ADHD and Food Part 1
Close to 16 million adults in America live with ADHD. That is 6% of the population. Those are the ones who have been officially diagnosed. That number is much higher when you take into account how many people deal with ADHD without knowing what it is, how to fix it, or do not have access to quality psychiatric care.
I can speak from experience because I was diagnosed in my 40s and was forced to pay out of pocket for my care because using my insurance to find a psychiatrist would mean I had to wait 12-16 weeks to even see a doctor due to their backlog of patients.
For years, I struggled, not knowing what was wrong with me. It affected every area of my life, and when I was diagnosed, the first thing I said to my doctor was, “I wonder how much of my life I damaged because of this.”
The grief was real, and that grief led to looking back over my life and seeing blaring red lights that pointed right at that ADHD sign.
You see, in the 80s, an ADHD diagnosis was not common, nor was autism, which I also suspect I have. We were labeled as lacking self-control, hyperactive, unfocused, and more. Schools were not designed to teach kids like us how to learn; therefore, we had to adapt to a neurotypical world with a neurodivergent brain. That affected how social we were, how easily we made friends, and how often we felt alone. Because there were no resources for kids like us, we suffered in silence.
Today, we know more, and children have a better chance of learning how to deal with an ADHD brain than we did in my generation. I am grateful for that, as no child needs to feel left out because they cope with ADHD and/or autism.
Unfortunately, despite these improvements, many adults and children still lack easy access to proper care. There are numerous resources online to help you pinpoint if you have ADHD or not, and if you remove your confirmation bias, they are excellent tools to assist you.
People think of ADHD, and they think:
Inattentiveness: Difficulty focusing, easily distracted, forgetfulness, struggling to follow instructions, losing things, and difficulty organizing tasks.
Hyperactivity: Restlessness, fidgeting, difficulty staying seated, excessive talking, and feeling the need to always be on the go.
Impulsivity: Acting without thinking, interrupting others, blurting out answers, and struggling to wait their turn.
What about food?
ADHD is linked to a dopamine deficiency, which affects how we experience pleasure, satisfaction, and reward. When you do something exciting or achieve a new milestone, your brain releases dopamine. This makes your experience more rewarding.
Source (1)
This creates food issues, and those issues are not easy to solve. ADHD affects how you eat and what you eat.
ADHD and binge eating disorder are closely linked, and I can speak on this from experience. We often put off eating during the day, mainly when those cases of hyperfocus occur. If you have ADHD, you understand hyper-focus. This is when you accomplish a significant amount of work in a short time, working through hunger, thirst, and it feels like you’re in a zone. The issue with hyperfocus is that you are ignoring your body’s natural hunger cues, and when the task is completed, you are ravenous and possibly low on dopamine. In those cases, eating a healthy meal sometimes takes a backseat to eating something that will give you pure pleasure in your brain.
Junk food, processed food, high-calorie hyper-palatable foods.
This is when preparation is critical, and I don’t necessarily mean meal prep because stopping what you are doing to make a whole meal can and will interrupt your focus to a degree that getting started again seems impossible.
What helped me in these cases is keeping some food supplies on hand that are easy to eat and not excessively carb-loaded.
Things like Chomps Turkey Sticks, pistachios, and berries. These are easy and quick to eat without taking away time from your task.
If you plan to buy snacks for your home, consider purchasing single-serving packs. They are a little more expensive, but the effort it takes to open multiple bags of chips is much more of a pain than opening one bag and eating the entire thing in the middle of a binge. Anytime you can provide a pause to your impulsive action, the chances of stopping a binge in its tracks improve. The price increase is offset by eating less, buying less often, and saving money in the process.
These food hacks require awareness and action, but aren’t necessarily easy to do when you have ADHD. As we know, it is easy to become overwhelmed and resort to the easiest solution rather than the sensible one. Much like when someone with ADHD has a day filled with tasks, doesn’t know where to start, but instead spends hours on their phone scrolling social media.
Our brains play tricks on us, and I am not going to call it a “superpower” as some well-meaning ADHD influencers like to proclaim. ADHD can be debilitating, and it can disrupt your life to the extent that it affects your economic outlook.
A study from the Journal of Psychiatric Research concluded:
“Despite available treatments, patients with ADHD lag in achieving social functioning outcomes. Further research is needed to better understand how to support patients with ADHD in order to close the gaps in health and socioeconomic status.”
Source (1)
When it affects your entire life, it’s not a superpower, but it’s not a prison sentence either. It means being aware of your actions becomes more important.
For now, if you have ADHD and you are reading this, and what I described above rings true for you, there are steps you can start to take to help you begin to have success with eating.
Use timers for work
Pomodoro timers are excellent to use. Download one, set it up, and adhere to it. During your breaks, you can drink water and have a small snack, and when the break is up, return to work.
Buy single-serving bags of snacks in bulk.
A Costco or Sam’s Club membership is excellent for this, as both places offer a wide range of options for single-serving snacks. Don’t make the well-meaning mistake of buying the massive bag of chips to break down into smaller ziploc bags. The effort is well-meaning, but taking the time to do that is probably not going to happen. Don’t try to say it will, I know how our minds work.
Set a water alarm on your phone.
It’s not a magical solution, but the pause to look at the notification saying, “Time to drink water,” will undoubtedly remind you enough times that you will just drink your damn water.
Be patient
People with ADHD aren’t particularly known for their patience. We interrupt people, blurt things out without thinking them through, and we don’t always think before we act, but this is the time to learn patience. You are not going to master this fast, and you will have days that you open 10 bags of snacks, pour them into a bowl, and binge eat, but that is part of the process of learning how to manage food better with ADHD, and don’t be hard on yourself through this.
You recognize a problem, seek solutions, and apply them. Those actions add up, and before you know it, you’ll have significantly more wins than losses.
In part 2 I will discuss why people with ADHD suck at food prep and how to fix that.
Hint: it’s not giving up, ordering GrubHub, and having another night of pizza.
