Why ADHD makes it hard to stop eating crisps

It's not only control over the eating of snacks that becomes more difficult with the variable attention inherent in ADHD. Creating and maintaining any habit and structure can be full of challenges.

These are very dangerous.

I've spent excessive time this week preparing for additional work that I don't want to do.

My supervisor recently told me about an online therapy platform she's freelancing for.

'It's slick and they have some excellent resources,' she told me.

'Maybe I'll have a look at it.' I said.

'I'll send you the link.'

I definitely don't need more work and, what's more, I don't want to do any, but I still find myself writing an application because variety is, apparently, more important than balance.

This all came about when I noticed I've been finding it hard to use my free time effectively because I focus more on the 'effective' part instead of the 'free' bit.

It has revealed to me a problem I appear to have had in making, adjusting or ending habits where I focus too much on denial and not enough on desire.

I noticed it recently with crisps.

I once ate an entire family bag of Twiglets on the drive home and spent the evening drinking enough water to fill a small swimming pool to quench my insatiable thirst.

As opening a bag of any crisps means I'll inevitably eat them all, my strategy for addressing the issue initially was to stop buying crisps.

It worked, after a fashion. Having no crisps means you can't eat crisps, but it did create in me an intense desire for crisps which was made more powerful by the self-imposed denial.

Denial is not the best way of establishing new habits, especially for the ADHD mind.

For years, as I tried to coach myself toward effective organisation I tried a variety of different productivity apps.

As a result, I managed to spread my chaotic disorganisation across multiple platforms without proper visibility of what I'd planned where making everything much worse in the process.

More recently I became concerned at a tendency to watch TikTok's of dogs jumping into leaves or refusing to get out of swimming pools, or people hitting one another with soft tortilla wraps.

No forced programmes of change were successful because they relied on denial of what I didn't want to want rather than a desire to gain the benefits of what I did want.

I tell my daughter about my failing strategy for not eating crisps.

'Oh yeah, it reminds me of the time I tried to stop myself eating biscuits by telling myself I could only have one biscuit.'

'What happened?'

'I ate all the biscuits.'

One of the unfortunate realities of ADHD is that negative thoughts are more stimulating for the brain and therefore become addictive. It's more compelling to think about the crisps you're not allowed to eat and the resulting guilt and shame than it is to consider the sunny uplands of healthy and positive denial.

The ADHD mind is also characterised by dopamine deficiency which means that there is insufficient feeling of 'reward'. This is partly why we're always looking for something new to stimulate us and why it is impossible to resist a family bag of Quavers.

If you add the ADHD predisposition to making impulsive decisions, difficulty stopping an enjoyable activity, trouble planning ahead, and poor follow through on promises, it makes sense that deciding to eat some 'Monster Munch' can happen in an instant, cannot be easily curtailed, and will override the promises you made to yourself about eating too many corn-based snacks.

Partial salvation has come, I have realised, in the form of my friend Martin who is a long-term recovering alcoholic and who I believe has ADHD. (There is a high incidence of addiction in people with ADHD).

Over his thirteen years in recovery, I too have stopped drinking alcohol almost entirely. Not because I told myself I couldn't but because I gave myself the space to prefer constant sobriety and treated the novelty of it as something that might be enjoyable.

Similarly, my organisational skills got better when I lightened up on myself and worked within my limitations rather than against them, and I wiped social media apps from my phone when I allowed myself the choice between a good book or a video of someone reviewing tinned fish.

For people with ADHD, trying to increase our focus is counterproductive because the harder we try the less focus we are able to apply. As with so many things, letting go is the answer.

So I largely solved the crisp problem by allowing myself to buy them and eat entire multipacks in one go at which point I found that I no longer wanted to.

As for taking on work that I neither need nor want, I have acknowledged my persistent need to do something worthwhile and constructive and told myself we can save working on that for another day.

I cancelled my informal chat with the online therapy people and watched the tennis instead while enjoying a small bag of crisps.

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This week on ‘Sideways’ it’s our final episode until September and we’re discussing ‘Toxic Positivity’.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for being here, I appreciate you.

See you next time.