My rare condition has me surviving on bread and sweets - it's torture

35-year-old Thomas Sheridan has "never" eaten fruit, vegetables or meat and says the thought of biting into an egg and sausage sandwich leaves him feeling "horrible" and would make him "throw up".

After years battling his food aversions and being dismissed as a "picky eater", Thomas was finally diagnosed with avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) in 2023 at the age of 33.

The condition leaves him unable to eat foods and he doesn't have any understanding of most textures or tastes. Thomas survives on a diet of white toast with butter, three bowls of Shreddies and Haribo sweets - and takes protein supplements to get the vitamins he needs - but longs to be able to enjoy a bowl of scouse.

Thomas is currently unable to work due to his health and has been prescribed antidepressants but says he has "become accustomed" to his condition. "The last time I worked over a 10 day period, I lost a stone and a half," he said.

He is fundraising for the £6,000 needed to pay for private hypnotherapy which he hopes will help him achieve his "dream" of sitting down for a shared meal with his family.

He said: "It's torture. I'm not living at the moment, I'm only surviving. I want to live a normal life and be able to go to work and not feel like a freak. It's closed so many doors for me."

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Thomas' aversion to certain foods first became evident when he was a toddler. His parents say there were no signs of unusual feeding habits until he was 18 months old and "one day I just shut my mouth".

He was told he was taken to the doctors - with one suggesting his parents, Tom, 65, and Sheila, 59, "just starve him" to the point he'd eat. His dad also tried to "bribe" him with gifts but to no avail.

When he was at school, Thomas' parents allowed him to go home at lunchtime to eat toast - instead of trying to force down school dinners.

He said: "It [the disorder] didn't really affect me until I was about 18, because I had a small bubble of people I was around. When you become an adult, you see people's opinions change of you, when they know you've got an eating disorder.

"Because the school didn’t know anything about it, when they gave me work experience, they put me in a college, in the catering department. I was prepping all the foods, I was quite good at it and then I thought about going to college, maybe about food. I mentioned it, and then people were just like 'what’s the point of that, you can't even eat a chip?'."

Thomas struggles with socialising when plans are based around going out for food and often feels "isolated".

"There was one time when we started drinking and everyone used to talk about bacon sandwiches when they were roughed up,” he said. "I attempted to make an egg and sausage butty one day and as soon as the egg touched my mouth I vomited about 10 feet across the room."

He was recently prescribed food supplements to make up for the shortage of nutrients in his restricted diet. But, he can only consume certain flavours - with a taste profile he is familiar with.

Thomas' restricted diet has left him unable to put on weight and he maintains his current weight by regularly eating his beige diet of two loaves of bread, three bowls of cereal, and crisps or sweets.

Thomas says he's tried therapy - one of the treatments suffers of ARFID are usually referred for - but says the "inconsistencies" caused him to struggle.

He said: "They said 'you'll probably get a different person every time. We can't guarantee you the same person."

Unlike anorexia or bulimia nervosa, ARFID lacks the awareness of other eating disorders and only appeared on the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases in 2022. Thomas says he's never met another person diagnosed with the same condition.

To support his fundraising, visit - https://www.gofundme.com/f/arfid-eating-disorder.