Understand and Heal Your Emotional Eating: Insights for Neurodivergent Women
🌟 My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is available to preorder here 🌟
This week, I’m joined by nutritionist and eating behaviour coach Marcelle Rose to explore the often-overlooked connection between emotional eating and neurodivergence.
If you’ve ever struggled with binge eating, food restriction or chaotic eating patterns, especially alongside ADHD or autism, you are not alone. We talk about why these behaviours are so common in the ADHD community, the impact of shame and generational messaging around food, and how traits like perfectionism, RSD and impaired interoception can make eating feel extra hard.
Marcelle shares practical, compassionate tools to help you feel more connected to your body, understand your hunger signals, and heal your relationship with food, without restriction or guilt.
Whether you're newly diagnosed or have long suspected your ADHD or neurodivergence influences your eating habits, this episode will leave you feeling seen, supported and more empowered to heal your relationship with food.
What You’ll Learn:
✨ Why ADHD and autism can increase the likelihood of emotional and binge eating
✨ The difference between disordered eating, emotional eating, binge eating, restrictive eating and clinical eating disorders
✨ How shame, diet culture and generational beliefs about weight impact your relationship with food
✨ Why neurodivergent women often struggle with hunger cues and interoception – and how to start reconnecting
✨ How RSD, perfectionism and comparison can feed into disordered eating
✨ What recovery really looks like (and why it’s different for everyone)
✨ The role of hormones, the menstrual cycle and sleep in your eating behaviours
✨ Gentle, realistic strategies to feel more calm, consistent and confident with food
Timestamps:
🕒 07:27 – What binge & disordered eating can look like
🕒 15:40 – The emotional root of chaotic eating
🕒 21:39 – Healing, body image, and self-compassion
🕒 25:40 – Listening to your body’s hunger signals
🕒 35:16 – Why neurodivergent brains need a gentler approach
Marcelle’s book The Binge Freedom Method: 4 Pillars to Beating Emotional Eating for Good is available here. You can also connect with her community via The Food Freedom Collective on Facebook.
Links and Resources:
⭐ Boosting Your ADHD Hormonal and Perimenopausal Wellbeing Workshop with Adele Wimsett is available to buy now on-demand - Click here to purchase.
⭐ Book on the next ADHD Wellbeing Workshop - Click here to book.
⭐ If you love the podcast but want more ADHD support, get a sneak peek of my brand new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit and pre-order it here!
⭐ Launching September! Tired of ADHD support that doesn’t get you? My new compassionate, community-first membership ditches the overwhelm by providing support aligned with YOU! Join the waitlist now for an exclusive founding member offer!
Find all of Kate's popular online workshops and free resources here
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Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids, and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.
Speaker A:After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.
Speaker A:In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.
Speaker A:Here's today's episode.
Speaker A:Today we are talking about emotional eating.
Speaker A:We're talking about disordered eating alongside neurodivergence.
Speaker A:And I'm really delighted to welcome in Marcel Rose.
Speaker A:And Marcel specializes in helping women beat binge eating, bulimia, emotional eating, restrictive eating patterns so they can heal their relationship with food and their body and reclaim their life.
Speaker A:Marcel is a band registered nutritionist and coach with specialist training in eating disorders and behavior change.
Speaker A:And Marcel consults with clients nationwide and worldwide and also supports women in her free Facebook community, the Food Freedom Collective.
Speaker A:And Marcel has also just had a book published and it's called the Binge Freedom Method, four Pillars to Beating Emotional Eating For Good, which was published in January.
Speaker A:So, Marcel, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker A:I'm really delighted to have you here.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thanks for having me.
Speaker A:I think this conversation is always really helpful for people because we are only just maybe gaining an understanding and a perspective on how our neurodivergence may have shown up throughout our lives.
Speaker A:And there may be lots of dots we're connecting, but sometimes we don't even know about certain dots.
Speaker A:And a lot of that could be around food, emotional eating, disordered eating, restrictive eating.
Speaker A:And we may not have even understood that could have been part of our neurodivergence, adhd, autism, however you want to look at it.
