Hello my darlings!
I got really shittiliciously sick on my last day while holidaying in Brazil, but now that my nose has finally stopped thinking it’s a rain cloud and my derrière has understood that it was never built to become a liquid fertilizer machine, I am back and ready to rumble. Not too much though, because well… read the previous sentence.
Shit happens (pun very much intended), so let’s move onto the topic for today, and that is… Vegetables. Yeah, yeah, ‘boring’, ‘who are you, my mom’, ‘I never signed up for useful advice that could save my life, I’m just here for your swear words’ et cetera.
Well, tough fucking titties.
I work on the daily with people who are not aware that their diet is literally going to kill them, and it honestly pisses me off. It pisses me off that in this society, with THIS level of scientific advancement, and THIS access to information, we STILL have people thinking it’s ok to have no fruits or vegetables at all and instead have Frankenfoods ultra-processed foods with a butt load of trans fats.
To be honest, I was one of those people in my early twenties. When I moved out of my parents’ home, I started working an incredibly demanding job which was driving both my mental and my physical health into the ground. My diet back then consisted of:
Coffee, with lots of sugar and milk of course.
Broodjes, meaning ‘little breads’, a very typical lunch in Belgium: French baguette, topped with whatever savory spread, meat or cheese you want. Basically like Subway but with a lot more mayo involved.
Frozen pizza with a truck worth of cheese and meat.
Frozen lasagna. Not the vegetable kind, because I was ‘not a rabbit’.
Lots of fries with whatever kind of mayo-based sauce and meat. I also had a strict ‘liquids don’t count as dessert calories’ rule which meant that I drank milkshakes on the regular 🤦♀️
So yeah. Not exactly the kind of diet you would expect from your friendly neighborhood health coach, amirite? Luckily I understood after a while that my diet and non-existent fitness were not doing me any favors, so I changed everything around. I even had a healthy food blog at some point!
We are all so keen to improve our focus and boost our productivity, especially as ADHDers, but often don’t want to change our diet when that would have a profoundly potent effect on it.
Let’s have a look at ‘sugar crashes’ for example. To put it (too) simply, when you eat or drink too many simple sugars (soda, cake, candy, white bread, potatoes etc.), a lot of glucose enters your blood stream all at once. After your body shits itself because of the sugar spike it just spotted notices the glucose, it releases insulin to quickly ‘clean’ the excess sugar out of your blood by using it for energy or storing it as glycogen or fat.
The problem is that that process can take out too much glucose (the ‘crash’ part of the sugar crash), leading to symptoms like brain fog, concentration problems, confusion, jitters, nervousness, anxiety and irritability. You will probably also crave something to get your glucose levels back up, like sugar, and if you have too much of that the whole process starts again.
If you have a diet high in simple sugars, you are basically putting yourself through this blood sugar rollercoaster ride every day. As you can see from the symptoms, this doesn’t exactly help a brain that already causes all those symptoms by its lonesome.
Vegetables are a great source of fiber, and fiber keeps you feeling full and slows down the digestion of sugars. They really help to prevent those glucose spikes in the first place.
Another reason why our diet needs to be on point: certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies can directly or indirectly make our less productive traits (much) worse. Let’s take magnesium deficiency for example. Symptoms of magnesium deficiency are inattention, agitation, fear, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and restlessness. Sounds familiar? Now guess where you can find magnesium? Avocados, leafy greens, edamame, broccoli, beans etc. So… once again, veggies to the rescue.
Right now, for 99.99999999999999999% of my health clients (which do not all have ADHD by the way), the most important thing we end up working on is incorporating fruits and veggies into their diet. And the main objection I get is “I don’t like any fruits or vegetables”. So…
You don't like tomato sauce on your pizza or with your pasta?
Don't like banana in your shake?
Don't like cole (cabbage) in your slaw?
Don’t like apple in your pie?
Don't like onion in your ring? Why does that sound weird?
Most people like at least a few fruits and veggies. What they often don’t like is the way they are prepared, or not prepared. I for one am not fond of raw veggies one bit. Salads can be delicious, but for me a nice salad would have to incorporate at least some cooked veggies. Just raw? Without dressing, spices, oil, herbs? Um, are you crazy? I’d rather eat my shoe, and I can’t imagine my shoe being tasty, what with all the dog poop in this city.
Us ADHDers aren’t good at doing or eating something we absolutely hate. You can try, but it probably won’t last. The good news is that no one said you have to eat your veggies raw, boiled or steamed.
I bet my ass (and your ass, everybody's ass, it's an omnipresent ass-bet) that you don't generally boil your meat, fish, or plant-based protein either. So why the fuck would you do your veggies that disservice? Why not give your veggies the same love as your protein? Meaning, caramelize them, sauté them, use fats or spices or herbs or stock or condiments to make them tasty.
Just have them, your brain will thank you.
I’ve been thinking about creating a group coaching program for ADHDers who want to work on their health. It would be much cheaper than individual coaching, and we’d be building a little community. Let me know in the comments or send me a message to tell me what you think of this idea!
PS1: if you’d like to work with someone who understands your ADHD brain and can help you work with it rather than against it, you can find my website here. I promise I don’t bite as much as my writing might suggest.
PS2: you can also become a paid subscriber/member via Buy Me A Coffee. Paid subscribers have the opportunity to ask me a question every month, after which I send you a recording of my answer to your and other members’ questions. If you appreciate what I do but a subscription doesn’t fit your budget, you can always buy me a coffee instead!
I just now got the image, its an onion and rings lol...onion rings. oh my brain
Maggie, I love how you wrote a whole post full of profanity to pitch eating your vegetables. Just eat your damn vegetables!