While I’ll normally talk about gender here, sometimes I’m going to slip in some neurodiversity things. After all, there is a significant overlap between trans and non-binary people and neurodivergent people.
And today that gave me that opportunity.
For many disabled people & persons with chronic illnesses, suggestions that a condition would improve if “only you ate better” come frequently and from all directions. So seeing an article about how to eat for ADHD didn’t particularly surprise me. Besides, it lets us blame people with ADHD for their own difficulties in life–they are eating junk, so of course their brains aren’t typical.
I’ve not studied the research on diet and ADHD, so I don’t know what it says. But what I do know is that the relationship between diet and ADHD isn’t going to be one where only diet impacts ADHD. ADHD (or any executive-functioning disability) is going to also impact diet.
As a neurodivergent person, let me describe the steps to eating:
First, well before you are hungry, you need to have went to the grocery store. If you have sensory sensitivities, that could be hard. The store might also be crowded. Beyond that, you’ll need to remember (whether with some sort of memory aid or without) what you need to buy. If you are using a memory aid, you would have needed to use this aid well in advance of the shopping trip, too, and not just thought, “Oh, I’ll remember to get milk,” because someone with an executive-functioning disability will probably not remember on their own to get milk!
But if you didn’t do that shopping (along with attendant consistent utilization of a memory aid!), you’ll have forgotten to buy the blueberries the article I linked thinks are important! But you might have some peanut butter and crackers in the cupboard, which is probably better than not eating at all. Sure, peanut butter and crackers are not a well-balanced meal, but, again, better than no meal.
So, you should go shopping. But I’ve already mentioned why that can be hard. It can be even harder after holding it together all day: not stimming, spending effort paying attention to others, trying to remember to use the various systems you must use to do your job, etc. You might be, get this, worn out at the end of the day! Heck, even neurotypicals might not feel like shopping at the end of the day, but when supposedly-simple tasks are significantly harder for you, and you struggle through them, probably without the help you actually need, of course you’re worn out. The world is not designed for people with executive-functioning disabilities. So you’re tired. And maybe hungry. And haven’t went shopping yet. But you’re too tired and hungry to go shopping. If you’re lucky, you have those crackers and peanut butter in the cupboard. Because shopping ain’t going to happen tonight.
But let’s say you were able to go shopping. Somehow you open your fridge and cupboard, and they both have lots of things in it. Let’s even assume you put the things in the right place, so the things that needed to be refrigerated actually made it into the fridge, and you didn’t put the ice cream in the room-temperature cabinet (you know, like someone with ADHD might!). Now you have to decide what to eat. But you’re still exhausted. After all, you still went to work or school, and probably did everything you could to appear to have the executive functioning of a typical human. That means you expended a lot more mental energy than your peers (and, sadly, it may not be enough–this is one reason neurodivergent people are significantly more likely to be under-/un-employed–and of course if you are trying to not get fired, you’re even more stressed and exhausted). Again, you’re looking at that peanut butter and crackers. You definitely don’t feel like cooking a meal!
But let’s say somehow you do feel like cooking a meal. You have a full fridge and cupboard. And you want to cook yourself something healthy. Did you remember to buy it? And did you buy it recently enough that the vegetable you want to include is not rotting away in the crisper drawer? If somehow you did, did you have all the other ingredients? This dish you want to cook needs rice. Did you buy rice, and not just the vegetable? If you didn’t, maybe you can use the peanut butter on that celery, but you probably aren’t getting the meal you want: unless you want to pay the ADHD tax on your time and go to the store again. But if you went to the store again, would you have the energy to cook? Probably not. So it’s celery and peanut butter tonight!
But maybe you luck out (or are the rare person with executive-functioning disability that is getting support around shopping) and have what you need! Hurray! You can eat well–or can you? You’ll need a pan and your rice cooker, of course. You’ll also need some spoons to stir with. You do have clean spoons, right? And the rice cooker: is it still full of something that is now blue because it’s been left in there for 3 weeks (I’m guessing this isn’t the blue food that the article I linked to suggests people with ADHD eat)? If you left this stuff dirty, it’s going to be a pain to clean, and take some time and energy to do, time and energy you might not have. So again, you’re looking at those crackers and peanut butter.
But maybe you remembered to clean the pots and rice cooker, and your dishwasher has clean, not dirty, dishes in it (and you didn’t throw a bunch of dirty ones into the dish washer because you forgot they were clean–I recommend a clean/dirty reminder on the dishwasher, if you are someone that can remember to use one)? Let’s say everything is clean. So you have the ingredients and the tools to cook them, and they are clean! You’re doing good. Now you need to plug that rice cooker in and put the pan on the stove. Also, you need a place to chop up the vegetables. Your stove isn’t piled up with two weeks of random mail you haven’t had the time to get to, right? You don’t have a bunch of pots “soaking” to help clean them sitting on the counter, right? Because if you have to clean the flat surfaces of your kitchen to safely cook, you might not have the energy to actually cook. Again, it might be better to just do the peanut butter and crackers!
But somehow your stove is clear (and safe!). So you fill the rice cooker with water and rice, or whatever you do with those things. You start making some sauce with the vegetables in the pot on the stove. You’re feeling good! A home-cooked real meal for once! Hurray! Not a highly processed frozen meal, and definitely not your crackers and peanut butter. You get everything started to cook, and now you have a few minutes to rest while things cook, so you grab a piece of mail off the pile that is now on your kitchen table (but not the stove anymore). It’s a notice from your landlord about something you needed to do last month, but didn’t do because you didn’t open the mail because you were too busy cooking your good meal to have the energy to deal with it. So now you’re stressed out. You go online to see if you can deal with it, but can’t seem to remember your login credentials. After 20 minutes or so of struggling, you realize your landlord converted your tenant portal to a different company and you have to re-register. But did I say 20 minutes? Ya, 20 minutes. You are brought out of your focus on keeping your apartment by the sound of the fire alarm–you definitely ruined dinner tonight, you only needed it on the stove for 5 minutes, not 20! How did time go by so fast? By the time you get the alarm to shut up, and fill the pot with a bunch of water so you can hopefully save the pot itself, you realize the rice is still cooking. Or that’s what it would have been doing if there was any water left in it. Oops. So you deal with that too. Even if you still have something you could cook, it’s too much at this point, and you’re grabbing your crackers and peanut butter.
But if somehow you managed to not set your apartment on fire cooking (and also somehow manage to respond to your landlord so you can keep the apartment), and you were able to sit down with a good meal, are you going to have the energy to clean things up? Probably not. Which means you won’t get a good meal when this all starts over tomorrow.
So just maybe that frozen dinner wouldn’t have been a bad idea, even if it is full of processed food. People with executive dysfunction aren’t going to be able to do things perfectly, but we need to find the way that is most sustainable. Yelling at us won’t help. Telling us we should eat better won’t help. Maybe helping us would help, but it seems that shopping and cleaning are only outsourceable for people with money–something most neurodivergent people don’t have. And that’s assuming you are not so ashamed of your living space that you are unwilling to let a professional in to see it. So if someone thinks we should eat better, they need to fix that problem. Not scold us, but rather actually help us with practical help: cleaning and shopping and cooking. Sure, these are exactly the things a lot of people hate. But when you have an executive-functioning disability, it isn’t that you dislike doing them, it’s that a simple meal for someone else is, for you, like cooking an all-day holiday meal. It takes more effort. A lot more effort.
So, please, don’t tell people with executive-functioning disabilities that they’ll get better if only they eat better–at least not unless you’re willing to provide the help.
Gendered Thoughts 