years out of college when I started working because I wasn't going out if my way to try and attend night classes or do other Symbolic Gestures of Career Commitment the way some of my co-workers of similar age were -- but the thing was, I just could not summon the...power or energy or whatever necessary to even begin to set up after-work classes, let alone actually attend them. And it took me a long time to determine that part of the problem with this would be that it would entail way more transitions than I could manage, which would impact everything from sleep to food to cognitive regulation.
Hence, I know first-hand how difficult it can be to challenge the prevailing "only people who work 80 hour weeks are responsible and ambitious" mentality that seems to especially proliferate in certain sectors of the USA. But if at all possible I would recommend that you take stock of your life, your schedule, and the number of transitions...you don't want to have to end up melting down in a manager's office babbling about how you "need to learn to emulate human behavior" or semi-incoherently finding your way back to your desk after nearly falling over in the lab due to a crash in blood sugar.
That kind of thing is preventable, and shouldn't happen very often at all if your life is set up in a sustainable manner -- which for many of us can entail making sure we are not tiring ourselves out so much with transitions that we can't find our way to the refrigerator in the evenings! Remember that there are many, many options for pursuing hobbies, projects, and career development (especially for those of us with Internet access and, heck, library access) and that a lot of the time you might very well be able to find a non-standard path toward even a rather ambitious goal that doesn't mean sacrificing your nutritional consumption or any other aspect of self care.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
I prefer to read it as a threat...
Came across this in a "vintage ads" photo pool, and spent several seconds blinking and sputtering, so figured it was worth a post.
Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things, eh? Wow.
I mean, not that I have a drivers' license myself, but still...
Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things, eh? Wow.
I mean, not that I have a drivers' license myself, but still...
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership In Research and Education (AASPIRE) Announces Gateway Project Launch
A while back I got involved with the nascent AASPIRE Project, which (quoting from the web site):
Now, of course no research project, online or otherwise, is going to be able to take into account the views of literally everyone in a given demographic. Not all adults on the autistic spectrum even have access to the Internet, and of those that do, not all have either the ability or inclination to use it.
This, however, is true of many populations and the way I see it, so long as any conclusions or hypotheses derived from research keep this in mind, there is still value in gathering the data.
And by making sure to adhere to relevant standards of scientific scrutiny and ethics, which of course includes openness to criticism, peer review, etc., it is my hope that AASPIRE and similar projects may at least have some positive impact on the signal to noise ration in autism research.
The notion that only nonautistic people are qualified to suggest research avenues or comment on study design elements, etc., pertaining to autism research is one in serious need of challenge and actually getting the inputs of at least some persons on the spectrum (and it should go without saying that these persons cannot and do not "speak for" all autistic people) strikes me as a promising avenue for addressing this challenge.
The announcement text appears below in its unmodified form from the AASPIRE administrators (per U.S. IRB requirements)
--- BEGIN ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT ---
Participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project
You are invited to participate in a continuing online research project called the AASPIRE Gateway Project. This online research project is conducted by the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE, http://aaspireproject.org) in collaboration with Oregon Health & Science University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portland State University, and the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.
The AASPIRE Gateway Project is recruiting participants with and without disabilities, and participants on the autism spectrum, for a series of continuing online studies on topics such as health care, Internet use, online sense of community, identity, problem solving, and perspective taking. The goals of the online AASPIRE Gateway Project are
(1) to collect the Gateway Survey data;
(2) to use the Gateway Survey data to invite eligible participants to AASPIRE’s continuing online research studies; and
(3) to use the Gateway Survey data in AASPIRE’s continuing online research studies.
You may participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project and contribute to continuing AASPIRE research studies if you are at least 18 years old, and you have access to the Internet.
The first step in joining the AASPIRE Gateway Project is completing the online AASPIRE Gateway Survey. The AASPIRE Gateway Survey asks about (a) personal information, such as age, gender, disability, education, and employment status, (b) information about which hand you prefer to use when doing activities such as writing with a pen or pencil, and (c) information about your personal preferences regarding interests, habits, and social interactions. Completing the AASPIRE Gateway Survey will take approximately 20-40 minutes. In return, you may choose to be entered into a drawing for a 1 in 25 chance to win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com or to receive 1 extra credit point in your introductory psychology class if you are a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Adults who identify as having a disability and adults who identify as being on the autistic spectrum are especially encouraged to participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project.
