Okay. Welcome back, guys. I have Marcelle Rose here, and can you go ahead and introduce yourself? Yeah, sure. So I. A registered nutritionist, coach and eating disorder and emotional eating specialist. So my job is really to help empower women to overcome binge eating, emotional eating and eating disorders and disordered eating and also chronic dieting.

So someone who’s been dieting for years and just wants to get out of that that trap so that they can heal their relationship with food and basically reclaim their lives. Very nice. Okay. And we were talking before the call, like in what ways this can relate to ADHD. And Marcelle had shared that her experience with ADHD is your husband and your son, right?

That’s correct. My personal experience is my husband and my son. But clients, they’re not. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So can we talk about that? Like, how does ADHD and disordered eating like, how are they related sometimes? Yeah. So what we’re learning, we’re learning more all the time about this relationship. And originally I think there were quite a few studies that came through on the connection between bulimia and ADHD.

And now with binge eating disorder, which is a more recently sort of eating disorder that’s been defined. And in the literature we know that there is probably around 30% of people who struggle with binge eating also have ADHD. So that’s quite a large proportion. So that is there is this sort of crossover and I think it’s possibly something that’s very often missed out when people are looking for support, perhaps with binge eating or bulimia, particularly that they’re not screened for ADHD.

So interesting. Now, one thing I didn’t ask you before the call is, is there any relation with anorexia and ADHD? And you tend to say more with anorexia and autism, though you can you can get that relationship as well. There’s definitely a general neurodiversity relationship with eating disorders where, you know, you can see a number of different reasons why or which actually hopefully will get a chance to talk about.

Yeah, and I ask that because personally I dealt with that and we didn’t even discuss this before the call, but and it was more of an issue of control. But there also was from I remember from a very young age, just binge eating all like often and, and to the point that like I remember like being in pain like at like five years old from eating, just overeating.

And it was just like. Like it was an activity. Have you have you dealt with any of that? Like, I’m sure you don’t deal with young people, but what happened? The reason I bring that up is because I kind of got into that habit of binge eating from a young age and then got into my teens and for reasons of control, as well as controlling my weight, ended up going into anorexia, which was you mentioned that you have your ADHD child will like not eat during during the day.

And that’s what I would do and when I was young is basically I would pretend to eat breakfast. I’m sure yours eats breakfast, but I would pretend to eat breakfast. And then it was easy to not eat at school. Yeah. And then I would just go as long as I could not eating and then just went into a cycle that way.

But you talked about like, the basics of like healing your relationship with food. What are the basics? So, I mean, I usually the way that I work is a combination of nutritional therapy, mindset coaching and the eating psychology that is is a big piece as well. And it’s sort of combining those modalities. And so I really do start with I as a nutritionist, I start with the basics of nutrition, but really start slowly, particularly with clients who have binge eating, say, and ADHD.

And because often there’s a lot of overwhelm involved and it’s they perhaps went to to get some help and they were just given a big diet plan to follow or a load of recipes. It can feel very overwhelming and it’s unlikely that they’ll want to continue and affects self-esteem, affects how they feel about themselves and anxiety, etc.. So we have to start really dependent on the individual in front of me, but really slow know slowly at their pace and see where they’re at with their eating at the moment.

But I’d say the very first thing we do is put in the regular meals. So breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, if needed. And we talk around that because I think one of the things that we discussed is that it’s very easy for someone living with ADHD to often forget to eat or whether it’s intentional or not. And often I say with clients, what’s been happening is they’ve forgotten to or held off eating as long as possible, and then they are much more likely to binge eat come late afternoon into the evening and feel completely out of control.

And then the cycle starts again, feeling bad about what may be seen in the binge and, you know, skipping breakfast, holding off, eating, etc.. And that keeps the cycle going on. I hope. Marcelle, before the call, like earlier this week, I had an experience where I had been working with clients, probably had done a podcast, you know, had been kind of busy that morning and I called my husband and I was like, I’m just losing it.

