19: ADHD and Food: Understanding the Binge-Restrict Cycle

If your relationship with food swings between forgetting to eat and then not being able to stop, this episode is for you. I'm breaking down why binge eating showed up as the top food struggle in a poll of 700 ADHDers, and it's not about willpower or discipline. This is for the ADHDer who's tired of the restrict-binge cycle and wants to understand what's really driving it.

I share my own path from restrictive eating in my teens to over a decade of intuitive eating, and walk through why restriction, even the accidental kind, triggers the same response in your body as a famine. I cover how nervous system regulation changes your relationship with hunger cues, why diet culture messes with food neutrality even when you think it doesn't apply to you, and how emotional eating is often dysregulation wearing a different face.

01:02 – ADHDers' Biggest Food Struggles

05:02 – Intuitive Eating: How It Helped My ADHD

09:12 – Honoring Hunger Signals with ADHD

10:31 – Why Restriction Leads to Binge Eating

11:15 – Emotional Eating vs. Dysregulation

Check out the show notes and other resources at https://jennafree.com/blog/adhd-and-food-binge-restrict-cycle

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