ADHD Diet: Eat Right To Be Right By Following Four Simple Rules

by Rob

ADHD Diet

It’s no secret that I’m an advocate for Diet as being one of the pillars for building a better lifestyle with ADHD. With extensive research having been done on everything on the food that we eat to the effect diet has on ADHD, we now know that the truth is out there.

We just need to follow it.

Over the past few years, what I eat has improved dramatically – and so has my life with ADHD. Unless my diet craters and I eat something unhealthy (like at a Wedding, watch out chocolate cake), the sensations of a cloudy brain or a being dumb have disappeared. And it isn’t hard to do.

With all the information on diets, must-do’s and how-to’s available, it can be difficult to know where to begin – and when you don’t know where to begin, you aren’t going to get started. So let’s cut through the noise and make it easy.

Below are four simple rules to follow. If you follow the simple rules for eating below for just 30 days, I guarantee that you will find your ADHD to be remarkably less present and less invasive in your day to day life.

That’s all it takes. Four rules and 30 days.

A SIMPLER APPROACH TO EATING

When in doubt, I say it’s time to simplify. Remove the unnecessary and unhelpful, enhancing the important as you go. And this is how we will be approaching your diet.

I won’t be involving myself with Diet Snobbery (my diet is better than yours, and so on), but rather with helping you identify the foods you should – and shouldn’t – be eating to turn you into an ADHDer: Level Awesome.

THE EAT RIGHT RULES

Rule One: Eat Natural, Normal and Unprocessed

It’s stunning that I have to outline this – not because of you, but because of how much unnatural, abnormal and processed food we have in society.

Your body is the product of thousands upon thousands of years of evolution. Most of the chemicals found in today’s foods are not.

Thus, think of it as a puzzle you need to put together – will this food fit in best with my naturally developed body, or do I need to find something a littler closer to nature? In most cases the food you hold in your hands and the food your body needs will not be two pieces of the same puzzle.

The added benefit of natural, normal and unprocessed foods is that you don’t lose the good stuff(1) before it gets on your plate. Avoid processed grains, genetically modified vegetables and “junk food” like the plague. It will not help.

Rule Two: Buy In The Supermarket But Choose Like It Didn’t Exist

If you want to obey rule one, the easiest way is to live by the maxim of ‘if you could spear it, you can eat it’. And the easiest way to do this is to pretend like your supermarket didn’t exist.

Let’s explore how:

  • Eat fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables by only eating what is in season.(2)
  • Get meat that’s fresh from the farm (ask your butcher) and uncaged, grain-fed animal products. Eating like a caveman doesn’t mean acting like one.
  • Go for preservative free and avoid anything with ingredients you can’t easily decode.
  • And finally, kill the candy. Although there are some rare exceptions to this (70%+ dark chocolate), 99% of what’s on offer is now off limits.

Need some motivation? Watch Robert Lustig’s Sugar: The Bitter Truth.

Rule Three: Water, And Lots Of It

Easy to overlook, but important to understand. On a statistical average, your body is approximately 57% water and this volume needs to be kept. Water is the elixir of life and you need to be drinking it, daily, by the glassful.

Before you go all Humphrey Bogart and insist that you’ll stick to Whisky and be fine, don’t. You aren’t Bogart, this isn’t The African Queen and your water won’t give you Dysentery. Drink the water and feel good.

Rule Four: If In Doubt, Don’t

Yes, you want to eat a wide variety of vegetables, fruits and meats. Yes, you want to enjoy the food you eat.

But if you’re not sure about that piece of bread you’re holding on your hand, avoid it like the plague. Don’t let it touch your lips until you know exactly what you’re putting into your body.

You wouldn’t use an unmarked fuel valve for your filling up your Porsche, would you? Of course not. You’d be sure what you were fueling up with before pouring it into a powerful machine. The same goes for the food you eat – make sure you know what’s in it.

When you follow these rules you’ll find yourself getting plenty of the good stuff (the aforementioned vitamins and nutrients) and less of the bad stuff (additives and chemicals).

1. The nutrients, minerals, vitamins, proteins etc that keep your body ticking the right way
2. Due to the size and scope of the world, it would be impractical for me to include a guide on this. Google [your country] seasonal [fruit/nut/ vegetables] for the answers.

Where Did This All Come From?

Have you ever wished that you could cut the reliance on drugs (some of which have no clear long term effects) for taking care of your ADHD? Do you want your ADHD to essentially go away?

