Long-Term Weight Struggles and Stomach Issues: It Correlates to Autism? Who Knew?

Posted on October 12, 2026

I find myself 119 pounds lighter than I was in January 2026, but let me back up and explain how I got here.

In 2010, I reached a point where medical professionals consistently told me that my health problems were because of “my weight.” Even when I explained that I never felt full, I went from doctor to doctor until I was eventually told that a gastric lap band could help by creating that sensation of fullness.

I underwent surgery to have the band placed in hopes of becoming healthier. Instead, that decision led to two additional surgeries. The first was needed to repair the tubing after a microscopic cut prevented the band from being properly adjusted. The second came in 2015, when the band had to be removed entirely after it slipped and caused an intestinal obstruction.

I nearly died before the problem was identified. I had been in and out of the hospital while pregnant, with my symptoms repeatedly attributed to pregnancy and hyperemesis rather than anyone seriously considering that the lap band itself might be causing the problem.

After everything I went through, I essentially resigned myself to the idea that I would always be obese and might never achieve the level of health I wanted.

Then, in January 2026, my boss was in my office talking about the success he had experienced with his own weight-loss regimen. He told me that a GLP-1 medication had changed his life in only five months.

Considering that I had nearly died from my previous weight-loss treatment, I had very real reservations. But there was one thing he said that I could not stop thinking about:

“I never feel hungry and always feel full. In fact, I often forget to eat.”

Those words played on a loop in my head.

What if GLP-1s addressed the biological issue I had suspected was there all along?

Reluctantly, I decided to investigate further and have a conversation with my doctor. I explained my history, my previous complications, and my concerns about getting caught up in another trendy approach to weight loss. My bloodwork ultimately showed that I was prediabetic, and I was prescribed a GLP-1 medication along with metformin.

I took metformin for about three months, until follow-up bloodwork showed that my A1C was under control. My GLP-1 dosage gradually increased, and I am currently taking 12.5 mg weekly. My average weight loss has ranged from about 10 to 16 pounds per month.

Within the first week, I experienced something that felt almost impossible to me: I was not hungry.

I cried tears of joy.

For most of my life, I had assumed that constant hunger was simply something I had to manage through willpower. Experiencing fullness without having to fight for it completely changed the way I understood my own body.

It also led me down another rabbit hole: autism and the body. I had already learned that autistic people can experience interoception differently, meaning the way we perceive and interpret signals coming from inside our bodies, including hunger, thirst, pain, temperature, and the need to use the bathroom. The research is not as simple as saying autism causes someone to feel constantly hungry, and scientists are still trying to understand these differences. But suddenly, a lifetime of struggling to interpret what my body was telling me felt worth reconsidering.

Then there were stomach problems. Gastrointestinal issues are reported more frequently among autistic people than among the general population. Again, that does not mean autism explains every stomach problem I have ever experienced. But learning that there was an established connection made me wonder how many physical experiences I had treated as completely unrelated pieces of my life when they might belong to a much larger picture.

Perhaps what affected me most was realizing how often weight had been treated as both the diagnosis and the explanation. I spent years believing that if I could just exercise more self-control, eat differently, or somehow become better at ignoring hunger, I could fix myself. No one ever seemed particularly interested in asking why I never felt full in the first place.

Receiving an autism diagnosis later in life has caused me to revisit many experiences through a different lens. This is now one of them.

Overall, this experience has made me much happier because I physically feel better, perhaps better than I have felt in more than a decade. More importantly, I have stopped viewing every struggle with my body as evidence that I simply lacked discipline.

If there is a lesson in any of this, it is not to give up on yourself because one experience went terribly wrong. Sometimes the thing that failed you before is not evidence that nothing will ever work. Sometimes the next experience can be entirely different.