Speaker A:So I wondered maybe you could shed a little bit of light on that because I know you work with a lot of neurodivergent people, women, and perhaps you can explain to people why you think it might be more prevalent in the neurodivergent community.
Speaker B:Yeah, sure.
Speaker B:So I work with a lot of.
Speaker B:A lot of women, particularly mainly women who are struggling with binge eating and bulimia particularly.
Speaker B:And what I found is that more and more women are either being diagnosed later in life with ADHD and then finding this connection or realizing that there might be something else playing a role in their eating behaviors.
Speaker B:And there's many things that this can show up as when we're working together, particularly around chaotic eating behaviors, finding it very difficult to just do basic planning or preparing of food.
Speaker B:But also the impulsivity side of things.
Speaker B:There's so many different sort of areas that this can impact.
Speaker B:And of course, they can be blaming themselves for just feeling like, you know, why am I failing at this?
Speaker B:What is wrong with me?
Speaker B:But there's some really good, you know, reasons that are playing part of this whole very complex picture.
Speaker B:If we take binge eating, for example, it's very complex, and I think there's not enough spoken about.
Speaker B:There's a lot of stigma around binge eating, for example, in all eating disorders.
Speaker B:But specifically with binge eating, there's a lot of stigma and a lot of misconceptions surrounding it.
Speaker B:The that often people are just lazy or greedy, and they bring that internalized stigma with them into the sessions initially.
Speaker B:And it really affects self worth.
Speaker B:It affects all areas of, you know, confidence and how they feel about themselves.
Speaker A:Yeah, because I guess shame is, like, pervasive, isn't it?
Speaker A:And so if there's shame around that and shame about their behavior and what maybe they feel like they can't control or can't stop, or is there a sort of like, a hidden secret?
Speaker A:It can.
Speaker A:It can, you know, cause all sorts of issues throughout, you know, life, parenting, career, relationships.
Speaker A:And in the biog, I think you said you help women find freedom because when you are in that situation of being shackled by emotional eating, binge eating, disordered eating, eating disorders, however you want to sort of coin it, and we'll get there, because I'd like to break that down.
Speaker A:It just feel like you are in this prison and you can't get out of it because you don't understand.
Speaker A:And I wondered, do you.
Speaker A:Do you think that when women are being diagnosed later on in life and they're finally understanding, you know, that the ADHD and or the autism has been a central part of why they've had eating disorders as well, do you think that helps release some of that stigma and that shame does that gives them an answer?
Speaker B:Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
Speaker B:I think it can really help.
Speaker B:And it's almost like, oh, okay, so this is why it's been so hard for me to do what seems to some people, like maybe basic, simple things that can be a real struggle for somebody who's neurodivergent.
Speaker B:So I think it can be a really, you know, enlightening piece of information and insights and empowerment almost to have that, to have and then be able to think, okay, well how can I work around some of these things and get the support that they need?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think it's, it's definitely a key that unlocks perhaps a door that has just been closed.
Speaker A:And we never knew why it was closed.
Speaker A:But there's a.
Speaker A:We always knew there was something else going on, but we never had those answers.
Speaker A:We never understood why our brain worked the way we do.
Speaker A:And you know, the neurochemicals and neurobiology and dopamine like all these things which help explain.
Speaker A:I know that emotional eating can sort of coincide with really difficult hormones and difficult menstrual cycles.
Speaker A:To know that we have more information, to unlock the self compassion and to allow us to let go of the shame and bring a little bit of acceptance to then move forwards towards the healing.
Speaker A:Which is, I'm sure what you help many people with.
Speaker A:Could we break down a little bit?
Speaker A:You know, if we, we hear these terms and I always get concerned because I don't work in this space that I don't want to say something that someone might not relate to.
Speaker A:So maybe we can understand a little bit about the difference between disordered eating and having an eating disorder.
Speaker A:Emotional eating, restrictive eating, binge eating.
Speaker A:So if someone is listening and they kind of know maybe they have had a difficult relationship with food all their life, but they're not quite sure how to coin it.
Speaker A:Maybe you could simplify that for us.