If you're interested in participating in the AASPIRE Gateway Project, or would like to learn more about AASPIRE or the study, here are three ways you can get started:
1) Go to the study’s website at www.aaspire.org/gateway.
2) Send an email to info@aaspireproject.org.
3) Make a telephone call to Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, at (503) 494-9602 or Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, at (608) 262-6989.
OHSU IRB # 3762; UW IRB# SE-2008-0749
Principal Investigators: Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, Oregon Health & Science University
Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Katherine McDonald, PhD, Portland State University
Dora Raymaker, Autistic Self-Advocacy Network
--- END ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT ---
And one more comment from me: I would like to make it clear that, to the best of my knowledge, AASPIRE is a research-oriented entity and that participating in the Gateway Project does not in any way, shape, or form constitute an endorsement of any political positions or specific organizations.
I.e., you can be involved in AASPIRE (as I am) and/or participate in research as a member of the world community by taking the Gateway Survey without this implying or signifying that you are a supporter of Oregon Health & Science University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portland State University, or the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, or the expressed political/policy opinions of these entities.
(I made specific effort to find out and confirm this recently because "affiliational" stuff confuses the living daylights out of me and I am leery of associating in any official capacity with anything lately due to past experiences. Moreover, I think it is very important for autistic people to be able to engage in self-advocacy without this being "branded" as adherence to any organization, as it would most definitely in my estimation undermine autistic civil rights if all of us always had to be compromising our personal principles in areas unacceptable to us or "signing on" with groups whose policies we might not even fully understand, let alone approve of, in order for our perspectives to be taken seriously.)
...brings together the academic community and the autistic community to develop and perform research projects relevant to the needs of autistic adults. Our partnership will adhere to the principles of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), whereby researchers and community members serve as equal partners throughout the research process.
Now, of course no research project, online or otherwise, is going to be able to take into account the views of literally everyone in a given demographic. Not all adults on the autistic spectrum even have access to the Internet, and of those that do, not all have either the ability or inclination to use it.
This, however, is true of many populations and the way I see it, so long as any conclusions or hypotheses derived from research keep this in mind, there is still value in gathering the data.
And by making sure to adhere to relevant standards of scientific scrutiny and ethics, which of course includes openness to criticism, peer review, etc., it is my hope that AASPIRE and similar projects may at least have some positive impact on the signal to noise ration in autism research.
The notion that only nonautistic people are qualified to suggest research avenues or comment on study design elements, etc., pertaining to autism research is one in serious need of challenge and actually getting the inputs of at least some persons on the spectrum (and it should go without saying that these persons cannot and do not "speak for" all autistic people) strikes me as a promising avenue for addressing this challenge.
The announcement text appears below in its unmodified form from the AASPIRE administrators (per U.S. IRB requirements)
--- BEGIN ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT ---
Participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project
You are invited to participate in a continuing online research project called the AASPIRE Gateway Project. This online research project is conducted by the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE, http://aaspireproject.org) in collaboration with Oregon Health & Science University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portland State University, and the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.
The AASPIRE Gateway Project is recruiting participants with and without disabilities, and participants on the autism spectrum, for a series of continuing online studies on topics such as health care, Internet use, online sense of community, identity, problem solving, and perspective taking. The goals of the online AASPIRE Gateway Project are
(1) to collect the Gateway Survey data;
(2) to use the Gateway Survey data to invite eligible participants to AASPIRE’s continuing online research studies; and
(3) to use the Gateway Survey data in AASPIRE’s continuing online research studies.
You may participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project and contribute to continuing AASPIRE research studies if you are at least 18 years old, and you have access to the Internet.
The first step in joining the AASPIRE Gateway Project is completing the online AASPIRE Gateway Survey. The AASPIRE Gateway Survey asks about (a) personal information, such as age, gender, disability, education, and employment status, (b) information about which hand you prefer to use when doing activities such as writing with a pen or pencil, and (c) information about your personal preferences regarding interests, habits, and social interactions. Completing the AASPIRE Gateway Survey will take approximately 20-40 minutes. In return, you may choose to be entered into a drawing for a 1 in 25 chance to win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com or to receive 1 extra credit point in your introductory psychology class if you are a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Adults who identify as having a disability and adults who identify as being on the autistic spectrum are especially encouraged to participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project.
