Losing Weight with ADHD

Today we are discussing how ADHD paralysis may be coming in to play. We cover: 1. What exactly is ADHD paralysis? How does it show up and affect us? 2. What it has to do with your weight loss journey 3. Some ways to help lessen it or move through it I'd love to hear if this resonates with you! And don't forget that The Anchor, my brand new membership, is now open! It is a great opportuni...

This week I am talking about finding your freedom in your weight loss. Sometimes finding freedom to do things in our own unique way can be the key to success! We discuss: What does that even mean to have freedom in weight loss? How can you find it as someone with ADHD? Don't I have to follow a program or plan that already exists? I also talked about my new membership program, The Anchor! It i...

Today's episode is for anyone who has experienced emotional dysregulation (which is pretty much all of us!). We are going to cover: 1. What is emotional regulation and dysregulation, especially as it relates to ADHD? 2. What does this have to do with weight loss? (Believe me, it is STRONGLY connected!) 3. What are some of the things we can do to help develop regulation? I also discussed at th...

Today we are discussing interoceptive awareness and how it might affect your weight loss and life in general with ADHD.  I cover the ways it might show up for you, as well as 7 different tips on how to work on developing your body awareness.  I'd love to hear from you! You can connect with me in the following ways: Instagram: @thejennwatts Email: jennifer@jenniferwatts.ca If you enjoyed this...

Is losing weight and dieting the key to having a happier life? To feeling better? Is dieting the answer? In today's episode, I talk about dieting and ADHD. Here are some key points that I discuss:  Feeling like you want to be done with something, especially losing the weight, is a totally normal way to feel and when you have ADHD, it can be really easy to fixate on losing the weight.  When tr...

In today's episode, I talk about something that I know you probably will understand, self-compassion. Sometimes things feel hard and you might not be very kind to yourself. I needed this reminder for myself, and I'm sharing it with you.  I discuss what self-compassion means, what it is not, and why it matters in weight loss:  Stephen Hickman defines compassion as "the awareness of s...

Today I talk about your environment and how it can affect your ADHD. How are your surroundings impacting you? Is that affecting your weight loss? Find out in today's episode! Some things I discuss are:  If you are a person who is naturally more attuned to your environment, it can be exhausting, and it can impact your mood. More clutter can impact your mood and take up your mental energy, whic...

This week I talk about autonomy and ADHD. I don't have a list for you this week, but here are some of the items I discuss: Autonomy is the experience of acting from choice rather than feeling pressured to act.  I kind of think of it as having input, having a say.  It's not just you reacting and following a set of rules or something. It's you having a choice or a say in whatever you&...

This week I'm so excited to share this interview I did with Karrie Lemansky. Karrie is a self-described neurospicy friend and Chief Weirdo of Karrie Out Loud! She has always lived with ADHD (but was misdiagnosed with anxiety and depression until age 49). She helps out-of-the-box thinkers and ADHD women build better businesses so they can have better lives because of it and to be able to use t...

I think we all know that walking is good for you, but this week, I talk about walking in the context of weight loss and how weight loss,  ADHD, and the interconnection between all of them. This week, I talk about 11 ways that walking can be beneficial for you:  Increases your energy Stress reduction Amazing for your overall health Better sleep  Lower your blood sugar Improves your mood Burns calor...

Today's episode is all about motivation and how it affects us people with ADHD and how it ties into when you have a weight loss goal. You might know the feeling of wanting to get started on something, but you just aren't able to get going or get any kind of forward progress.  Today I talk about six ways that motivation may or may not show up for you and the kind of struggles that you mig...

This week I talk about impulsivity and how it relates to losing weight with ADHD. I've touched on this briefly in other episodes, but this episode is all about impulsivity specifically. In this episode, I discuss the six ways that impulsivity might show up for you and six ways that you can combat impulsivity.  Six ways that impulsivity might show up for you:  Disrupted eating patterns- waitin...

