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Comment by jasonsb | Hacker News Reader

> A lot of the behaviors this seems to force I don't understand - like railroading whether to skip breakfast or not. I am well aware that for kids with autism frequently there are feeding issues, but what's going on in the "simulation" is very not clear to me.

I lost interest after the breakfast question. For someone who’s physically fit (which this person likely is) skipping breakfast shouldn’t cause a noticeable drop in energy. If it does, then there may be more going on than just autism.

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you also don't fall asleep at your desk as a response to a birthday party in the office early in the morning after a good nights' sleep, but if you play a one-sided game in this that's what happens.

it's not a reality simulator, incredibly few video games are.

the whole thing seems like a conflicted struggle between "I want to make a game" and "I need to get my points across", often to the detriment of the game-part.

It's an interesting concept though.

> It's an interesting concept though

Why? It's a multiple choice game with different outcomes. Hardly groundbreaking.

I think the subject matter makes it interesting conceptually, not gameplay.

Execution matters regardless, but not all innovations are in mechanics of gameplay.

Can you name another multiple choice game about this subject?

not quite the same subject but i think depression quest executed on its subject matter better than this did

Depression Quest?

I think you're overly inflating the word "interesting" here. It doesn't imply novelty, innovation or anything groundbreaking. It's just of interest, which isn't a high bar.

My lived experience is that high stress situations frequently make me feel like just going to sleep.

This may have multiple causes (past experience/trauma, energy levels, existing depression, sleep troubles, anything on the spectrum of autism, like ADHD...).

As far as energy levels go, if you are already tired, you may lack energy to cope with stressful situations, which leads you to procrastinate or even sleep too just not face it. From personal experience, low (just below the lower limit, so nothing seemingly dramatic) vitamin D levels may affect one's energy levels negatively (always tired, brain fog, everything feels hard...), and having appropriate vitamin D levels may already provide one with a clear mind and remove the hardship of dealing with most of what others consider as seemingly simple situations.

You might be depressed because of low energy levels, instead of the other way around.

So, make sure your energy levels are appropriate and that your mitochondria work fine. (Any LLM will provide you with detailed info about energy levels and mitochondria).

Of course, that's only based on personal experience, and I'm a software engineer, not a Doctor.

Have a nice day.

Same if it involves a human yelling. If I'm in my bed while it's happening , I might actually sleep briefly. It becomes impossible to stay awake sometimes.

Other high stress situations involving actually solving something motivates me though.

> My lived experience

What are the other types of experience one might have?

Other people's? Like, I don't get meltdowns myself but I've seen others that do.

You misunderstand, their sentence is in the first person, you cannot experience anything in third person.

You have experienced other people's lives? How? Are you a discorporated entity that possesses the living?

There's this concept called empathy, and people can share how they experience things. We can also relate our own experiences. So, it might not be a first-hand experience, but we can put ourselves in their shoes. If we see a friend experience something, it becomes a shared experience. When our friends laugh, we laugh too. When they grieve, we grieve with them. Etc

It's a nice change of pace around here when people intentionally make themselves the butt of the joke by acting like extremely common phrases are somehow foreign to them. "Lived experience" immediately adds more detail and context to how they obtained their knowledge by explicitly referring to first hand involvement and direct experience rather than potentially from second hand sources or studying, but here you are making a smarmy reply pretending that it was somehow more confusing to the benefit of the rest of us who might take your attempt at quips as humorous. Thanks for the laugh!

No problem friend, happy to help. I still think it's a stupid phrase, you don't have anyone else's experience and you're never not alive to experience anything. All it does is "I'm trying to make my point stronger by making you feel bad about questioning it because I'm going to reply that you can't question what I said"

I guess you could take the idea that someone has an experience that may be different to yours and that you aren't able to dictate as a personal affront rather than a plain fact, but I recommend against it. That doesn't seem interesting or productive, it seems like getting worked up over something beyond your control and of no consequence.

> I guess you could take the idea that someone has an experience that may be different to yours

I do as a default because it is, that's why the sentence is tautological - which was my point. There's also a difference between expressing an opinion and being "worked up".

That's like your personal opinion man

For me it's low stress / passive situations, like listening to presentations or sitting in a meeting where I'm just observing. And that's with good sleep etc.