And by that I mean I was feeling like super, super anxious. And he’s like, Well, you sound fine, you’re okay. And I didn’t know what was going on. And I got off the phone with them and realized I hadn’t eaten that day. Why does not eating like that? Why would it why would that cause anxiety? Yeah. So it might be a blood sugar thing because of course, if you’re not eating, you have that blood sugar debt.

And one of the symptoms of that can be feeling a bit shaky, anxious. You know, you’re essentially your body’s saying to you you need to get some food. And that might be one of the reasons why that one of your particular signs to say, actually I need to eat now, but it’s almost got to the point of over hunger.

Yeah. And and that’s one of the things that I think people with ADHD do struggle with because it is known that they’re there. It they they struggle more with introspective ness. And then that’s that that connection between the brain and the body’s organs. So now I was hoping you would bring that up because that has been a conversation in other areas where we like will not get into our bodies.

Now is the way that that we were describing it really with other coaches and stuff I was talking to. Yeah. So tell us more about that nutritionally about like not not noticing the signs or what did you call it? What was the name, interestingly, to Inception? Yes. So it’s really about some of the things that it helps us do is recognize our emotions, which is important as well, which with binge eating, because that’s one of the things that can really drive the binge eating behavior.

But energy as well. And, you know, people knowing when you’re low in energy, knowing what you need and, you know, whether you need rest or looking after yourself in a certain way, And often that low energy can is can also play a role emotionally, single binge eating, but particularly appetite and appetites. The big thing that I often work on with my clients, but I have to have obviously the awareness that if the client has ADHD as well, then that might be something they’re really going to struggle with.

And it’s they know probably when that over hungry like you described, you were like hangry. I didn’t know it, but no, no, no. And, and, or if you’re you know, when you get to the point is over soreness so you know that you know those two ends of this kind of spectrum but you don’t you you might not necessarily get the nuance of okay I’m starting to feel hungry now.

Okay. You know, it’s time to eat. Okay. I’m nicely satiated now and I use a hunger scale to help my clients try and do that. Yes. So that they can every time they eat before they eat while they’re eating and after they first. This helps to train them to try and check in with where they are is to see where they might be on the scale.

And that can be quite difficult, some with ADHD. So we try and talk about what is it that you might what, you know, sign or symptom helps you to realize that you failed. So we try and explore that because for each individual it might be something slightly different apart from obviously when you get over angry and there’s, you know, the usual feelings, often it’s also but not the things in the middle.

And I don’t know if this is related to ADHD or if this is just everyone in, but I do notice, like when I’m extra tired, I tend to want to eat when I’m not hungry and I have correlated in my mind that that means I’m seeking energy. But like what? What would you say that is? Yeah. I mean I think that there’s definitely and that you know, a big element of that because you’re tired but again perhaps not checking in and thinking, okay, what do I need right now?

Am I hungry? Am I bodily hungry or is it head hunger, you know, trying to decipher the difference, but also actually, is it that I need to rest now? Is it that I need to look after myself in a different way? Perhaps it’s not food that I ate I need and it’s trying to work that out. And I think those are the things that can be quite difficult for someone with ADHD.

I think it can be challenging because I find that we can tend to hyperfocus. Yeah, a little bit on the food, even though it’s more that I need to lay down room and rest my mind just tends to hyper focus on the food. Yeah, we were talking. Okay, I want to hear first before we go into that a little bit more about your hunger scale.

How does that work? Yeah, so it’s a scale to 0 to 10 and then it’s got the differences. Start with overly hungry and then the other end of number ten is overly so. And then I have a description along the way and neutral in the middle on each number. So it’s about thinking, okay, I’m about to wait. I wonder where I am on the hunger scale now and just putting it down.

And it’s about doing it without the judgment as well, because some people think, why am I so hungry? Why am I hungry again? Or why am I so hungry? Why me? So that’s critical talk in the talk. And we really want to when we’re doing this work, it’s quite a mindful approach, so we really want to be taking the judgment away.