Speaker B:Yeah, sure.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:I think a lot of people might not consider themselves a decision disordered eater, but they might sit somewhere along a spectrum of disordered eating.
Speaker B:So if we look at it as a spectrum, on one end you could say you have, I don't like using this term, but normal, a normal eater, the normal eaters at one end, at the other end of the spectrum, people who have diagnosed eating disorders and these are very specifically, you know, defined criteria to, to fit into this defined criteria of an eating disorder.
Speaker B:But along the spectrum in between there are many different behaviors and severity and symptoms and signs and symptoms that people come are sort of showing, displaying as a disordered eater.
Speaker B:So that could mean, for example, there might be binge eating episodes.
Speaker B:And I can talk a little bit more around what a binge eating episode is.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of misconceptions that I said around binge eating.
Speaker B:So binge eating episode is, is usually around eating a large amount of food in a short space of time, eating extremely quickly, having a great deal of shame.
Speaker B:Following that and feeling very distressed.
Speaker B:Following a binge eating episode, it's usually done in secret and it can be either spontaneous or it can be a planned binge because people kind of can quite flippantly use the word, oh, you know, I was binging on this.
Speaker B:And actually it can be really, really distressing for the individual.
Speaker B:So somebody might binge eat some of the time, may not quite meet the criteria of binge eating disorder, which is a diagnosed eating disorder, but yet still feel all the, you know, distress and have experienced all the symptoms of it.
Speaker B:Eating to the point of being full, to the point of being complete discomfort.
Speaker B:Some people even having to be sick, they haven't purged themselves as with bulimia, but because it's made them sick.
Speaker B:But other kind of disordered eating behaviours might be chronic dieting, constantly being on and off diets, restrictive eating behaviors, cutting out whole food groups, being very restrictive around calorie controlled diets and things like that, which I think a lot of these behaviours have been quite normalized in our society and so people don't realize that actually it's quite disordered.
Speaker B:Strict fasting regimes, all of that kind of thing could mean that there is disordered eating going on.
Speaker B:Even bringing in things like excessive exercising in order to make up for calories consumed or to feel like you're able to actually give yourself permission to eat something.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think as you were saying, those there was people in my life popping up of who I could see in those different scenarios for sure.
Speaker A:And it has, I think it has been normalized actually, but it takes away a lot of their pleasure in life.
Speaker A:I recently recorded an episode with Rebecca King who is I think the ADHD nutritionist or dietitian on Instagram, I can't remember which one, but she's on Instagram.
Speaker A:Becca King.
Speaker A:And we did a really interesting podcast and we were talking about how we can normalize eating food with ADHD that is easy to prepare and easy to access and taking away the shame of like buying pre prepped food, pre cut things pre packaged because with executive functioning difficulties to then have to think about making sure that we've got enough food in the house and the shopping list and the healthy food and buying all the ingredients to make something completely home cooked and from scratch.
Speaker A:It takes so much bre brain power when we're trying to utilize that brain power to kind of like exist and to look after children and all things like that.
Speaker A:And I really enjoyed listening to her kind of just reduce all that shame and all that Stigma of if you want to buy pre cooked chicken and pre cooked vegetables and some pre boiled noodles and that is how you're gonna get a healthy meal down you, that is fine.
Speaker A:Because we've sort of been indoctrinated in this, in this society that we're not doing a good job unless everything is cooked from scratch.
Speaker A:Healthy, organic, all of that.
Speaker A:And I wonder if that fuels disordered eating as well.
Speaker A:What are you noticing in the sense that what is causing more shame and more stigma for people who are coming to you initially?
Speaker B:Yeah, there's so much shame around that idea that you have to eat perfectly.
Speaker B:There's this whole all or nothing thinking, you know, mindset around food.
Speaker B:There's a lot, there's a lot of expectations in society that we should be eating either good food.
Speaker B:If we're not eating good food, then we've failed.
Speaker B:It's all gone wrong.
Speaker B:And it's very much more nuanced than that.
Speaker B:There is so much in the news at the moment around ultra processed foods and we know that actually there's plenty of processed foods that can be used as part of a balanced diet.