This week's episode is a little bit different than I expected. I had a tough family situation come up and I wanted to talk about when things get hard.  This is the time when you really get a good view of where you stand with your emotions, with your drive, with your habits, all of that kind of stuff.  When things have happened that kind of throw you off course or become challenging it's...

This week I talk about meal planning for weight loss with ADHD. You know how I love a list, so here are three different lists to help you:  Five reasons why meal planning might be harder for us: Executive functioning can affect our ability to think ahead, make a list, prepping food Time management and time perception might be incorrect or can be a struggle Overwhelm with food choices can lead to d...

This week I am so excited to share this conversation that I had with Dr. Patty Shutt, founder of Scared Treehouse, a meditation and education center in Boca Raton Florida.  We talk about mindfulness in general, as a branch of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy mixed with Eastern practices like Buddhism.  Dr. Patty shares her own story of ADHD and how she has surrounded herself with her own tribe of peop...

This week we are talking about whether sugar impacts ADHD (or vice versa), whether you could be "addicted", and what to do if you have the thought that you "should" be reducing sugar if you are working towards weight loss.  We discuss 6 ways to approach this: Identify the reason WHY you want to reduce the amount of sugar you're consuming Identify the reasons why you'r...

Today I talk about the last component of the CALM method, movement and mindfulness! Movement is so important for us and for good reason; it helps us to build and maintain muscle mass as we age. More muscle = more burning energy There are so many benefits to incorporating movement into our lives: better sleep, better stress management, balanced cortisol levels!  Movement also increases the producti...

Today I talk about the 3rd part of the CALM method: Lifestyle. There are so many components that go into this, but wanted to focus on stress, sleep, water, and environment.  Stress - are you stressed and your body needs energy from the form of foods like sweet, fatty, or salty foods?  Sleep - sleeping less can affect your hunger levels which could lead to eating more than you normally would Water...

I am so excited to share this week's episode with you. I had a conversation with Jennifer Dent Brown.  This is somebody that I have admired greatly for a while. She is a certified health and life coach and she has her Stop Dieting Forever program and podcast as well.  And she helps women learn to stop dieting and start living. She has also been in our shoes, too! She has struggled with keepin...

This week I talk about the second component of the CALM method: Awareness There are four main components that are important to develop awareness when it comes to weight loss:  Body awareness (or interoception) -  just stopping to notice what's happening in your body Existing patterns - what things are driving your behaviors?  Your thoughts -  these are important because we might not notice th...

Creative planning!  A few episodes ago (in Episode 3), I talked about the four components of my CALM method for weight loss with ADHD.  Today I talk about the C; Creative planning.  We are naturally pretty creative people and it's so important that your plan is individualized and adapted to you. This is not your cookie cutter protocol of planning!  What we're really talking about here is...

This week I want to talk with you about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD).  RSD is extreme emotional sensitivity and pain triggered by the perception that a person has been rejected or criticized by important people in their life.  It may also be triggered by a sense of falling short, failing to meet your own high standards or others' expectations. Nearly 100 percent of people with ADHD h...

Welcome to the podcast! In this episode, I really wanted to share about the connection between ADHD and your weight. I was diagnosed with ADHD within the last year, and I have been doing a lot of research about the connection between ADHD and weight loss. There's actually a lot of research on this topic, but there's not a lot of information on why this connection exists. But today, I sha...

This week I wanted to share my story, just a little bit of history of how I ended up here and why I'm even doing this in the first place. I have struggled with my weight since probably my early teens and although I had ADHD at the time, I didn't know it. I grew up in a time when South Beach, Body for Life, and Atkins diets were all the rage! I share more about how other's comments a...

Stay CALM everybody! This week I am sharing my method for weight loss with ADHD; I call it the CALM method. This is the way that I work with people and what I suggest that they focus on. I give an overview of each of the four main components and ways that you can implement them. I'll dive deeper into each component in the future, but I'm excited to share an overview of this method with y...