The extract above is from The S.E.E.D. Approach To Drug Free ADHD, my upcoming book. To be kept in the loop when it gets released, and to get more information to help you go Drug Free with ADHD, subscribe to the blog by putting your details up the top right of this page.

So You Want To Overcome Your ADHD? Follow These Three Simple Rules

by Rob

So You Want To Overcome ADHD? Follow These Three Simple Rules

“Just remember mate, go slow. You already know this stuff – they don’t. Give them a few moments to breathe and soak it all in before you hit them with the next big point. They need to know this stuff”

- Gerry, my mentor, before I took the stage at the NDCO Accessing The Future Conference

At the start of December this year, I delivered a keynote to an audience of a few hundred people entitled “720 Days Later”. In it I told the stories of two big achievements I’d had since last speaking at the conference, and the three principles that had underpinned them both. You can see the slides here.

With ADHD, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed or like you’re not really making progress. And the fact is, some times you really are overwhelmed and you aren’t actually making any progress. Tough but true.

If you really want to kick the ADHD habits that are holding you back next year, and start achieving that awesome potential that you know you have, you need to lay a framework and understand these principles in advance. It won’t necessarily be easy, and that’s why we’re preparing now.

As the old saying goes – if you want peace, prepare for war.
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How to Start (And Keep) Exercising, And Do The Impossible

by Rob

(Apologies for the loud voice – this is my first recorded call and I had no idea I was this loud)

When it comes to ADHD, I’m a strong beleiver in overcoming the symptoms by taking care of the basics first. This means addressing Diet, Exercise, Mindset and Self-Awareness before moving towards other solutions.

I believe in this because there’s no point in supplementing with something that you don’t know the long term effects of (medication) when there’s a natural, proven short term solution. The thing is, though, that some of the steps you need to take towards overcoming ADHD symptoms and building an ADHD lifestyle that works for you can feel difficult. Impossible even.

Enter Steve Kamb.

Recently I had a chat with Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness about why the impossible is possible, and how you can easily start making exercise a part of your ADHD lifestyle. The guy is switched on and knows what he’s talking about..

Steve runs a successful business called Nerd Fitness. In the past three years, he’s grown his supportive community (affectionately known as The Rebellion) to over 10,000 email subscribers and a forum with around 100,000 posts at the time of writing.

People listen to Steve – and for good reason.

Steve has a way of making even the most daunting tasks seem possible (like gambling a night away in Monte Carlo on a tight budget, or travelling the world for just $400 on plane fare).

His blog posts and products have helped people around the world to lose weight, build muscle, get fit and genuinely improve their lives. But more than anything else he’s a down to earth and easy to hang out with guy. I know this first hand from the first time we met . Steve was on his Epic Quest, where I twisted his arm to come out and party with strangers.

Steve’s provided a veritable goldmine of advice in this interview, so make sure you take notes.

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Sleep On Demand: How To Fall Asleep By Choice

by Rob

Sleep and ADHD - Sleep On Demand

Sleep and ADHD have a delicate relationship. 

When you’re trying to get some extra shut eye, there are a whole range of factors at play. There’s the levels of melatonin in your body, the chemicals you’ve recently imbibed (like caffeine, ginseng, kava and other stimulants/depressants), your environment, mind state and stress and anxiety levels. Getting all of these factors to play nicely together can make it difficult to sleep when you have ADHD.

At the time of being diagnosed with ADHD my sleep patterns were all over the place. I was lucky to get in four solid hours per night (sometimes it was self inflicted), rarely slept right through and woke up feeling like I was running on fumes.

Over the last few years, I’ve learned a lot of things. A lot of this was from when I proudly survived on minimal sleep (although in many ways, I hated it), and as I’ve improved my sleeping habits they’ve served me well.

Understanding The Basics Of Sleep

Let’s make sleep simple by breaking it down into something we can manage. For all intensive purposes, we will approach Sleep as being made up of four basic factors:

  1. The quality of your sleep (how good it is)
  2. The quantity of your sleep (how many hours you sleep)
  3. How quickly you fall asleep
  4. How quickly you wake up

Each of these factors has a compounding effect on the others, either improving or weaking them. This means that if you’re getting great sleep, but not getting it very often, you’re likely to be affecting how quickly you fall asleep and wake up.

By addressing each of these factors individually you can tweak and optimise your sleep related habits. In turn, you get better quality sleep – and more of it.