Speaker B:And it doesn't have to be all about everything being perfect effect.
Speaker B:And I'm very much in the approach of what can we add into the diet rather than stripping things out.
Speaker B:Because if you're focusing on restriction and stripping out, you're much more likely to feel like you've failed, things have gone wrong.
Speaker B:If you're in that all or nothing thinking black and white thinking around food, then you're much more likely to cause a kind of, oh, well, I've blown it.
Speaker B:So I might as well just carry on and it leads to binge eating episodes or emotional eating or certainly unhelpful eating behaviors.
Speaker B:Whereas if we can just actually remove that shame and think, what can we add in that's easy, how can we make it easy?
Speaker B:And there's plenty of ways that we can use foods that have been packaged or, you know, partially prepared, such as that frozen foods are brilliant often because they actually contain more nutrients than the fresh foods that have been sitting on shelves in our supermarkets for a long time.
Speaker B:Exposed to the light, you lose the nutrients in that.
Speaker B:So, you know, can we use things like tinned beans are brilliant.
Speaker B:If we're going to put a soup together, how can we think, what can we add into that soup?
Speaker B:We can use lots of frozen veggies, just chuck in some herbs and some spices and it can be very delicious.
Speaker B:It doesn't have to be bland food as well.
Speaker A:Yeah, Yeah, I think this is it.
Speaker A:This is the messaging that so many of us need to hear.
Speaker A:And we've talked about it quite a few times in.
Speaker A:On the podcast in different ways.
Speaker A:But I think it's so important to keep reinforcing this message of how can you make your life easy?
Speaker A:We've been trying to make our lives so difficult for so long without any scaffolding because we've been told by somebody that we have to hold everything together.
Speaker A:We have to hold our families together, we've got to be career women, we've got to look after our parents, we've got to be thin, we've got to be healthy, we've got to be doing everything.
Speaker A:And it's time, it's really time that we keep reinforcing this message back of like, how can we just make our life easy?
Speaker A:And where we can find a bit of comfort and we can find some joy without it being comfort eating or emotional eating, but we can still kind of enjoy a meal that we know that is satisfying us and maybe from a sensory perspective as well.
Speaker A:With adhd, it matters so much, you know, to have the crunch and the spice and the sweet and the tangy and make things a little bit more fun.
Speaker A:Because from speaking to many, many, many women, and myself included, living and diagnosed and only getting a diagnosis when you're much later on in life, when you've typically gone through very challenging times, it is time to start saying, how can life be a little bit easier and how can life be a little bit more fun and joyful?
Speaker A:And also recognize, I think what's.
Speaker A:What's really important is that we've gone through a lot and a lot of women have gone through a huge amount of trauma.
Speaker A:And whether that's trauma with a very big T or lots of little small T traumas, that all kind of like builds up in the Filofax in our head.
Speaker A:And that is very often what contributes, you know, maybe to disordered eating, our beliefs, things that people have said to us, and allowing ourselves to unpack that a little bit.
Speaker A:I remember when I first was training to be an EFT practitioner and I just completed my health coaching and I.
Speaker A:And I was seeing somebody for the very first time and she.
Speaker A:I was probably a little bit out of my depth, if I'm honest, because she.
Speaker A:I didn't know, but she had a binge eating disorder.
Speaker A:And I knew I couldn't help her with that because I knew I wasn't trained.
Speaker A:But what I did try and help her with using tapping was trying to let go of a lot of things that had happened in the past and a lot of difficult beliefs and trauma that she'd gone through and trying to sort of release it and lessen it.
Speaker A:And what was really interesting, even though I didn't know much about helping her with the binge eating, she said that because we dealt with that her binge eating episodes were less frequent and when they did happen, it didn't feel as difficult.
Speaker A:And I wonder, do you go back to the root with your clients instead of sort of just tackling the food side?
Speaker A:Is there a lot of it around the emotional side?
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:And obviously if there is trauma there and they should be ideally, you know, if someone's got a deep trauma, often they've, they've come from a therapist and done some work on the trauma, then we need to go back and understand exactly where have those beliefs come from which turn into those constant thoughts about food.
