Eating for Dopamine: How to Navigate Emotional Eating with ADHD
If you have ADHD and you find yourself gravitating towards “high dopamine foods” and can’t remember the last time you ate a green thing, you’re not alone. However, I’ve got good news for you: the answer isn’t to try to stop eating the yummy foods that give you dopamine! That’s right! Restriction doesn’t work. Limiting sources of dopamine doesn’t work, it only makes you grumpy and sad. No one wants to be grumpy and sad, right? I hope not. So here are ways you can continue engaging in emotional eating and eating those highly palatable foods you love, even though you have ADHD.
don’t restrict your food in any way
I hinted at this before, but I know how tempting it can be to not keep those delicious foods in the house. Usually what happens when you do that is when you do have access to those foods, you’ll binge on them or feel like you can’t stop eating them. Keep all the foods you enjoy in your pantry, and you’ll notice that they don’t feel quite as special anymore. The dopamine will come from the flavor, and you’ll actually get to enjoy the food, instead of the dopamine coming from eating something that’s “forbidden.”
Allow yourself to eat your favorite snack foods alongside your meals. This will hopefully cue you to A: eat more meals instead of a conglomeration of snacks (nothing wrong with that every once-in-a-while though), and B: make sure you’re still allowing yourself to eat the foods you love so you won’t binge on them later!
Bonus: the more variety, the better! By keeping a variety of foods that bring you dopamine in your house, you’re less likely to get hyper-fixated on one particular food. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it can help!
get rid of value judgments
You might feel out of control around high-dopamine foods that are in your house. If that’s the case, are you mentally restricting? What that means is you’re placing judgments on yourself for eating those foods. It might look like:
“Ugh I’m so bad for eating that.”
“I shouldn’t eat that it’s bad for me.”
“I’ve already had that twice today I can’t have that again!”
Notice the value judgments: “bad,” “shouldn’t,” “can’t,” etc. Stop placing those types of judgments on food and you’ll notice that all of a sudden food feels much more neutral, and you’ll feel more neutral about eating!
practice gentle nutrition (only if you want)
Gentle nutrition is normally something I introduce with clients after we cover all the other intuitive eating principles. However, with ADHD sometimes it’s helpful to get a jump start on it. This should only come in after you’ve eliminated any restriction! Here are some main gentle nutrition guidelines:
Focus on what nutrients you can add instead of what you should take away
There are no “good” or “bad” foods, only more or less nutrient-dense foods
All foods have nutrients. Yes, even “processed” foods
Sneak green things in your meals
Ex: mac and cheese with roasted broccoli on top (it’s delicious)!
This is not something you “should” or “have to” be doing. It’s something you have the option to do when you feel like it
If you have the time, meal prep things like roasted veggies or even entire meals if you’re ambitious like that
Make nutrient-dense foods easy to access
Ex: buy frozen fruits & veggies
make eating easy
One of the best ways you can practice gentle nutrition as well as just make food more available to you is to make it easy. Make it simple. You are not a bad person for not having the spoons to create elaborate dishes from scratch for every meal. All food is good food, especially if you wouldn’t eat consistently without ready-to-go meals! Some examples were mentioned above (meal prepping veggies & buying frozen), but other ways to make food more accessible might be:
Buy pre-packaged and/or frozen meals if you can afford it
Don’t guilt yourself for getting takeout more often than you think you “should”
Again, meal prep if you’re able!
A lot of times the foods that we consider “high dopamine” are easy-to-access snack foods. Again, keeping those in the house is so important, but making meals with more variety just as accessible will help you shake things up a bit!
Final thoughts: all food is emotional. Food is meant to make you feel good, and there’s zero shame in that! Allow yourself to enjoy food.