ADHD & Binge Eating with Katy Weber
In this episode, I discuss ADHD and Binge Eating with Katy Weber. Katy is a certified holistic coach who coaches ADHD women (has ADHD herself) and is the author of Worth It: A Journey to Food & Body Freedom. Check out Katy’s Women & ADHD podcast!
HIGHLIGHTS
Katy explains what binge eating is and how she first connected it to her ADHD
How ADHD and food have impacted Katy’s life, and how she came around to helping others with those challenges
Why binge eating is so common among people with ADHD
How to break free from the binge eating/dieting lifestyle
Where listeners can connect with Katy
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Summary
Navigating the world of ADHD and binge eating can feel like walking through a maze, and Katie Weber knows this firsthand. Diagnosed with ADHD at 45 amidst the chaos of the pandemic, Katie initially struggled with her diagnosis. The misconceptions about hyperactivity led her to resist, but she soon discovered an emotional depth to her experience that included dealing with shame.
Join us as we unravel the complex interplay between dieting, ADHD, and mental health with personal anecdotes and reflections on experiences like Weight Watchers. The revelations in our conversation highlight how binge eating often arises as a symptom of chronic restriction, rather than the core issue.
In the final part of our episode, we focus on the broader picture of ADHD and health, especially for women. We emphasize the need to redefine health beyond mere physical metrics, considering mental and emotional well-being as equally significant. Our conversation encourages a compassionate and holistic approach to addressing binge eating, viewing it as a response to restriction and an act of self-care.
Highlights
(00:00) ADHD and Binge Eating Connection
(06:25) ADHD, Binge Eating, and Dieting
(15:30) Overcoming Binge Eating and Restriction
(21:21) Exploring ADHD and Holistic Health
Transcript
01:01 - Sarah (Host)
This episode contains content on food and eating that may be sensitive to some listeners. The Adulting with ADHD podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. Please see a medical professional if you think you have ADHD or have ADHD and need additional assistance. For podcast archives, please visit patreoncom slash. Adulting with ADHD. This is the Adulting with ADHD podcast self-empowerment for people with ADHD. Today, I am very excited to have with us Katie from the Women in ADHD podcast, katie Weber, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. I'm very excited to be here. I am too. Thank you so much for being here. I guess, before we really get into it, do you want to tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
01:59 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Sure, yeah, well, like you said, I host the Women in ADHD podcast, which I started soon after I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 45. And it was kind of right after the lockdown and the pandemic and I had a little bit of an implosion to say, and you know, my therapist had been gently suggesting to me. My therapist, who has ADHD, had gently been suggesting to me that I look into it over the years and I was sort of like I don't know what you're talking about, I'm not hyperactive. I didn't really understand it. And then, I think when and I even took a self-test online that was sort of a general ADHD self-test and I did, okay, I mean, there were some things I related to, but I wasn't like I don't know. I was sort of like I don't know. It's just I didn't know what to do with that information, I guess. And then, during lockdown, with my kids at home and my, my husband at home and I sort of, you know, decided that this was going to be a great time to like start a new business, and I was complaining to my therapist about how, like I just couldn't do anything, I couldn't focus because I felt like every time I tried to sit down on my computer, my kids were bursting out of their bedrooms oh my God, the wifi is out, or I'm not on zoom, or you know, it was all of this stuff. I just felt like I was in waiting mode all the time. Oh right, yes. So she was like you really need to look into it.
03:17
And then I started looking into ADHD in women and how very different it manifests and how it really it's. You know, when I took the Sari Solden online self-test, that's when it hit like hard, where I was like oh okay, this really makes sense. This has a lot less to do with hyperactivity and a lot more to do with, like shame around how I keep my house and that feeling of like everybody thinks I have it all together and I just feel like a total show behind the, the, behind the scenes and like we're really relating to that kind of emotional shame element. And that's when it just, like you know, I got the diagnosis and it just sort of snowballed from there where I was like this is a really, really profound experience. This is life changing Totally. Am I the only woman who's going through this right now? Life changing Totally. Am I the only woman who's going through this right now.