Speaker B:And often the individual isn't aware of these thoughts a lot of the time.
Speaker B:So we have to do a lot of understanding where they've come from and unraveling them.
Speaker B:So we do do a lot of work around understanding, you know, food meanings.
Speaker B:Where did you know?
Speaker B:There's some key questions like what was your parents relationship with food, like when you were growing up?
Speaker B:Without putting blame onto parents, it's just an understanding.
Speaker B:How were mealtimes like for you?
Speaker B:What were they like for you when you sat at the table?
Speaker B:Was it a stressful experience?
Speaker B:Was it rushed?
Speaker B:Was there lack of food?
Speaker B:All of these things play a role.
Speaker B:And also body image too.
Speaker B:So we do a lot of work around body image and understanding where their thoughts about themselves and about their bodies come from.
Speaker B:And obviously, you know, the beliefs, the society, societal beliefs around diet culture, beliefs around having to be a certain size and appearance to feel like you fit and to feel like you belong.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of work around all of that that, that we try and sort of dismantle and then we can sort of work around the reframing of thoughts because if you're just working on the food, you have to work on the mindset as well and build on bringing around a positive body image, which takes time, but that's more around just working towards body acceptance and respecting your body so that at the end of the day you're more likely to be able to look after it if you're not despising it.
Speaker A:Yeah, I understand.
Speaker A:So yeah, I want to just sort of say about that because you know, we're talking about old beliefs Dismantling things that we might have seen through, you know, our childhood.
Speaker A:And if you're sort of working with women, say in middle age, around 40s, 50s, 60s, whatever that might be, they were very likely.
Speaker A:And then neurodivergent.
Speaker A:They're very likely to have been parented by at least one neurodivergent parent who wouldn't have had a clue that they had ADHD or autism.
Speaker A:They would not had a clue.
Speaker A:And so we're gaining insights and awareness that they just would not have had.
Speaker A:So we're kind of looking back at, you know, generations and seeing very unhealthy eating patterns and disordered eating and different beliefs around food and body shapes and all of that, that just wouldn't have had any kind of consideration.
Speaker A:I mean, even looking back all day in the 80s and the 90s of what people used to say, you know, we just bandied the word fat around or I need to lose weight or I'm going to need to my stomach.
Speaker A:So, you know, this.
Speaker A:Or it was just such a common conversation to talk about weight all the time.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And the body checking as well.
Speaker B:Yeah, children really absorb that.
Speaker B:Just, you know, the pinching bits of your body and looking in the mirror and saying, oh, do I look big in this?
Speaker B:You know, all of that stuff can be quite subtle.
Speaker B:You think it's quite subtle, but yeah, it's all these things.
Speaker A:And with neurodivergence, you know, we're more prone to sensitivity, we're more prone to RSD rejection, sensitive dysphoria.
Speaker A:We are probably, you know, comparing.
Speaker A:We're wondering why we're not the same as our peers.
Speaker A:All different things like that.
Speaker A:And it can be so difficult from an emotional perspective that, you know, sometimes food and eating and our weight is a way to fit in.
Speaker A:It's a way to look normal, you know, in inverted commas.
Speaker A:It feels that this is a.
Speaker A:It's a difficult subject.
Speaker A:But can we give people hope that there are ways through this and what are those ways and how does it work?
Speaker A:I guess if someone came to you and it wants this to go through this healing journey, how does it work?
Speaker B:Yeah, I would definitely say there is.
Speaker B:There is hope for this healing journey.
Speaker B:And, And I think people come to me thinking, I'm going to give this a go, but they.
Speaker B:They often don't believe that this will be any different from all the dieting, all the things that they've tried before.
Speaker B:And it takes a little, you know, a little bit of time to trust in the process because it can feel Quite scary to do something different.
Speaker B:But what I would, I always say is do try and trust in the process.
Speaker B:But one of the things we do try and move away from is the focus on the weight, because that will be.
Speaker B:Often they come to, to me saying, it's really important that I lose weight, but I want to give up binge eating and, you know, I want to have a healthy relationship with food.
