By Marcy Landes, MSN

COOKING WITH ADHD MEANS…

Grocery stores are overstimulating, with way too many options—seriously, why didn’t I make a list beforehand??

You keep telling yourself, “I’ll go tomorrow,” but tomorrow turns into three more days of scavenging for crumbs.

By the time you finally make it to the kitchen, you’re ravenous because your hunger cues decided to take the afternoon off.

You don’t have the spoons to follow a recipe (and even if you do, you somehow miss a crucial step anyway).

And then—those veggies you were actually excited to roast? Yep, burnt to a crisp because you forgot the timer.

You’re stuck in a hyperfixation food loop—loving it one week, hating it the next, and suddenly… no idea what to eat.

You don’t want to cook because the dishes aren’t clean, and the thought of washing them? A major chore (without the allowance money).

While cooking, it’s chaos: cupboards and...

I remember a time where the word “joyful” and “movement” didn’t feel grammatically correct in the same sentence.

There was a period of my life when the buzzing voice of diet culture had its volume waaaay up. You know, the constant nagging of: “you need to exercise every single day to be healthy” and “you need to work-out hard”,  or “if you want to eat XYZ you have to workout today” for the *insert unrealistic body rule/ideal/social construct*. Ew, cringey times. 

And let’s be real, the way I interacted with movement those days left no, no, NO room for joy. 

 Shall I paint the picture we all know too well? The sweaty, crowded, stinky, brightly lit gym. The Disneyland length lines for a medieval guillotine-like machine that left me in a painful pretzel. The mirrors on mirrors on the wall, watching you, watching me watching you. 

 And let’s not forget the LOOOUUD...

Let's delve into a notable, and all-too-familiar hurdle that arises when navigating food and eating with a neurodivergent brain (ADHD, Autism, OCD, or any other flavor of neurospicy). You probably know it: the cringe-worthy and dreaded experience of guilt, frustration, and self-judgment that often shows up in response to finding (or avoiding) that rotten broccoli, moldy bread, container of something unrecognizable, freezer-burned chicken, and SO. MUCH. MORE.

It's an experience often marked with spirals of negative self-talk, echoing "WHY does this keep happening!? WHY can't I get a handle on it!? What's WRONG with me!?" And despite earnest efforts, genuine intentions, and constant attempts at pushing those thoughts to the back of our minds (and refrigerators), the issue remains stubbornly present.

So, it's time to talk about the shame monster that haunts so many of us day after day after day: FOOD WASTE. 

The refrigerator holds all...