If you're interested in participating in the AASPIRE Gateway Project, or would like to learn more about AASPIRE or the study, here are three ways you can get started:
1) Go to the study’s website at www.aaspire.org/gateway.
2) Send an email to info@aaspireproject.org.
3) Make a telephone call to Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, at (503) 494-9602 or Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, at (608) 262-6989.
OHSU IRB # 3762; UW IRB# SE-2008-0749
Principal Investigators: Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, Oregon Health & Science University
Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Katherine McDonald, PhD, Portland State University
Dora Raymaker, Autistic Self-Advocacy Network
--- END ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT ---
And one more comment from me: I would like to make it clear that, to the best of my knowledge, AASPIRE is a research-oriented entity and that participating in the Gateway Project does not in any way, shape, or form constitute an endorsement of any political positions or specific organizations.
I.e., you can be involved in AASPIRE (as I am) and/or participate in research as a member of the world community by taking the Gateway Survey without this implying or signifying that you are a supporter of Oregon Health & Science University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portland State University, or the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, or the expressed political/policy opinions of these entities.
(I made specific effort to find out and confirm this recently because "affiliational" stuff confuses the living daylights out of me and I am leery of associating in any official capacity with anything lately due to past experiences. Moreover, I think it is very important for autistic people to be able to engage in self-advocacy without this being "branded" as adherence to any organization, as it would most definitely in my estimation undermine autistic civil rights if all of us always had to be compromising our personal principles in areas unacceptable to us or "signing on" with groups whose policies we might not even fully understand, let alone approve of, in order for our perspectives to be taken seriously.)
Friday, June 26, 2009
On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 2
2. "Feeling Hungry" (or not) - Body Awareness and Eating
I.
The phrase "body awareness" is used here not in any strict scientific sense or in any flaky New Agey sense, but rather informally as something along the lines of: the capacity or tendency to specifically notice and identify that one is feeling a particular internal sensation.
Hence, body awareness (as I am using this phrase in this context) is going to be relevant to a person's eating habits, as if you don't "feel hungry" very intensely (or if you just have difficulty in general sorting out what you are feeling), your need for nutritive input is not necessarily going to match up with your sense of wanting food.
And if this is the case, you may find yourself missing meals without necessarily even realizing you've done so until you start feeling really horrible (and possibly not even then, at least not without someone else coming along and reminding you about food).
Needless to say, this isn't exactly an ideal situation. But a lot of its power to wreak havoc, as often seems to be the case with this kind of thing, comes from not realizing what is going on. For people with atypical sensory and information processing, our culture often doesn't provide the means or the language for us to readily figure out what might be causing a particular problem -- which means that we can end up going years before encountering information that actually usefully explains what is going on.
E.g., for ages I just went around implicitly presuming that if something was wrong I would "just know", and that there was no need to do anything extra or different than anyone else around me in order to stay healthy and functioning well. Moreover, I have always been severely emetophobic, which as a child often meant that I would refuse food when I probably needed it most, because I couldn't tell the difference between feeling very hungry and feeling sick.
Later, even in college, when I crashed or felt horrible I would either figure it was a sign of laziness or character flaws -- or in some cases jump to some hypochondriacal conclusion, like in when I was worried I had a brain tumor or something because I kept getting headaches and didn't even consider that I was perhaps dehydrated.
This sort of internal conviction (that I should expect to know when I needed to eat or drink based on bodily signals alone) stubbornly maintained itself even through instance after instance of ending up in vastly unpleasant and even injurious situations because I didn't know what I wasn't aware of until it was too late.
I still tend to not be able to immediately identify and articulate sensations like hunger, thirst, etc., but I have been able to avoid many potential crashes since figuring out what signals I do tend to feel strongly. And one particularly strong signal I tend to feel is what I might describe as "sense of routine".