Speaker B:So I completely validate those feelings around the weight with, you know, with the society that we live in, they have this internalized weight stigma very often.
Speaker B:But what I say is we're going to.
Speaker B:We're just going to shift our focus away to starting to learn how we can feel within our body.
Speaker B:And that's something that's very hard for people often with ADHD because of the interoception and impaired interoception.
Speaker B:So we have to start really trying to focus our attention and understanding how in terms of, we work on appetite, for example, how do we know when we're starting to feel hungry?
Speaker B:How do we know when we're beginning to feel satisfied?
Speaker B:What does it feel like?
Speaker B:Where is it in your body?
Speaker B:And that takes time to learn and it's not always easy, as I said, particularly with adhd.
Speaker B:But it's probably a lot of the things that people haven't even thought about before.
Speaker B:Because if you're constantly on and off a diet, you're listening to external rules and regulations about how much you should be eating, what you should be eating, what you shouldn't be eating, that completely takes you away from how your body feels.
Speaker B:How does your body feel when you have certain foods?
Speaker B:Do you feel more energized?
Speaker B:How does your digestive system feel?
Speaker B:How do you feel in your mood?
Speaker B:And we start to really bring the focus into that.
Speaker B:And I find that people, once we start to work through the practical steps to help, which I can talk about more about, is individuals really start to then tell me in sessions, oh, I really noticed that this really made me feel good.
Speaker B:This made me feel much more energized than that.
Speaker B:And actually I need to bring more of this into my diet because I appreciate that that really helps me feel good rather than I want to leave this out of my diet because I know I shouldn't be eating that.
Speaker B:So it's a very different way of looking at it.
Speaker B:Just in terms of starting, I'd say one of the most basic.
Speaker B:Well, it's not basic for a lot of people, actually, it's quite hard for a lot of people.
Speaker B:But the simple first step is Just getting some meal regularity in.
Speaker B:And especially if your eating is very chaotic and it's just about.
Speaker B:And especially if you've been doing fasting and dieting and all sorts of missing meals, just bringing, trying to bring in a breakfast, lunch and dinner is a really important first step.
Speaker B:And for some people, that can, I know, can be hugely overwhelming at first.
Speaker B:And so sometimes that's just the first thing we start working on.
Speaker B:What can we, you know, work on one meal that we can bring in, not even worrying about what's in it at the moment.
Speaker B:Let's just bring in a meal and see if you can notice the change to your energy and how satisfied you're feeling throughout the day.
Speaker A:I think what you said about the impaired interoception is really interesting for people to understand because that validates and gives a huge amount of meaning and understanding as to why we may not notice those hunger cues until we're so ravenous that the only option is to binge.
Speaker A:The only option is just.
Speaker A:Just to raid whatever we can find because we were so busy hyper focusing on something or we just didn't see those cues coming.
Speaker A:And then one minute we're just, we're just so beyond capacity.
Speaker A:We can't make anything.
Speaker A:We just need to eat lots of chocolate.
Speaker A:We can almost miscommunicate our bodily cues and think we're hungry when actually we're anxious or think we're hungry, but actually we're bored or think we're hungry, but actually we're thirsty.
Speaker A:And to be able to make those differentiations is really like clues and gold dust that we need.
Speaker A:So is there, I mean, is there somewhere that you can refer people to so they can understand those interoceptive cues, so they can differentiate between anxiety, boredom stimulation and hunger?
Speaker B:Well, in terms of.
Speaker B:What I use often with people is I call it the cravings list or quiz.
Speaker B:And it asks you.
Speaker B:So it's a number of questions that you can ask yourself.
Speaker B:The hardest bit is about catching yourself before you're turning to food for something other than hunger.
Speaker B:So it's about catching yourself and then asking yourself, am I actually hungry or is there something else I'm needing?
Speaker B:Am I bored?
Speaker B:You know, have I just come on my period?
Speaker B:Am I stressed?
Speaker B:Am I anxious?
Speaker B:Am I tired?
