I’d love to hear about your quirky habits.
One of mine is that when I’m out in nature I tend to collect cool looking rocks, sticks, cones etc. My window sills have become a geology exhibit (and I have zero clue about what I’m collecting, I just go by “ooh shiny”) and more often than not I’ll have small rocks in my pockets, bags, backpacks etc etc
I have a load of them, including yours (collecting random bits of nature). I will also eat the same foods for breakfast and lunch, sometimes for years on end. Probably the strangest one is that my adult son and I often speak to each other in LOLCats. LIke, “can I have” turns into “I can has” every time and so on.
My girlfriend and I are autistic and we get absolutely stuck on some meals for long periods of time. We also just cycle through various catch phrases and noises we’ll repeat until they get replaced by new ones
I love those little “secret autist languages” that develop when you’re around each other for long enough! My friend and I used to have alternate names for everything, like “catus” for “cat”, or “hello penis” for “jalapenos”.
The noises I make at our cats are something else lmao
Yup, lots of random noisemaking around here. We cannot talk about any sort of beans without both of us chirping “BEEENZ!” in a high-pitched voice. You’d never guess we are neurospicy, oh no.
Weird noise gang! I make what my friends refer to as “notification sounds” or “alarm sounds”, funny little noises when something unexpected happens
You wouldn’t happen to be neurodivergent, would you? Food hyperfixation is super common in folks with ADHD and/or autism; eg. I’ve been eating salads for a couple of months straight 😅 There’s variation between them but usually the base is boiled whole grain barley, different greens (but almost always including spinach), bell pepper, cucumber, scallion, maybe some sprouts, some vinaigrette, and then this absolutely lovely mirin-marinated tofu you can get from stores here
Yep, I’m autistic with a side helping of ADHD. I know that not varying my diet is bad for my health, so my dinners are extremely varied and usually plant-based, but I need my comforting sameness at breakfast and lunch.
I should definitely have more variety in what I eat, but I figure that as long as I’m eating I’m doing OK (I’ve got some health issues that have really messed with my appetite so that bar isn’t as low as it may sound.) I’m still mainly eating pretty healthily and with lots of veggies, so it’s not like I’m just eating french fries, right? 😅
I have to work really hard to plan variety into my diet as well. It’s just so easy to eat the same meal forever.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) my wife will never eat the same type of meal two days in row so that really puts a damper on my boringness.
Do you know of any papers about this or is it mostly anecdotal?
My partner and I have been eating the same thing for dinner for probably at least 70% of the last two years (marinated chicken breast in curry sauce). I’ve never liked the daily grind of cooking because I always have too many other things I want to do with my time! I do enjoy the act of cooking something complex but that has to be a special occasion for the time investment to be worth it, haha.
Good question. I haven’t actually looked into it so personally it’s anecdotal, but I do know several people with ADHD and/or autism who experience this, and I’ve got both of those and I definitely fixate.
Based on a quick Google Scholar search, there does seem to be some research into this but I’m not finding a lot. There’s eg. this editorial in Nutrients from 2021 about nutrition and ASD, and it does seem to support the claim that at least folks on the autism spectrum do have “eating disturbances”: