Food Choices and ADHD: The Daily Struggle of Feeding Yourself
Why Your ADHD Brain Makes Meal Decisions So Exhausting, And What You Can Do About It
You open your fridge, and staring back at you is half a sad bell pepper, some wilting lettuce, and yogurt that's a gamble you're not sure you're ready to take. You're tired, you're hungry, and honestly, figuring out dinner feels about as doable as spontaneously running a marathon, in flip-flops.
Suddenly, ordering takeout for the third night in a row seems totally justified.
Welcome to the ADHD food overwhelm club, a group none of us signed up for, yet here we all are. But before you label yourself lazy or “bad at adulting,” let’s get one thing straight:
It’s not laziness. It’s your ADHD brain. Here’s why food overwhelm hits so hard, and some actually helpful things you can do about it.
Why Food Overwhelm Feels So Real for ADHDers (and Why No One Talks About It)
Food overwhelm isn’t just about struggling with grocery shopping, it’s about every decision you make around food. Deciding what to eat, remembering to eat, cooking, and yes, grocery shopping. Every part of the food consumption cycle can feel surprisingly challenging for ADHD brains.
Yet, this struggle is hardly ever discussed openly. We watch neurotypical friends casually meal prep or confidently choose dinner in seconds, while we sit there, quietly stressed out, wondering why it feels so impossibly hard.
But here’s the thing: You’re not alone. It’s not just you, and it’s definitely not just laziness or bad planning.
Over the past year, we talked to over 250 ADHDers during our early research journey for our first ADHD project, Feed My ADHD (FMA) [more on this later]. We explored what food overwhelm really feels like, why it happens, and what makes it uniquely challenging for us.
Here’s what we learned from these conversations, and from diving deep into scientific studies about ADHD and executive function: