 Good day and welcome back to the Forty Ooty podcast with you host as always Mr. Thomas Henley. Today I have again another very special episode for you guys. This is going to be an episode that was very much in the makings for a long time. Basically I received an email around about a year or so ago from someone who listens to the Forty Ooty podcast. Lovely lovely woman called Liv who I'm going to speak to today. And basically she was talking all about sort of the benefits that the podcast had on her. She's very into podcasting so I was like we need to set up an episode fast forward about a year. We've been trying to set it up. We're both very very busy and we've both been finding it very hard to find time to set the episode up but it is finally the time. So I just want to make a little bit of a nod to the dates of recording. We are recording on the 14th of February which is Valentine's Day. And I just wanted to put this out there that you know Valentine's Day although it can be great for some people. It can be very very hard for other people. And you know I find it really weird that we have a specific day for this kind of thing. Me and my partner actually had our Valentine's Day like on the weekend so we avoided all the busy times, avoided all the expensive prices and stuff. And yeah I mean I think it's important to realize that although there are these social norms and social expectations to have a partner and put it on social media and go oh look at my partner did to me and I find it very very very silly. I feel like it should be a very private affair. And I don't really think it should be confined to just romantic relationships. You know you can show love to everybody. But that's a little bit of a mention of a nod to Valentine's Day. Getting back on track we're going to be talking today about autism and eating disorders. As many of you may know from watching previous episodes I have had a rocky road with eating disorders being bulimic when I was younger and also now struggling with binge eating disorder which has sort of been an ongoing thing. And so there's going to be a bit of a warning label. You know if you find that discussions around eating disorders is going to upset you perhaps stuff around mental health this is probably not the absurd for you. But if you feel like it's something that you want to listen to very happy to have you with us. So without further ado how are you doing today love? Well I am so so excited to be here and I loved your intro and when you said about a year ago I feel like it's been long. Because you were on the Live Label Free podcast and I am positive that episode was more than a year ago. So yeah I think suffice to say we've been trying to set this up forever and I'm just so so excited to be here today to talk about a very very important topic and I am of course honored to do it on Valentine's Day even though I agree that I think all these days right autism awareness day Valentine's Day Thanksgiving right like why don't we just make these things a forever thing. I think you know like first of all like autism awareness day I'm like we don't need more awareness we need more acceptance and just like people show their love on other days besides Valentine's Day I think. I think it was created by the card companies as well like it's definitely like a marketing move. Oh absolutely. Do you feel that stress as a sort of like content creator to like make sure that you get like a specific episode or post out for a certain day and I mean I've heard from other creators that like especially autism like awareness week and month and stuff it's always like a really stressful time. What do you think about that? Yeah well for me personally it used to be like any type of holiday even my just my birthday I would be like so stressed because I'm like oh now I have to do another post just for this and and and when I kind of realized like as I started internalizing the live label free philosophy more and more I realized like I it is in my power to choose whether or not I allow this external circumstance to decide my actions or whether I just do things on my own time and in my own way. Everyone does it don't they? So it's you know like comes around Christmas time there's all these posts about like autism at Christmas so I'm like even though like it sounds like that would be the perfect time to get like views on the posts or like followers like they never perform well for me. Well it's because it's not evergreen right it's like people are not going to listen to autism at Christmas in August right whereas so that's kind of for me also been like I actually recently heard a quote that I loved and it really helped me to like I guess put the final step in like I'm going to stop making content specifically for these special days and holidays and that was the opposite of courage in society is not cowardice it's conformity and I loved that so so much because it's so true like in society we always think we have to be doing what everyone else is doing to fit in and to be and you know to be successful but the thing is that the most successful people the most people that live in freedom and don't feel so much pressure or stress or the people that do something completely different because they're like the individuals yeah exactly and yeah also with with my cookbook which is now finally out by the time this episode airs tell us tell us about it because I'm going to be sticking right in the in the description so now you've been hard at work on it yes well it's called noticing no diversity and it's filled with over 50 simple recipes to notice both um the body and mind and I've learned a lot over the years about the mind gut connection and how if you have a lot of anxiety like you're really going to suffer from digestive issues because we have so many serotonin receptors and no transmitters in in our gut like it's not for nothing we have these expressions like oh to have rainbow no rainbow what am I saying is it because of the light in the background it's like probably because I have a lot of association with with rainbows um like my memoir actually that's coming out in I don't know yet in a couple months it's called rainbow girl my journey to living life in full color because growing up rainbow girl was my nickname because I only drew symmetrical rainbows and castles but yeah anyways kind of going back to the cookbook it has been in the making for a very very very long time and I was always like okay I want to bring it out for my birthday I want to bring it out for Christmas but every time something came up and there was some edit that had gone horribly wrong and I was like no but now I have to set the next deadline and then it was at one point you're like you know what I'm just going to bring it out when it's done and I don't care when this is going to be but that day is going to be special in and of itself because I'm bringing my cookbook out on that day so now it's officially out as of February 21st 2023 so it's I think I think I'm going to release this as the next one but the next episode I think that would be Tuesday so that's like a couple of days after the pot this you're hearing this go over onto Liv's links down in the comments so I'll post like your link tree or something and there'll be like sounds great yeah some areas you can do it but um I think we've probably skipped over like the introduction a little bit do you want to tell us a little bit sort of about the work that you do when some of like the social media stuff that you do on Instagram yeah absolutely so my name is Liv and my I'm the brand of the face for the person behind Liv label free um and my whole philosophy with Liv label free is that I believe that any type of restriction or limitation um or fear of life of living of anything is rooted in in labels like for me personally in my eating disorder like was was rooted in labels seeing food as good or bad caused me to restrict certain foods seeing rest as lazy and exercise as productive caused me to basically run myself into a dark hole of misery and and in society and diet culture we see so many labels gluten free dairy free vegan this blah blah good healthy bad um normal not normal like it's it's overwhelming especially I think for neurodivergent individuals and I think for me also like my literal brain really took certain health recommendations growing up really too I took them to literally seeing like as you should eat this and you should avoid that because if you'll if you eat cookies you'll get this illness and you'll do this and this will happen and I got all these fears around all these external labels basically plastered on to everyone because of course we live in a in a society that's infested with fat phobia and diet culture and keto paleo yeah vegan vegetarian pescatarian well obviously there's this caveat to those ones but and even with just like neurodivergence and autism it's like oh you're not normal or you're weird or this is a problem behavior I'm like it's so not helpful and and for me I really on my own journey to freedom not only for my eating disorder can you hear that in the background is that is that my um no no they're like building behind my house or something do you hear that let me tell my yeah a little bit I think it'll be okay it'll be okay because you're like hammering or doing something I don't know um I don't yeah if you hear something guys is that you're not going