Any kind of one sided meeting puts me to sleep. So I either don’t go, leave or work on my computer if it is not relevant. Luckily my company encourages not going to meetings where you feel you don’t have anything useful to add.

Unfortunately I haven’t even been able to make it through one phd presentation of my friends.

> the whole thing seems like a conflicted struggle between "I want to make a game" and "I need to get my points across", often to the detriment of the game-part.

This seems to be a common issue with mediocre video game writers and designers, especially those politically motivated. If you can't trust your audience to make up their own mind about the subject matter then maybe the interactive medium isn't the right one for you.

Everyone's different.

I lose energy if I do have breakfast. Which results in lack of focus. Therefore I often postpone my breakfast as long as I possibly can, otherwise, with a large probability, my work day is ruined before it even starts.

Agree, breakfast slows me down, so I rarely eat it anymore and typically eat around midday to 1pm after morning work and exercise. I've fasted only once, it lasted 12 days and my energy level was almost overwhelming and electric. Boxing, running, etc. I gave up trying to understand why. And although it was an amazing experience, have not fasted again in the 5 years since.

Why? If it was so good.

For myself, I have low energy if I don't eat breakfast, but there is essentially no hunger signal for me in the morning. Over time I've settled on eating the plainest breakfast I can.

I think this has a lot to do with the 9–5 and my natural sleep cycle being delayed compared to that.

Same. If I have breakfast it seems to kickstart my metabolism or something idk. The result is, if I have breakfast, I’m distracted by hunger all morning. If I skip breakfast I can focus all morning and I don’t get hungry until lunchtime. Bodies are weird.

I don't even have an autism diagnosis, and I never skip breakfast because of the energy drop. I bike to work, run 5ks, and am not overweight, even by standardized BMI metrics.

I don't even have an autism diagnosis. It never occurred to me that something might be "going on". Breakfast imparts energy. To me, that has been a given.

I can go about a full day before eating without noticing an energy drop. Everyone's different.

I find I’m happiest not eating until about 6 pm. Usually one large meal and one small late-night snack. I’m a little surprised there wasn’t much evolutionary pressure to align eating schedules considering how social we are but meh. Maybe everyone being on their own schedule is actually better for survival.

Think that is farmer vs hunter adaption. Hunters eat big meals less often, plant eaters eat small meals often as its more work to digest plants.

So humans doing both have genes for both, but maybe some humans have more of some of those.

Just like with sleep cycles are is probably also some variance to accommodate different roles in a group.

I was in my 30’s before I realized that other people really need to eat and can’t just decide to skip a day when work / travel / timezones make it inconvenient. So much natural variation.

This is also something you can train your body to get used to. Anyone who started doing intermittent fasting and struggled at first will know that you eventually adapt to it. Depending on how difficult someone finds it, doing a ketogenic diet might be a nicer way to ease into it.

Typically, my first meal is at 11:45 (a plate of normal food + fruit), and then one at about 19 (the content varies from bread + cold cuts to soup).

When this changes in numbers, size or kind I do not feel any difference in energy.

When I bike to work I am particularly not hungry until 11:45.

Interesting. I am also physically fit and if I don't have something to eat within the first half hour of getting up, I am cranky and definitely won't be doing anything approaching information work.

Seconding this. Additionally, I'm likely to fumble speaking tactfully as a result.

Exercise can push off hunger pangs for quite a while. Your body wants you to know it’s hungry, but if you’re exercising (read:probably hunting according to your brain), the pangs fade because they would simply be distracting.

Thanks. I've never heard it framed this way. I've mentioned my appetite diminishes after aerobic exercise, but a common response is that I'm weird.

Interestingly my appetite sometimes skyrockets after certain activities like bouldering or weight lifting, so the diminished hunger response must be a bit more complex of a phenomenon.

> a plate of normal food + fruit

What is "normal food"? Fruit seems like it would be more universally normal than pretty much anything else.

Sorry, I was not clear. A plate of some meat + some vegetables, or variations of that. The kind of things you expect to eat for lunch in France (and, broadly speaking, in Europe).

What I meant by that is that this is a full starter for the day, not a "late French breakfast"

part of the challenge with autism is that nearly all it's features are shared partially or individually by ordinary people as pretty routine character traits (eg: socialising is energy draining for "regular" introverts).

It's (a) them being collectively combined and (b) the severity that creates the issue, but it's very hard for autistic people to explain and justify what's happening to them when everybody feels like they already experience these things and manage to just "deal" with it.

Haha yeah I was thinking it just sounds capricious.

Very well put

I haven't ate breakfast in 7+ years and I've never had an energy issue. I've ate OMAD (one meal a day) for over a year while running 5ks Monday to Friday and never had any energy issues either.

A lot of people in here with similar anecdotes. I'm not saying everyone's like me. I'm just saying that some people feel lower energy if they skip breakfast. And it doesn't mean 'there's something else going on'.

The lack of logic in this thread is remarkable.

If 50% of the world is just fine without eating breakfast, that still means 4 Bn people are not.

Posting personal anecdotes as if that proves feeling low on energy without breakfast means something is wrong is a degree of irrationality I can’t believe is showing up on HN.

It’s fine to share personal anecdotes and experiences but so many here are sharing them as if it disproves all other things experiences and responses.

It's even more complicated, because it also depends on what yout eat for breakfast. Some food will sustain you for a longer time, some will give you an immediate sugary boost and then the inevitable fall (which could definitely be a big part of the "I feel lower energy when I eat breakfast" experience.

You don't feel it immediately. Notice the bar doesn't reset the next day. You don't feel breakfast immediately but your workout later in the day and tomorrow will be affected by this.

> For someone who’s physically fit (which this person likely is) skipping breakfast shouldn’t cause a noticeable drop in energy.

It definitely does.

Unless autism gives you an eating disorder, making it so you have absolutely no energy reserves cough cough

You're unfairly extrapolating from your own experience here -- everyone's body has different chemistry.

I have to eat breakfast in the morning in order to feel energetic during the day. But specifically, I need a high-protein, high-fiber breakfast. Anything else makes me feel lethargic and tired.

I'm a mid-packer in the triathlons I participate in, so pretty fit. I definitely notice the energy difference between having eaten breakfast or not, in the everyday (non-training) context. It's not a hunger thing (I'd miss breakfast most days if I didn't literally schedule it) and I can do my strength training and short intervals to the same performance fasted as fed. But I am aware of it.

If I don’t eat breakfast I feel afraid I will lose any gym gains and feel very weak. I don’t know anyone that hits the gym daily and skips breakfast.

Since the anabolic window is a lie and you have roughly 72 hours to feed yourself protein after effort you can skip breakfast without any impact if you don’t feel hungry. I don’t think many nocturnal people who wake up regularly at 10:00 really eat breakfast if lunch is 2 hours away, regardless of gym habits.

Being physically fit past your 30s is a series of building habits and making hard choices that obviously is a challenge of its own that many in sedentary jobs have skipped or fallen away from. OP may be fit, but yeah for average office worker (especially in locations that are car-bound on long commutes) I’d bet there is indeed more going on than just autism.

Skipping breakfast absolutely causes a noticeable drop in energy for most people. Especially if you work an intellectually demanding job. That blood glucose is important.

Also of note given the OP’s subject, several studies show that people with significantly impactful Autism spectrum disorders have higher brain glucose consumption than the baseline.

[citation needed]

In regards to energy levels: 10.3945/an.115.010231

In regards to autism: 10.1001/archpsyc.1985.01790280026003

It's complicated for me. Sometimes breakfast makes me notice my digestive system, which seems to make my ADHD-adjacent traits worse. I also get IBS... Which is different from the meds constipation. So eating is difficult. Because of IBS my bowels are also unpredictable, so dosing laxatives is hard. I don't know how many of these things are caused by meds.

Then there's the energy thing. I guess if I'm in ketosis it's fine, but after not eating for a whole day it's hard to sustain the next day, but eating isn't alway worth it.

The saddest part is that junk foot and Tesco meal deal is so is somehow easier to digest. So I often eat that.

I'm trying Kefir (even though I'm lactose intolerant, but I take lactase with it) for the 10 time probably. My GP recommended it. Alas, maybe it helps.

Soooo, tldr eating yes, I love it, but it can have consequences that completely tank my productivity. And each time I have to ponder this it feels like I've done a chore but without the reward feeling of completing a chore, even though I just say there in silence for 5-15 minutes

Idk if other people are in a similar boat

i would interpret physical fitness as cardio exercise routine and depleted muscle glycogen stores: so breakfast is very welcome and without it is not possible to keep up exercise routine

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