The combined effect of ADHD and emotional eating doesn't just impact what’s on your plate – it affects your whole life.
If you’ve ever felt caught in the cycle of emotional eating or binge eating, you’re not alone. In fact, many people with ADHD experience this challenge, and one which the So Nutrition team has particular insights into, both through our clinical practice and lived experience.
Living with ADHD isn’t just about struggling with focus or remembering to complete tasks – for some, it’s about managing emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, and a complex relationship with food.
What it feels like
If you’ve found yourself eating in response to emotions – stress, frustration, overwhelm – chances are, it’s not simply a lack of willpower. ADHD adds an additional layer of complexity, where emotional regulation is often a struggle.
For many of us, food becomes a way to cope, a quick fix to regulate emotions when things feel out of control. The brain’s dopamine system, central to ADHD, is often underactive, leading individuals to seek out things that can provide immediate satisfaction – like food. This can turn eating into an emotional and impulsive response, making it easy to feel trapped in a cycle of overeating, guilt, and frustration.
So Nutrition’s founder, Sarah Osborne, explains: “In my own home, I’ve witnessed first-hand how emotional eating becomes intertwined with ADHD. The impulsiveness and emotional dysregulation that my family members with ADHD experience show in ways that are often misunderstood by those who haven’t lived with it.
“This is why I’ve dedicated my work to understanding the connections between ADHD and emotional eating, so that those who live with these experiences can feel supported, seen and heard.”
It’s about more than just food
For those navigating ADHD, emotional eating often goes beyond food itself. It's about unmet emotional needs, unaddressed mental health struggles and the constant balancing act between feeling overwhelmed by life’s demands and the desire for self-soothing.
If you’re someone with ADHD, you may find yourself eating when you're stressed, anxious, or even bored – struggling with how to deal with those feelings in ways that feel healthy.
This can also lead to cycles of restrictive eating and binge eating. After a binge, there may be feelings of shame or the instinct to restrict, and then the cycle starts again. The emotional eating isn’t just a reaction to hunger – it’s a response to stress, to overwhelm, and to the constant need for dopamine hits in the brain. This reality often leaves people with ADHD feeling like they’re never truly in control, never truly ‘winning’ the battle with food, no matter how hard they try.
But the most important thing I want you to know is this: You are not alone. The challenges you face with food are deeply connected to your neurodivergent brain and need to be addressed in a way that is compassionate and understanding of those nuances.
The science behind it
Recent research sheds light on the science behind these patterns. Studies show that emotional dysregulation and impulsivity in ADHD play a significant role in disordered eating behaviours.
Emotional challenges drive many individuals with ADHD to turn to food for comfort, while impulsiveness leads to difficulty managing food intake, contributing to binge eating. Cognitive control and executive function difficulties – another hallmark of ADHD – make it even harder to develop healthy, balanced eating habits. These factors can often create a vicious cycle, where emotional eating feeds into impulsiveness, and vice versa.
Sarah Osborne explains: “As someone who has studied ADHD extensively, I can say that it’s crucial to approach emotional eating with this understanding. What may appear as “picking at food” or “overeating” may, in fact, be a natural (albeit difficult) response to the neurological aspects of ADHD.”
How we can help
Everyone’s experience with ADHD and emotional eating is unique. That’s why So Nutrition offers flexible programmes, ranging from self-guided to fully personalised one-to-one coaching.
If you’d like to know more, visit our Courses and Coaching page.
