The ADHD Food Pyramid with Aleta Storch
In this episode I talk to Aleta Storch, a nutrition therapist and founder of Wise Heart Nutrition, about the intuitive eating model she created for her ADHD clients.
Highlights:
- How Aleta got interested in the ADHD and food connection
- A common misconception about eating with ADHD
- Aleta's food needs pyramid for ADHD'ers
- The No. 1 thing to do if you want more confidence with food/eating as an ADHD'er.
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Summary
Aleta Storch, a registered dietitian and licensed mental health counselor, unravels the complex interplay between ADHD and eating habits. Through her personal and professional lens, Aleta dispels the myth that ADHD-related binge eating is merely about dopamine pursuits, introducing the concept of compensatory eating instead.
With a focus on the pyramid of food-related needs, she underscores the importance of meeting basic nutritional requirements like regularity and energy, paving the way for a balanced and varied diet that can enhance overall well-being.
In a journey towards healthier eating, Aleta emphasizes the power of aligning food choices with personal values, such as relationships, adventure, or nature.
This approach not only boosts self-awareness but also fosters persistence and self-compassion, especially crucial for those with ADHD. Aleta also shares the transformative role of self-compassion in overcoming emotional challenges related to nutrition and body image.
Highlights
(00:00) ADHD and Eating
(09:11) Exploring Values to Improve Eating
(13:37) Embracing Self-Compassion in Nutrition
Transcript
00:30 - Sarah
This is the Adulting with ADHD podcast self-empowerment for people with ADHD. Today I have with me registered dietitian Alita Storch. Alita nice to meet you.
01:10 - Aleta
It's nice to meet you too. I'm so glad we could connect.
01:13 - Sarah
I'm really glad we could connect too. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this space?
01:18 - Aleta
Yeah. So yeah, I'm a registered dietitian and a licensed mental health counselor, so I do a little bit of nutrition and a little bit of therapy with my own clients and I found the whole like world of ADHD and food, eating, nutrition based on. I had my own struggles with food and body in college and my recovery process was rooted in health at every size and intuitive eating frameworks, which is the approach that I use in my work and that's what initially drove me to want to be both a dietician and a therapist, because I saw that like both of those pieces were so important. And when I got to grad school I was really struggling with food again and I just sort of started to understand that my ADHD was impacting my ability to feed and to nourish my body. And then in my work with clients, I really jumped into working with eating disorders.
02:12
I worked in higher level of care settings and I saw a lot of clients who were sort of having the same struggles that I was having in grad school, where they would do really well when, like, meals were prepared for them and served for them, and then the second they stepped down to outpatient. They were sort of floundering, really struggled with planning and following through or following through, and so I just sort of saw that there was a disconnect between eating disorder treatment and, like neurodivergent affirming care, and so that's when I really dove into like okay, how can I put these two together to help folks who who are struggling with the same things? That that I was able to work through, and so that, yeah, that's what got me here today.
02:55 - Sarah
A hundred percent. Well, I didn't realize you were also a therapist. My apologies, that's amazing, that that sounds like I wish there were more of you around. That sounds like such an emerging need, or a need that's always been there, yeah, so what's a common misconception people have when it comes to eating and ADHD?
03:16 - Aleta
Yeah, that's such a hard question to narrow down. You can only pick one. You can just pick the first one. You think of seeking dopamine or that we're stimming, and while those aspects of ADHD do contribute to binge eating, I believe that the real reason that so many ADHDers struggle is because we're often not meeting our basic food needs to begin with, so we don't eat enough or we don't eat frequently enough, we don't get variety and we often like struggle with feeling satisfied with meals and we often struggle with feeling satisfied with meals. And so then all of the experiences of ADHD so being on stimulant meds, getting stuck in hyperfocus procrastination, time blindness, low self-awareness, poor planning, decision fatigue, right, like the list goes on. And then, of course, diet culture are a few examples of why ADHDers aren't getting those food needs met, and then they end up ravenous at the end of the day and end up eating everything in sight. So when ADHDers come to me with concerns around binge eating, I like to support them in really getting curious and figuring out if they are actually engaging in what I would call compensatory eating, and that's just sort of like a fancy way of saying that their body is desperately working to get those food needs met and that can also feel really out of control and can lead to like physical discomfort. So oftentimes, like binge eating and compensatory eating are getting confused and it's more blamed on binge eating with ADHDers. That is so eye-opening I'm having these comments go off while we're treatment and they're all sort of like mishmash together. So it's basically a pyramid of food related needs where meeting like the lowest needs on the pyramid will allow the higher needs on the pyramid to be attended to like essentially like more effectively. Or it will be easier to attend to those needs when the lower to be attended to like essentially like more effectively. Or it will be easier to attend to those needs when the lower needs are getting met and our bodies are really hardwired to get the most basic needs met in order to survive. So we often like fall back to meeting those basic needs right Like the compensatory eating. Those basic needs right Like the compensatory eating, getting enough is really attending to that need. So the base of the pyramid really is regularity and consistency, which is like eating every three to four hours like most of the time, right, no one's going to be able to do that every single day of their life, but really aiming for that the majority of the time, and then eating enough in terms of quantity, so meeting your overall energy needs throughout the day, not just all at one time. And when those two needs are being met, then it's easier to think about, like, how do I get variety, how do I get balance? How do I eat like more diversity of foods? How do I focus on meals instead of just like eating snacks all day long? So that's kind of.
06:52
The third step is variety, and then, above that, we have pleasure and satisfaction, and that's my favorite kind of food need to work on.
07:01
It's one that often gets left out in this process.
07:04
It's one that's really like villainized by diet culture and and really is the basis for for a lot of the work that I do, and so that's really thinking about how can I tune into, like appetites and cravings and desires and and how can I attend to those in a way that, like leaves me feeling satisfied, which is really important for ADHD, right, our reward center needs to be activated in order for us to feel good, and so, yeah, when we're, when we're using food for pleasure, we are getting dopamine, we are getting that reward and, and I would say like there's nothing wrong with that.
07:41
And then at the top of the pyramid is gentle nutrition, and that's where, like, most people are trying to function. So it's sort of like how do I eat in a way that supports, like, my well being and my health and my brain? And that's really like the last thing we focus on, because none, none of it is going to matter, right, if you're not attending to all of those other needs, all the gentle nutrition in the world isn't helpful. So, yeah, that's that's really the model that I use with like, all of my clients, all of my course participants, and really identifying, like, what needs to be attended to first.
08:14 - Sarah
It's music to my ears because I feel like someone's explaining to me how my body works. You know, and I don't feel like there's a lot of talk about this kind of stuff out there, at least from my point of view, unless you know to look for it.
08:29 - Aleta
Yeah, yeah, and especially right in the ADHD world, where we're talking so much about our brains and our minds and cognition and and we forget, I think about, like the lower 90% of our body.
08:40 - Sarah
Yeah, and you start thinking about our, our perfectionism, and how hard I mean we must be so hard on ourselves. If you know, that's incredible.
08:51 - Speaker 5
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09:11 - Sarah
So another big, broad question would be you know, let's say, I want to get started and I want to be more confident in what I'm eating. What's a good first step to get on to this journey?
09:22 - Aleta
Yeah, yeah, I mean first step right, there's so many pieces to it. Just let me back up. Like the the foundation to the foundation, I would say, is really like exploring and identifying values, and I really love using like a values based approach. So I feel like we won't really make changes to our thoughts and our behaviors and our actions unless we really have a reason to do so. Right, and ADHD years often are just sort of like bopping through the world, like doing things at a whim without really understanding why we're doing them.
10:05
But when we can really understand and connect with, like why something isn't serving us or like those deeper, underlying, underlying reasons of why we might want something to be different, then it's easier to to be persistent and to keep showing up in the process, even when, like, maybe things don't go as we planned or we expected. It's a lot easier to be self compassionate when, when we're connected to values. And so I would say, like, for someone who's starting on this process, really get curious about how gaining more confidence with food and eating would actually help you move closer to those things that matter most to you in life, and connecting with values can be really empowering, and I find that a thoughtful place to start, because ADHDers struggle so much with self awareness right. So it's a way to really get to know yourself, but not necessarily having to do that like in the moment when you're trying to make a decision.
11:00 - Sarah
So what's an example of a value?
11:03 - Aleta
Yeah, there's so many my own personal values, like relationships and connections. So family and friends are really really important to me. Adventure and being outdoors and that for me like for food needs, right, Like I need to fuel my body in order to be able to go out skiing all day and I've really felt that experience of not meeting those food needs and then just like not being able to ski and feeling terrible. So those are just a couple examples. There's lots of like values sorting exercises online. That can be really helpful and it can be hard to narrow down to like five or 10. But but knowing like those can shift over time and just really thinking about like what matters right now, in this moment.
11:46 - Sarah
Yeah, awesome. So where can our listeners find out more about you and learn more about the stuff you're teaching?
11:54 - Aleta
Yeah, so I'm online at wiseheartnutritioncom so I have a private practice. It's myself and another dietitian, sarah Kushner, who is also an ADHD dietitian, and we both work with clients one-on-one. And then we also have I had been leading a group program. It was like a three-month group program for several years and it was really great, but it was also a little hard because people would want to join in between and then by the time signups came they had kind of lost motivation. And 12 weeks it was just so much material to digest. So we're sort of restructuring it into a monthly membership where people can kind of get the foundations and then there'll a lot more like community support and they'll sort of like get information as they go. So we're launching that in April. We're really excited and if you want to get on the interest list, people will get early access as like founding members. So, yeah, go ahead and sign up for that. And then Instagram I'm the underscore ADHD. Underscore RD.
12:57 - Sarah
And where would you go to sign up for this group?
12:59 - Aleta
yeah. So if you go to my website, wiseheartnutritioncom backslash ADHD, there should be a little little form to fill out with your name and your email and we'll be sending emails out in the next couple weeks, kind of getting people excited and doing some sneak peeks yeah, yeah, so you, you come and go as you please as part of the membership yeah, yeah, so it's like a monthly.
13:22
You just pay like a small monthly fee, um, and then you have access to like all of these different resources. You can do it self-paced. You can join live calls. So it's just a little more accessible for for neurodivergent folks totally, that sounds perfect.
13:37 - Sarah
Is there anything I I left out that you want to add to the conversation or not?
13:42 - Aleta
to put you on the spot In the work with nutrition and body image and folks who have maybe struggled with disordered eating or have been stuck in diet culture. There is so much shame that shows up. And then there's the added layer of being neurodivergent and all of the shame and frustration that comes with that. And so, yeah, I just really encourage people to be open to practicing self-compassion. I used to be open to practicing self-compassion. I used to be like adamantly against it. I thought it was like this idea of giving up and didn't ever think like I had the capacity to really tap into that. And so, yeah, I would say like that's such a big piece of the work that I do with clients and then personally right, like how, how I continue to show up every single day and feed myself and nourish my brain and my body.
14:40 - Sarah
Yeah, that's really interesting Cause I've been hearing self-compassion come up more and more lately and it sounds like something to tap into, so thank you for adding that piece. I think, it's really course. Thank you so much for being on the show and it was wonderful to meet you.
