Brain v. Food v. ADHD

The best part of my journey in the late discovery of my ADHD is finding communities of people that thrive through the lack of vilifying meals and foods that don’t require more than 10 minutes of prep. One of the main rules for these groups is that you don’t comment on how ‘healthy’ the meal is, or whether it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’; food is food, and sometimes any food is better than no food. I can’t count how many times somebody has put themself down for the food they’re eating, trying to ‘justify’ it to a group of people who already understand.

The time spent in these communities has raised the consciousness of how extensive diet culture is, and how often we put a food item down in a shop or when we feel snacky, or even times you tell yourself you shouldn’t eat too much cheese. Diet culture has seeped into every corner of our society, it only growing in the United Kingdom, calories now being compulsory on menus, regardless of those it mentally punishes. An escape out for the day, only to be thrown back into a mental prison of numbers and guilt.

Whilst medical professionals continue to declare an obesity crisis - at the same time they cry out about mental health services, how nobody is being helped or even seen, and yet, diet culture continues, on and on. Young children being weighed in school at age seven, with a letter sent home to parents dictating their weight based on a BMI. Jamie Oliver making sure there’s enough veg, not too much chocolate, ‘how many calories are in those biscuits?’. From childhood, we are taught to be careful when we eat, when we choose to eat, and whether we should even eat at all.

All this leads me back to my points about ADHD. When you run out of spoons, and merely thinking about boiling a kettle becomes a step in a long line of steps that you need to take, but the voice in your head says eating four cheese-strings in a row and then a packet of crisps is bad, but then the voice also says you have to eat something…

The dangerous mindsets about what we can and can’t eat only increasing is especially damaging for people with ADHD, with recent studies (2021) showing that those with ADHD are statistically more likely to develop a binge eating disorder or bulimia nervosa, compared to peers who do not have ADHD.

The shame that surrounds food within society, with people who eat ‘too much’ being called greedy, those who are fat being mocked - ‘fat’ being an insult at all! - is one that is unconsciously ableist. For those who struggle to eat (not even just people with ADHD, it goes so much further), every comment about food and weight and calories and grease and carbs just drastically increases the problem.

Where does diet culture end? When do we return to seeing food as our friend, rather than an enemy that we keep at arm's length? Mostly, when do we stop placing differing values on people based on what and when they eat.

An increase in body positivity is a step forwards, but even here, on this very site, diet culture is present. A focus on being ‘healthy’, despite health not always being physical, and varying immensely from person to person. From the viewpoint of the stereotypically ‘healthy’ person, we are often painted with the same brush; exercise, have a routine, eat well. Eating well is not real. Being human is. Being human is our focus, being happy, being mentally healthy until we can focus on all forms of health, in the way it suits us as an individual.