crazy yeah they've decided to like hammer behind my house um but anyways yeah for me I mean growing up I was diagnosed with anorexia and depression as young as 11 and anxiety and OCD came on top of that and then when I was 15 as I was tossed in and out of the treatment system I was labeled as manipulative and too complex and a hopeless case and told I was never going to get better you know all these labels just made me really not want to live and not want to go forward with my life um because it was so much negativity attached to them and it was really for me once I realized like trying to find validation or trying to find answers in in external circumstances was the really reason actually keeping me tracked and keeping me enslaved to my external circumstances and as long as you are a slave to your external circumstances I mean you can never be free because the very definition of freedom is not being enslaved obviously so are you conforming to like if you're applying a label to yourself you're assuming that it's sort of like the generalized or stereotypical idea of it so like you're always going to have to fit somewhere within that label to give yourself it and then like if you deviate out of it you know like you know if if you give the example of autism you know you for some reason you you stop needing to stem like for myself like I go to the gym so I don't really stem a lot and so I don't do that and I tend to make like pretty decent eye contact for for neurotypical standards and so I meet all of these these sort of criteria that kind of don't fit with autism and so yeah I mean I've been trying to make like quite a few reels and like posts and that kind of stuff nowadays because you know people that people do have especially people outside of like the autistic community they have an idea of like certain traits that they've heard from a family member or they've seen on TV oh autistic people don't do this this and this so they kind of use it as like a confirmation bias it's like okay they don't make eye contact told them it's be autistic or they do they're not they're not autistic yeah I love that you just brought that up also about like I make eye contact for good neurotypical standards and I don't stem that much and kind of I really like that you brought that up because it kind of breaks that stigma around like autism in posture syndrome that we hear a lot a lot about because for me too like the reason why my autism went undiagnosed for over 20 years was because I seem to be functioning perfectly fine right and then we can bring it back into those functioning labels that are also so harmful and for me the very nature of the diagnosis is it's you know medical diagnosis is there for things that cause dysfunction like things that cause some level of disability because yeah it's like you know for example you know the support that you would receive from getting an autism diagnosis if you don't need that support then medical practitioners don't really see a need for it right it's it's more for us you know obviously it's great to kind of have that that validation from like an external medical scientific thing and you know and it is it's only really at points in people's lives if they're if they're not diagnosed when they're younger it's at the points where they're having a really hard time and then they go in the like hey look there's I show these these this and this signs of autism you know so the ignition is the actual issues that you have and that that kind of encourages people to go for it but it also encourages like the medical system to to diagnose you so like if you're not having any issues of it like you know if you if you're not finding that in your eyes autism is is causing you any issues then you know it's it's quite hard to go for a diagnosis like right yeah and you mentioned a keyword which I think is really important to bring up in that word is dysfunction um because I actually have a line in my upcoming memoir um that reads but livia isn't autism a label and and I go into that because it's like yeah of course autism is label and I do label myself as an autistic person um but again the keyword here is is function or dysfunction because the the autistic label knowing that I'm autistic and being able to label certain traits or behaviors as oh these are autistic traits that are part of me and help me function and help me be better like I said they help me function they help me be my full self whereas labels such as labeling food as good or bad or unhealthy or saying I am anorexic or bulimic or I am disordered I am wrong or I am bad or I need to feel guilty for this these the kind of restrictive yes labels rather than right they do not help us function they they cause dysfunction right that's why it's called a disorder and that's why I hate the terminology of autism spectrum disorder because I'm like it is not a disorder but but again there we go with the labels right and I think it's really important when it comes to labels and if you do find yourself labeling things like I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with labeling again because labeling labeling as wrong would just be another label but it's really about looking at what is the intention behind this is this hoping a purpose is this actually helping me function or is this limiting me or restricting me from living to my full potential because in the end I think that's all what we're here to do is to find people and discover ourselves so that we can live to a full potential and I think part of that is is looking at which labels help me do that but which labels are keeping me from doing that and and so like like a part of a part of your like your your business because obviously you're I imagine you're a sole trader like so I'm kind of going through the the process of setting up a business and stuff what kind of like services and stuff do you offer to people and like how does that tie in with the content that you put out yeah so I am I I guess I would call myself a food freedom coach but it honestly goes so much beyond food freedom because I think freedom in itself if you are a free person like food freedom is inherently part of that and I actually have started doing some like life and business coaching with other people that also want to um that are also autistic and also want to coach other people with their issues I mean I currently have a client that has mass mass cell activation syndrome and is autistic and is in the LGBTQ community and had an eating disorder so we're really looking at like how can you what niche are you trying to get into so that you can really find the audience that you're looking to work with but anyways what I do is it's really I work one-on-one with clients to to help them discover like what are the obstacles what are the labels in your life that are holding you back and a lot of it is of course tied to tied to eating disorders because there's this huge fairly misunderstood gap link whatever you want to call it which is autism or neurodiversity and eating disorders and for me personally I believe that my eating disorder my anorexia was simply a manifestation of underlying and undiagnosed autism and the more and more I've been talking about this and sharing my personal story I've been learning how incredibly common this is and that people are just not being seen or validated or understood and their eating disorder is being treated just in a really harmful way because there is no awareness or understanding for the root cause which is often the invalidated autism yeah because I imagine like if you if you diagnosed with any any like you hear it a lot with with autistic women and girls getting diagnosed with like BPD or schizophrenia instead of autism it's like if you if you already have something that like a medical professional has given you and you like you trust that that that sort of process all of your like lines of sight is gonna be on that and like if you can fix that everything is gonna be good right you know like for you know for a long time I could say that you know I was very sort of self-conscious and you know looking a lot of self-esteem or self-care I would say um so a lot of the stuff that I did was you know it's kind of on the lines of yourself I was I was focusing on my external world I was focusing on I need to be the best taekwondo fighter I need to be the best scientist and so I just focused on those two things and all the time I was ignoring this massive part of myself which was being autistic and you know perhaps if I'd learned about autism in the detail that I did like during my 20s then I did with my teens then maybe I probably you know I probably would have raised my confidence more than any like medals or degrees could give me so it's kind of like it's it's interesting when you when you have something to focus on it's kind of like you find different coping mechanisms to deal with to deal with the consequences of something rather than like going and just like understanding parts of yourself and like trying to like build yourself up like from me from the inside out rather right yeah yeah and I like that you just said that about building yourself from the inside out because that's really the core of the work I do with clients is really looking at who are you as a person what do you want your life to look like and how can we actually embrace your your unique strength and your autistic traits