KATY: Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust with Your Body. It is Katy here, and today’s episode is long overdue. This is a topic that has been requested over and over again and funny enough, I have attempted to record a podcast episodes about this topic more than once, and it just hasn’t worked out. I’ll tell you the story in a minute, but in case you couldn’t tell from the title, we’re gonna be talking about intuitive eating and ADHD and how to handle hunger.

Impulse control. Executive functioning with food general nutrition, what to do if you’re on a medication that is disrupting your appetite and all the things. So we are gonna get into it. This is gonna be such a juicy episode, and I have to tell you, I have, um, scheduled recordings in the past with two separate ADHD experts to come on and talk about this topic.

And the reason you’ve never heard those episodes is because both of these individuals forgot the appointment that we had to record the episode. They didn’t show up for it because they forgot because of their ADHD. And then it just never worked out for us to get it rescheduled. And again, you know, it’s that ADHD showing up in um.

Some of those daily challenges, so it just makes me giggle that it’s like, oh, we couldn’t record because of ADHD. So I thought, you know what, I’m gonna get on the mic here and I’m gonna talk about it because I work with so many clients over and over again who have ADHD, I have so many thoughts and strategies that I can share with you.

So I thought, you know what? I am just gonna do a solo episode about this. We’re gonna get into all the things. Now, before we dig into that main topic, you know what time it is. We’ve got some wellness. Woo, to talk about. Wellness. Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims or just nonsense.

Today’s wellness, woo is bovine colostrum. The wellness influencers on social media will claim that it boosts your immunity, it will heal your leaky gut. Which side note leaky gut, we’ve already covered that in and of itself. That’s wellness. Woo. Uh, it will build muscle and it might even improve your skin.

Essentially it is being marketed as liquid gold. So let’s, let’s rewind real quick here. What is bovine colostrum? So let’s break this down real quick. Colostrum is something that all female mammals, including humans produce right in the first days after birth. So the colostrum is the initial breast milk that comes in that contains a special nutrient composition to help strengthen the infant or the newborn.

Mammal, whatever animal we’re talking about to help strengthen their immune system. It gives, um, protein essential fatty acids, antioxidants, antibodies, and it’s a really important thing nutritionally, it’s one of the reasons that we do have such a big push towards breastfeeding when possible, uh, in women because there’s a lot of benefits to the colostrum now.

Bovine colostrum is colostrum that comes from cows and it has become this wellness trend that people are taking. Bovine colostrum supplements as humans. So, you know, is there a reason that humans should be consuming cow colostrum and is there any science behind it? I did some research so that you don’t have to, that’s how we roll around here.

Uh, there was one study where they took 20 different bovine colostrum supplements that were being, you know, sold on the, the market, and they found very wide. Variations in what effects these supplements actually had on cells. So there’s not a consistent consensus on the impact, and we don’t have any consensus on what would be the appropriate dose.

Most of the studies out there are utilizing between 10 and 60 grams per day. Uh, and it’s divided often into two doses or more. And in a lot of the studies we’re looking at a timeframe of four to 12 weeks, so kind of a short term timeframe to, to assess is it having any impact? And what they’re finding is very inconsistent results.

There’s some studies that show maybe it has some benefits, but what I would also argue with that is. Are those benefits things that we couldn’t achieve in other ways? So even if it’s helping with, you know, immunity or muscle synthesis or whatever, are there other ways we could achieve that, that are. You know, more cost effective and just simpler and easier for people in most cases.

Yeah, probably because if you go to look at, you know, what would this cost somebody to be on this supplement? Well, the popular brands that are out there cost, if, if you break it down by gram, it’s about a dollar 50 a gram, and remember. The studies are showing doses of 10 to 60 grams per day. So that’s at a minimum, $15 a day to follow the, the studied dosing.

And it could be, you know, six times that if you go up to the 60 grams a day, so. You know, it, it would be a very expensive thing to be on. And then the question would be, okay, well how long should a person take this supplement and spend this money to achieve the health benefits? And is that really something that you want to be committing to long-term?

So, you know, if your goal is to prevent or treat a health condition, I would. Certainly be steering you towards what are some, A more evidence-based strategies and B, more practical, realistic, easier, cheaper things that you can do. So I chalk this up to woo. I’m not gonna get any further into the weeds of it.

