A short YouTube monologue (May 2024) by Katie McManus describing how ADHD makes routine eating decisions unexpectedly difficult. The speaker recounts getting hungry around midday, feeling resentful and overwhelmed by choosing and preparing food despite having plenty available, and describes downstream effects (blood-sugar drop, tiredness, tempting naps) that differ from neurotypical experiences.
If you have adhd, then I apologize because I'm about to unlock another thing to be bitter about. So did you know that neurotypicals, when they experience hunger, they just decide to go and eat something and then they like just go to the kitchen or wherever and they get the thing they want to eat and they eat it and then they're not hungry anymore. I got up at 7:30 this morning. I had a smoothie. It had protein powder in it, but it was not like a substantial meal. I did some work calls, and then around like 11:30 or 12, I started experiencing hunger. You know, like the normal hunger you usually get when it's around lunchtime time. But instead of just getting up and going to the kitchen and making myself some lunch, I sat here at my desk getting super resentful at myself for having hunger because that's really inconvenient and stressing over what I would want to eat. I have a refrigerator full of food. Okay, I have snacks, I have all the things. But no, it was a really stressful situation to decide what, what I wanted to eat and then to figure out, like, what the steps would be for me to prepare it and then what, like, container I'd want to eat it out of. So anyway, so I just made a whole box of Mac and cheese and ate that. And I want to share that. Sometimes it does not end this way. Sometimes it's like two hours into the hunger and I start getting tired. Because when you're, you know, hungry, it means that you need calories. And if you don't give yourself calories, you start having a blood sugar drop, which means you get tired. And then the option then is, do I eat something and then have to figure out what I want to eat and what I want to eat it out of and blah, blah, blah. Or do I take a nap? And the nap always feels like the right option because you're tired, except you will awaken from that nap like a feral animal that wants to unalive everything and anyone who comes in your way. And genuinely, it wasn't until recently that I realized that not everyone goes through this. So if you didn't know that, then you are welcome.