to find that freedom whether that means recovering from an eating disorder finding financial freedom really any kind of freedom because for me personally going in and out of eating disorder treatment for over seven years it was always they were always trying to rid me of my autistic traits labeling these as eating disorder behaviors because they yeah because they didn't know because a lot of autistic traits I mean if you mix them with food and exercise it it becomes an eating disorder behavior right like the calorie counting for example it is my the underlying trait is my autistic need for attaching numbers to things right yeah or like the needing to eat the same foods every day eating disorder behavior well no like that's yes exactly or like really strong sensory preferences I if I eat something that's meant to be served hot um like I can only consume it if it's really hot but I remember in treatment like when I would want to microwave my food it was like that's an eating disorder behavior right and basically by telling me that I could only fully recover from my eating disorder if I got rid of all these traits all these preferences I mean recovery at one point I was like this is actually impossible and it was with that approach because I can't get rid of my autism like I that is me I am autistic so and that was really for me when I discovered I'm autistic it was like I always like to compare it to recovery for my eating disorder I was just like baking this cake the whole time and the autism diagnosis was like the cheer you on top of the cake like the cake is done like because now I was like now I can actually really realize and fully embrace that I am fully recovered and fully recovered from eating disorder for me for an autistic person does and will look really different for someone that is neurotypical right because for someone who's neurotypical maybe being really spontaneous and being able to say yes to a last minute dinner date or party or whatever maybe that is what full recovery looks like for them but for most autistic people I can tell you that is not the case so I'm sure you can imagine the harm that it that can be inflicted upon an autistic person if some professional saying you will only be fully recovered once this even though that's something that may never even be part of your life because of the underlying not even want it as well because exactly you know a lot of the things that we advocate for you know especially in the autistic community are things that parents and professionals want us to get rid of and not necessarily something that dramatically has a negative impact on our life like it's the funny thing as well like it's definitely because they're like labelling parts of your autistic traits as as eating disordered related things like I can't imagine how like just counterintuitive that that must be like to go through that whole process and just well absolutely awful yeah yeah but I I guess I mean I turned the mess into my message now and that's my favorite quote ever and that's actually also the last sentence of of my memoir book um because I I truly believe now looking back there were many many years where I was I've wasted my entire youth I've wasted everything due to my eating disorder my eating disorder stole this away from me um but now I can with a full heart full heart on valentine's day say that I think developing my eating disorder was the greatest gift that I could have ever received in this life um because would not for that journey of self-discovery I had to go through to to recover maybe I still wouldn't even know that I'm autistic right like who knows like we of course can never go back but um that that journey to freedom made me question myself and my identity and it's what prompted me to read more about me and my trade to my preferences and and yeah like I said discover I'm autistic and now being able to bridge that gap between eating disorder and autism a gap that I'm learning is so so important and such a strong link that's so common I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't want to do any other work in the world because it lights me up more than anything helping helping others find their own freedom um with similar stories it's beautiful thank you for that live I guess one of the the key things if we kind of focus in on like the topic of the podcast which you know autism and eating disorders what aspects of autism like or autistic traits could impact the development of like an eating disorder what are like the the crossovers that that really stand out to you yeah so the first one that comes to mind for me is interceptive awareness and I mean I'm sure you've talked about interception on the podcast before um but in short you know what I I I don't know if I have I I I don't think I've even made a podcast about Alexa fine yeah I really need to like oh really do something related on that maybe maybe I have maybe it's there's been a few episodes because I'm sure you've mentioned it like a couple times I probably mentioned it probably wasn't like one of the topics or right but anyways yeah for for the listeners that maybe don't know interception in short is the sense through which we monitor the inner state of our body so whether we know um whether we're hungry or thirsty or too hot or too cold or um whether we need to go to the bathroom or not like that's all regulated by our interceptive awareness but autistic individuals as well as those with eating disorders often often tend to lack into receptive awareness so we may not be able to recognize a physical hunger as easily or we also may be unable to recognize when we're full or when we're satisfied um which can of course make eating and and nourishing yourself really really difficult so definitely like like even with stuff like hydration and going like yeah going going to the bathroom you know like there's been many times looking back in my life where I've just got into this this crazy like hyper fixation rabbit hole of just like working from morning to like early hours in the morning and I just I stopped working and I'm like oh my god my stomach is like absolutely churning and like making all these noises and I haven't been to the bathroom much today either and I've been drinking like loads and loads of water I'm just like how did I not realize right yeah well I think that for me for an example like doing doing eating disorder treatment I was like I'm never hungry like I did not feel physical hunger and they they they'd accuse me of lying right they'd be like that you're eating disorder talking yeah but I'm like psycho psychosomatic right and I'm like and I'm like that is so harmful now that I think like you were telling me I was lying to a little 15 year old girl that was just telling the truth like I mean it's just so so awful so yeah that's like there is medical gas lighting like totally totally yeah so that's a big one is that lack of interceptive awareness and um because I mean if you're unable to recognize whether you're hungry or not like it can cause it can lead to unconscious restriction but also on the other end of the spectrum I think it can also lead to overeating if you don't can't unable to recognize when you are sad when you fall like you'll just keep eating until you feel like you're gonna burst and you're like oh maybe I ate a bit too much right so I've experienced like both sides of that like when I was younger didn't have like hardly any hunger like I would I mean I would eat enough but I would eat like really like high calorie dense foods so I just wouldn't have like a lot of bulk in like what I was eating where it's like nowadays starting this this medication metazapine which I think I've talked to you about before it's like it's it's for anxiety and depression and stuff and it's like a sedative and it helps you sleep but one of the side effects for a lot of people is that it stimulates your appetite and like as soon as I was on that like my weight just I went straight up I started like binging at night I like the the only real way that I can tell that I'm full when I've had my tablets is if my stomach hurts or like it feels sick like yeah and I think for me like that was a really strong experience that I had when going through extreme hunger because when I when I was coming out of energy deficit after years of restriction um I mean I always say like I was used new Newton stood law which newton I think by the way was autistic but his his stood law states like for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction and I think it's the same for restriction and binging right like if you've spent a long time not eating enough malnourished then like yeah you are going to need to eat a lot of food to make up for that and almost compensate for this this build-up of energy debt that's been happening to your body so for me too it it literally felt like even though I didn't feel like a physical hunger I guess like it was just like my my body was like this invisible force that was like calling me to eat and eat and eat until I literally couldn't eat a bite anymore because I felt like I was just gonna like explode so it's also like relieving that mental pressure isn't it it's like if you go yeah like especially when I was competing and stuff if you go for like days and days and days or weeks and I'm sorry even years of like doing daily intense cardio and like yeah eating belly and often it's