In My Head: ADHD And Disordered Eating

Welcome to In My Head - a lecture series about ADHD and all things related to mental and emotional wellbeing. In this talk, I tackle the topic of Disordered Eating - both what it's like to parent a child with ADHD who also has oral sensory input needs, the impact of stimulant medication on eating habits, and being an ADHDer who often forgets to eat because if it's out of sight, it's out of mind!

Transcript

Hi,

Hello,

How are you?

Welcome to In My Head,

A new series of talks that I'm going to be giving on Insight Timer,

Specifically related to mental health and emotional well-being.

My name is Shanna Moyer.

I'm a mental health counselor,

An ADHD management specialist,

And a trauma support specialist based out of London,

Ontario.

I'm also a human who exists with late-diagnosed ADHD,

And I'm a parent of two neuro-spicy ADHDers.

I know a thing or two about how the brain works,

Why we are the way we are,

And how the world just has not been created with neurodiverse humans in mind.

So my hope with this new series of lectures here at Insight Timer is that you will take away one little sliver,

One nugget,

Every single time,

That helps you understand your brain and helps you embrace who you are.

Well,

Hey friends.

Today on In My Head,

I wanted to talk to you about something that might stir up some big feelings for people,

And that is disordered eating.

This is by no means meant for diagnostic purposes.

I'm not here to diagnose or recommend anything particular with regards to disordered eating to you.

This is simply one ADHDer talking about their experience with food,

Fuel,

The things that we put in our body to nourish our body,

And how difficult that can be as an ADHDer.

This is all based on my own individual lived experience,

And maybe it'll resonate with one or two of you.

But,

Trigger warning,

This is about disordered eating,

And that might bring up some big feelings for you.

So if you are in a position where you need to reach out for support after,

Please let me know.

My inbox is open to each and every one of you here at Insight Timer,

And if you ever need to chat,

I'm here for you.

I think the first thing that I want to talk about is the experience of parenting an ADHDer with an oral fixation.

We didn't realize it for a really long time,

But our youngest prior to his ADHD diagnosis had this need to put everything in his mouth,

And that could have been an incredible amount of food.

It felt like he was never satiated.

He was always wanting more.

It could have also meant things like batteries or coins,

Lego pieces.

Eventually,

We transitioned into silicone jewelry,

Which was a lot safer for him,

But we had a really hard time trying to figure out why he wanted food or something in his mouth all the time.

For him,

It was about stimming.

It was about the oral sensory input.

He needed something there to keep his brain actively engaged in whatever it is that he was doing at the moment,

Whether it was playing a game on Roblox,

Watching a show on Netflix,

Or even to do some homework.

He needed that oral sensory input as a way of stimming so that his brain could stay engaged.

Now,

That leads to some disordered eating habits because then we edge into overeating,

Which is something that our oldest struggles with,

That impulsivity of,

There's nothing going on with my hands.

My brain is out in left field.

Therefore,

I will put things in my mouth.

Oral sensory input can lead to disordered eating in my experience and in my observances in being a parent to two ADHD kiddos.

Now,

When I think about when we first introduced medication to our youngest,

We started with a stimulant medication,

Which is often the first line of defense alongside behavioral therapy for young children,

But it's an appetite suppressant.

So there again,

You're introducing another layer of potential disordered eating.

We found that during the day,

Once his medication would kick in,

He wasn't hungry and he was so hyper-focused on whatever the task was at hand that he would often forget to eat.

We are now having that same experience with our older child,

Who's recently diagnosed with ADHD and also using stimulants.

What we would do to combat this would be to sort of bookend the day.

He would have a massive breakfast of really whatever he wanted to eat.

We didn't put limits on food.

We didn't put limits on pantry access.

We didn't put limits on the fridge.

Whatever you wanted to eat,

Whenever you wanted to eat it was perfectly fine.

Then we would bookend the end of the day.

Build a really big,

Nutritious dinner with a hearty dessert so that we knew that they were getting the caloric intake that they needed for their bodies to do the work that they needed to do.

We have since changed the medication protocol for our youngest and he's no longer on stimulant medication,

Which means he has an open pantry rule that just exists in this house.

But we are also getting into more balanced,

Well-rounded meals throughout the day because we don't have to bookend anymore.