Speaker B:And tiredness is another thing that affects, you know, people with ADHD might not be able to identify necessarily if they're feeling tired and think it might be hunger or get that sort of signal confused, but also emotional signals.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:What is, what is the emotion?
Speaker B:So we start by starting to just be able to pause and ask yourself what is going on for me right now?
Speaker B:And also then try and identify, you know, where does it feel in the body again?
Speaker B:Rather than.
Speaker B:Because when you can start to think, okay, I think that I might be feeling this and I think I'm feeling it here and this is how it feels for me to feel like this, then you can start to build almost like your understanding around yourself and your awareness.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Really help.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:There's also, you know, especially if we're speaking to girls and women that are menstrual cycles, especially you know, with adhd, that we have really big highs and lows and when we are due our period, we could be really struggling mentally, emotionally, but like you say, fatigue, energy, and to allow ourselves to have those starchy, carby, stodgy things that we're craving and to have that intuitiveness to be like, you know what?
Speaker A:My body is craving this big jacket potato right now.
Speaker A:And maybe I wouldn't have it, you know, in two weeks time, but right now I'm gonna just enjoy and embrace the fact that my body needs these, these carbs and to be able to have that awareness and to be okay with it.
Speaker A:Because every day can't look the same with women and hormones and energy levels and sleep.
Speaker A:And you said about routine, I think that's really good to have the breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Speaker A:But those breakfast, lunches and dinners could look different, couldn't they?
Speaker B:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker B:And yeah, and what you're saying, you know, just to know that for example, before your period, your, your drop in hormones brings around a drop in serotonin, which is, you know, we know as the kind of happy hormone.
Speaker B:And one of the things that raises serotonin is, is the sort of carbohydrate foods.
Speaker B:So that's why we're more likely to be craving it.
Speaker B:You know, you talked about when you have poor quality sleep, it really affects your appetite hormones.
Speaker B:So your satiety hormones go down and your hunger hormones go up and you're much more likely to crave foods.
Speaker B:And of course you're much more likely to crave perhaps the less helpful foods.
Speaker B:So you're going to go for those less helpful foods and you're going to be more hungry and you're going to have less energy to want to look after yourself and prepare, prepare such a good meal.
Speaker B:So it's thinking of ways in which you've got stuff there, some food there that's easy to prepare, easy to just throw together and think, okay, I know that I've had a bad night's sleep.
Speaker B:I know that I'm more likely to perhaps binge or eat foods that aren't going to be so helpful for me.
Speaker B:This is what I'm going to just have right now that's simple and easy to put together and I've got a backup plan that can be helpful.
Speaker A:I like that.
Speaker A:I really like that.
Speaker A:Because it's taking away that sting that, that, that blame, you know, the judgment which can be so toxic to live with when you constantly have this sort of narrative in your head of someone constantly judging and criticizing you and going, there you go again, look, you can't do this and you don't do that.
Speaker A:If we can just say, you know what you, that self compassion of, yeah, you've had a bad night and there's a chance you probably are going to need some sugar in the afternoon.
Speaker A:How can we maybe do that in a less kind of processed way?
Speaker A:But you can, you know, dark chocolate or, you know, something like that.
Speaker A:But just allowing yourself to have some of those comforts without it being so shameful.
Speaker A:What would you say to someone who's listening right now and they have struggled with, you know, whether they want to call it emotional eating, disordered eating, They've just recognized there's been a pattern throughout their life.
Speaker A:While now they're also understanding, you know, their ADHD and they're getting lots of epiphanies and eye openings and they're ready to start now.
Speaker A:Now that they've got this understanding of neurodivergence, where would someone start?
Speaker A:And also if maybe they can't afford to see someone one on one, but they need some help.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, that's really why I wrote my book, because I just felt like, because I work one to one with people and, and when I work with people, it's usually for a minimum six months to really work on all the different areas.
Speaker B:So I appreciate that that's not accessible for most people.
Speaker B:So I wanted to write the book to enable people to work through it's, you know, in a practical, step by step way that's not overwhelming so that they can work on the different areas.
Speaker B:And there's the four different, four key pillars to work on.