like when you when you stop doing that you're like oh my god I can eat what I want and right yeah it's like you go the opposite way you're just like right because your body like has completely lost trust with you and the only way to gain that trust back with your body is to prove to your body like there's enough food like you're allowed to rest and and of course here a lot of times what we what I see with clients is that when they come come from a history of restriction usually anorexia bulimia or orthorexia really any kind of restriction there's this huge fear when they're hit by this wave or like tsunami that sweeps them up of like you need to keep eating they have this huge fear like they're going to gain weight forever right they're gonna become obese they're gonna you know become really really overweight and that's of course fueled by the fat phobia of our society because even this this label obese and overweight and like it all has to do with BMI which is a super outdated method that is literally like not even BMR is like it's it's it's like not even based on science like honestly so so yeah that's like this huge fear is like oh i'm swinging to the other side and developing binge eating disorder and I mean as I just on the BMI thing like I found it so funny because I'm classified as being obese because of my BMI it doesn't like factor in like your lean body mass or your bones or anything like anything like yeah I mean I have a whole post on my website of why BMI is like bullshit and and I mean if you like it was invented by a mathematician over 200 years ago like someone who didn't even study medicine and it was created exclusively by and for white western european men like no women were part of the study no immigrants were part of this study no people of color were part of the study I mean if a neuroscientist were using 200 year old techniques like the brain surgery he would immediately be fired so how doing the is right okay we're gonna get you in we're gonna take out that frontal lobe exactly so how is it that literally every health professional nowadays with the advancement of technology which says by the way never been more advanced than it is today how is it that every health professional still using this like honestly dumb ass metric like it just uh it just kind of just kind of the same as like like in a similar venue you find stuff like somatotypes which are very prevalent in a lot of like advertising for like fitness coaches and stuff you know using like the whole ectomorph endomorph and like it was it was actually designed it wasn't designed to like give people an idea of what the metabolisms like or what kind of bone structure or body shape they have it was actually designed to categorize people in order to see if someone's frame was related to their personality so it's kind of like so none of those like pseudo things that just keep like I was taught about it in PA like when I was doing my my A level in physical education like somatotypes that was a part of it and just like why is that right yeah I mean so much of the education system is just so messed up like I mean even like the whole eating disorder education I remember like when I was when we were learning about eating disorders when I was still really young kid in school you know you have the classical stereotypical image of anorexia and then a very thin white female that is looks like a skeleton looking in the mirror and she sees a really fat person staring back at her this is like that belief of what anorexia is and something that is really that I notice a lot in autism and neurodiversity is that there isn't there isn't body dysmorphia and there is not fear of waking and that was for me really personally why I never resonated with this label anorexia because I was like but I don't think I'm fat I don't want to lose weight I cannot have this illness right and that's why I believe the the anorexia I mean I even hesitate to call it that like the restrictive eating disorder is a term I prefer was was really a manifestation of the autism because for me it was like all of my autistic traits like the difficulty routines the need for ritual and routine the sensory preferences like the control factor like the anxiety that I had around food and not trusting eating different foods or new foods or more foods because eating full felt really sensory and uncomfortable to me like yeah I mean that if you don't have any awareness or knowledge of autism or autistic traits like yeah I mean of course anyone would label that as an eating disorder and then when it's invalidated and you're not believed and you're accused for lying and being manipulative like it just causes you to cling to that control even more which of course worsens the disorder so as opposed to when you when you were mentioning it like it's it's kind of like inherently assumed that if you have you know diagnosed anorexia that that that label that you also have body dysmorphia as well yeah you're kind of saying that you you don't need to have body dysmorphia to be anorexial like you can see that you're very very you know skinny and you can be like okay right this is actually a problem I don't see myself as a really fat person in the mirror I know what I look like and I don't want to be like this and you kind of like splitting the I suppose like you know even even in my mind to be honest like you know to me you know someone who hasn't really sort of delved into like the eating disorder literature and sort of the world as much as you have like it does kind of feel like body dysmorphia anorexia like one in the same but whereas you're saying that it's not it's like oh not at all I mean I have never had body dysmorphia I have never considered myself a fat person and even when I was very very ill and literally looked like a skeleton I knew better than anyone else that I looked like a skeleton but then of course people like but then why didn't you just eat more why don't you change well it's because that was the artistic trait the difficulty with change that was almost overpowering this knowledge of how new I how how sick I knew I was right like the the idea of changing my ways of changing my habits was more scary to me than than being like okay I just look this way and I could die any day right like that's how how scary the change was for me and and I think this is really really common in in eating disorders because in the end like an eating disorder is is an addiction just like smoking or sex addiction or alcoholism like the person suffering from the addiction often knows that what they're doing is not good for them like a smoker who sees their black lungs like they're not gonna they're not gonna say no like I'm not harming my body like I have no idea what you're talking about right exactly like they know um they know that what they're doing is not healthy but but changing is is the hardest thing humans have to do like the reason we are called creatures of habit is because we are wired to to do things over and over again because what we're designed are we because it's like yes our brain's ability to form to form habits is the very thing that allows humans to survive like if we had to wake up every morning and think about how to turn on the shower how to use the bathroom like all of the energy that we would be using like on an evolutionary level to seek out food and and survive and protect ourselves would be wasted at the beginning of the day it's kind of like bypass bypassing the need to like cognitively process everything that you're doing right like if it's like a habit like that you just after the gym you just go in the shower you don't really think about it you just jump in the shower like this is what I do whereas like you know if you in that sort of initial stage like you think it and go into the gym you're like okay I'm gonna go twice a week and do this all that and that those like first few weeks it's like the amount of energy and cognitive thought that goes into doing that is just so intense but if you're in a cycle just every week you go twice a week you don't think about it and you actually feel a bit weird if you don't go exactly and that's what happens with with an eating disorder right and when we have repeated a certain behavior enough times it forms a habit and when we've repeated a habit enough times it forms an identity yeah and when we've been engaging with eating disorder behaviors for many many years we identify we see ourselves as someone with an eating disorder and we cannot imagine our life without this illness we believe we need this illness to survive and that's why when that's why it is so hard to recover and to say I'm choosing to to give the possibility of a different life a chance because we don't know what's going to come in the place like for me personally I was on the fence about recovering for so many years because I was like what is what if what if not no longer having my eating disorder leaves this huge void leaves this huge emptiness like what's going to come in the place and there's so often right that's the whole shallowness with that whole thing why don't you just eat more like it's like if it was just about food like I obviously would have long done that but it's so much deeper it's about the habits and the identity tied to the disorder that keeps that keeps us stuck and again that brings me back to the labels of when we remove this label of we need to