You don’t need to be taking bovine colostrum if you have an example of wellness. Woo. Please send it my way. You can shoot me a DM or email me at rebuilding Trust with your body@gmail.com. Okay, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic, intuitive eating with ADHD and how to handle hunger, impulse control, executive functioning, general nutrition, medication, all the things.

Let’s start with how ADHD affects. Your ability to read and understand and recognize your appetite cues. So there is this concept and this phenomenon, if you will, called interception and intuitive eating is very much built around the skill of. Interoceptive awareness and what we mean by that, intero is like internal perceptive, is perceiving perceptive awareness, being able to recognize and be aware of your internal cues.

And in this situation we’re talking about our internal appetite cues and also just our internal body cues in general because our body sends us. So many signals, and sometimes we get confused over what the sensation means. So we need to be able to tell the difference between hunger, fullness, thirst, anxiety, stress, excitement, anger, all these other emotions that show up physically in our body, as well as, you know, the biological cues like hunger and thirst and needing to pee and whatnot.

So with ADHD. What can happen is the perception, the interception can be dulled or delayed, where. You might not be picking up on the signals and therefore it might be difficult for you to eat when you are hungry and to honor your thirst and to take a break from what you’re doing to go to the bathroom.

Because sometimes part of ADHD is that you get hyper-focused on something and you’re like down the rabbit hole for eight hours on this random thing that you stumbled upon on the internet and you haven’t eaten. Drank anything or peed in this long timeframe. So these are common struggles that people with ADHD have.

And then a lot of times if that happens, by the time you notice your hunger, it’s urgent. You’re like, holy moly, I’m ravenous. I need to eat right now. And when we get to that point of hunger, it’s very easy. Easy to. Feel the need to just like inhale your food because you’re starving and, and your body wants food now and it’s gonna kind of gasp for whatever is readily available.

And then in that scenario, you’re probably not gonna take time to, you know, prepare a meal with an entree and some sides. You’re just gonna pick something that’s quick and. This can make it difficult to recognize your fullness because sometimes you just eat all your food and then before you know it, you’re stuffed.

So all of this can really create that cycle of. You know, undereating, then overeating, and then guilt, and then judgment and feeling like you need to be in more in control with your food. And it can be so frustrating if you’re trying to eat intuitively and you’re just like, oh, why is this so hard for me?

Well, if you have ADHD. It makes sense that it’s hard for you because of how your brain and how your body operates, and so understanding how your brain works and how your body works allows you to then work with yourself and to do things to help yourself so that you can honor what your body needs and give yourself the fuel and the nourishment that you need and work.

With what you’ve got and and overcome some of the challenges. One of the other challenges that goes hand in hand with ADHD is executive functioning, and so it can make it difficult to have impulse control. It can make planning and decision making with food very difficult. It can make it hard to regulate emotions, and so of course those challenges are gonna impact your eating.

You may find yourself impulsively eating, especially when it’s those hyper palatable. Or kind of exciting foods, those foods that taste really, really good. It’s, it becomes very easy to impulsively want to eat those when you have ADHD. Sometimes eating itself can be a dopamine seeking behavior, and it’s essentially a way of self-medicating.

It is kind of a good way to think of it, and you may have trouble pausing to check in with your hunger and your fullness and your emotions. So none of this represents a failure of willpower, but rather what’s going on is a brain-based experience here. And when you learn how your brain works and when we can address the ADHD directly and properly, we can help you to be able to figure this out.

I, and I wanna just emphasize here that there is a really significant overlap. People who struggle with binge eating and compulsive overeating who have ADHD, whether it’s diagnosed or not. So if you struggle a lot with binge eating and compulsive eating, you might also ask yourself, you know, have you ever been screened for?

Or have you ever wondered if you have ADHD? The research shows that in women. It is often underdiagnosed, like it gets overlooked in women, especially during childhood. And so it’s not uncommon for women to not be diagnosed until they are adults. In fact, I see this all the time in my private practice because I team very closely with.

Therapists when I’m working with my clients and a lot of times the therapist, when when the client comes to us for their eating issues, for their disordered eating or their eating disorder, the therapist ends up diagnosing ADHD that has gone completely overlooked until the person sought treatment for their eating issue.

So I’m not saying everybody out there has ADHD ’cause that’s kind of the, the social media version of it. But I am saying if you’re listening to this podcast and if this is something you’ve struggled with, it may be worth doing little research to see if it, you know, the criteria describes you and talking to a mental health provider about it to see if it is worth further exploring.