04:08
And so, you know, the first thing I did was I typed women ADHD into the podcast, my podcast platform. When I was diagnosed, I found Tracy Otsuka's podcast and listened to like. I listened to like 75, I found yours too, but I was, you know, just like hyper-focusing and listening to everything and I wanted to talk to other women about their experience with diagnosis and adulthood. And I wanted, you know, and I thought, well, podcast seems like a great platform to reach out to people and talk to them Totally. And so I called it Women in ADHD because I figured it would be easy to find. Yeah, and that was almost two years ago and yeah, it's been quite, it's been quite a ride.
04:42 - Sarah (Host)
Yeah, and congratulations on your 100th episode. That's a huge milestone. Yeah, yeah, thank you. That's very exciting. Well, let's get into it. Today's topic is ADHD and binge eating, a topic close to my heart, so let's let's just jump right into it, to something A lot of people with ADHD struggle with. Let's just jump right into it. It's something a lot of people with ADHD struggle with.
05:13 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Let's talk about what binge eating actually is and how you were first able to connect that to your ADHD diet at the age of 14. I went on slim fast with my mom.
05:24 - Speaker 4 (Host)
And you always remember your first.
05:27 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Yep, and it was really, you know, and I, at 14, is that time where it was like, all of a sudden I was growing breasts and curves, and I think it's, you know, a very typical time for women to start kind of railing against their changing bodies and, oh my God, what am I going to do? And wanting to kind of be smaller, right. And so it was sort of a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and doing really well on a diet and losing all this weight and getting all these compliments from everybody around me and all of this validation, and then the diet would stop working or I would you know, quote unquote fail, the weight would come back and the the comments would stop Right.
06:06 - Speaker 4 (Host)
And I'd be like oh, just that.
06:08 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Constant validate. You know that constant re, whatever what's the word I'm looking for, there's a loop.
06:13 - Sarah (Host)
It's like a positive feedback loop.
06:16 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Right, yeah, and just realizing how you know everything's going great when you're losing weight and everything's going terrible when it's coming inevitably coming back with more. So that was my life and my cycle for most of my adulthood, going into adulthood, and then I joined Weight Watchers after my second son was born and it was the first time I paid for a dieting program. I was all in right. I loved the idea of like counting points and weigh-ins and accountability and meetings and, oh my God, it was perfect and I did. You know, I lost a ton of weight and I was so happy. This was so, you know, wonderful that I became a leader because I thought, if I become, a leader, I'll keep the weight off right and I wanted to help.
07:00
Well, and I was like this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. Oh my God, so great. I want to become a leader. And then every week I would get up there and I would talk, and I was sort of discovered this like public speaking element to myself, that I hadn't really tapped into before. Yeah, where.
07:19 - Sarah (Host)
I would like get up and give out my Bravo stars and, and you know, and I remember that Right, I'm a chronic former weight watcher, right. So yeah.
07:25 - Katy Weber (Guest)
So what I noticed when I was a leader was not only two things. I noticed that the weight was coming back and I was hiding it and I was secretly developing a pretty severe binge eating disorder and was hiding it from everybody. I obviously wasn't talking about it in my meetings and I also kind of had that conversation a lot with people who would come back over and over and over and they would say things like Weight Watchers is the only program that's ever worked for me and I'd be like this is your sixth time here. I don't think it's working Right. And so I was sort of noticing that and but at the same time was really nervous about this binge eating.
08:06
It was, it was getting out of control, the weight was coming back, I was spiraling and I was worried I was going to get fired and and so I started looking into like how can I beat binge eating? You know, I need to nip this in the bud. I need to stop with the binge eating. How can I get rid of this? And I remember finding a podcast called beating binge eating.
