Eating with ADHD: forgetting to eat, then eating everything

Your head aches and it takes you a while to work out that maybe it isn't your head.

You count backwards and it doesn't come to much: a coffee, another coffee, and a piece of something you ate standing up while you were on the phone and couldn't even name now.

You haven't been hungry at any point. That's the strange part. It isn't that you held out: it's that it never arrived.

And you know perfectly well how the day is going to end, because it ends that way a lot of the time.

First of all, and this one is serious

There's no diet here, no schedule, no foods, no amounts and nothing resembling a plan. That doesn't belong to a blog, and if you need any of it, it belongs to a professional.

This explains a mechanism. It doesn't describe anyone: recognizing yourself here doesn't mean you have ADHD.

And if you're already in someone's care for something to do with food, this article doesn't touch any of that. Not for better and not for worse.

A day that splits into two halves

The first half asks for nothing. The hours go by, the meals go by, and the body doesn't interrupt.

The second half asks for everything, and it asks in a hurry.

It gets told as a willpower problem, and as one single problem at that. They're two different things, with two different mechanisms, and each would deserve a surname of its own.

The first half: the signal doesn't arrive

When attention is hooked onto something, whether that's work or a difficult conversation, whatever ought to interrupt stops getting in. And hunger is exactly that: an interruption.

In brains with ADHD, getting deeply hooked on one thing and seeing nothing go by around you is one of the most described things there is, and also one of the least measured.

There's something else, and it's more boring and more important: a day without structure has no mealtimes. If there's no break that exists on its own, eating depends on remembering, and remembering is exactly the job that runs tight.

The honest part: this gets described in the clinic and it turns up in the accounts of a great many women, and that's where it ends. Nobody has put it to the test with adult women with ADHD.

The second half: what arrives fast

Here there is a mechanism, and it's the same one that turns up in half this blog.

The analysis Marx and colleagues published in 2021 gathers dozens of experiments with the same either-or behind them: less now or more later. With ADHD, now gets slightly more votes. A modest difference that repeats.

The honest part: that happens in front of a screen and with rewards that never come to exist. It looks nothing like a kitchen late in the day.

And on top of that comes the 2008 theory by Tripp and Wickens: that here the simple act of starting brings no reward of its own.

Put the two together and an uncomfortable sum comes out: if the whole day has given nothing, and there's one thing within reach that gives something back in fifteen seconds, without failing, without asking permission and without depending on anyone, that thing is going to get used.

It isn't a failure of character. It's the only thing in the day that delivers what it promises.

And it isn't hunger that closes the loop: it's guilt

Short relief, and then the hole. And behind it, the usual sentence.

What guilt does is specific and expensive: the next day the first half gets tightened. Less, later, stricter, to make up for it.

And with the first half tighter, the second arrives harder. Which is the opposite of what was intended.

That's why this doesn't get walked out of by deciding. It isn't a problem of deciding: it's a loop with two halves that feed each other.

And food is one of the few things that are always there

It deserves a paragraph of its own, because it explains why this in particular and not something else.

Of everything that gives something back fast, this is the most available. You don't have to arrange to meet anyone, it costs almost nothing, you don't have to ask permission, it's five steps away and it works first time. Nothing else in the day meets those five conditions at once.

So it isn't that this has some special power. It's that it's the only thing within reach when what's needed is for something to work right now.

And there are weeks when all of this weighs more

A great many women report that in the days before their period the second half of the day gets louder, and that the guilt on top of it grows as well.

What can honestly be said is little. That many describe it that way, and that it's described too in the materials used by the people who work alongside this.

The honest part: on eating and the cycle in women with ADHD there are no studies that can hold up anything more than that. And the other half has to be said: if it doesn't happen to you, or if it happens to you in another week, there's no calendar you're falling outside of.

The only thing done with that here is to take the morality out of it. A craving showing up on a few particular days doesn't turn it into a failure of character with a date on it.

And what won't be done here is telling you what to do with it, or encouraging you toward anything, or asking you to avoid it. That doesn't belong to this piece of writing.

What isn't measured, which is almost everything

It's worth saying plainly, because this is ground where a lot of things get asserted with a lot of confidence.

Behind this article there isn't a single study on eating and ADHD in adult women. What there is, is a laboratory task about choosing, a hypothesis from 2008 and what gets described in the consulting room.

Anyone who gives you an exact percentage on this, or a closed mechanism, is making it up or has read it from someone who made it up.

What doesn't get told about this

Eating standing up with the fridge door open, with no plate, so that it doesn't count.

Putting the wrapper at the bottom of the trash and something on top of it.

Having skipped a whole meal and telling it out loud as a feat, with pride even.

And the most shameful one: being grateful that nobody at home has taken it into their head to ask what you've eaten today.

None of that has a moral behind it. And not one of those scenes is a fact about your character.

Where this stops being an article

There's a line, and it has to be said clearly and without talking around it.

If eating has become the place where how the day is going gets decided. If it has to be hidden. If fear shows up. Or if you feel it has got away from you and you're no longer the one choosing.

None of that is an organizing problem and none of it gets fixed with an article. That gets told to a professional, and sooner rather than later. Your primary care doctor will do to start with, and you don't have to arrive with any label in your mouth: describing what happens is enough.

There's room for it here. It's just that they can help you better there than here.

What there is and what's missing

Measured: that the small thing now beats the large thing later, in laboratory tests.

Hypothesis, not fact: that starting something, on its own, barely pays.

Described but not measured: that the hunger signal doesn't arrive when attention is hooked.

Not even looked at: how adult women with ADHD eat. That file is empty.

And one thing that needs no study: a day that has given nothing in fourteen hours ends up asking for something. That happens to anyone.

This is educational support, a complement to medical care and never a substitute for therapy or treatment. Nobody is diagnosed here.

And if reading this you've recognized whole days of your own, the Map puts them in some order. It's free, it takes a few minutes, and it won't tell you what you have or what you should eat: it hands your own tangle back to you, in order.

And one more thing, set apart from everything above. If you find yourself thinking you don't want to be here, that doesn't wait for an appointment: tell someone today, a professional or a crisis or emergency service in your country. And if something is getting away from you, with drink, with food, with whatever it is, that's one to take to a professional too. It isn't that there's no room here for how you're feeling: it's that they can help you better there than here. No talking around it, and nothing to be ashamed of.

Where this comes from

• Marx et al. (2021). Journal of Attention Disorders.
• Tripp and Wickens (2008). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. This is a theory, not a finding.