Now for me,

As an ADHDer,

I often forget to eat.

All of a sudden,

As I'm recording this right now,

It's 1.

30 in the afternoon.

I have gotten up around 7.

30 this morning,

Done all of the household chores.

I have worked out.

I have connected with my teenager son.

I've done a whole bunch of work and now it's 1.

30 in the afternoon and I still haven't eaten yet.

My body doesn't feel that need for food,

But it has that need for food because I'm a living,

Breathing,

Existing human being in this world.

But my ADHD being inattentive ADHD,

I often forget.

It's that out of sight,

Out of mind space where my brain goes that I will forget to eat.

My partner,

He also has ADHD and what we do is we know that in his physically demanding job as a carpenter,

He needs a certain amount of food and fuel throughout his entire day.

So we prep all of that the night before and we do it as a team because it's a connection moment for the two of us.

But for me,

I fall short and then come dinner time,

All of a sudden there's this hangry beast that is coming forward who also has decision fatigue.

And it's easier for me to decide not to eat than decide between meal A or meal B.

It's a bit of a vicious cycle that I get in.

And for any women who were raised in the nineties,

We were all raised with this heroin chic kind of outlook on things,

Right?

So we suppressed our appetites.

We ate really small.

We were used to a hundred calorie packs of snacks,

All of those things.

So there's also a conditioning that needs to be undone in the brain.

Start recognizing that your body as a living,

Breathing,

Existing organism in this world needs and is deserving of food.

Your brain needs the food too.

So what are some of the things that we can do to combat that disordered eating piece as it relates to ADHD?

What I have our teenage son doing,

Especially for water intake.

And this is something that I am really awful at as well.

I feel like we're uncovering a lot of skeletons in the closet today.

What I have him doing is he has reminders on his phone to drink water and to eat.

And it might be a granola bar and a bottle of Gatorade.

It might be some apple juice and some raspberries.

Whatever it is that we are putting the fuel into our body,

That is good.

So in our home,

We have an emphasis on food being fuel.

There is no good.

There is no bad.

We don't look at the five food groups.

We don't look at how many servings of fruits and vegetables we have every day.

We look at,

Did you eat?

Did you feel good about that?

Sometimes it feels like we've gotten too far into the classification of food.

And we often forget that sometimes the purpose of that food is simply to make sure that that person has eaten food that day.

That bagel and cream cheese that you had this morning,

Good job.

You remembered to eat.

That's awesome.

Those mini eggs that you had as an afternoon snack when maybe your sugar was low,

But it made you really happy.

Good job.

You ate today.

I think sometimes we've gotten too far into classifying what is good versus what is bad.

That we forget that for some people,

The difficulty is simply in eating.

For some people,

It's the remembering to eat that is the hard part.

So maybe we should be a little bit gentler on ourselves.

Maybe we should hold ourselves with a little bit more compassion and understand that you ate today and that was enough and that was good.

And maybe you ate something that just filled you with joy because those chocolate chip cookies that your partner made you last night reminded you of when you were little and when you were sad and your dad would make you chocolate chip cookies.

So it gave you that feeling of joy and nostalgia.

And maybe that's what you needed in the moment.

So if we stop labeling things good or bad and just accepting them for them being neutral,

Fueling your body and fueling your brain all of a sudden doesn't feel like such a big undertaking.

Setting the reminders in your phone,

In your calendar,

Timers,

Alarm clocks can be such a simple but important step in all of this too.

And then undoing that societal conditioning that tells us that we are too big or we are too much,

That the food that we are wanting maybe doesn't have a purpose.

Let's just fuel ourselves because you're deserving of that.

Your brain needs the fuel and so does your body.

Don't forget to eat.

And remember,

At the end of the day,

If you maybe haven't and it wasn't a great day for food,

That's okay.

You can try again tomorrow.

At the end of the day,

I want you to remember that you're not broken.

You just have ADHD.

And that's going to look different for every single person who's listening to this.

For me with disordered eating,

It's about the remembering to do it.

For my youngest,

It's about not just putting things in our mouths because we have that oral fixation and that sensory input drive.

For my teenager,

It's about remembering to eat and remembering to drink water and then not binging when we've remembered.

So those regular intervals are important as we grow.

You're not broken.

You just have ADHD.

And maybe you need a snack.