So. Let’s, uh, let’s talk for a second about the medications that are used to treat ADHD and their impact on eating. The most common type of medication that is used to treat ADHD falls into the stimulant category. So we’re talking about like Adderall, Ritalin, uh, Vyvanse. Those are kind of the big three, at least here in the us And what I will say, these drugs.

Work beautifully for a lot of people, and in my experience, untreated, ADHD can make it very, very difficult for a person to heal their relationship with food because it’s like you’re trying to fight with two hands tied behind your back. You, it’s, you’re just fighting such an uphill battle biologically.

If you’re not properly medicated, and I know a lot of people out there are very anti-medication, which it’s this thing in our society that, that I think is kind of part of diet culture. Honestly, this idea that we should be able to fix and control our bodies and manage and heal our health conditions without taking medication.

We just wanna do it the natural way and we’re afraid of medications. As a side note, at the same time, we’re more than willing to do, I was gonna say SHIT. We’re more than willing to do stuff like take bovine colostrum than we are to take an actual FDA regulated medication. I. That’s why I say this is part of, of diet and wellness culture is this idea that if something’s natural, then it’s a great idea.

It’s safe, effective, healthy, and this opposition and resistance towards actual medications that are well studied, proven to be effective, regulated by the FDA, and can be, you know, dosed appropriately by a trained medical provider. So I, I would encourage you if you have resistance to the idea of taking medication.

That you get curious with yourself about why and where is that, that resistance coming from, and to open your mind to the possibility that this could be life changing for you in one of the best ways. I, so many of my clients, I just, I’ve seen this dozens and dozens of times when they get properly medicated for their ADHD, they’re just like, holy cow.

I, I don’t even know how I functioned in life. Without medication because it’s such a night and day difference. They can now focus, they can complete tasks. They aren’t late for everything and missing appointments. They are able to, um, you know, just kind of manage their life. They’re not so exhausted all the time.

They’re not dropping the ball constantly, making so many mistakes and, and from a food standpoint, it allows them to have the executive functioning to be able to do things like make a grocery list, plan out some meals for the week, go to the grocery store, these types of tasks that require executive functioning in order to be able to execute them.

It’s very difficult to do when you have unmedicated ADHD and that part, that’s part of the reason why food can be so chaotic for someone with ADHD, is they have a hard time getting themselves organized enough to even have a game plan for food or the groceries on hand to begin with. And then we just see, you know, eating random snack foods that are available or constantly getting takeout or DoorDash or, um, you know, just kind of eating willy nilly.

And that’s part of that frustrating cycle. Now that said, the medications themselves, the stimulant medications we’re talking about can and do suppress appetite, and for some people they use this either consciously or subconsciously as a way to restrict it’s, it’s almost like a dieting tool. The problem is these medications are very short-lived in your system, so it.

If, let’s say you take it in the morning, it wears off by the end of the day. And when that medication wears off, if you have not eaten enough because you weren’t hungry when the stimulant was in your system, if you have not eaten enough throughout the day, it is easy to end up ravenous and overeating and binging at night, and that can really perpetuate.

A restrict binge cycle. So for my clients who are on a stimulant, what I am guiding them to do is let’s eat your breakfast with it or before you take it in the morning so that you have normal appetite for breakfast. Let’s set some timers or some structure so that you remember to take breaks to have some snacks and your lunch in the middle of the day.

And then around the end of the day, at like dinner time in the evening is usually when the medication is wearing off and their di, their appetite returns to normal again. So it’s that middle of the day when the medication’s most active in their system that they might not feel hungry and they might.

Forget to eat or not want to eat, that we’re setting timers, and this is a gentle nutrition thing because even though quote unquote intuitively, you don’t feel like eating, you we’re using gentle nutrition because we logically know that you need to in order to meet your body’s fueling needs and that the medication is masking your appetite, so therefore we are gonna implement some practical eating in order to address that.

That’s how this is part of intuitive eating, even if it feels like it’s going against it from a hunger fullness standpoint. So the structured eating becomes really, really crucial when you’re on a stimulant. And the other thing is, um, you might have to kind of modify what some of those meals look like when you are.

On a stimulant and your appetite is suppressed. So it might be that, you know, you don’t eat like a full, you know, sandwich and chips and fruit as your lunch or, you know, whatever type of meal you would have. Maybe it becomes a little bit more of like a finger food type of thing or snacky type of thing, and, and you just eat like, you know, some, some snacks to kind of get you through the day if that’s all you can tolerate.

