ADHD Diet: ADHD-Friendly Tips To Eat Cleaner

When it comes to the ADHD diet, we usually find information about what we should eat to reduce the symptoms. But not too many resources explain how to start and sustain clean eating when you have ADHD, even though “doing” seems to be the hardest part.

Don’t get me wrong. ADHD doesn’t necessarily mean that you have bad relationships with food. There are many ADHDers with normal diets and who have never been overweight or obese. They tend not to get that excitatory stimulation from food at a level that makes it worthwhile. They often don’t notice their hunger because they have other more interesting things to focus on and they eat whenever their body tells them it needs to get some energy in.

Plus some of us are genetically less predisposed to gain and hold on to excess body weight. People in the fitness industry often refer to this body type as “ectomorph”. Ectomorphs naturally have a lean and long built, with difficulty gaining both muscles and fat. We all know someone who can eat all the junk food in the world but nevertheless stays slim… Not to say that this person is healthy and shouldn’t try to improve his lifestyle, of course. But at least physically wise his bad eating habits don’t show as much.

As for many other people with ADHD, problematic eating behaviors can be a real struggle that wreaks havoc on their fitness and health goals. Just to name a few of these behaviors:

• Binge eating at night because she forgot to eat during a day or didn’t have appetite due to ADHD medication side-effect. This is one of the most frequent issues especially in people who just got on meds.
• Impulsively eating her feelings of boredom, overwhelm, sadness, or stress.
• Eating junk food because she has no time and/or motivation to cook healthy meals on a daily basis.
• Not being able to stick to a diet because it either feels like torture from the get-go or she just loses interest after a few weeks.
• Struggling with eating disorders. Unfortunately, these are not uncommon among women with ADD or ADHD.

If any of these describe you, no worries! Pretty soon you’ll find out what you can do to improve your dietary habits despite ADHD!

How to diet with ADHD?

Changing eating patterns is hard. And it’s even harder when you are naturally “addicted” to external stimuli and prone to make impulsive decisions. That’s why diet plans that are written for neurotypicals are not likely to work for a person who has ADHD, at least not in the long run.

What you want to focus on is developing new positive habits around food. In order to do so, you need a plan that’s not reliant on your decision-making abilities and a set of simple and clear rules that you can follow regularly without the use of willpower.

To stick to your ADHD diet, you don’t need to change everything at once! Start with one of the tips listed below and practice it until it becomes your new default behavior. Then move on to the next one.

Replace a negative habit with the positive one

If you don’t know where the problem is, you can’t fix it.

How does the old eating behavior “serve” you? It might be weird to think about it this way but your bad habit does have a purpose. Does it help you relax? Does it give you energy? Does it make you more focused? Does it push away certain negative emotions? Or maybe it’s a form of procrastination?

Simply going cold turkey on the undesired eating pattern is unsustainable. First, you want to find a better way to meet your need! This means that the new behavior needs to bring you the same sorts of benefits.

So for the next week, I’d encourage you to keep a food journal where you log everything you eat, time of the day, circumstances, your feelings, and thoughts preceding each food intake. Not only this will give you an idea about how often you eat when you are not hungry and your food choices, but it also will help you identify your “triggers” (situations or emotions) that make you more susceptible to making unfavorable food decisions.

For example, you might figure out that it’s the hardest for you to control your eating at night, when you watch TV, when you’re at the restaurant, if coworkers share junk food at work, when you smell certain foods, when you pass the drive-throughs on the way home, or if you didn’t have a good sleep. And of course, address your mood issues and whether you eat out of boredom, anxiety, overwhelm, frustration, or a feeling of inadequacy.

How can you deal with this situation differently? If you can’t eliminate the vulnerability, you need to come up with at least one or two alternative positive actions that will bring you similar emotional output. 

For example, if you’re midnight munchie you can and eat a filling, high-protein dinner about 3 hours before going to sleep and get some calming herbal supplements (or even melatonin) so that you can go to bed before your “hunger” wakes up again. If you absolutely have to stay up late then you can prepare a healthy, low-calorie snack like hummus and veggies, a good-quality protein shake or a protein bar; or see if drinking a few cups of herbal teas or chewing gum do the trick.