My brain is very good at mapping certain kinds of patterns, in time as well as in space, and hence I've been able to perform a "partial hack" to utilize this capacity in the service of making sure I eat regularly. E.g., I set up the following "rules" for weekdays:
- I will eat breakfast as soon as I get to work (and since my breakfasts usually consist of an energy bar or something similarly user-friendly, I can actually accomplish that during the first morning e-mail check).
- I will eat lunch at 11:15 AM.
If that sounds too simple to even bother mentioning I apologize, but for me it was not a trivial thing at all to come to understand that by taking advantage of my pattern-detection abilities (through first establishing a particular pattern), I could in effect gain access to a signal that was a lot more reliable than hunger.
Since establishing these rules, I've ended up skipping breakfast or lunch far less frequently (dinner has usually been less of a problem as I've never lived alone and have hence had the "cue" of seeing other people eating and smelling food, etc., to remind me about food in the evenings).
When I have skipped meals more recently it has generally been due to a disruption of the routine (such as an early morning meeting or one that starts at 11:15 and goes until after noon), but as time has gone on I've noticed myself starting to feel a sense of "something missing" if I don't eat lunch simply because I know I haven't gone through the activity of taking food out of my lunchbox, etc.
This brainhack doesn't work perfectly and can be thwarted at times by being really absorbed in something so deeply that the routine-signal gets buried, but it works way better than expecting to feel hungry or thirsty in a timely manner ever did. In short, I've made it so eating meals is part of a pattern I expect to exist during the day, and this has made their absence a bit more conspicuous.
II.
Another thing that has helped me is the plain old external reminder. That wonderful invention, the mighty checklist (lately mytricorder iPod Touch has been serving this purpose handily with several of its to-do programs) is a lovely "signal booster" for the routine-orientedness that I've described herein. Knowing that something should be happening is one thing, but having that thing written down tends to make me even more likely to actually do it.
Of course then there is the matter of actually remembering to write stuff down, but since discovering writing a checklist tends to almost instantly settle my brain down when I am beginning to feel overloaded, I've been able to maintain the habit with a reasonable degree of success.
And then there is the truly external reminder of the sort that you may not get to access unless you are lucky enough to have certain kinds of people in your life -- and that is the one which comes from someone who you either live with or know reasonably well who knows you well enough to offer you periodic sustenance-related reminders.
(My partner is excellent at this -- he started doing it initially after noticing how grumpy I was after work some days and thinking to ask me if I'd eaten lunch, and for quite a while now he's been doing things like having me try drinking water or having a snack if I feel nonspecifically "weird" or seem to be acting in an agitated or spacey manner.)
But still, while I am very grateful for this I also know that you can't just go out and "get" help like this. There is a major problem right now with lots of people probably not being able to get even as "simple" a service as the regular food reminder because either they are considered "too high functioning" to qualify for it or because they don't know where to start in the administrative maze.
I wouldn't know where to start there either so I can't really advise in that regard -- but I can say that it probably wouldn't hurt to maybe try asking a roommate, a sibling, or some other person who you have at least some amount of regular contact with to perhaps say "hey, did you eat?" once in a while.
Summary
So, in summary, if you have body awareness issues around eating for whatever reason, if you haven't already you may want to try:
(a) Identifying some signal other than hunger or thirst that you are actually likely to notice more readily
(b) Using self-initiated reminders (checklists, post-it notes, electronic organizers, etc.)
(c) If possible, making sure someone who you have at least semi-regular contact with you knows you might sometimes need reminders about food or drink.
I.
The phrase "body awareness" is used here not in any strict scientific sense or in any flaky New Agey sense, but rather informally as something along the lines of: the capacity or tendency to specifically notice and identify that one is feeling a particular internal sensation.
Hence, body awareness (as I am using this phrase in this context) is going to be relevant to a person's eating habits, as if you don't "feel hungry" very intensely (or if you just have difficulty in general sorting out what you are feeling), your need for nutritive input is not necessarily going to match up with your sense of wanting food.
And if this is the case, you may find yourself missing meals without necessarily even realizing you've done so until you start feeling really horrible (and possibly not even then, at least not without someone else coming along and reminding you about food).