So, you know, things like smoothies, energy bites. Um, those, uh, Sargento packs where it’s like the fruit and the nuts and the cheese. You know, you might find that you do a little bit better with finger type foods and you get to experiment with that. One of my clients would do, um, like a half a sandwich, so she’d kind of do like half of her lunch at lunchtime, and then a couple hours later she’d have the other half of her lunch.

So like for her snack. So it’d be kind of like lunch part one and lunch part two. That worked really well for her. You just have to experiment to see what works for you and for your body. Uh, let’s see. Um, I’m just looking at my notes here ’cause I, there were so many points that I wanted to share with you.

Okay. Let’s talk a little bit more about the brain and ADHD. So. One of the other reasons, whether you’re on medication or not with ADHD, that it is important for you to be eating at those regular intervals throughout the day and not just sitting around waiting for yourself to notice hunger. It’s important, rather that you are intentionally eating at certain times.

Most of my ADHD clients will set timers on their phone. And it, it’s, some people have resistance to doing this that like they don’t want to need the timer in the first place, but you just have to acknowledge what it is that you need and what your body needs and what helps you to function well in your life.

So if a timer is it, then hallelujah. That’s a fairly simple tool, right? So it’s important that you are eating at least every three to four hours and that you’re not going longer than that without food. And what that’s going to do is it’s going to help keep your blood sugar stable. Stable. It’s going to prevent you from having highs and lows with your blood sugar.

It is going to prevent you from ending up ravenously hungry at the end of the day, which can set you up for a binge. It’s gonna help with your executive function because your brain runs on blood glucose, blood sugar, and if you’re not eating enough, your brain can end up kind of running on fumes, so to speak, and it can make it harder to think clearly and complete tasks.

And so we want there to be an adequate supply of fuel for your brain all throughout the day. And that requires consistent eating because your brain can’t. Save energy. Your brain has to be always getting the energy from the blood sugar in your bloodstream. Another thing that consistent eating will do is help with your focus and your ability to regulate your emotions.

I mean, we’ve all ended up hangry, right? One of my clients with ADHD, uh, she has children and um, some of her children also have it. And she is teaching her children how their brains work. And one of her things with, with one of her kiddos is, Hey, when you go too long without eating, you get hangry. And you know, she’s helping her child connect the dots with this is what’s happening to you and why, and this is why it’s important when you’re starting to feel this way, that you pause and you go get something to eat.

And it’s why she’s also helping her children to, uh, eat at those regular intervals. And to not fight her on it and that kind of thing. So what I would recommend is that you, if, if you can think about your day as, as like a big picture thing, we wanna have the three anchor points, your three meals, and then.

When the meals are longer than four hours apart, which most of the time they’re going to be, let’s plug in a snack in there at at the midway point between the meals, and that’s what your schedule would look like. So in terms of putting those timers in your phone. And sometimes those things are built into your schedule.

So if you have a consistent lunch break every day at work, then okay, great. You probably don’t need an alarm for that. But if you have to just decide on your own accord when you’re gonna take a break, then yeah, it may need to be an alarm or it may need to be set as a meeting on your calendar. Same thing with snacks.

And this is so different than having diet rules. Sometimes people kind of bristle at this ’cause it feels like when they were dieting, but it’s not. This is not a diet rule. It’s not about restriction. It’s about providing your body with what it needs. It’s not about depriving, it’s providing and it’s an act of body kindness.

And so eating regularly is essentially your foundation of self-care. It is giving your body what it needs. I wanna also talk a bit more about this overlap that I mentioned earlier with ADHD and Binge Eating Disorder and compulsive overeating. There is a huge prevalence of binge eating disorder in people who have ADHD.

Like this is not a coincidence that the only FDA approved medication to treat binge eating disorder specifically. Is Vyvanse, which is a stimulant that also treats ADHD there, there’s a reason that the same medication helps with both because part of the, the way that ADHD alters, you know, brain chemistry is contributing to the binge eating.

And we’ve kind of talked about this to sort of tie it together the way that it disregulates hunger, it can make it harder to regulate emotions. And so sometimes food becomes kind of an emotional coping mechanism. There can be that impulsivity and that dopamine and reward seeking behavior, and, and a lot of times food becomes part of that.

And so when we are able to treat both conditions concurrently and the, and the Vyvanse can be a big help with that, it allows you to be able to connect more with your body to give yourself what you need to not be thinking about food 24 7. And what’s interesting there, there’s a lot of chatter out there ab in this day and age about food noise.