Before we go any further, one more thing on sleep foundations. Your sleep will always be affected by your day to day life. If you eat a bad ADHD Diet, and exercise isn’t high on your priorities, you’ll find it tougher to get positive results. Make sure you take care of the ADHD basics, and the rest can take care of itself.

How To Improve Your Sleep – Tonight

Before you can start worrying about the quality or quantity of sleep that you’re getting, you need to ensure that you’re actually falling asleep. Trying to sleep with ADHD can feel like a bit like being trapped in a prison – you’re lying there, trying to sleep… but you just can’t.

This sucks. Luckily, you don’t have to do this anymore.

I now have two steps that I take every night before falling asleep that ensure I’ll pass out not long after my head hits the pillow. Neither involves exhausting myself (it used to) or any kind of wierd drug, and both can be done anywhere.

Step One: The Unplug

Unplugging is important for ADHDers. It gives us the opportunity to wind down and have our brain relax before we hop into bed – an imperative for getting decent sleep.

Unplugging in this sense means getting off the computer, turning off the TV and stopping playing with devices that are backlight. These stimulate your brain, making it difficult for it relax. So what do we do instead?

First, we ensure that we will unplug. I work backwards, counting ultradian rythyms, from the time that I’m going to be getting up to calculate the time I need to be in bed (more on that in another post). Then, I allocate an extra 30 minutes of “wind down” time. This is time when the screens are off and the relaxation begins.

In this 30 minute window, I’ll do one (or more!) of of the following activities. I find that by pre-planning what I’ll do to fill in this time, I reduce the chances of getting distracted and “just checking” facebook or any other screen related activities – and thus ruining my unplug. Just like in a zombie invasion, preparation is key.

  • Read (fiction only). Fiction lets you unwind and imagine the story, much like a dream. Non-Fiction will keep you awake and thinking. I’ll use a Kindle for this.
  • Stretch. Part of my ADHD and Exercise routine is Krav Maga and Muay Thai, and as a result I’ve always got a muscle worth stretching. I find by taking 10 – 15 minutes and stretching out my body, I’m more relaxed when I get into bed.
  • Stream Of Conscious Writing. This is a simple activity, but really helps unwind your brain. Put a pen on a piece of A4 Paper, and dump your thoughts. If halfway through a sentence you find you’ve changed thoughts, change your sentence – there are no rules of grammar here! Keep going until you reach empty.
  • Gratitude Journal. There’s nothing worse than being stressed, so at the end of the day I’ll take a few minutes and write down the things I’m grateful for. It keeps my life in perspective, even when the chips are down.
  • Daily Review. I’m a big advocate of the daily review. It helps me see what I’ve accomplished, wins I’ve had, lessons I’ve learned and how I can improve. Doing this every day helps keep to keep focus on goals and self awareness.

Once you’ve had your wind down window, it’s time to get under the covers.

Step Two: Getting Under The Covers

I won’t make this long, nor will I make it difficult. Getting to sleep is probably the biggest challenge for individuals with ADHD, but by having unplugged for at least 30 minutes before hand we give ourselves a solid foundation to start with.

I often found it hard to establish a thought pattern before falling asleep, and tried all manner of things. Counting sheep, focusing on breathing – you name it I did it. But I’ve now settled into a powerful way of falling asleep each night.

This technique is called the List Technique, and I learned about it from Daniel Ternes, author of one of the most comprehensive guides to sleep that I’ve ever seen, Sleep Hack Dojo. It’s a deceptively simple technique that he expands on (amongst other things) in Sleep Hack Dojo, and everyone I’ve shared it with gets the same results.

It works as follows.

  1. Select a topic that you’ll be listing from. It could be animals, bands, movies or so on.
  2. Go through the Alphabet and name one thing from that topic for each letter. For example if you were using animals, your mind would think “A…. Aardvark, B is for Bat, C… is for Cat, D for.. um… Dolphin” and so on. You get the idea.
  3. Doze off before you get to the letter M. If, by some chance, you do get all the way through the cycle, pick a new topic and start again.

Why is this technique so valuable, and why does it work? Let me explain.

First of all, this is a form of repetative and focused meditation. You’re repeating a simple activity that requires little brain power, and at the same time slowing down your brain.

Secondly, although the first 5 – 10 letters will be quite easy, your brain starts to unwind pretty fast and you’ll find yourself falling asleep in no time.

