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by cik 335 days ago
As someone with diagnosed ADHD. I fully agree. There's some background thread that says "you, now, eat". It's almost impossible to shut off.

That being the case, the same behaviours have led me to a compulsive need to plan meals. Doing so has helped me lessen (not eliminate) food noise. Anecdotally, I've noticed with others as well, that this is the way. Prep - be fine. Don't prep - eat a small village.

1 comments

Also ADHD here, and same thing for me. Hyperfixating on meal planning and strength training has pretty much saved me. It's hard, and I still have to fight food noise daily, but having everything pre-prepped means I have easy, friction free healthy choices instead of reaching for a bag of chips and downing the entire thing while sitting at my desk, or not having the executive function necessary to cook an un-prepped, unplanned dinner and just eating a whole pizza instead.

I also used to binge, and meal planning and pre has also helped with that, as I tend to have periods of either really high food drive, or almost no food drive at all leading to not eating for an entire day, then downing 3000+ calories in one meal.

ADHD sucks. It's often trivialized in pop culture, but it makes life so difficult, and those real difficulties are almost never talked about.

I am a strong believer that the biggest "thing" in ADHD is the challenge with sustained goal-focused behavior. And that is in large part due to how fucking hard it is to stay on task when you have ADHD. It's not uncommon to hear people like you who are able to keep control by focusing on the few things that make the most sense and are the most motivating. And even with a perfect target for behavior, it's a battle to keep at it. That is why I think a lot of people get adult-onset ADHD diagnoses—because they are burned out from spending 2x the energy to keep their life and behavior on track.
Do you have kids? Even when I meal prep, tasty kids foods draws me in like a bug to a night time light.