Adult ADHD and Diets

It seems like everyone you know is on a diet, right? Most people don't succeed, sadly. If they do, they gain it back (plus some) later on. It's hard to stick to losing weight and a diet plan. For those of us with adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) it can be even more difficult. Impulisvity, medication side-effects and all the traps that "ordinary people" fall into are all waiting to trip us up.

Impulsivity and Diet

For those who may be reading this article, but don't have adult ADHD, here is a bit on how impulsivity affects eating and dieting. Ever had too much to drink before? If you're an adult, I would venture most of you have. Ever get super-duper hungry while you're drinking and it's sort of like "diet be damned?" I think that's what it's often like when you start out each morning with adult ADHD. You get something in your mind and you do it. You want chocolate, you eat chocolate. You want doughnuts, you eat doughnuts. When you want to run around in circles, you run around in circles. Being impulsive makes eating a well balanced diet tough.

ADHD Medication and the Diet

When you take ADHD medication, a stimulant, you often find yourself no longer hungry during the day. At first, it's torture. It's hard to eat almost anything and you lose weight. This is just something that happens. Once your body gets used to the medicine, you can find yourself able to eat more during the day - but, not so much you necessarily pack back on the pounds.

The really big issue? Medication wears off. Around five or seven at night, my medication wears off and I could eat a buffalo. And I'm a vegan. It's super hard to maintain a normal eating pattern when you have different levels of hunger that spike at difficult times throughout life.

Of course, we are all subject to cravings and parties and holidays just like everyone else. Dieting is hard, but knowing where we might slip up is a large part of the battle.

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