Any tips on loosing weight when you've got ADHD?

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beat saber is absolutely amazing, i wish my VR didn't break. i can stick to normal exercise for maybe a week, beat saber filled my brain with so much dopamine each time i played it regularly for months, Rum & Bass in 360 mode my beloved

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Have a calorie tracking app and track everything. You will start to learn how somethings are more calorie dense than others.
Don't have junk food. You will want to snack. Have veggies like carrots or fresh fruit on hand.
Drink water first. So many times I "feel" hungry but I am actually thirsty.
Load up on broccoli. If you over eat, then have lots of broccoli. It's filling and not calorie dense.
When possible plan your meals ahead of time. It's brutally hard to make the better diet choice when your hungry. It's easier to just follow through with a decision you already made.

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my meds stop me from feeling hubger, its not healthy, so i have to force myself to eat my daily nutritional intake. its mostly the protein content thats hard due to the dense nature of it and how long if takes to digest.

go for walks, listen to music, have healthy snacks only. fruit, vegetables, nuts, dried chickpeas with seasoning for crunch. works for me.

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My ADHD had me writing a cooking blog intro about how I discovered this but I'll spare you:

The catch-all answer is water. But for ADHDers with oral fixations (both of us, apparently), the real answer is powdered drink mixed.

You'll stop wanting a snack if your 0 calorie drink tastes good.

I didn't buy it for weight loss but my water bottle has electrolyte powder every day. I use half the recommended amount (don't wanna overdose) and it completely replaced food as my go-to when I'm not sure if I'm bored or hungry.

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I have definitely used my difficulty starting tasks to help myself lose weight. I find its way easier to just be hungry than to make food. Most of the time.

I still have to make sure I'm not eating snacks without thinking about it. A good option for me has been keeping easy, small, healthy foods, that can get me through hunger pang. My favorite is a pot of Greek yogurt. They're like 80¢ at Aldi where I live. Fresh fruit works great as well! And for late night treats, I eat frozen fruit. It fills the ice cream niche, without being packed with calories and extra sugar

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Yeah - I can’t really meal prep in the traditional sense. But I have found that if I can bulk cook some meats and freeze them, and then have a few ~15 minute meals that I can portion, combine and cook the ingredients- that it works for me.

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Fruit all the way. Two big ass kiwis are like 100 calories. I'm in love with them and blueberries (and every berry). Super good for you nutritionally as well.

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It's easy if you can hyperfocus on something all day and neglect eating.

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Going to (generally) one meal a day had me drop weight like crazy. And you can eat pretty much whatever you want when you're only eating once per day. You get used to fasting fast especially if you're medicated for ADHD.

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Every gram of fiber in a food allows you to essentially “erase” a gram of sugar so fruits with fiber (not bananas or many melons) are essentially free foods calorically speaking and they do have plenty of nutrients on top of it

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My wife tried to tell me the same thing but with fiber and carbohydrates in general. She still believes it, it sounds like nonsense to me. Do you have a source?

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This may not be an option for you, but for me it's mildly easier if I make a pickup order. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

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take all this with a grain of salt

if you don't need to lose weight immediately for health reasons, focus less on weight loss and more on making healthy habits feel natural

regarding eating, i'd say the following are essential:

avoid getting hungry
food should be as tasty as possible. you have to actually like what you're eating
no forbidden food. do not try to take anything away from your diet
absolutely NO strict rules in general. they're bad enough for neurotypicals, so they're fatal to us
introduce healthy food you like. if you can, start with fruits, lots of fruits. fruits are the easiest kind of tasty healthy food
try to eat on time as much as possible. kind of a corollary of "avoid getting hungry"
have go-to foods you can eat at each meal/whenever you get hungry without thinking. one of mine is strawberry smoothie
don't eat anything you don't like. it doesn't matter how healthy it is, if you hate it, it's bad for you. there's plenty of healthy food out there
give a chance to foods you don't like too much once in a while. maybe you'll end up liking them eventually, maybe not. just try and you'll find out
above all else, make any of these changes incrementally. the point is building solid habits, not having a solid diet from the get go

any of these follow from: eating is one of the most important things in our life; never make yourself feel bad while trying to get healthy.

good luck

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Whenever you want to eat junk food, take of your clothes and stand in front of the mirror.