That’s probably a term that you’ve heard before. A lot of my clients with binge eating disorder who have high amounts of food noise, they report that it gets quieter when they’re on Vyvanse. Now, one important thing, if you are listening to this and you’re curious about Vyvanse or you are already on it, a lot of doctors actually don’t know this little nuance if they’re not specialized in treating binge eating disorder and, and psychiatrists as well.

So. Vyvanse works really well for ADHD at the lower doses. You know, like 30, 40 milligrams is kind of a, a commonplace that the doctors will prescribe people for you to get the full benefit of the medication from a binge eating disorder standpoint. For it to quiet that food noise, you usually have to be on a therapeutic dose of 60 to 70 milligrams a day.

And a lot of physicians don’t actually know that, so you might have to be the one to bring that up to them and to ask them about it and to ask them if they’re willing to prescribe it that way. Now, you wouldn’t wanna start at that dose. Usually they start you lower and kind of build you up to it because again, it’s a stimulant and that could be kind of intense to just boom, go on the highest dose of it.

But I do want you to know that if you’re considering this or if you’re already on the medication. For you to get the full benefit. It, it’s that 60 to 70 milligrams, you might wanna jot that down. And again, what what happens is it’s not just because it’s taking away your appetite. That’s one of the misconceptions about Vyvanse is that, oh, well it’s just blunting your appetite and it’s helping you to restrict and not binge.

No, no, no, no, no. In fact, it can set you up to binge if you’re not eating enough during the day. It’s addressing those dopamine signaling pathways in the brain so that you’re not seeking out food for non hunger reasons anymore, and it’s quieting the food noise. I’ve had so many clients tell me like, holy cow, this must be what normal people feel like, who don’t think about food 24 7, and it’s such a revelation to them.

Of what it’s like and how much easier it is to manage their eating when there’s not the obsessive thinking and the constant seeking out of food for the dopamine fix. And so intuitive eating. Is absolutely appropriate for someone with ADHD, but it does have to be adapted. And that’s where some nuance comes into play, and that’s where general nutrition comes into play.

Same thing, there’s still no food rules. We’re still not judging food as good and bad. That’s diet thinking. Uh, you, so we’re still working on making peace with food and we’re not depriving food. You have unconditional permission to eat the things that you want to eat, but we wanna do it without the impulsivity.

We wanna do it from a place of, are you honoring your hunger or are you honoring what your body needs physically? Even if the hunger is blunted for medication and I. Keep in mind also that part of the intuitive eating framework is also about learning to accept and be kind to your body in terms of your body image and your weight.

It’s learning to move your body in ways that work for you. It’s about challenging those food police thoughts in your head. It, it’s so much more than just hunger and fullness. And if, if you’re hearing this episode and you’re just like, holy cow, you know, mind blown right now and you are wondering if you have ADHD or if you have Bingeing eating Disorder, or if you already have diagnoses for one or both of these conditions and you’re like, I need some help figuring this out.

There is help out there. It’s, these are very treatable conditions. You just need to work with people who understand them because it is very nuanced and, and sometimes people who don’t truly understand both of these conditions can, um, inadvertently of course do more harm than good. So, uh, I wanna wrap here with just a few tips that will help you navigate intuitive eating with ADHD.

So I’ve got six tips if you wanna take notes. Number one, use external structure to support internal cues. That is the timers, the alarms, the uh, meetings on your calendar. One of my clients used to put a meeting on her calendar for 10:00 AM every day. The meeting was her snack. That way people couldn’t come in and schedule meetings at that time when she needed to eat.

Uh, visual cues that might remind you to eat or remind you to pair protein with your carbs. So use the external structure to support your internal cues. That’s number one. Number two is talk to your doctor about medication and if you’re on a stimulant or if you’re gonna start taking a stimulant, make sure you are eating consistently when it’s in your system and when it’s blunting your appetite.

Number three, I call this meal prep light. I’m not a big meal prep person. I actually don’t recommend meal prep for the most part. But what I’m talking about here for folks with ADHD is like, let’s stock up on some simple, ready to eat foods that don’t require a ton of preparation. So you’re kind of meal prepped by nature of the foods that you’re keeping on hand.

So you might keep on hand some of like things that you can pop in the microwave or in the air fryer or, um. You know, something that you can like put the components of it together to make a meal. So a good example would be, you know, those salad kits that come in the bag and it’s got like the dressing and the toppings in there with it.