Building Your Own On Ramp

These are the techniques that have worked from me, and I’ve pulled them from a variety of resources. Admittedly, I haven’t touched on other techniques such as ice baths or melatonin supplements, nor have I discussed the importance of lightblocking and exercise for sleep. These are “more advanced” sleep hacks, which I’ll write about later.

Now the question is, what works for you? What is your current on ramp for your ADHD Sleep, and how can you improve it?

See you in dream land.

- Note: If any of you ever get past the letter M with the list technique, let me know. I’ll be truly impressed. Rob.

Confidence: Why You Don’t Have It And How To Build It

by Rob

Coping With ADHD : Building Confidence With ADHD

“In my mind, she cheated because I wasn’t good enough. I remember making the decision that I will never not be good enough again”

- Will Smith, self-diagnosed ADHD, to Time Magazine

When asked about coping with ADHD, a common challenge most adults with ADHD will mention is dealing with low confidence.

When you have ADHD, low confidence becomes an insidious mental mind-game that we play on ourselves, and it can seep into all the various parts of your life. Your job can be threatened, your relationships can crumble and your total sense of well being is at risk.

How do I know this? Let me put on my ‘Been There, Done That’ hat and explain.

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Six Confessions Of An ADHD Technology Addict

by Rob

ADHD and Technology - 6 Confessions Of An ADHD Technology ADDict

Do androids dream of electric sheep? Sometimes there's such thing as too much technology in your life. Photo by thevlue

For the past 20 years, I’ve been a heavy hitter when it comes to technology. 

From my humble beginnings in MS-Dos playing Word Rescue and Commander Keen (nerd Rob got balanced out by nerdier Rob) to later days with Alex The Kid on the Master System, and my uses of technology to overcome my ADHD, one thing is clear.

I am an ADHD Technology Addict.

Although I try to keep my lifestyle as minimalist as possible, I have struggled to bring the same ideals over to my digital life. At my worst, I am a digital pack-rat. At my best, I’m a cyborg from the future set on optimising every element of my life.

I run a review site for Assitive and Special Education Technology, which gives me good reason to search for new and interesting ways of applying technology. It also puts me neck deep in that world.

Now even though the benefits of being neck deep in usable technology and applied solutions are many – and they’ve really helped me to overcome my ADHD – it runs a risk of corrupting you. As a result, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes.

Here’s just a few…

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The Zen Of A Beatdown: You Don’t Know Sh*t, And That’s OK.

by Rob

What You Learn On The Mat Will Help You In Life - Photo by Mike Nelson

The biggest challenge I find with ADHD?

Slowing my million miles an hour mind down… and dealing with the fact that I’m not perfect.

In my mid-teens, after rediscovering books, I started to take a great pleasure in proving to people that I knew more than they did. I became the know-it-all of everything I possibly could as a way of overcoming my own lack of confidence.

And because whenever I delivered my thoughts and learnings with such gusto it was accepted as fact, I started to develop an ego. A fragile ego that was founded on being right all the time and being “better” than other people.

What does this have to do with beatdowns? Let me explain…

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Coping With ADHD: It’s A Lifestyle Thing

by Rob

Photo johntrainor

I remember when I was first diagnosed with ADHD. It was the most uplifting, yet simultaneously crushing, moment of my life.

The upside was that finally there was a reason – something that I could put my finger on and say “Here! This is where the problem comes from!”

The downside was that there was a problem that I now had to fix.

Over the past few years, I’ve learned a few things about coping with ADHD. Let me tell you, it isn’t about “magic pills” or “herbal remedies” by a long shot – these are just band aid solutions that can help you stablise. But they’ll never truly help you cope with ADHD.

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3 Reasons You Need To Get More Sleep When You Have ADHD

by Rob

Photo by Smath.

One common challenge for people looking for people with ADHD is getting sleep that matters. Depending on who we are, we either avoid it completely or don’t get the quality that our body so badly needs.

The benefits of sleep can’t be overlooked. From looking good to being mentally switched-on, getting seriously good sleep will give you the ability to be at the top of your game and overcome your ADHD on a daily basis. Think you can do this by powering yourself through the face with caffeine? Think again. Sure, coffee can help cure cancer but sleep deprivation leads to death.

What Ever Happened To “Sleep When You’re Dead”?

For the majority of my teens, as well as early twenties, “Sleep When You’re Dead” was my motto. I figured I was invincible, that I could get away with little to no sleep and live to tell the tale.

I was lucky.

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