Get rid of junk food

Talking about vulnerabilities, keeping junk food lying around the home, and hoping that this time you’ll be able to resist the temptation is a recipe for trouble… How many times have you started the day with great intentions of eating clean, only to end up devouring a pack of chips or chocolate bar, maybe even after having a full meal?

People mostly tend to crave the foods that are waiting for them in the kitchen, not the ones they need to go out and get. Probably, the most important ADHD diet advice is to stop buying them and only eat them occasionally, out of the house.

I know that some people have the best results when they treat their food addiction pretty much like alcoholism. They need to completely avoid anything that contains sugar, flour, and artificial ingredients because diet plans that are based on moderation just don’t work for them. Their brains are too sensitive to the effects of fast food.

The thing is we’re all different and what works for one person can absolutely fail someone else. So I’m not going to say that someone is not right for following a very strict plan. But for the vast majority of people, the all-or-nothing mentality is not the best approach. They do much better when they don’t cut the certain food out entirely because this almost always leads them to eventually overeating it.

With ADHD, we are more susceptible to pleasure-seeking behaviors, and this includes cravings for certain foods. Fully restricting them won’t change our brain wiring and may actually backfire.

Why do we get addicted to fast food?

Processed, high-carb, high-fat foods hijack our brain’s pleasure circuits (for some more than others). That’s why things like candies, chips, crackers, ice cream, cookies, and Coke are so addictive and should be minimized in the ADHD diet. They raise the production of dopamine to excessive levels. So we want more of these foods because our mind gets hooked on experiencing pleasurable and comforting feelings that come along.

For this reason, the most practical decision is to keep the pre-packaged products that contain added sugar, artificial sweeteners, colors, and flavors, Monosodium glutamate (MSG), trans and oxidized fats, and high fructose corn syrup out of the house. All of these things are added to our food, not because of their nutritional value or not even to provide us with better experience but because food companies know that the more addictive their products are the more we buy and the higher profits they get.

Bottom line: if you don’t have these “irresistible” foods in easy access you’ll have much better chances to stick to your healthy ADHD diet plan.

What if you can’t just ban all junk food?

In reality, it often happens that the family members/partners/roommates are not exactly on board with the idea of you throwing away all the snacks. In this case, eliminating the trigger is not an option. What you can do is to make sure to place all the poor choices on some hidden shelves, out of your eyesight. For example, you can ask your husband to keep the things he wants to eat in his home office or the garage fridge.

At the same time, have some better alternatives available. A portion of fruit, low-sugar protein bar, nuts, dark chocolate, greek yogurt with berries, low-sugar ice cream, seed crackers, popcorn with no added flavors can satisfy your craving while keeping you on track. Make sure the packaged snacks don’t include any of the no-no ingredients listed above. Keep in mind that organic and all-natural foods are not always equal to healthy! They still can be high in calories, simple carbs, sugar, industrial fats, and sodium.

And lastly, you need to have a strong plan about what exactly you’re going to eat at night (or any other time of the day when you tend to have the strongest cravings). You don’t want any spontaneous food decisions! So you can enjoy one portion of a dessert but only on the nights you planned to have it (for my personal training clients, I usually recommend the days when they worked out more intensely).  So you’ll bring home a single serving of whatever it is you desire and eat it mindfully, taking your time to savor it after you’ve had your nice, nutritious dinner. No guilt trips. It’s very important for a successful ADHD diet.

If you receive sweets as a gift, don’t feel bad to save one serving (if any at all) and then subtly throw away the rest later. Sometimes the snack is not even that good but we still keep it because it’s free. And then, in a moment of weakness, we don’t even care what it tastes like, we just look for stimulation. So we eat it anyway, feeling guilty because we knew deep inside that this is what was going to happen.

Why waste your precious executive function energy on resisting a craving? Some foods are better off in a garbage can than in your thoughts and then inevitably in your belly. Don’t think of it as a waste of money. This food doesn’t have any nutritional value. If you believe the taste makes it worth trying, have one portion at a planned time. If it’s not, toss it.

Eating a dessert can be a part of your healthy diet plan, as long as you’re in control. Overeating sweets or eating impulsively (whenever your brain seeks a dopamine hit) is not.