Needless to say, this isn't exactly an ideal situation. But a lot of its power to wreak havoc, as often seems to be the case with this kind of thing, comes from not realizing what is going on. For people with atypical sensory and information processing, our culture often doesn't provide the means or the language for us to readily figure out what might be causing a particular problem -- which means that we can end up going years before encountering information that actually usefully explains what is going on.
E.g., for ages I just went around implicitly presuming that if something was wrong I would "just know", and that there was no need to do anything extra or different than anyone else around me in order to stay healthy and functioning well. Moreover, I have always been severely emetophobic, which as a child often meant that I would refuse food when I probably needed it most, because I couldn't tell the difference between feeling very hungry and feeling sick.
Later, even in college, when I crashed or felt horrible I would either figure it was a sign of laziness or character flaws -- or in some cases jump to some hypochondriacal conclusion, like in when I was worried I had a brain tumor or something because I kept getting headaches and didn't even consider that I was perhaps dehydrated.
This sort of internal conviction (that I should expect to know when I needed to eat or drink based on bodily signals alone) stubbornly maintained itself even through instance after instance of ending up in vastly unpleasant and even injurious situations because I didn't know what I wasn't aware of until it was too late.
I still tend to not be able to immediately identify and articulate sensations like hunger, thirst, etc., but I have been able to avoid many potential crashes since figuring out what signals I do tend to feel strongly. And one particularly strong signal I tend to feel is what I might describe as "sense of routine".
My brain is very good at mapping certain kinds of patterns, in time as well as in space, and hence I've been able to perform a "partial hack" to utilize this capacity in the service of making sure I eat regularly. E.g., I set up the following "rules" for weekdays:
- I will eat breakfast as soon as I get to work (and since my breakfasts usually consist of an energy bar or something similarly user-friendly, I can actually accomplish that during the first morning e-mail check).
- I will eat lunch at 11:15 AM.
If that sounds too simple to even bother mentioning I apologize, but for me it was not a trivial thing at all to come to understand that by taking advantage of my pattern-detection abilities (through first establishing a particular pattern), I could in effect gain access to a signal that was a lot more reliable than hunger.
Since establishing these rules, I've ended up skipping breakfast or lunch far less frequently (dinner has usually been less of a problem as I've never lived alone and have hence had the "cue" of seeing other people eating and smelling food, etc., to remind me about food in the evenings).
When I have skipped meals more recently it has generally been due to a disruption of the routine (such as an early morning meeting or one that starts at 11:15 and goes until after noon), but as time has gone on I've noticed myself starting to feel a sense of "something missing" if I don't eat lunch simply because I know I haven't gone through the activity of taking food out of my lunchbox, etc.
This brainhack doesn't work perfectly and can be thwarted at times by being really absorbed in something so deeply that the routine-signal gets buried, but it works way better than expecting to feel hungry or thirsty in a timely manner ever did. In short, I've made it so eating meals is part of a pattern I expect to exist during the day, and this has made their absence a bit more conspicuous.
II.
Another thing that has helped me is the plain old external reminder. That wonderful invention, the mighty checklist (lately my
Of course then there is the matter of actually remembering to write stuff down, but since discovering writing a checklist tends to almost instantly settle my brain down when I am beginning to feel overloaded, I've been able to maintain the habit with a reasonable degree of success.
And then there is the truly external reminder of the sort that you may not get to access unless you are lucky enough to have certain kinds of people in your life -- and that is the one which comes from someone who you either live with or know reasonably well who knows you well enough to offer you periodic sustenance-related reminders.
(My partner is excellent at this -- he started doing it initially after noticing how grumpy I was after work some days and thinking to ask me if I'd eaten lunch, and for quite a while now he's been doing things like having me try drinking water or having a snack if I feel nonspecifically "weird" or seem to be acting in an agitated or spacey manner.)
But still, while I am very grateful for this I also know that you can't just go out and "get" help like this. There is a major problem right now with lots of people probably not being able to get even as "simple" a service as the regular food reminder because either they are considered "too high functioning" to qualify for it or because they don't know where to start in the administrative maze.