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Another idea worth considering is taking up a martial art. It's both energetic and interesting. I often use the patterns as "kinetic meditation". It plays well with ADHD, unlike normal meditation. It also works well as a nice distraction from the "I'm hungry" mind state.

Food wise, focus on improving your nutrition, and add in more non calorie dense foods. It reduces the drive to overeat, and keeps you feeling full, with less calories. Losing weight by simple calorie restriction is notoriously reliant on will power. Something we notoriously lack. Trying to road on that front is asking for a loss.

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I can’t back up the GP’s “1 gram 1 gram” claim, but the effects of dietary fibre on regulating blood sugar and other benefits for health are well studied.

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A lot of focus on diet in these comments but almost no mention of exercise.

For me, I found the couch to 5K running program for beginners highly engaging. With a running tracker app I could see my progress and really enjoy fixating on the details. If you do decide to get into running here are some tips:

Really good running shoes are a must. Take your time trying on shoes until you find the right pair. They should feel extremely comfortable in the store, like a pair of bedroom slippers, and there should be no rubbing of parts of your feet/toes while walking around. They’re expensive to buy but much cheaper than any gym membership
Other nice to haves are good shorts and shirts made of breathable material
Don’t try to skip ahead on the C25K program. You really do need to take it gradually or you will feel a lot of pain and give up
Some pain is normal though but eventually it all clears up and starts to feel amazing (as your distances go up)
If the pain gets worse and worse then slow down or stop. Some level of soreness / fatigue is normal until you’re an experienced runner. Severe pain is not normal and could indicate or lead to injury
If you’re running out of breath then you’re running too fast. The goal of running is to run, not sprint, which means staying entirely in the aerobic zone. Learning to regulate your pace and your breathing is challenging at first but soon becomes natural
If you’re overweight then you probably need to go even slower than the C25K program recommends. Spend a lot more time walking than running and be mindful of your joints. You should not be taking big running strides or striking your heels. Try to be very mindful of your joints and if they hurt then slow down or stop. You can lose weight just by walking a lot while improving your diet but trying to force yourself to run while overweight can harm your joints or cause other injuries

So why run at all? Well, besides the obvious exercise and cardiovascular health benefits, running is a lot of fun. It actually feels amazing to be running on a beautiful morning/evening and seeing the world go by at a rapid pace, the wind blowing gently in your hair. Running releases endorphins which feel amazing and give you a “runner’s high”.

Furthermore, the cardio fitness benefits of running extend to everything else in life. You’ll sleep better, you’ll feel better all the time, you’ll develop a slower resting heart rate which allows you to relax much more deeply, and you’ll feel more awake and better able to focus rather than being in a fog for much of the time.

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Unfortunately not everyone gets that one

Actually I don't think I've had any side effects. From concerta, elvanse, nor any adhd unrelated meds. Antibiotics gave me the yellow shits once but that's barely a side effect, killing bacteria is the entire point of those.

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There has been exactly one thing that worked for me (other than the new relationship high when you do things with your new partner all the time, go places, lots of activity and little time for hunger. This is not sustainable though)

I watched 2 bears 1 cave when it started because I like comedy, Bert is funny and honestly a caricature unto himself, and it didn't have as many annoying sponsor segments. Anyway, they were talking about what they were doing for Sober October and Bert, who seems to have a lot of problems similar to mine, said he was trying One Meal A Day and it felt like the first time in a looong time that his mind was sharpish and he didn't feel the constant need to snack. So I tried it, lost 25 KG over 4 months (healthy loss, I never felt starved, I just had a high starting weight) and gained half of it back from COVID lockdown. FML. Rest came back over the next 3 years of working mostly from home and not having the spine to stick to it again. But when I was doing it, starting day 2 or 3 I did feel sort of... Free. The constant blood sugar rush-crash cycle was no more.

TL;DR: One Meal a Day. It's awesome. No you won't feel hungry all day.

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I do omad too and have lost 50 lbs this year and am closing in on my goal weight but have 0 desire to stop omad. I’ll just eat a bigger meal to start maintaining. Nothing really to add other than it’s easy and works.

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Any tips on loosing weight when you've got ADHD?