When you can’t remove junk foods from your home altogether, planning your meals including snacks and desserts will help you minimize the moments of weakness when your mind starts scrolling through the possible “treats” you could get. You’ll know exactly what you’re going to eat so that your brain can focus on one option instead of many which will take a huge load off your decision-making energy and dramatically reduce cravings.

Don’t do your groceries when hungry

Making better dietary choices starts in the grocery store. Once the food item is in your cart it will most likely end up in your stomach.

Hunger depletes your willpower! It can easily make you buy things that are not aligned with your fitness goals. How often does this happen that you zoom out and finish a candy bar or a half of the crackers box before you even get home? And then you justify it by telling yourself that you had to eat something cause you were just starving… 

Well, you can minimize the temptation to spontaneously purchase unplanned snacks by doing grocery shopping within a few hours after you’ve eaten.

The other two useful tips are:

• To come with a shopping list and stick to the foods on it.
• To avoid middle aisles as they are the ones that are filled with all the junk foods and can trigger the urge to buy them.

How do cheat-meals fit into the ADHD diet?

The idea of cheat meals is not just about giving yourself a mental break. It’s more about balancing out the hormonal levels and boosting metabolism when you’ve already been on a low-carb or a calorie-restricted diet for some time. So it’s not for someone who is at the beginning of a fitness journey, just trying to eat clean. 

Of course, if it’s a special occasion or a one-of-a-kind experience when foods taste exceptionally good then yes, it’s ok to “cheat” and consume things that are not ideal for your weight loss goals. In this case, planning extra calories won’t sabotage your body transformation. However, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere because not every weekend day can be Thanksgiving. So if you have a hard time staying on track then don’t worry about “cheat-meals” or “cheat-days” just yet. You can go ahead and skip to the next section of this post.

A high-carb refeed can be helpful when you don’t have problems sticking to the plan, but after being consistent for some time, you began feeling more hungry and/or lack energy due to natural body adaptations to a diet. Having a meal that’s higher in carbohydrates promotes the release of  “the satiety hormone” leptin, glycogen replenishment (energy from food stored in muscles), and lowering the stress hormone cortisol. Together, these reactions give the person a power boost and faster metabolism.

Ideally, a cheat meal should be planned around a higher-intensity workout (heavy leg or full-body training). I also recommend making it the last meal of the day, rather than first. Otherwise, the chances are you’ll be tempted to continue indulging all day long, which can kill your motivation.

On the carb-loaded days, limit your fat intake to about 50 g and carbs to 250-300 g a day. The amount of protein should stay the same: about 1 g per pound of lean body mass. Start your cheat meal with non-starchy veggies or fruit. You can also drink a glass of water with a tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar to reduce the insulin spike. The next day, it will be beneficial to do a fasted cardio workout and intermittent fasting.

Cut back on alcohol

First of all, alcohol is extra calories that don’t have any nutritional benefits. An occasional drink or two won’t make a whole lot of difference (you’ll only add about 100-300 kcal). But more than that can hinder your weight loss and maybe even tip the scales toward weight gain.

Additionally, drinking alcohol often makes people simply forget about their healthy eating intentions. It triggers cravings and compulsive eating. So it’s not just about how much you drink, it’s also the food choices you make when tipsy.

Another issue with alcohol consumption is that it’s shown to disrupt your sleep cycle (R). It might help you fall asleep better but on the other hand, it reduces the REM (rapid eye movement) phase of the sleep which is responsible for your emotional regulation and memory (R). That’s why social and emotional functioning can be so hard the day after you’ve “had a little bit too much”. And of course, making better decisions around food becomes challenging when your mood and emotions are out of control.

And finally, just like any other addictive substance, alcohol raises your dopamine to excessive levels. While it feels good at a moment, these dopamine highs eventually can make your brain less sensitive to its effects. For most people, this is not enough to cause addiction but it still dulls the enjoyment of all the other positive aspects of life, including eating healthy food, spending time with friends and family, achievements at work, and so forth. Yes, life can be hard. But since low dopamine is already an issue for someone with ADHD it makes sense to minimize the amount of booze in the diet.

Eat 3 balanced meals a day

Is fasting good for my ADHD diet?

