ADHD And Health At Every Size/Intuitive Eating/Diet Culture

[Fayerweather]

Hello!

Any ADHDers currently on an Intuitive Eating Journey? I ask because I've found that there's some diety talk in ADHD communities. Seeing a restrictive diet as a cure-all for symptoms. Talking about decrease in appetite due to medications being a good thing. It pulls me up short every now and again when a great ADHD podcast I'm listening to will start in with "I needed to lose weight and it helped my ADHD symptoms" or similar.

I run an Intuitive Eating/Anti-Diet Facebook group that's ADHD friendly, but would totally start up a new one for exclusively ADHD + IE/HAES folks.

*** Please do not reply if you have no idea what I'm talking about or if you are pro-diet or anti-fatness. Thank you. ***

[SweetCream]

I’ve only recently learned about intuitive eating. I’ve been on the journey for several years now, but didn’t have a name or label for it. I’ve been able to manage my adhd symptoms so much better than when I was obsessing about food and searching for the perfect adhd nutrition plan. I’m glad to know there are others here with this same philosophy. If you do start up a new group, I’d be interested depending on the platform. I stay away from FB and other social media platforms in effort to maintain focus and help with time management. That is a different topic for a different day, however.

[Fayerweather in reply to SweetCream]

Unfortunately, other than an in person meetup, which would be amazing, but we probably live all over the place, the only group I can think of is through social media. But... I can say that I'm glad you've found a form of Intuitive Eating for yourself. I'd strongly recommend reading the book by the same name by Elyse Resche and Evelyn Tribole. Also, Linda Bacon's Health At Every Size.

Improving health does not have to include losing weight or cutting down on portion sizes, and I've heard several diets promoted as "good for ADHD symptoms", but they mostly focus on restrictions.

I add more vegetables to my meals, try to drink enough water, take daily walks when I can. I refuse to starve myself ever again. Best of luck, and if you'd like to reach out at any time, you can message me here. I have a lot of resources!

[SweetCream in reply to Fayerweather]

Maybe I’ll come across something that uses a basic meeting platform like Zoom/GoogleMeet/GoToMeeting/Skype/ etc.

I know that Health At Every Size has been adopted by the eating disorder treatment community as best practice. Any type of restrictive diet is seen as a vulnerability factor for developing an eating disorder. Diet culture is an enormous giant to combat, I wish there were more of us fighting it rather than colluding with it.

[Fayerweather in reply to SweetCream]

I'm really glad to hear that. Eating disorder treatment from within diet culture is so extremely counterproductive and damaging.

[Cant_stop_wont_stop in reply to SweetCream]

I try to stay away from Fakebook too. It's very predatory (everyone has a business on FB) and I really hate the misinformation (at best) and lies (at worst).

I use it to video chat with my brother overseas, and to keep a link with my other relatives that live overseas in a non english 3rd world country. Communicating is extremely difficult as I have forgotten most of my mother tongue 😛 lol.

My psychologist says social media is bad for everyone (dopamine seeking which messes with ones natural brain chemicals especially dopamine) but especially bad for ADHD brains.

[Cant_stop_wont_stop in reply to SweetCream]

I forgot to mention Zoom, Google meet etc are my preferred way of keeping contact. Many of my appointments are via Zoom and I love it because it cuts out travel time.