08:26 - Speaker 4 (Host)
And I was like perfect, this is it Like okay teach me your ways.
08:32 - Katy Weber (Guest)
And the podcast was really about like breaking down what is binge eating, and the thing that I found so revolutionary to me was that binge eating isn't like a problem. Binge eating is a symptom of a deeper problem, which and that deeper problem is chronic restriction. And that was just like the light bulb moment for me where I was like why hadn't anybody ever talked about that? Like, obviously Weight Watchers isn't going to talk about this but it was this moment of like.
09:00
Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense that binge eating is actually a reaction to the chronic restriction of dieting and the chronic restrictions, chronic restrictions in general. Right, and that was another thing where I was like not only is it the chronic restriction of food, like literal restriction of food, but also there are a lot of the restrictions that we just have in our life around body and the desire to be smaller and how our idea, our definition of health is intrinsically linked with weight, and that is incredibly problematic. And so this was all long before my ADHD diagnosis. I became a binge eating recovery coach, left Weight Watchers and often wanted to make a t-shirt that said you know, I went to Weight Watchers and all I got was this lousy binge eating disorder, because I was meeting more and more people who were like sort of you know, coming out of the closet about this connection.
10:01
And you know, I read some of those groundbreaking books like Health at Every Size that were really sort of helped me break free from that dieting paradigm and the binge eating stop. And that was when it stopped. It was really, you know, it wasn't like this wonderful like moment where I was like, yeah, I'm free of dieting forever. I mean, I'm a woman living in our society, so it's. I think letting go of the desire to lose weight and be smaller is probably like the hardest thing any of us can do in society and I birthed two babies like I still feel like freeing myself from that paradigm is an ongoing journey. I haven't freed myself, but the act of freeing myself is, I think, the hardest thing any of us can do as women.
10:49 - Sarah (Host)
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11:34 - Katy Weber (Guest)
there. So, yeah, so that. So here I was working in a binge eating recovery and then I get my ADHD diagnosis and I start looking into some of the popular eating issues with women with ADHD or even adults with ADHD and again I was like, oh, oh, yeah, this all makes a lot of sense and I had no idea how popular it was. And I also found a lot of the articles and messaging around binge eating to be really problematic, because a lot of them are in that same mindset of like how can we control overeating, right? And I was like right, let's hack your overeating, let's figure it out and nip it in the bud. And I'm like that is so problematic and really kind of predatory.
12:19
And then you know, and then you look at like drugs like Vyvanse which Vyvanse are? You know where the doctor is like, and an added benefit is that it's an appetite stimulant. So we like to recommend it for binge eating. And I'm like that makes literally no sense. Why on earth would a binge eating medication be an appetite suppressant? Because that's just encouraging binge eating behaviors at the end of the day. Hey, like I was like do you realize? That makes no sense. If somebody out there can explain to me how this makes sense. I would appreciate it, Cause that's still boggles my mind. Why, but you know? But but still that messaging even around medication and stimulants is like, hey, and there's this added benefit that it'll help you lose weight.
12:58
You're like that's messed up, but in terms of like, why people with ADHD struggle with binge eating. I think it can come down to a lot of things. One of the things I think, becca King, the ADHD nutritionist online she, she talks. She's great. She talks a lot about intentional restriction and unintentional restriction, and that's something I really like in terms of like. There's the intentional restriction which we talked about, which is, like, you know, calorie counting, you know, trying to basically thinking about our health. In terms of like, wouldn't it be great if I lost weight, you know, cause that's how my the quickest, easiest way to help. And then you put in ADHD, you put in the impulsivity, the impatience how can I lose weight as fast as possible? I know, if this diet tells me to eat 1200 calories, I'll eat 600 calories and then I'll lose weight twice as fast, right, like we have that
13:51
tendency to want to like be as efficient as possible and when it comes to weight loss and nutrition, that can be really dangerous because then you get into like severe, you know you get into really disordered behaviors really quickly. We're not great with balance, you know we're not great with balance. We're not great with doing things in a sort of small, healthy way where we're sort of like I'm going to take everything to the extreme. So that made a lot of sense to me and just the appeal of diets in general made a lot of sense to me because I think when you have a generally sort of chaotic feeling in your life, it's really appealing to have a diet come in and say here's what you eat, here's how much, let's keep track.