Generally speaking, we all want to be able to fast at least 12 hours a day, meaning that if you eat your dinner at 7 PM you won’t get any calories in until 7 AM. This way you can stabilize your blood sugar and insulin levels and allow your body to rest and recover rather than spend its energy on digestion.

Personally, I feel the most focused and energetic when I don’t eat for 16 hours on most days. I finish my last meal by 8 PM and don’t eat again until 12 PM the next day (I have one or two cups of coffee with stevia though). Noon is the time when I usually start feeling the first signs of hunger and blood sugar drops, so I make sure to eat my wholesome breakfast. Otherwise, I’m risking to make a bad food choice. If I know that I won’t be at home around that time then I eat earlier, before I leave or take a lunch box with me.

But this is me. And if skipping breakfast inevitably makes you crave junk food or overeat later, make sure you eat in the morning! Just instead of loading up on simple carbs such as bread, toasts, waffles, or sugary cereal, opt for a meal that’s high in protein, contains enough healthy fats and complex carbs.

Related: ADHD and Appetite Control

Lots of ADHDers complain about medication killing their appetite. So they often starve themselves during a day and can’t help to binge at night. My main advice is to eat breakfast before you take them and then have at least something light like a protein shake or a protein bar for lunch. This way you won’t be ravenous when meds wear off.

How often should I eat?

When it comes to meal frequency, for most of my clients I recommend eating 3 nutritious meals a day, ideally with no snacking in between. Why? Because you’ll be breaking a long-standing habit of constant, mindless grazing which probably costs you hundreds (if not thousands) of extra calories a day driving your weight up (R), stealing your energy, and disrupting your sleep.

Meal frequency and insulin resistance.

Every time you put food in your mouth it increases your insulin levels. Insulin is the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels by telling the body to utilize it as immediate energy or to store it as fat for later use. Eating too often (like 6+ food intakes per day) keeps your insulin levels continuously elevated which over time, can lead to insulin resistance. This prediabetic condition happens when too much of the hormone makes the body “insensitive” to it, so the glucose builds up in the bloodstream causing high blood sugar or hyperglycemia.

The effects of this state can have detrimental effects on the body, including increased inflammation, various tissue damage, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease (R). As for ADHD, following a diet that reduces insulin sensitivity seems to lower dopamine levels in the brain, exacerbating the symptoms (R).

Plus, when people eat every few hours it keeps them thinking about food all day long. Who has time and energy to carefully plan each one of these food intakes? Well, people in the fitness industry probably do. I’ll tell you more: I was one of them for a few years when I was following the old-school guidelines in an attempt to build more muscles and lose fat. I was also highly dependent on food and often became hangry and shaky in no time if I didn’t get to eat every three hours or so. Once I’ve got my blood sugar levels under control by progressively increasing the time between meals, switching to 2-3 meals a day started to work just fine for me. Most importantly, I could take my mind off the food and place this energy towards accomplishing all the other important tasks.

My point is unless it’s your job to hyperfocus on food and training, eating frequently and healthily is hard to sustain long-term because it requires a much more thoughtful approach including thorough portion control, meal timing, and food prep. It’s not something a typical person with ADHD is willing to do in her day-to-day diet. In addition to that, planning to eat 5-6 times a day can make you overly obsessed with eating and only increase cravings and hunger.

What if I’m hypoglycemic?

People with hypoglycemia or low blood sugar tend to get very fatigued, irritable, and brain-fogged if they go without food for more than three to five hours which pushes them to make poor food choices.

If that’s you, my suggestions are to:

• Prioritize balanced meals rather than snacking. These four to six meals need to be planned out and eaten with attention. Eating nutrient-dense foods and chewing your food properly will ensure that you absorb the nutrients, making you feel more satisfied. And of course, keep your portion size in check.
• Avoid junk food during a day. Hypoglycemia is often caused by eating foods that are high in sugar that spike your insulin levels causing a rapid drop in blood glucose (R). When this happens you crave sweets and carbs even more. Whole foods, on the other hand, allow a much more gradual increase and decrease in insulin and blood sugar so you feel satiated for longer. Remember, a quick snack may reduce your hypoglycemia symptoms temporarily, but in the long run, it may promote insulin resistance.
• Work on gradually increasing your fasting window. Just don’t wait until you become cranky, low-energy, or dizzy and make sure to eat at the first signs of hunger (the empty feeling in your stomach rather than a desire to eat something specific).