identify as this type of person then we no longer need the eating disorder because we no longer need to attach ourselves to something beyond ourselves we can just be us yeah yeah well um you know you mentioned some stuff around like sort of the literal thinking about like the calorie count and stuff and sort of the sensory elements a little bit and you know aspects of like routine which you know we know it's quite it's quite an autistic thing but what about like the anxiety because anxiety is a really funny one because it's not it's a it's a mental state but it's also it's tied to like a very important like hormone for like a lot of stuff because you know when we think of like eating disorders we think of it as like a psychological thing as well but there's like those there is those elements of hormones related you know like for example with cortisol the the stress hormone you know that that helps us set up our like sleep sleep weight cycles you know it releases before we get up and then you know and then you also with food you have um things around like leptin and ghrelin and stuff like that yeah yeah so I think um um what are we talking about the the anxiety I think that's directly um I think I kind of want to jump off the interception I was talking about earlier um and say that interception also affects our interpretation of emotions and a lack yeah and a lack of interceptive awareness therefore can lead to difficulty recognizing emotions and this is known as alexa thymia and I believe that alexa thymia is also directly ties to anxiety because people who struggle with alexa thymia often may be over responsive to inner cues of fear or worry and then this of course leads to just anxiety and distrust in the situation and I kind of do you kind of like link it's it's like for me it's it's I I know something's up you know I've kind of got myself to a point I can kind of tell by my bodily sensations in my mental state some degree what I'm feeling but like it's really hard for me to go hey look this this event happened then I feel like this like finding that connection between the two is really hard yeah and so like I always resort to these sort of blanket methods to overall improve my mood like exercise like you know exercise is going to improve my mood it's gonna lower my anxiety I'm gonna get all the energy out so I'm kind of killing all of the the birds without really addressing the cause of why I'm feeling like this right and I think that what you just mentioned about like you know what's going to happen when you go to the gym I think this is where a really important word comes in and that word is trust because another one of my favorite quotes is the opposite of anxiety is not calm it's trust because if you think about it we only are anxious for situations when we don't trust the outcome and what is not trusting the outcome it's not knowing the outcome but when you have a habit and you've done it over and over and over again and you know that you're going to get the same every time you do that feel good you do this feel good you do this feel good you trust that outcome and you trust that behavior and again that ties back to why eating disorders are so addictive and people stay stuck in them for so long simply because we know exactly if we eat this or if we run for that amount of time we're going to feel like this and therefore we trust this whole way of living and recovering from your eating disorder choosing to do something completely opposite of what you're doing every day that's the very definition of of bringing up anxiety because you cannot trust the outcome because you don't know the outcome yeah so and I think what you said about like eating disorders and anxiety is often seen as really psychological I mean there's so much research being done more and more about how anxiety and autism and eating disorders like is also very biological physical system too I mean I don't want to go into a whole another rather than go into the HPA axis and I'm reading a lot about going to go that deep I'm reading a lot about like the vagus nerve right now yeah it's interesting a lot of really fascinating science about how people on the autism spectrum as well as those with eating disorders like have like vagal nerve dysfunction and they're constantly in like certain systems which are keeping them in this state that their body thinks they're in danger the vagal the vagal nerve being like pretty much the the nerve that you think about when you think about like the parasympathetics emphatics like the the fight of flight mode the one the anxiety the the alertness stuff like that is what activates you whereas the parasympathetics that's the it's also known as rest and digest rest and digest yeah so yeah just just clarifying around the yes and the vagus nerve yeah the vagus nerve is also the main nerve that connects the mind and the gut and that's again why if you if you feel mentally very anxious that's why you can struggle with digestive issues and have difficulty recognizing physical hunger because you're like serotonin neurotransmitters your receptors in your brain are literally communicating to your stomach like you have to be anxious about something you have to fear and when your body perceives danger being hungry and eating is your very last priority like if a tiger is going to come run at me all the blood all the bloods yeah i don't have time to be like you go and everything else to your muscles so you get ready for action exactly yeah so i mean for me personally like learning all this science and like gave me like a deeper understanding of the way my body works and when you understand the way your body works and the way your body communicates with you it's so much easier to nourish your body and work with your body rather than against it because again like awareness knowing understanding how something works is the very first step to changing for the better and improving yourself because you can't fix a problem if you don't know what the problem is in the first place and if i think as well there's there's you know sort of going back to identity i think you know once once you understand something like you know quite often people you know if you go up to people and i talked to to dr megan neff uh neurodivergent insights on this you know if you if you go up to someone and say look i have depression i think i have anxiety they take it as like a personality trait so it's like like just just a part of your personality whereas like when you understand the science it kind of it allows you to be a bit more detached from that label and just like okay so i'm depressed my serotonin is low obviously obviously it's not completely exactly how it works you know we can we can guess but you know your serotonin is low or my you know instead of you know i have a condition where my serotonin is low a lot rather than i am a depressed person or exactly you with anxiety a my cortisol is really firing today rather than i'm just anxious i'm socially anxious i'm now so below self-esteem right you know like it allows you to kind of get a bit of distance from it exactly yeah i mean for me the first step to recovering from my eating disorder was saying instead of i am i am someone like with an eating disorder is i have an eating disorder meaning i can also get rid of it and i think you're just like the opposite of autism like exactly yeah exactly well that's funny you just brought that up because i like my very first video i made on youtube about autism is titled like how i found out i have autism and one of the comments on that video was like hey livia i really love this video but have you considered saying i am autistic because the majority of the neurodivergent community actually prefers i've had those yeah and and then i said it like to be honest that sounds like a really nice comment like compared to like this stuff that i've heard it over people's like people plaster people on the stories like oh my god this person is saying this this and this and like i don't i mean it is super sweet and actually it led me to create another video that's now on youtube which is like about the identity first and the person first language and which language you should use and kind of explaining both and it's interesting because i created i labeled that video labeled that video versus how i found out i had autism because i had conditioned my brain to to associate like the eating disorder by saying like i have an eating disorder rather than i am disordered but with autism it's obviously the opposite because everything i do is autistic because i am autistic it's not something i can ever get rid of unlike some parents of children doctor dr ranger han boshener first cured my child of autism have you got those comments before in the year so many times oh my god this is like they just maybe laugh so much i'm just like oh jesus christ i get like i've got i think the max i've gotten a post is like free before yeah i mean i get so many emails too parents come on to this comment section and click on the link and go down this like pseudo signs rabbit hole yeah or like right or like even when i was like researching on amazon like a like neurodivergent like recipe books to kind of get an idea of like what was out there like it was all books on like recipes to cure your child of their autism symptoms and i'm like this is exactly why i need to such a big market for it and especially