It’s more about curiosity, just observing what’s going on. Isn’t that interesting? I wonder why that might be, actually. Why? Why might that be holy now? Where am I on the scale when you know it might be that someone feels like, well, it’s not time to be hungry yet, so why am I hungry now? And then perhaps they would look back.

It’s often I use a journal with them to understand triggers and to understand patterns of eating behavior, and they might look back and go, Well, that’s interesting. I had a really small breakfast. Perhaps it was kind of refined carbs and it hasn’t keeping me satiated hasn’t taken me. It’s true. So I’m much more likely to be hungry now, you know, and there’s lots of different reasons why that might be.

I know I personally experience that where there are times that I’m like, Gosh, I just ate like 2 hours ago. Yeah, I really don’t feel like I should be hungry already. And there is that judgment. Yes. And so just getting it sounds like getting curious about it is. Yeah. It’s just the judgment is just so unhelpful. And, you know, for anyone with any kind of eating disorder that is binge eating, for an example, it usually keeps that whole cycle going because you’re picking yourself up, you think you’ve blown it.

And so, well, I might as well carry on. I always describe that with my clients because it ends up in a lot of facets of our life, right? It’s as if you’re driving on the road and you kind of swerve off the road a little bit and instead of just correcting back onto the road, they just take their hands off the wheel.

Yeah, like forget it anyway. Yeah, yeah. I use a cycle, a bike ride analogy of that. But similarly, tell us your analogy. So my, my analogy is very much and I think it’s completely true. So you know, what we expect when you’re recovering from binge eating is that there are going to be you might still binge initially, but now gradually be, you know, more spread out and less severe, etc., as you go along.

But unless somebody has been going along, you’re cycling along, you might hit bumps on the road and that sign you come off your bike. But when you get back on the bike, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost everything. It doesn’t mean you’re back at square one. That’s your journey. Yeah. You don’t you like transport back to where you want to go, You go where you are, and it’s already learned so much.

And I, I actually call, you know, a binge eating episode, a learning experience or a learning episode because actually it’s so important that we use that information for that. Those who said, you know what? What led to that binge, why did that come up to understand what was going on there? And it’s it’s gold. It’s like it’s actually really important information.

So it’s actually really beneficial. And if someone suddenly started working with me and suddenly had no changes and nothing happened, then I would think something’s going on here. And I don’t think there’s something that there’s going to be an issue with recovery. So we expect on the way. Yeah, yeah, I love that expecting I again working with clients in a lot of different ways, I’m like we set up expectation so like an executive function scale is time management, right?

And when we’re working with our time management, I’m like, expect to not want to do a thing you plan to do. That’s just, that’s how it’s going to be. And then when it’s so fun, when they come back and they’re like, Well, because you told me to expect this. Yeah, it wasn’t a problem when when it happened. Is that kind of how it is with the founder?

Yeah. So then so yeah, it’s definitely, you know, it’s, I think it’s very important to have those expectations in there. But often I think with people struggling with disordered eating is this there’s still it takes a while to get that belief that actually they can do this. I mean, there’s a lot of self-doubt. There’s a it’s a deep rooted belief because perhaps they’ve been dieting for years.

So they and every time they felt the diet failed eventually or they failed, they don’t think the diet failed. They think they failed. But it is the diet and and they’re back. So it’s like everything I’ve tried, it’s never worked. So what’s convincing about this? Yeah. Yes I in coaching we talk about like you cannot use your past experience to judge what you can do today.

Yeah. That you have to just believe in yourself now and that that you can have that self-belief now, not based on your past experience. Yeah, so that’s very interesting. Okay, so you had some examples of clients with ADHD that you had worked with. You talk about that. Yeah. So I’ve worked with quite a few and I tend to see a sort of familiar pattern.

I’m just thinking of one lady who really struggles. She, I think she started off more as a restrictive eater and was put on medication, realized that the medication sort of dampened her appetite. Certainly earlier on in the day. And but then, you know, came off softer time because it wasn’t working. And then they realized she was losing too much weight, then ended up binge eating.

