This blog post represents the author’s views and should not be interpreted as professional/medical advice or endorsed by NEDA.
For most of my life, I thought my eating disorder meant something was wrong with me.
I was impulsive with food. I cycled between restriction and bingeing. I felt out of control around certain foods and completely uninterested in others. I chased diets, lost and gained hundreds of pounds, and eventually landed in eating disorder treatment, convinced I was the problem.
What I didn’t have, until much later, was the correct diagnosis.
How My Eating Disorder First Started
Growing up, food was never neutral. It was moralized, restricted, praised, shamed, and sometimes used as punishment long before I had words for that. By age eight, I was already trapped in a restrict-binge cycle.
My mother had long told me I wasn’t allowed to have food society deemed would continue making me fat. So, in my child brain, that meant I had to hide sweets and sneak food in an act of rebellion.
By adulthood, I blamed myself for what I now understand was a nervous system desperately trying to regulate itself.
The ADHD–Eating Disorder Connection
Research shows people with ADHD are significantly more likely to develop eating disorders, especially binge eating disorder. ADHD is linked to differences in how the brain processes dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in motivation, reward, and attention.
These differences can make people more likely to seek out immediate, high-reward experiences. Food can become one of those sources because it is quick, accessible, and socially acceptable. Research also suggests that overlapping reward pathways in the brain may play a role in binge eating behaviors.
The Role of Sensory Input in my Eating Disorder
The part I didn’t realize until I spent many months in an intense eating disorder treatment program was that all of that out-of-control and disordered eating wasn’t just about taste or hunger. Sometimes it was about texture.
One day in treatment, a clinician noticed I was adding chips to the inside of my sandwich (something I had been doing for as long as I could remember). When she asked me why I did that, my response was simple: “I like my food to crunch.”
I can’t recall exactly what she said or asked that led to the ADHD + eating disorder correlation, but in that moment, I realized recovery from disordered eating is going to be so much harder for me and my NeuroSpicey brain compared to a Neurotypical one.
That’s when it clicked. I didn’t just like the crunch. I needed it. Chips. Crackers. Extra crunchy bacon. Anything with resistance. Anything loud. Anything that gave my brain a sharp sensory hit.
Crunchy things ground me. It focuses me. It cuts through the constant chitchat in my brain in a way soft foods never could. For the first time, my “out of control eating” wasn’t framed as a lack of willpower or failure; it was framed as sensory-seeking behavior, a well-documented ADHD trait.
I’m not a fat loser with no self-control like I believed for so long, I’m chasing dopamine.
That realization changed everything.
ADHD Explains Both Sides of My Eating Disorder
ADHD symptoms also explain the other side of my eating disorder; “Atypical” Anorexia (I can’t be classically diagnosed with anorexia because I live in a large body even when I am in a calorie deficit). When I hyperfocus, I can “forget” to eat for extended periods.
I often struggle to recognize my body’s signals such as hunger or thirst. When I am emotionally dysregulated, feelings hit hard and fast, and food becomes the farthest thing from my mind.
Eating Disorders Treatment isn’t Built for my Neurodivergent Brain
Traditional eating disorder advice assumes a neurotypical brain: just eat regularly and plan ahead. Listen to your body.
For someone with ADHD, that advice could feel impossible, and when it didn’t work, shame rushed in.
Shame is gasoline on an eating disorder fire.
In treatment, I learned that my eating disorder had very little to do with food and everything to do with coping. Control. Dopamine. Sensory input. Grief. Trauma. A brain that needed more support than it was ever given.
Late diagnosis matters. So does timing. I spent decades believing I was failing diets, failing recovery, failing my body. When, in actuality, I was trying to use tools that weren’t designed for how my brain works.
What Recovery Actually Looks Like with ADHD
Recovery, for me, doesn’t come from rigid meal plans or white-knuckling urges. It comes from understanding my ADHD and working with it instead of against it. It comes from building structures without punishment, allowing sensory accommodations without shame, and learning that “healthy” does not always equal small.
If you have ADHD and struggle with food, you are not broken. You are not weak. You are not doing recovery wrong.
You may simply be neurodivergent in a world and a treatment system that still doesn’t fully understand how our brains work.
Understanding the connection between ADHD and eating disorders didn’t erase my past. But it finally gave me language for it.
And language is where healing actually begins
Resources
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Penelope Mazzetti (she/her) is a Baltimore-based writer, digital media consultant, and owner of PM Media. When she’s not working or writing, she’s exploring her city and wrangling life as a cat mom of two. As a Renfrew Center alum, her work explores trauma, late-diagnosed ADHD, body dysmorphia, and neurodivergent eating disorder recovery. She’s currently shaping these stories into a forthcoming memoir. You can find Penelope on Instagram at @Pennyspenz.