in the us like oh my gosh with the whole vaccine thing and oh my god yeah yeah and i mean yeah so this is like again like going back to my cookbook like this is why a huge reason why i created nourishing neurodiversity is because i wanted there to be a book for neurodivergent individuals that like gives them permission to eat and nurse themselves in a way that allows them to embrace their neurodivergent traits rather than seeing it as like i need to cure myself of this for parents like oh if i if i cut dairy and gluten out of my kid's diet they may stop being autistic yes when i cut gluten and dairy out of my diet all that happened is that i feel like well um i know we're taught sort of generally about eating disorders but i there is something that it's kind of making its rounds for you the the autistic community there's a lot of people making posts on it and that is um aphid yes like do you like what what could you could you explain aphid to us yeah so i actually had an interview on my podcast that that came out today with um aphid dietitian lauren shurifi um and she works with with um people with aphid and aphid like traits and um it's actually funny you you brought the brought this up in the context of eating disorders because lauren actually did a post yesterday about if whether or not aphid is actually an eating disorder or whether it is actually just a form of neurodivergence or maybe a preference exactly because for anyone who's listening and doesn't know what aphid is or never heard of it aphid stands for avoidant restrictive food intake disorder and and the reason why this can be problematic is because um people who have a very restrictive and limited diet like chicken nuggets chips this can result in like nutritional deficiencies like lack of eating enough food um but there are a lot of also like sensory i guess parts of traits of aphid yeah like crunchy getting crunchy foods or yeah but also like physically like people who with aphid often feel like very full very quickly and this can just lead to like under eating and not getting enough nutrition and in a lot of people children with aphid um like there are growth delays and just like hormonal problems really yeah so i guess that's why it is considered a disorder again kind of going to what we talked about them in the beginning like how this label causes like dysfunction like dysfunction disorder of proper living and proper growth but there are a lot of misconceptions about aphid and in saying that it's like just picky eating right which we see a lot of autistic people as well but yeah i i mean i i recommend if anyone is listening to this and they've never heard of aphid before to actually listen to that podcast episode um in which i interview lauren from aphid dot dietitian um because we really unpack like what is aphid what um is like the overlap with autism but also like what's the difference between aphid and like other eating disorders like anorexia for example link in the description yes uh live label free uh link tree yes and and also with with aphid like it tends to be often really rooted in trauma um so for example if if a child like had a certain traumatic experience um eating a certain food and they like choked on it for example they they might have this fear around eating food in the future that that same thing will happen again that they'll choke again um but there's often also stories of of children being forced fed you know food they didn't want to eat which causes again that distrust in eating food because maybe their association with eating food is like i'm forced to eat this i have to do this but when us humans have to do something we're forced to do something we will push back we will not want to do that thing yeah and then again like i said century preferences like really specific food taxes not wanting to feel full not wanting clothes to feel too tight that was a huge one for me in my own in use for the recovery i mean i i didn't have aphid but um that that's one and i think another big um uh trait symptom of aphid is that people with aphid often find a lot of food to be disgusting or it brings up feelings of disgust yeah and this disgust is actually a primal emotion regulated by the insula which is the same part of the brain that is responsible for an intraceptive awareness so it all comes like it's all connected um and i think it's so so important for people when it comes to raising awareness of eating disorders in autistic people and making education more accessible for these people is i think is to really amplify the voices of people with lived experience and allowing them to share their story and allowing them to share what worked for them and what did not work for them like like we're doing today right um and i i think that's that whole problem with these big ableist organizations right like autism speaks is like we are advocating for autism uh but people that have no understanding advocating for their idea of what would happen right of being autistic like and the same with like professionals like when i talk see professionals talking about eating disorders and autism or this and that like they don't even i'm sorry like they don't even know what they're talking about because they don't have lived experience with either like that's just the truth now i i think you know i think to some degree people you know professionals and people now obviously there is quite a lot of utility in like understanding like the medical literature around certain things but i i do also find that the people who are who are the best at doing that job also have another feed-in from lived experienced people like an ally like they may have this these qualifications and stuff but they also they have an input they know someone they've they've understood someone's experiences and so i wouldn't i wouldn't kind of say that i'm not saying that you're saying it but i wouldn't say that every single professional is you know like didn't know what they're talking about oh of course yeah i think i think i i definitely agree with you like even like i've heard diagnosticians pretty much just palm people off because they made like a slight bit of eye contact during an assessment oh my god like stuff like that you know like it's people's biases that really i i found get in the way because they think they know better like they know better than these criteria and so like in my professional opinion even though i don't there's no reason for me to have this professional opinion i just think this this is why you can't have that this is why you have this or like i think those those types of people those kind of but i wouldn't say self-righteous but just kind of know it know all kind of people they definitely cause a lot of issues yeah and i mean like like what you said with professionals like i definitely think there are some amazing professionals out there and i think the amazing professionals are the ones that have a very open mind and they're willing and open to learn from their clients and and they're constantly you know saying i'm i'm constantly learning and and not pretending to already know everything because i think the professionals that say this is what i studied and these are my nice diplomas lined up behind me on the wall behind my this is why you should listen to me right these are the professionals that are very this is the one size fits all this is how we do it like if you fall without of with if you fall out of my like experience with this illness then you're too complex then you hopeless right that was for me i think even like even though we constantly see the flaws in the system like this this knowledge and this you know the the research and stuff that's got us to this point it's still it's still not solving anything like like even it's like i could understand if it was a system and everything worked really well we didn't have all of these issues perhaps in the autistic community or around eating sodas but the fact that you know the the sort of the recovery rates and the sort of outcomes for people are not like really really consistently good yeah kind of points to the fact that they're missing something there like then you know there's still developments to be made and i think any good professional and any good scientist knows that just going towards one study and using that as a representation of what they should do is is bad you've got a you know science is a progressive thing which means that things that we accept to the facts now are things that we know are not always things that continue in the future you know the studies that disprove them there's you know and so when someone comes up and says some some level of lived lived experience which goes against that or they show certain traits they you know it is worth actually listening to them and like trying to try to understand it a bit more for even even just for the sake of making it more person-centered and individualized as i think it's really really important absolutely and i think i think what you just mentioned about having a professional that's maybe seeing something they're not experienced with i think what will make them a really strong a helpful person is by by asking questions and admitting like they don't know everything because any anyone who ever says like i have all the answers like is probably the one who has the least answers because in the end like and this is kind of the approach