How meal frequency affects your metabolism.

You might wonder, “Doesn’t eating small frequent meals speed up metabolism?”. Just think about it. From an evolutionary standpoint, when did we have food available to us 24/7? Obesity became a huge problem in the modern world. And with all the scientific information about healthy eating we have now, this issue is actually at its worst! Does this make sense to you?

Meanwhile, science says that so far, there is just not enough evidence that would support the idea of frequent food intakes and improvements in metabolic rate and body composition (R).

Bottom line:  If you’ve been grazing your entire life, jumping to eating only three meals a day may be pretty challenging. So start slowly, — and keep in mind that there is always room for exception. Not everyone feels better when skipping meals or extending the period of fasting. That’s why to remain consistent in following your ADHD diet, it’s crucial to listen to your body and determine what works best for you.

Plan and prep your meals

Food is your fuel. So think of what you need to eat to be productive and energetic this week. A high-protein meal or maybe skipping breakfast for better focus and concentration. A healthy snack to reduce afternoon craving. A little more carbs on days when you work out intensely, have lots of physical work to do, or just need to run around accomplishing daily tasks. Lighter meals like veggies and lean protein on days when you have to be sedentary. A larger breakfast and adding more healthy fats to it so that you can stay satiated on a busy day.  Are you eating out this week? Making this kind of meal plan won’t take much time but it will ensure that you provide your body with the nutrients it needs to succeed.

Try to mostly cook at home

I’ve heard from many ADHDers that they don’t have a choice but to buy junk food because they hate, don’t have time, or don’t know how to cook. Meanwhile, I believe that cooking at home is one of the best tools any ADHD diet plan should include! Let me give you just a few reasons why:

• You can make your food much more nutritious and healthy than any prepackaged, frozen meals.
• Making sure you have meals ready to eat throughout the day will mitigate late-night eating.
• You’ll become independent of fast foods or others cooking for you.
• Cooking at home saves you money compared to eating out, taking to-go, or buying ready meals from a grocery store.

No matter your ability, anyone can learn to do it! It’s easy when you turn it into a HABIT. So even after a long day at work you can come home, open the fridge and know exactly what to do to make a tasty, wholesome meal in less than thirty minutes. 

A few tips on how to start:

1. Try easy-to-make recipes with 2-4 ingredients and no fancy equipment.
2. Watch a video with step-by-step written instructions. It’s typically the best form of learning for someone with ADHD as we need both simple rules and a visual presentation.
3. Maybe learn one thing at a time. Start with one or two healthy breakfast options like omelet or protein powder oatmeal, and practice them for a few weeks. Then learn how to prepare a couple of easy lunches and snacks. For example, avocado toast with smacked salmon or greek yogurt with berries and seeds. Then move on to grains and protein for dinner. Chicken breast or steak are some require little or no preparation and pretty fast to make.

How to prepare your food for a week

Choose any day when you have more free time for food prep for a week. This might seems hard at first but trust me, making things like soups, grains, veggies, yogurt, and salads (with dressings on the side) in advance can save you a lot of time! It’ll only take you like half an hour to decide what you are going to eat over the next week and write down the grocery list.

Which foods will you use for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks?

1. Make sure you have all the essentials first, including grains, proteins, legumes, vegetables, fruits, and nuts.
   • Keep in mind that fresh produce like greens, tomatoes, avocado, broccoli, bananas, berries, and green beans spoil pretty fast. So plan on eating them at the beginning of the week.
   • Apples, cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes, and squashes, on the other hand, are much less perishable, so they can wait till later use.
   • And of course, frozen veggies have the longest lifespan and are so easy to cook. They also retain most of their nutrients.
   • Canned vegetables are cheap, very fast to prepare, and can be super-helpful in case if you run out of fresh options. I prefer organic products with water and sea salt only and in a BPA-free can. 
2.  Restock all the other important ingredients such as salt, spices, vinegar, tomato paste, mustard, cooking oil, yogurt, milk, bone broth, etc.