14:30
There's so many metrics, right, let's keep track, let's weigh ourselves, and you're externalizing a lot of that accountability to a diet. It's really appealing to have that sudden, intense structure and order that diets can bring, especially programs like Weight Watchers or Noom or any of these new ones that are sort of like you know we're not a diet but we're going to weigh you all the time and congratulate you every time you lose weight and all of that stuff. That's really reinforces disordered behaviors. But as somebody with ADHD, it makes total sense why that's appealing because you sort of feel lost a lot of the time when it comes to nutrition and eating and we really like rules yeah, the the control is soothing, but also the the success is like a dopamine boost, right like oh, I lost a pound this week, you know right, yeah, yeah, what a rush.
15:21 - Sarah (Host)
That's a hard rush to break away from.
15:25 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. And then again, you know, I think, I think food is stimulating too. So binge eating is a form of self-care, it's a form of comfort, and that's gets back to this idea of like why are we having an overwhelming desire to comfort ourselves and to stimulate with food? That's the result of restriction. So now I have to look at my life and think okay, where am I restricting myself? It might be intentional restriction, like withholding food, but it might be unintentional restriction which then gets into the ideas of body image right and body dysmorphia and feeling like we're.
16:00
You know, our self worth is often in the toilet by the time we get to be adulthood adult, if we're undiagnosed. We spend our lives having a lot of self-doubt. We spend our lives feeling like we don't really know what's best for us, because those are the messages we're given in childhood. A lot of that adds to really feeling unhappy. Then we buy into this message that if we lose weight we will be happier. And then when we get to that point where we've lost the weight and we find that we're not happier, then we're like, well, maybe I need to lose more weight, you know. Then that's when you start to get into those extreme disordered behaviors.
16:37
So again, like I feel like restriction can be a really, it can be a wide reaching. It's not just the literal food restriction. There's a lot of restriction involved in, in masking and, yeah, sort of operating in society as somebody who is just generally unsure of ourselves, right, and looking for kind of happiness and answers outside of ourselves.
17:03 - Sarah (Host)
Totally so many, so many things I'm thinking about as you're talking. It just brings up so much, yeah, so let's, let's see we covered what binge eating is and how it overlaps with ADHD and why it's so common for ADHD women. So how do we break free from this? You've talked a little bit about that. Let's get into it.
17:26 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Well, like I said, it's really hard to just be like I'm going to stop binge eating.
17:32 - Speaker 1 (Host)
Let's nip it Come on.
17:33 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Let's hack it. And I think it's even harder to suddenly decide I'm not going to think about my weight anymore, I'm just going to be the weight I am and everything's going to be fine, because we live in a society that is incredibly fat phobic, incredibly judgmental when it comes to you know our behaviors around our size too right. So it's like you know there's those ideas of like you know feeling like if we're eating salad, we're being quote unquote good, and burgers we're being bad, right, and so we we have labels around food and behaviors that can be really problematic. So I think the two things that I would say really are the most helpful steps when it comes to, like, breaking free of binge eating is realizing that it's a reaction to restriction. So the first thing is to stop restricting food. I mean, really just eat food a day as simple as that sounds is going to stop the binge eating and it's going to stop feeling like you are out of control. The more you are trying to control yourself and control your food, the more out of control you're going to feel in those moments. And that's the other thing about binge eating. Binge eating isn't really about how much food you're eating, it's the feeling of the lack of control you feel around the food, which is that idea that like, oh, I should be stopping now and I can't I literally cannot stop myself from going back and getting more. And like that out of control feeling is the binge eating. It's not the there's no amount that suddenly becomes binge eating, it's really the out of control feeling. And so I think realizing the connection between, like, needing to, to rest control in other areas of your life is leading to the self-soothing behavior that is railing against the control and so kind of making that connection I think is important and appreciating the fact that we care enough about ourselves to self-soothe, I think is really important.