i take with my clients is like i i'm not here to tell you i have the answers to your problems because in fact i have none of the answers to your problems but what makes a good coach or a good guide or a good professional is that they know how to ask the right questions because i believe that every individual already possesses their own answers within them and they need certain guidance they need to be asked the right questions to to discover those answers within themselves and that's ultimately how they shave themselves and help themselves and find freedom humans are just so complicated anyway like well we know very very little about the nature of like consciousness and like how are we we know certain bits in like the in the in the in a certain level of scope and single things but we don't know how everything connects together completely we don't know how at what point psychology is different to biology or like you know there's there's so many like gray areas especially when it comes to the human brain because it's so complicated right and of course we can never we can never view or observe or study the human brain without a human brain yeah like we can never view it objectively because we we're we're studying something from a objective right we're studying a brain with a brain right and like what you just said about like like we don't even know these things like the very act of saying I know is is to be conscious is to say something from your conscious awareness so how can you study the unconscious mind by being conscious like you can't so yeah that's that whole idea like the more you know the more you don't know and honestly exactly that is that is one of my favorite quotes out there it's like yeah the more you know the more unconfident you are that you know everything right because you kind of you go down this pathway you learn this and this and this and then suddenly it branches out and there's loads of branches and everyone follows a certain branch and specializes in a certain area but then misses the massive bulk of everything else and like you can't be that it's very hard to be able to be specialized that because you can't by the nature of being specialized in everything and there are links to be had between separate things like for example of autism and eating disorders you could be a specialist in eating disorders but add autism into the mix like it's like a whole new dimension exactly exactly and it's it's so much more nuanced than than just approaching it and sort of that like boxed off kind of version yeah you know yeah and and that's why for me it was honestly so freeing to to almost come to the realization and give myself permission to say like you know actually I really don't know anything and I'm constantly learning and isn't that the beauty of life is that we keep learning every day anew and through people and through connections and through through meeting amazing people like you like I like if it weren't for autism like we wouldn't even be talking like how beautiful is that yeah I really I really love the fact that you you untouched because it was kind of at a point like I didn't really get many I don't really get many messages or emails I'm starting to get a few more now that I'm talking about it more but um I didn't get a lot of messages and and like I didn't really know if I was having much of an impact like I only see numbers on the screen like yeah I've stopped looking at the numbers because they make you crazy yeah I only look at them when I need to like understand how well an episode did and I just kind of just just have it like a little bit of an inkling but like or or to like you know find how well my podcast is doing so I can sort of help advertise my podcast's responses stuff and and that brings me to to one thing that I've I'm trying to do and I hope you don't mind this little insertion into that into the podcast podcast you get to do whatever the hell you want today's podcast is sponsored by me yes as you can see if you're on youtube if you if you're on audio you probably can't see it I have my neurodiverse squad uh t-shirt on it's uh basically from this company can you hear me yeah it's basically from this company called uh born anxious which is a autism based clothing company they do like very sensory friendly fabrics and stuff and they they don't have any labels in them and no labels label free I need them and they're really great I always get a ton of compliments when I wear them at the gym because there's like overall autistic people who go or over a neurodivergent people and they're like hey like that's t-shirt it's really cool where can I get them I'm like well it's it's my t-shirt so you can get it if you like so yeah um if you if you go into the description click on my link tree there'll be some some link to to find the t-shirts and I get a slice of it born anxious get a slice of it so yeah that's that that's the end of that and also if you're listening to this uh over on Spotify or Apple or Google please give me a rating and a small review really helps me out a lot and also with YouTube you know like and sub if you like it then give me a comment down below give me a a blue heart if you got to this point so with that little insertion done I guess one of the last questions that I want to ask you live is what can what can you do what can what can people do to raise awareness of eating disorders in autistic people and kind of make that education more accessible to the general public but also maybe maybe like I realize this is two questions but maybe to like the medical communities and stuff yeah well I think like I said before I think one of the most important things anyone can do either someone who is autistic a supporter of someone who's autistic or a medical professional anyone who wants to learn more about it is to allow people with lived experience to share their story and actually being open to listening to them and not even necessarily trying to understand because I personally believe that if you don't have lived experience you will never fully understand what it's like but I think really amplifying the voices of people with lived experience and again having that open mind of maybe the way I'm currently approaching working with my clients maybe there's another way right and I think for me personally when I was told when I was 15 you're too complex you're just gonna have to accept the fact you're never gonna get better that was from a professional who in my opinion had a very closed mind because she she believed this is the way we treat people with eating disorders and because you didn't get better within our realm of approach like this is why you're never gonna get better and I and I've often for many years I wondered why would someone say that to to someone right because obviously you don't go into the eating disorder field if you really don't care about helping people and for me I've come to the conclusion that this is said to people because I mean almost all my clients who have come to me they've been told the exact same thing unfortunately sure and and my conclusion that I've drawn from why they've been told this is because when a professional says that to their client or to their patient and basically says like I'm done with you bye good luck they no longer have to deal with the guilt of not have been able to help that person right because they then they don't have to admit to the fact that that maybe they missed something or they were incapable of helping they're putting that blame on to you rather than themselves because in the end we don't we don't want to be held responsible we don't like to have problems that we don't know how to solve so by saying it's your problem I no longer have to solve this oh yay I'm free I don't really right so again you're not amenable to the process you know yes you're not agreeing with them that this is an eating disorder trait rather than an autistic trait yeah so I think that would be the main one is really having an open mind and being willing to listen to people with lived experience and also listen to them and their needs and also providing a sense of trust because again for me personally like one of the biggest reasons why I manipulated the system and didn't listen and didn't do what the professionals told me to do was because there was no sense of trust our entire relationship was built on this like hierarchical like I'm the professional you're the patient I know what's best you're the sick one right but like if that's how you're approaching the treatment like you're creating this huge tension gap and and distrust and especially for autistic people that are waiting for people to tell you off for like say no or like correct you or like right and especially about subjective things yeah and especially for autistic people that already have so much distrust in the world I mean that's why we're so anxious because we don't trust the circumstances like that's why we have a routine because we don't trust or doing something else if you're going to take this approach of like this is how we do it like there's no way you can help this person um because I I'm masked and I lied to my therapist and I lied to my nutritionist and told them just what I thought they wanted to hear and I would start my sentence sentence with I'm just being honest but I this is a huge few fruit of mine just so that they'd be proud of me and let me get out