And what was happening was which she was she was deliberately holding off eating. And then and she got binge eating and got herself into into such a state with it. So we had to she had her hours of work, were all over the place. She was skipping meals. She wasn’t she was going into work so she wouldn’t have breakfast.

She was going to work without, you know, having anything. And then it would be like either sort of grazing the rest of the day and then perhaps, you know, a sort of binge eating episode later on in the evening. And actually we just managed to work through putting in the breakfast that was k start off waves. As I mentioned.

You know, really she was able to actually her partner was cooking dinners, which she wasn’t eating because she so so by the time she got to dinner time from the, you know, snacking or bingeing that she couldn’t eat the meal. So but actually, it was amazing. You know, I said we need to use this, your partner’s cooking. And so he would cook extra, so she would take in the leftovers for lunch into her work and she would eat with her partner.

And that really helped to stabilize her eating. Know, like regulate it. Yeah, we

So one thing that I noticed with clients is cooking can be overwhelming or boring long or difficult. Like how.

How do you handle that? Yeah, I think a lot of lost clients, particularly those with ADHD on it. Yeah, quite overwhelming. They want to be doing that stuff. So we really start with where they’re at and see what we can add in very much about adding in rather than stripping out. So that see where they’re starting with, with the meal, how can we try and make sure that they’re having something a bit more balance that can help reduce the cravings.

So it’s making sure they’re having some protein with their food and, you know, some fiber in the soul veggies particularly, but maybe switching out some of the refined carbohydrates. And those are things like carbohydrates and things like bread, pasta, rice, etc., but switching in something more wholegrain. So that they’ve got that slower release of it basically. So release of glucose into the bloodstream.

So that helps to stabilize blood sugar and so does the fiber. And so to say protein in the middle and some natural fats as well. So and it helps them to feel more satisfied. So we look at what they’re having and really start very slowly and trying to switch things out with that. Don’t try and run, but can look really perhaps meals that are it’s just easily assembled males as well so that you’ve got different ingredients ready, just ensuring that you’ve got certain ingredients ready in the fridge so that you can assemble a plate without having to necessarily cook up a whole recipe and that look like so it might look like as it if

you can get there from the store, some ready roasted chicken, for example, if they haven’t got time to roast chicken and some, you know, bags and salad and that they can just adult some or some grain you can buy the so grain mixtures and you can have the same there but where you are but you know quinoa with all different grains or beans and things in the mixture so you can easily just heat that up.

So it’s it’s like how can you assemble? So that’s very basic and, but it’s just thinking about easy ways and we’re not we just want to try and keep it as simple as possible to start with. But also you can buy and where we are, you can get things like delivery boxes where it comes ready with the recipe.

You will do the rest of the recipe. It comes with all the ingredients already laid out, ready to go, and you just have to throw it together and it tells you how to do it. So a lot of my clients who are very busy workers, if they run their own business or whatever, they find that quite a few days a week to do that and then they know they’ve got something there that they don’t even have to think about.

And some of my clients, I think things like cooking more batch cooking or cooking extra and having to the next day is really useful as well. I was telling Marcelle before we started recording, like personally, I never cook a dinner without cooking enough food for a whole nother meal. Yes. And so I guess that would be considered batch cooking.

But you also mentioned batch cooking in the way that like they can put it in the freezer faster and then I will like make up scrambled eggs for the week. I will make up boiled eggs for the week. I will make a salad. So it’s all just they’re easy as brilliant. And I since my kids were little, I just go get your own food besides dinner.

But we would eat dinner together. But like, there was always the food there where it’s like when you’re hungry, you eat. Yes. And so that was that was very important. But I my ADHD kid, could get very hyper focused mum and what she was doing and forget to eat and then get very low, low blood sugar. Yeah. And I didn’t even know the symptoms of low blood sugar for a time, but I remember when she was very little, we were at our county fair and we walked up to my father in law and he’s like, What’s what’s the matter with her?

