ADHD and the Binge/Restrict Cycle, Part 2: Suggestions for Breaking out of the Cycle
In my first blog on ADHD and the Binge/Restrict Cycle, I reviewed common attributes of ADHD that make Intuitive Eating more difficult. In part two here, I want to cover some practical suggestions I give my clients who have ADHD in order to disengage from the binge/restrict cycle. Of course, these are general ideas and I encourage you to work with a provider that’s well versed in neurodivergence and disordered eating for more individualized approaches.
Here are some tips to get started on your journey our of the binge/restrict cycle:
Use Intuitive Eating (IE) around what you eat or how much of something you eat, versus when you eat. Time blindness and other aspects of ADHD can make you go too long in between meals. Relying on hunger cues to signal it’s time to eat may not work. Instead, use IE to chose between food options.
Set timers or reminders in your phone so you can eat at certain intervals. Each person is different, but if you often go more than 3-5 hours without eating, set timers to remind you to eat.
Executive functioning can make it difficult to shop for ingredients and then to follow through with making those ingredients into a meal. To cut down in executive functioning barriers, make food easy to eat!
Have food easily available, such as near your work station or in your bag.
Allow yourself permission to use convenience foods, like pre packaged foods and precut produce. It’s okay to use frozen veggies, or to eat “kid” foods like squeezable yogurts.
Accept you may need to engage in mechanical eating, which means eating because you know you need to eat, even if you are not feeling hunger cues. A good example of this is having to eat something with your morning medication. You may not want to eat breakfast yet, but you know you have to eat something with your meds.
Watch all or nothing thinking, and aim for good enough. Watch where you are trying to eat perfectly, or perform IE perfectly. Allow yourself to make mistakes with this, and allow imperfections. There’s no catastrophe or crisis here. The stakes are not that high!
Get to know your reactions to medications. For those taking meds related to ADHD, you may notice your hunger cues are subdued until the evening when the meds have worn off. Normalize this, and explore how you can work with it. You may need to engage in mechanical eating during the day until your meds wear off and you have more of an interest in eating.
Be kind to yourself around food waste or use of plastic. Again, watch all or nothing thinking.
Accept there will be an ebb and flow with the foods you like. Allow yourself to be hyper fixated on certain foods and accept these fixations will probably rapidly change without warning. Use humor, and allow yourself permission to go with your fixations. Get curious when you start implementing food rules and watch for any food moralizing.
Allow yourself to explore pleasure in your life and find ways to generally increase it. Many others have written about this, but I especially love Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic.Your brain, like all brains, needs dopamine and pleasure. Give yourself permission to creatively explore how to make tasks like cooking or eating more enjoyable. Where else in your life could you use more novelty or pleasure?
Watch where your anxiety goes, and watch your anti-fat bias. There’s too much on anti-fatness to say here, but stay tuned for further blogs on the subject!
It is possible to find peace with food when you have ADHD. It is possible to have more compassion towards yourself and to understand your patterns better. The goal is not to remove all binging but to have more understanding and more harmony with your eating habits and needs.
You may want help in this process, and there are providers that work explicitly with folks with ADHD and neurodivergence. Contact me here for more information and referrals.
