When Mistakes Are Made and Neurodivergence and Brain Death Spirals

This isn’t the post I was planning to publish next, but it is the post my brain won’t stop thinking about. I’m going to share details I didn’t on social media with the hope being you can replace my scenario with your scenario if you ever find yourself making a “mistake” and then your brain proceeds into a death spiral.

I am extremely nervous to share these details. I’m worried they will be met with a “Bugger off with this! I wish I had your problem!” My hope is, by sharing more details than I’m comfortable with, you will be able to approach it with empathy.

Note: I’m currently in Phase 5 of my training plan. It doesn’t follow a typical muscle gain plan. Instead, it’s a one I created. A post will come after I write about Phases 2b to 4.

Underlying Conditions

The problem begins with, I have a metabolism that is way too efficient. This not only makes it difficult for me to gain mass, which is my goal, it also means my body will eat itself given the smallest opportunity. There are other things that come with having a hyper metabolism.

My body filters medications quickly, which may result in stronger side effects but mostly it makes them less effective. I’ve woken up during surgery because my body just yeeted those sedatives in no time. It’s also why treatments for my autoimmune disorder have been ineffective.

The way my metabolism functions also results in hormonal dysfunction, even when those hormones are received through injections and patches. Many people are aware of the role testosterone plays in muscle growth for all people. However, they are often unaware of the equally key role estrogen plays in muscle growth, even in men. Beyond muscle growth, estrogen plays many important roles in men’s health.

When men receive testosterone replacement therapy, either because of hypogonadism or as part of affirming care, part of the testosterone is converted into estrogen. My body refuses to do that, so I also must receive estrogen replacement therapy. Years after starting dual hormone therapy, we are still trying to find a good hormone dose. When delivered via a gel, my estrogen levels are non-detectable. When I receive it via a patch, it is expelled almost immediately. Also, body fat plays an essential role in the conversion process. And because body fat plays a vital role, the more body fat I lose, the faster my body filters out my hormones.

The next part of this problem is that, because I’m a hard gainer and have a body that cannibalises itself, for decades, food was a chore. I hated eating. I had to put too much effort into it. It was a huge source of stress.

When you must think about food all the time, it ruins it. When you have both OCD and OCPD as part of autism, it’s a recipe for an eating disorder.

I was so relieved when I came up with a method that allowed me to do sport while properly fuelling my body to reach my goals without ever having to think long about or stress over making sure I was getting adequate nutrition. I was so successful; I gained over 12 kg of muscle in 18 months.

The Mistake

And then a “mistake” was made and my brain when into a death spiral.

A few weeks ago, I came to realise that I was under fuelling my body for my specific fitness goals. One of the things that helped me not worry about food was an app that assisted me in figuring out my caloric needs. The app developed a bug that caused it to underreport my needs by over 100 kcals per day.

The result was for three weeks, even though I was still in a slight surplus, I was losing fat which I absolutely cannot afford to lose. I hate talking specific numbers, but I found myself at 8 per cent body fat, which was a 1.5 per cent loss in a three-week period.

When I first noticed this “mistake”, I panicked. This was immediately followed by beating myself up. It was made worse when it came time for my monthly hormone tests and my estrogen levels were once again barely detectable. After a day of OCPD spiralling, C-PTSD decided to come along and complicate things. I became angry with myself for trusting in something outside of myself.

I was spiralling. I was constantly having panic attacks as I was convinced, I fucked everything up, derailed my fitness goals and damaged my health.

I felt like I should have known something was up when overnight, this app was reporting I was burning over 100 kcals a day less than I had been for months, with no changes in activity. I felt like I shouldn’t have ignored the fact that despite eating over 3000 kcals a day, which is a lot for my height and weight, I was always famished, instead of pushing it aside because I also happened to be on a corticosteroid at the time. I should have been paying closer attention to the numbers on the scale and my weekly averages. I should have noticed that my clothes and watch no longer fit properly. I should have. I should have. I should have.

You may have already concluded that I, in fact, did not make any mistakes. I had a system that I created that hadn’t failed me for over 18 months. I was right to trust in that system. The part of it that failed was completely beyond my control. But the extreme perfectionism that comes with OCPD, the type that gives no room for failure of any kind, requires more strength to push back against that I sometimes feel I’m capable of. It isn’t automatic.

Confronting My Brain

Before I could move forward, I had to confront my brain. Especially because my first instinct was to allow my OCPD to take over and start to obsessively plan every little detail about how much I exercise and what I eat.

The ways my brain was operating is not too dissimilar to orthorexia. Except with me, my disordered eating wouldn’t be about avoiding foods, cutting out food groups, being critical about what others eat, or fixation over quality. Instead, it would be all about the perfect plan and becoming inflexible; making sure I do everything in my power to ensure no more mistakes are made.

The urge was driving me, hard. This drive was fuelling my anxiety, which then fuelled this drive, creating a feedback loop. Then, my OCD decided to join the party that was happening in my brain. It was either control everything to death or quit my sport because I can’t do it and be worried about food. Not without developing an eating disorder that has yet to be named.