After you’ve bought all the required foods:

1. Chop the vegetables and put them into a fridge or freezer. They can be cooked within minutes.
2. Cook large batches of grains, beans, and soups (if you eat them) that last about 4 days and can be easily reheated and used for a meal.
3. In the ADHD diet, protein is the king! I like my animal-based proteins freshly cooked but you can definitely pre-cook them and store in the fridge or freezer.
   • Cooked poultry and red meat can be refrigerated for 3-4 days and should be frozen no longer than two to six months. Deli meats last two weeks in the refrigerator unopened and three to five days after opening.
   • Fresh fish should be cooked within two days, up to three at most. Cooked fish and seafood can be refrigerated for a couple of days in a small covered container at 40°F or less or froze for up to one month. Canned fish is an easy way to satisfy sudden hunger. It can be added to a salad, whole-grain toast, soup, or mixed with grains. Opt for sustainable, wild-caught fish, in a BPA-free can. 
   • Eggs are my absolute favorites when it comes to easy-to-make, nutritious meals or snacks! When hard-boiled, they can be refrigerated for up to a week.

Then you can divide all the cooked food into portions and refrigerate them in glass food containers (try to stay away from plastic).  You don’t have to do it, of course. But I find this last step of meal prep very helpful when it comes to portion control and avoiding second servings. So if that’s something you struggle with as many people do, especially at dinner-time, then consider spending another ten minutes or so to split your big batches of food into separate meals.

Note: I’m not a huge fan of using a microwave to warm up my meals. Even though there is no strong research on how microwaving affects food quality I prefer to stay on a safe side and just use the stove. But hey, sometimes life gets really hectic and motivation plummets. So whatever works best for you!

For a balanced meal, focus on the Big Three:

• Protein
• Fiber-rich carbs
• Healthy fats

This is the example of what my typical dinner contains:

One or two open palms of protein.

One cupped hand of starchy carbs (grains, starchy vegetables, beans).

One fist-sized portion of non-starchy vegetables.

I use one or two tablespoons (1-2 thumbs) of oil or butter to heat it all up.

Slow down for your meal

ADHD often makes it harder to recognize true hunger and satiety signals on time. To avoid overeating, it’s important for us to eat sitting down.

Take your time. Each meal shouldn’t take you less than 20 minutes. To gain the skill of eating at an unhurried pace, you can set a timer and place it in front of you. Also, try eating with your non-dominant hand, and put the fork down after each bite.

When we get busy, eating well becomes inconvenient. So we eat on the go, simply swallowing the food as fast as possible. The problem is this way our bodies can’t efficiently extract the nutrients from food. So we feel hungry sooner.

Savoring and chewing your food properly will not only contribute to better digestion but will also help you enjoy your meal and realize when your stomach is full and you need to stop eating.

And of course, you need to avoid eating while doing something else like reading, watching TV, or driving. Distracted food intake is one of the main saboteurs of a healthy ADHD diet. It prompts us to eat more than our bodies need. Plus mindless snacking rarely involves eating healthy foods.

Just make it a rule to get your first bite of food when sitting at the table. I also like to take a few deep breaths to lower stress levels in the body and put into a parasympathetic or “rest-and-digest” mode.

Related: Non-dietary tips for better eating habits.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, having ADHD often means having problems with diet. It can be very frustrating to spend year after year trying to eat differently only to have your brain working against your good intentions.

It can manifest in eating foods you’ve promised yourself you wouldn’t eat, not being able to control your insatiable hunger at night, eating your emotions, going for a second serving even though you know you’ve already had enough, or buying junk food because at the moment you have zero desire to cook at home. And you make this mistake over and over again, telling yourself that tomorrow or next week will be different.

But don’t despair! I know how you feel and I also know that you can successfully diet with ADHD! You just need a set of simple and easy-to-implement rules. So here you have them!

In this post, I’ve covered some of the most important topics on ADHD and a healthy diet, including HOW TO:

• Stop a bad eating behavior
• Eat less junk food
• Eat only what you’ve planned
• And enjoy your food without overeating

I really hope this is helpful! Let me know in the comments below if you’re ready to start implementing any of these tips right away.

Or maybe you have your own methods that help you stay on track? Please share your experience to support other ADHDers that are still struggling with making better daily food decisions.