Speaker B:And you know, what I would say is I do have a free Facebook group that people can join and I want people to be able to work through the book and be able to ask questions in there and feel like they've got that support so that they're not on their own with that as they work through.
Speaker B:But I'd say in terms of steps I mentioned meal regularity.
Speaker B:That would probably be one of the first things to try and start working on.
Speaker B:And then the next step would be perhaps starting to really tune into as much as you can where you are using the hunger scale.
Speaker B:I've got a free one that I give away as part of my toolkit and with some key steps to try and start to identify.
Speaker B:Okay, have the awareness.
Speaker B:Grow the awareness.
Speaker B:Start writing things down if you can and just, you know, if you have, you know, a light bulb moment about something, something.
Speaker B:Oh, I noticed that.
Speaker B:That was why perhaps today I was really hungry and really craving.
Speaker B:It's useful to write down and understand patterns.
Speaker B:What might be a cue or a trigger for a binge eating episode or a sort of episode of emotional eating that you didn't feel comfortable with.
Speaker B:Try to understand what happened.
Speaker B:Was it that the day before you were overtired, you were overstressed, had you skipped a meal, you know what was going on for you?
Speaker B:So it's looking without observing, without the judgment, bringing in the self compassion, as you said, it's so important and just trying to observe.
Speaker B:So you become almost like your detective.
Speaker B:And writing things down can be really useful because that can really help you to understand and pick up patterns of behavior.
Speaker B:And then you can start to address it because then you can say, oh, okay, perhaps next time I'll try X, Y and Z.
Speaker B:Because I know that last time that probably didn't help.
Speaker B:So let's see if that helps.
Speaker B:And it's kind of a trial and error through because we're all individuals.
Speaker B:So what works for one person might not necessarily necessarily work for the next.
Speaker B:But it's about learning your body, re reconnecting with it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:100.
Speaker A:I love the idea of like writing down those, those triggers because we might not.
Speaker A:And especially with ADHD and our memory and working memory and piecing things together, sometimes we have to have written it down to say, oh, okay, so I stayed late that night and worked or I scrolled on social media and didn't sleep properly.
Speaker A:And all these little things that we might not even connect with.
Speaker A:But then like you say, we see that those patterns and kind of say right when I go to bed later and I'm on my phone the next day is more of a write off or when I'm around that person that might be, you know, a family member or something, you know, that you find a bit jarring or triggering about them.
Speaker A:You might notice that your self esteem or your confidence takes A bit of a knocking and that's kind of like, then has a, you know, trickle effect down.
Speaker A:Just remind people what the name of your book is.
Speaker A:So people are listening and kind of think, yeah, really fancy reading this.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:So it's called the Binge Freedom Method and it's essentially a four pillar plan.
Speaker B:Nourish balance, think and feel.
Speaker B:You go through to, to work through the book.
Speaker A:Brilliant.
Speaker A:And that's available, I presume, online books?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Amazon Waterstones.
Speaker B:Yeah, Worldwide online available.
Speaker A:Brilliant.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, I'll make sure that's in the show notes.
Speaker A:I think this conversation's been really helpful because even just bringing a bit more awareness and just talking about it and normalizing these conversations to be able to say actually something that I may have kept secret or may not have talked about to anyone, other people are going through this as well and I'm not on my own and there's, there's a lot of people, you know, I know that have difficult relationships with food.
Speaker A:So the more we talk about it, I hopefully will help more people seek help and support.
Speaker A:So thank you for what you do, Marcel.
Speaker A:It's been really interesting talking to you.
Speaker A:Just remind me what your website is as well.
Speaker A:People are listening and just want to.
Speaker B:Log on quickly, so it's marcellerosenutrition.co.uk.
Speaker A:Thanks, Marcel.
Speaker A:If today's episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for even further support, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellness Toolkit, is now available to order from anywhere you get your books from.
Speaker A:I really hope this book is going to be the ultimate resource for anyone who loves this podcast and wants a deeper dive into all these kinds of conversations.
Speaker A:If you head to my website, adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk you'll find all the information on the book there, which is going to be out on the 17th of July.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