19:33
I think, especially when I talk to patients, when I talk to clients whose children are binge eating, you know, and they're really worried about these, setting up these terrible behaviors in early life, I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, slow your roll. Like, first of all, your child is self-soothing and how wonderful is it that they have found intuitively a way to care for themselves, right? Like that is something to celebrate, that they have these. You know that they've got that in their toolbox, right. So I think just acknowledge the fact that that's what's happening here, that it's not this terrible behavior, that it really is taking care of yourself and your body's way of saying you know sending messages to you, of yourself and your body's way of saying you know sending messages to you. That's like you know we need to. We need to stop kind of desperately trying to control something that probably doesn't need to be controlled.
20:23
The other thing I think is really important that we talked about a little bit, which was like how can I redefine health outside of a weight centric modality and and I think, the easiest thing that I have done for myself easy yeah, that's such a loaded word but, like I think the thing that works for me is really just coming down to individual decisions, which is like why am I doing this? Am I exercising because I think that maybe it'll lose weight, or am I exercising because of all the other benefits? It helps me not stay as tired and it helps me focus more you know all the long list of things that are beneficial about exercise. But at the end of the day, am I doing this, like, because I think it's going to help me lose weight? Am I doing this because I'm punishing myself because I had an extra big piece of cake last night. You know, why am I doing these behaviors, and is it about my health or is it about my size? Is this an issue of health or is this an issue of control? And those are those sort of you know moments you can have with yourself. Or it really comes down to the why, and you know, with ADHD, we really we have to like have a really intense relationship with the why behind all of our behaviors. So that's a question I think could be really helpful to ask in terms of you know what's, you know what's motivating me in terms of these factors.
21:39
Because weight is, you know, weight loss for a lot of women is a number one motivator in a lot of our health behaviors, and I think it's time we need to like untangle that and society needs to untangle that. It's not just on us. And then the other thing is just to remember that, like health, part of a huge part of health is mental health. So is this behavior at the expense of my mental health? Is another thing too is that, you know, the realizing that a lot of sort of quote, unquote healthy behaviors end up being really destructive and to our mental health. So remembering that health is not just about the metrics that you get at the doctor's office, which is stepping on the scale and blood pressure and all of that that there's. So there's a lot more to our holistic overall whole body health than just the numbers.
22:34 - Sarah (Host)
Absolutely Well, Katie. Thank you for distilling this for us in such a great way. I think this is really going to impact our listeners in a huge way, so thank you so much for sharing.
22:48 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Yes, it's, I think you know it is so common, and I think it is also, but also such a private issue for so many of us. So I think it is so important to really talk out loud about some of our shared experiences. That's how we, that's how we heal ourselves and it's how we heal each other. It's very nice symbiotic relationship there.
23:09 - Sarah (Host)
Yeah, totally, totally. So where can our listeners find you on the interwebs? How can we keep up with you and all the things?
23:18 - Katy Weber (Guest)
Well, the best place to start would be my website, which is womenandadhdcom, and when I started the podcast, I started meeting all of these amazing, interesting, brilliant women and I wanted them all to meet each other because I was realizing how conversation and realizing that we're not alone and finding each other is such a huge part of treating our ADHD, so to speak. And so that's when I created the women in ADHD community, which has been a really nice place off of Facebook to come and share resources and ask questions and just vent. So you can also join that through the community or through the womenandadhdcom website.
24:00
You can find my podcast, which is called Women in ADHD, and also work with me one-on-one in terms of coaching or group coaching. I do that ongoing.
24:11 - Sarah (Host)
Excellent, Katie. Thank you so much.
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