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I am an ADHD and product management coach, helping you change one belief and take one action each week.
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Part 8 of the Things I Wished I Knew Sooner Series
Belief: My relationship with food is a character flaw.
Reality: It’s a symptom of ADHD, not a moral failure.
Action: Stop asking “why can’t I control myself?” and start asking “what is my body trying to tell me?”
Welcome back to Things I Wished I Knew Sooner, a series about being diagnosed with ADHD late in life.
I have always struggled with my weight. Even when I was kickboxing full-time, I thought I was fat. I don’t know of a time in my life when I didn’t think I was fat.
For most of my life, I believed that was a character flaw. I ate too much. I had no discipline. I was broken.
It wasn’t until I got diagnosed — and started medication — that I understood the truth: my eating wasn’t a moral failure. It was my ADHD brain trying to regulate itself the only way it knew how.
The belief I carried for decades was simple and brutal: I was flawed.
I ate too much because I was weak. I couldn’t stop eating because I lacked discipline. My body looked the way it did because of personal failure.
I was surrounded by people who seemed to be able to eat normally. They would stop when they were full. They didn’t feel this constant pull toward food. They didn’t go to a buffet and just... keep going.
I thought I was the broken one.
And everyone around me confirmed it. My parents called me fat. My sports teams called me fat. Kids at school called me fat. I was the fat kid — at home, in class, everywhere. That was my identity before I was old enough to question it.
The only thing that never called me fat was the food I was eating. So I kept eating.
That’s what I believed for decades. Not because I was weak — but because every person in my life told me I was.
When I started ADHD medication, my appetite changed. The urges to seek out food diminished.
My first instinct: appetite suppression is a known side effect. But I think something else was happening. The meds helped me feel more connected to my body. For the first time, the signal was getting through — I could feel full off a reasonable amount of food. Without them, I could go to a sushi buffet and just eat continuously.
Michael Asaku-Yeboah, licensed therapist and ADHD coach, put it plainly: “Quite often when someone is hyperfocusing, food isn’t an issue. But as soon as the hyper focus breaks, that’s when they binge. A child with ADHD will seek out food they’ve been told not to eat just to get the dopamine hit. Even if they’re going to get a negative reward, they’ll go for it.”
For neurodivergent people, eating challenges show up in different ways:
Dopamine-seeking. When your brain is chronically understimulated, food — especially sweet, salty, novel food — becomes a quick dopamine fix. It’s not gluttony. It’s your nervous system trying to regulate itself.
Disconnection from your body. I have a higher pain tolerance than most people. I can shut off my fullness signals. I can just consume. This isn’t a superpower — it means I can eat well past fullness without realizing it. My hunger is even resistant to GLP-1 medications. Yep, not even Ozempic can tame my ADHD hunger.
Executive dysfunction. Michael pointed out something I deeply relate to: “Because of executive functioning issues, we are not able to meal prep. We are not able to plan ahead. I’ll go to the fridge and make the worst choice — the most carb-filled option — not because I want to, but because I didn’t make the executive effort to plan something better.”
And then there was the layer that took me the longest to see: the emotional one.
Food was an act of rebellion. My mother called me fat constantly. Eating — freely, abundantly, defiantly — was one of the only ways I had to push back. I snuck food I wasn’t supposed to eat. Had pizzas delivered when my parents weren’t home. Sold candy at school so I could buy my own. I didn’t understand that at the time. But I can see it now.
I’m not here to give diet advice. The shift I’m suggesting is about a different question.
Instead of asking why can’t I control myself? — ask: how does this food serve me?
When you reach for something, pause. Is this hunger? Boredom? A dopamine hit? A habit you picked up to cope with something you never had language for?
Know your ADHD-specific patterns. Do you binge after a hyperfocus session? Eat reactively because planning felt impossible? These aren’t character flaws. They’re patterns with names and reasons.
Consider connection. Cooking for my family and friends brings me real joy. That relationship — food as connection — replaced the old one: food as rebellion, food as shame. Understanding myself made that shift. Not willpower.
If you’re struggling, find someone who gets ADHD. Not every therapist or nutritionist does. The goal isn’t to control food — it’s to understand what you’ve been reaching for, and why.
For most of my life, I thought something was just wrong with me.
It was never a character flaw. It was my ADHD — dopamine-seeking, body-disconnection, executive dysfunction, emotional history — all tangled together in something I just called “being fat.”
Naming it didn’t fix everything. But it changed the question. And better questions lead to better answers.
I’m still on that road. I’d rather be on it with understanding than with shame.
Get coaching that helps you find what works for your unique brain and situation.
Food part 2.
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