You can do that. Add some rotisserie chicken. Literally I saw TikTok the other day, where all you have to do is, um, mix all of it together, like dump the ingredients in the bag with the salad, shake it. Then kind of roll the top of, of the bag down and use the bag as your bowl, add your chicken in there and you don’t even have to dirty any dishes besides your fork to eat it.

I was like, that’s so brilliant. I love it. So that’s a great simple thing. Or, um, I. You know, something that’s just kind of a mix and match. So you might do like cheese and deli meat and crackers, and some, uh, grapes and some baby carrots. It’s like a charcuterie board on a plate that, like, that can be your meal.

You didn’t have to cook anything. You’ve got components that you can throw together. We can also, um, number four, lower the bar for what counts as a meal. So maybe a smoothie and a granola bar. Okay. Boom. Breakfast. If you can just think of every single food as carb, protein, and fat, all you have to do is combine something that falls into each of those categories, and we can call it a meal.

So maybe your meal is, um, let me think of a good example. Like let’s do a microwave quesadilla. This is one of my favorite things. Or you can put it actually in like a toaster oven too. Um, the tortillas, your carbohydrate. Some shredded cheese on there is both protein and fat. If you wanted a little bit more protein, you can throw some chicken or some beans in there, microwave it or pop it in the air fryer or the toaster oven, and boom, we’ve got a quesadilla that took you like 30 seconds to make.

And, um. You know, then you can serve it with like salsa, sour cream, guac, whatever you want. Or you can just eat it as is. So, I mean, it does not have to be fancy or complicated for you to get yourself fed. Another one that I like when I just need something really quick and easy is a bagel. And I spread ricotta cheese on it.

Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. Ricotta cheese. And then I might drizzle some honey, or I might put a little bit of jam on top. So it’s like sweet and savory. It’s very good. Um, cottage cheese as a side note. Dip. Um, I like to dip Doritos in it and like use the cottage cheese. I like scoop the cottage cheese with the Doritos or a tortilla chip is great or a cracker of any sort or a pita chip is delicious.

So we’ve got protein with the cottage cheese. If you get a like a 4% type of cottage cheese, there’s some fat in it. And then we’ve got a cracker or a chip with some carb and maybe a little bit of fat. There you go. It’s easy. If you wanna throw a fruit or veggie in, we got some fiber baab. Boom baa bang.

All right. That was number four. Number five is to pay attention to your body cues like you are a scientist, not a judge. So what I mean by this is put your scientist cap on and practice being curious with yourself and with your body’s signals, and try to practice pausing to check in with your body before you eat so that you’re not eating impulsively.

That’s where we’re gonna start to capture those moments where you were just gonna grab something just because, and if we go, okay, whoa, pause, time out. Am I hungry? And if the answer to that is yes, okay, let’s think about what do I want? What do I need? What do I have available to me? Those are the three questions I want you to ask yourself before you eat.

What do I want? What sounds good? What does my body need? What do I need to pair with it for balanced nutrition? And what do I have available to me? If you can remember those three questions that will change everything for you. And then my number six tip is be gentle and flexible. And think about this as learning to work with your brain and chemistry.

I. So let’s recap those tips really fast, and then we will get outta here. Uh, number one was using the external structure to support your internal cues. Use timers, reminders, whatever you gotta do. Number two, talk to your doctor about medication. Number three is meal prep light. So keep those, you know, ready to eat foods on hand where you can mix and match the components and throw things together where it’s super easy, not complicated.

Number four is to lower the bar for what counts as a meal. It can be just carb, protein, fat, simple components that come together, and that’s gonna give you a meal. Number five, pay attention to your body cues like a scientist, not a judge. Be curious with yourself and practice pausing before you eat. And  then number six, be gentle and flexible.

You are learning to work with your brain, so if you are struggling. With all the ups and downs of eating, and you have ADHD, or you think you might have it, I really wanna assure you, you’re not doing intuitive eating wrong. You’re not incapable. It’s not that this is never gonna work for you. You just need an ADHD friendly approach.

And you’ve gotta have compassion and patience with yourself and take small steps. And if you’re looking for more support in a community of others who get it, there are plenty of people, uh, who really get it and can support you. And plenty of people with this lived experience inside my free community called the Intuitive Eating Made Easy Facebook group.

So if you want to come inside, if you’re not already in there, the link for that is in the show notes. And in case nobody has told you today, you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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