of treatment early right like and I'm like now thinking back I'm like that was so so problematic like if they would have just allowed me to express my reality and actually had believed me and actually have been open to the fact that oh maybe this is actually a real thing and maybe she is really different than I know typical clients I think I I think my eating disorder never would have gone as bad as it would have because I would have felt validated and I would have felt seen so you kind of felt like you had to lie to them in order to get on that good side yeah rather than and looking back it was it I admit that the process is not working right and looking back all that lying all that manipulation it was all masking honestly yeah I mean I definitely I definitely relate the relate quite a bit on that through my sort of experience through mental health you know I talked about it in the last podcast with other the one before last with Megan and it is really really hard to find a therapist that gets you and it's it's really hard to find one that you trust and all throughout my teenagehood I did not trust my therapist I was just all the time paranoid what are they going to tell my mom I know it's confidential but you know you know I'll say to them hey look this isn't working and then they just kind of reword it and rejig it and give me the exact same thing I'm like I don't need these these these things in place that that that help regulate me I know them I can remember I know what to do I just you know there's aspects to me that I don't understand and I just feel depressed because I feel depressed and I feel anxious because I'm I'm anxious and that that was the kind of mentality that I had with it for for quite a while and so you know I started off being very open I didn't feel like they took me seriously because you know with the elixify me and lack of indirect communication they didn't really take it that seriously even though I was saying some really like heavy stuff and so I just kind of tape it off and because I was already in that system and I was a risk to myself they kept me in the system so it was just kind of like oh every week I've got to go there and just kind of talk to them and just listen to what they have to say and not really import much and that's how it went for a lot of the time during during teenage it wasn't a very like you know as as Megan would say that I co-regulating like I didn't really feel like they were on my level like me exactly stood me yeah like the hierarchy right like I'm the professional you're the client I know what's best you don't know anything like if that's like the approach like you're ready build you're creating a foundation built on distrust and if you don't have trust in a relationship in the world in anything you really don't have anything like trust I believe is the basis for life for freedom of any kind for positivity of any kind that's why it's it's that whole stereotype of like what you don't trust me in relationships like that's the red flag right yeah so yeah I thank you so much for sharing that I mean I love to you your story too because I feel like we talked about so much today and we could talk for hours and hours but but yeah yeah so yeah thank you very much for sort of filling us in on the world of autism eating disorders what kind of you know what the links between the two are what your your experiences are I think has been really really useful to hear about also you know I guess you know for me like the really like key thing is to to remind me that it kind of pops into my head is the the thing that you said about anorexia and body dysmorphia not necessarily being tied together all the time I think that was really powerful because I think you know for especially for myself like you know with my binging disorder I'm not in denial that I gain weight with it and like I kind of thought that you know to have an eating disorder that you have to have body dysmorphia and so that it's really interesting that you brought that up and if I think there's been a lot of a lot of points through the through the podcast that have been really really enlightening for me and I'm sure you know you guys listening will definitely take a lot away from this podcast yeah I guess if you were to encourage people to look at maybe like a couple of links because obviously I'll put the link tree down in the down in the description uh what what would you say people should um do what what places can they find you and follow you on yeah so you can follow me on instagram at live label free although now I'm pretty much only sharing like big updates in my podcast on instagram because I'm spending my energy and my focus on writing more books and focusing on how I can maximize my impact in the world which I believe is unfortunately no longer on social media with the algorithm and everything um and then my my recipe book Noticing New Diversity is out by the time this episode airs and you can get on the wait list for my memoir rainbow girl also on my website there's like a drop down like book and then you can just enter your name and email and you'll be the first to know about that and yeah my memoir rainbow girl is really sharing like in depth my entire story my entire experience with growing up undiagnosed autistic developing eating a sort of my experience with being tossed in and out of the treatment system manipulation like I share in that book things that I had never shared anywhere else with anyone so I'm really really excited for that to come out I don't know when it will come out yet but if you're on the wait list you'll be the first to hear about it and then ultimately the whole vision behind live label free and then yeah like if you just go to my website live label free.com you can find more information on my coaching and I have my own podcast and my blog um and I also have a course on extreme hunger um but yeah you can pretty much find everything on my website live label free dot com so go check out that episode that the that live mentioned earlier about arvid yeah yeah that's on you can find that via my website too so I think that would be the easiest place rather than saying visit all these hundred thousand like everyone go to the website cool and that that will be down in the description as the place that he usually has with the link trees and my link tree will be next to it obviously if you have enjoyed this podcast I've realized that I probably inserted the like personal advert like a little bit too late and it's it's kind of a bit weird to mention it again but yep the t-shirts and stuff down in the description make sure to give the podcast a rating if you have enjoyed this uh it really helps me absolutely massively even if it's just a star rating and no comments that that's good enough for me that would be really really helpful and my instagram is very very live at the moment if you go over to at thomas henley uk on instagram obviously I have the other social medias but you know instagram tiktok youtube tend to be the places that I do the most work on where I make the most updates twitter and facebook's just kind of dwindling like dwindling out a little bit so you can go over to that I make daily content I do daily posts and daily reels so I do a lot of stuff over on there and also you know you you'll be able to get a lot more updates on the stuff that I'm doing my daily life a bit more of a close thing you can ask questions and if you if you do want to ask questions and and get a reply that's not like a month long wait uh go over to my email hi at thomas henley.co.uk yes it is a new email and on the professional yeah yeah the website thomas henley.co.uk is I'm setting up my own business at the moment I'm kind of following a little bit and and lives footsteps and I'm gonna coach you I'm gonna help you out with that thank you starting off business and coaching it's gonna be one to one stuff for autistic adults or adults who are in relationship of an autistic person if you're in any of those categories and you want my sort of coaching or consultancy around certain things or if you just want to chat you can go over to there it should be live sometime in April might be a bit sooner when I start doing some like test trading and stuff but once I've got all my documents and stuff sorted out it should be up and running and if you send an email over there anyway I can put you on my little list and email you once it's live don't take little lifts it'll become a big list okay there's a fair few people don't minimize yourself Tom you're meant for bigger things but yeah live it's been really really lovely to finally do the podcast and bring really great chat about you know something that I feel like it's really really important to highlight because I know what the statistics are like for autism and eating disorders and anxiety and mental health so always really really good to touch on new things in the angle of autism so really really appreciate that have you enjoyed your 40 auto experience I have loved it it has been a true pleasure it is honestly always so so wonderful speaking with you so thank you so much for having me on the podcast Tom thank you very much leth and thank you all for tuning in and watching really appreciate you coming to listen to us ramble about autism today links always in the description and I will see you in another episode of the 40 auto podcast see you later guys bye bye