Clearing Out The Junk Food

“Mike,” our son with Asperger’s at 18 years old, is old enough to hang out as a volunteer in a hospital workplace and make good decisions, right? Wrong. He’s been volunteering since early June, and has managed to put himself on a diet of at least five sugared sodas per day, plus candy and assorted junk food, paid for with the money in his wallet which came from gifts. Sigh.

What we’ve seen as a result is a great increase in obsessiveness, and less interest in other people. The reason for it came to light last week on vacation, when he didn’t have access to any of this stuff. But the obsessiveness stayed. It’s going to take a while to clear it all out of his system, if he cooperates. Sigh.

Hoping he can see the light and cut back. Today, his first day back on the “job,”  he said he only had one soda. Sigh.

Here’s the problem: his system is apparently extraordinarily sensitive to what he eats. The right supplements have brought him out of obsessiveness into regular conversations, over the past four years.  But eating lots of sugar and other stuff is sending him right back to where he started.

So the question becomes, where does HE want to be? And is he tough enough to say no to junk food?

Phyllis Wheeler