I wouldn't know where to start there either so I can't really advise in that regard -- but I can say that it probably wouldn't hurt to maybe try asking a roommate, a sibling, or some other person who you have at least some amount of regular contact with to perhaps say "hey, did you eat?" once in a while.
Summary
So, in summary, if you have body awareness issues around eating for whatever reason, if you haven't already you may want to try:
(a) Identifying some signal other than hunger or thirst that you are actually likely to notice more readily
(b) Using self-initiated reminders (checklists, post-it notes, electronic organizers, etc.)
(c) If possible, making sure someone who you have at least semi-regular contact with you knows you might sometimes need reminders about food or drink.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 1
One of the things that has long been a challenge for me is eating -- that is, eating both properly and regularly.
Between extreme sensitivity to certain textures (which makes me rather picky), inconsistent body awareness (which makes it difficult to tell when I am hungry), difficulty transitioning between activities, and proneness to sensory overload, there are frequently multiple obstacles between me and a good solid meal.
Growing up of course my parents made sure I was fed (though not always without a fight from me...), but when I reached the age when people are expected to manage that sort of thing on their own, it did not even occur to me to make food a priority, and most of the "eating habits" I developed were, in a word, bad.
To give you an idea of what I mean by "bad", at one point in college I was in a biology lab where we were performing chemical analyses of our urine. Gross, I know, but definitely a bit of a wake-up call for me in that the teacher informed me (upon viewing my results) that I appeared to be "digesting muscle" or something along those lines, and asked me whether I had been eating lately.
I thought about this, and with a start I realized I'd only eaten a small packet of peanut butter crackers that day, and probably the previous few days as well. With all my schoolwork, etc., it simply did not cross my mind that I actually needed food (or water, for that matter)...and since I don't tend to physically "feel" things like hunger and thirst until I am hungry or dehydrated enough to feel really awful, I had been essentially "subsisting" on a diet decidedly lacking in nutritional content.
That was perhaps my first "wake-up call" to the fact that maybe food actually mattered, but it still took me several more years to really internalize that, and has taken more still to figure out what to do about it.
And now, seeing as these days I usually manage to obtain sufficient nutrients and maintain adequate hydration, I thought I would write out some of the things I've discovered to be helpful. I'm not perfect at this stuff, but I've gotten a lot better at it over the past few years, and the subject of nutrition ties very closely into interests in both longevity and disability issues, particularly for those of us on the autistic spectrum who often need to acquire adaptive and self-help skills in atypical ways.
Posts will be presented in series format -- this is the first of what will probably be four or five consecutive entries.
1. Food-Related Sensory Issues
I.
For as long as I can recall I've been a "picky eater". Many of my childhood mealtime memories are, shall we say, less than pleasant -- even though I know I was not kept at the table for "hours", it certainly felt that way when I was attempting to choke down a plateful of something literally gag-inducing.
The majority of things I can't stand are what I would call "texture offenders" -- e.g., most meats (especially anything with fat or gristle), macaroni and cheese from a box (a.k.a., "bowl of slimy entrails"), mayonnaise, and creamed corn (which my brain classes in the same category as "dog vomit"). I didn't like these things as a kid and I don't like them now, and pretty much anything with a slimy texture (or that is stretchy or gelatinous or that somehow seems "pre-chewed") goes on my "avoid" list.
Given this, it's no wonder that my worst period of nutritionally-void eating definitely included a component of "hey, nobody is making me eat horrible slimy things, so I can have whatever I want!" That is, on those occasions on which it actually occurred to me to eat something, I would tend to go for things like, oh, pop-tarts, candy corn, cookies, and chocolate bars. On a "good" day this would be intermingled with some trail mix or a cup of sodium-rich instant ramen.
Looking back, it is very easy to see why I ended up "crashing" (in the "sudden fatigue, shakes, and nausea" sense) every so often during college especially -- I was eating too little overall and way too much sugar when I did eat, and consequently giving myself hypoglycemia-like attacks.
Anyway, it has taken me a while, but I have actually discovered since those dark days of dietary disaster that there are lots of real, healthy foods I genuinely like!
E.g., I have a considerable fondness for raw vegetables, which have the added benefit of not even needing any preparation besides perhaps washing. I also like most cooked vegetables (except okra -- too mucusy), salad greens (including the bitter ones), tofu, veggie burgers, mushrooms, nuts, and beans. Frankly at this point I can't even stand a lot of highly processed things anymore -- they are too sweet, too salty, and just plain too boring for them to even be tempting.
Finding "real food" that I not only tolerate but enjoy has mostly been a matter of experimenting. Once I finally internalized the fact that eating wasn't exactly optional, I became a bit more motivated than before to try different sorts of things.
Sometimes this took the form of starting with something I knew I liked and looking for things that had some property in common with it (such as spiciness -- I'd liked hot sauce on all kinds of things since childhood, but didn't discover curry until I was in my twenties, and upon trying it wondered where it had been all my life!).
Other times, it took the form of trying something that I had rejected as a youngster not for any reason related to taste or texture, but just because I'd thought it was "weird" for some reason (e.g., mushrooms, which I was terrified of for a while for no good reason, but now like in a lot of things).
And other times still it took the form of thinking back to something I hadn't really liked and figuring out that the reason I'd not liked it might have been related to preparation or variety rather than to the food itself (and that there was no reason, for instance, I had to even bother cooking a vegetable if I liked it better raw! It took me years to figure out that I didn't have to be at a picnic to have carrot sticks, etc.).
(It has also helped, of course, that my partner Matt (born and raised in California, Land Of Fresh Year-Round Produce) is an utterly amazing cook who spoils me with his culinary creativity...I've had more different kinds of food since moving out to California from Connecticut in 1996 than I knew existed previously.)
In other words, regardless of what your sensory sensitivities happen to be (and many people have them, not just autistic people), the sheer variety of food out there probably has something you can eat and enjoy and that won't pickle your pancreas or accost your arteries.
II.
Of course depending on where you live it is going to be more difficult to get certain things than others.
And some people have food allergies and other conditions to deal with that can make healthy eating even more of a challenge (e.g., people with Crohn's Disease can have trouble digesting vegetable matter, people with mobility impairments may be limited as to what they can prepare, etc.).
Moreover, there are serious disparities in food availability across geographic and income lines, as well as people that literally gag on everything that isn't Cheez-Whiz and goldfish crackers. The last thing I want to do is write anything that gives the impression I think this stuff is easy, much less for everyone, or that I don't recognize the privilege of my own position (e.g., as someone who currently lives in an apartment with a communal lemon tree in bac that produces fruit year-round).
In other words, I am not presuming everyone has access to, or can even eat, a diet high in fresh veggies and such. Mainly I am just trying to point out that there is a lot more food out there than is obvious, and that even picky eaters might find themselves surprised to find that they actually like some healthy things if they experiment a bit with different ingredients, processing variations, stores, sources, etc.
Furthermore, I also want to write this to emphasize the importance of acknowledging sensory sensitivities in looking to improve your (or someone else's) nutritional intake. While yes, some people (especially young children) are "neophobic" eaters who come to like things they initially balked at trying, sensory sensitivities can be persistent and permanent throughout a person's lifetime, and should not be taken to automatically indicate the person is "rebelling" or "attention seeking" by refusing to eat a particular thing.
I have heard of some cases where people have an overly strong gag reflex due to poor tone in swallowing muscles, etc., and certainly if something like this is occurring then the proper medical professionals should be consulted, but sometimes you're dealing with a simple matter of individual variation in sensory tolerance.
And in any case of texture sensitivity or general pickiness, it is important to work toward finding nutritious things a person can tolerate, so that they don't end up gravitating toward seriously unhealthy items due to not knowing anything else is available.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Still Alive...
Not sure who is reading these days but just wanted to post briefly to say that yes I am still alive and so is this blog. I have just been very busy lately, both with Day Job and with preparation for an upcoming move. Yes, I am going to be moving sometime this summer and while I am looking forward to being somewhere somewhat larger and where I can have cats(!!!), preparation for such a thing is pretty exhausting! My partner Matt and I are finally going to be moving from the 560 sq. foot apartment we've lived in for the past six years into a house about twice that size.
So that ought to be interesting, but it will probably mean sporadic posting for a while!
So that ought to be interesting, but it will probably mean sporadic posting for a while!
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