I began to confront my brain, telling it, it was a dirty dirty liar. But it wasn’t working. I needed help.

Climbing Out

Climbing out of this spiral wasn’t easy. After giving myself a day to be in my feelings, I talked with my trainer about it. I told him I knew what my brain was doing to me was nonsense, but my brain does what my brain does. I told him that if the bug in the app I relied on isn’t fixed and I can’t find another solution to make feeding myself a low-thought task, I may just quit.

I’m so lucky to have him. He let me know he understood my spiral as he too has been known to battle with perfectionism. After validating my feelings, he reassured me that I didn’t make any mistakes. And that I haven’t messed up my training. He also understood the food challenge.

He shared my food frustration because I had made this amazing system so that I don’t have to stress about it, as he also knows my history there and how my metabolism complicates food, that I was right to trust in this system, and he understood just how catastrophic it was for me for it to develop a bug. He asked all the right questions about any steps I may have taken to address the bug with those who could fix it, without causing me to feel like he was questioning my competency. (I had.)

Having someone I trust to both validate my feelings and then to gently push back against the distorted parts of my thoughts while telling me to be kind to myself was all I needed to begin the climb out.

It took a couple days of replaying in my head what my trainer said to me before I could move on to the next part.

Bird’s Eye View

After a few more days, I was able to pull back and look at the big picture instead of spiralling over the fact I hadn’t gained any weight despite being in a surplus and was getting smaller.

Pulling back allowed me to compare how much I weighed the last time I was this small. It turned out, I gained 1.5 kg in muscle since July. I also looked at my strength numbers. I was lifting a lot heavier, too, which is another sign of muscle gains.

As an aside: this is what body recomposition looks like. Because fat takes up more physical space per kilogram, you will get smaller as muscle replaces fat by a 1:1 ratio. You will not see changes on the scale, but you will see it in the mirror and in your clothes. And if you’re wondering, how can you lose fat while being in a caloric surplus? It’s because your body needs extra calories above maintenance to repair and grow muscle. And if you’re not consuming all the extra calories your body needs, you will lose fat.

These pieces of information allowed me to finally fully believe that I hadn’t ruined my progress. But now what? The thought of redoing my meal plan for the rest of this workout cycle was too much.

While I don’t have to think about food day-by-day and only cook three days a week, there is a lot of planning involved to achieve this. All my groceries were purchased. My delicious meals were cooked and ready to go.

I once saw someone say the reason why autistics find changing plans so difficult is because we put a lot of thought into them so that we can function. Redoing all that work is overwhelming in terms of needing to spend all that time yet again, coupled with all that time is wasted!

I was feeling that overwhelm and panic was once again setting in. My first thought was to just leave it be until my cycle was over and I can easily increase my calories without added work. But then I did some math to figure out where my body fat was sitting based on how much I was needing to eat every day to be at maintenance and realised, at 8 per cent, that wasn’t safe.

The Solution

First, I found an app that would allow me to track how much I was burning, plus or minus 50 calories a day, while I wait for the bug to be fixed in my app of choice. This new app also helped me do the necessary math to figure out my body fat percentage coupled with looking in the mirror.

Second, I decided that I was going to have one day a week that I called a “Fuck It Day.” Because I was not going to redo my meal plan, the “Fuck It Day” followed my original meal plan plus eat more. It’s different than both a “cheat” day, which I don’t believe in because I don’t restrict what I eat nor is it necessary for any fitness goal, and a refeed day because I’m not in a deficit. A one-day caloric increase won’t undo everything, but, hopefully, because it would raise my weekly average by 100 kcals per day, it would halt the fat loss.

Third, during my next cycle, there will be another planned caloric increase that will hopefully allow me to regain some fat. The caloric increase is more than the recommended 10 per cent over maintenance, but only by a small amount.

Fourth, I ran my plan and all my numbers past my trainer for a logic check. While I was fairly sure all my numbers were correct and the logic behind my plan was sound, I still wasn’t trusting my brain after the spiral it went down. It got the thumbs up including a confirmation of my body fat based on my progress pictures. We are crossing our fingers that it works.

Fifth, my trainer and I decided that if I don’t gain some fat during my next cycle, I’ll go in for a DEXA scan plus have my metabolism tested so that I can get the needed numbers to properly fuel my body.

Finally, the weight was lifted. I could move forward.

Lessons To Learn

I share the above to not only let people know they aren’t alone when their brain tortures them in this way. But also, hopefully you can take away a few lessons.

When something goes sideways and you feel it’s catastrophic, spend time in your feelings. They need to be felt and confronted. You can’t properly confront the distorted thoughts if you don’t give yourself time to fully sit in the discomfort and explore them.

Talk with someone you trust who can both empathise and push back against the cognitive distortions. It helps, a lot.

Pull back and look at the big picture. When you’re in the spiral, all you see is the thing causing it and could potentially be missing some wins.

Finally, move forward and create a new plan. Even if it hurts because you already had a plan, and it was perfect. Maybe, especially then. There is an excellent possibility that my brain would still be trying to correct the thing that went wrong instead of taking the things that worked and making them better had I not willed myself to move forward.

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