And I’m like, What do you mean? And then I like, I looked and she she was kind of like glazed over. And now I realize good shit. And I’m like, she didn’t eat. And she was having a low blood sugar situation. And we didn’t even know when that was. And it wasn’t until she was like, gosh, I think like, well, or something like that where we were at church and she like, ran into a wall as we were walking and I’m like, What is the matter?

And like, just in the car I noticed like she was just glazed over and because of past, like insulin resistance problems with myself and stuff, we had a glucose monitor and I tested her blood sugar and it was just plummeted. Yeah. So because of the ADHD, though, she can get so hyper focused that it’s like, did you remember to eat?

And and being an artist as well can get very much into her projects and and not eat so that but also to your point about stimulant medication a lot of my clients can forget to eat or not feel like eating because of their medication. Yeah yeah and I say a combination of that and I see a lot of hyper psych saying and then and you’re just much more likely to someone who’s prone to it too.

Benji, when you, when you’ve missed out the male and when you haven’t eaten, it’s just one of the things that your body does is produce high level of hunger hormones to get you to go searching, he said. So that’s when you start to crave. You’re much likely to eat the less helpful foods and much more more likely to feel out of control around eating.

And then you got to the point where you are not able to sort of prepare. It’s a helpful male. Yeah, because I, I was telling Marcelle that like I went on what I would call a ketogenic. It’s just I call it a diet, but it’s just the way we live now. Like 13 years ago, I said, I always say before it was cool, which is just, you know, basically protein, veggies, healthy fats and but before that there was binge eating.

I definitely was a binge eater before that. And I feel like it was the types of foods I was eating because I was eating the cookies and the cakes and the breads and things like that. I felt like I was out of control, like it was controlling me. So what was happening there? Yeah, So it could have been a dopamine thing.

Those kind of foods that is known now as hyper palatable foods, particularly that have a sort of concocted combination of sugar and carbs and and certain fats in there that have been that sort of foods industry have worked out that they can fail. But you just can’t. It’s hard to stop eating them. I can I can definitely like relate to that dopamine hit.

Yeah because I wasn’t going for and it’s so interesting now like because I’ve been eating the way I eat for as long as I have like now a cookie doesn’t even sound interesting. Like, but at that time it was like, it was like happiness. It was, yeah, it wasn’t I it wasn’t like an appetite thing. It was like a feeling.

Yes. Yeah. And what we do find is we see that there is that link between people with ADHD and a problem of getting enough dopamine. And it might not be that they’re not producing enough, but perhaps they’re breaking it down more quickly or they’re not. You know, there’s an issue with receptors and yes, in brain, so there’s not that definite link and then that link with dopamine and and binge eating as wanting that that reward, you know, pleasure and reward.

Well, I love what you do. I’m so happy that you’re out there helping people the way you are. And my personal experiences across the board, obviously, like binge eater to anorexic, to binge eater to just finally finding something that works for me where I don’t I don’t feel food is controlling me. So I definitely like I could have been your client ten times over in my life.

But let’s talk about how can people find you? And yes, so I’m on Instagram, I’m at Marcelle Roe’s Nutrition and my website, www.marcellerosenutrition.co.uk and and yeah, you can find me on Facebook as well. And I have a free Facebook group called the FOOD FREEDOM COLLECTIVE as well, which is the Daily support. I do bite sized videos every week really for women to help them heal their relationship with food and feel supported.

And in the same place. Beautiful. I do have a book coming out very soon. I don’t know why this cost is dropping, but it’s called the Binge Freedom Method. And you know, I do love seeing mentioned ADHD in that and a few occasions because it’s relevant to people tend to be aware and it’s essentially four pillars nourish, balance, think and fail to take you through how essentially how I would work with my clients through the nutritional therapy side, but also the eating psychology and mindset stuff as well.

It’s it’s kind of in there, but it’s also kind of part workbook. So it’s lots of strategies and lots of ways to be able to things to work on as you work through the book. Very nice. All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing everything with us today. Well, it’s a pleasure. Really pleasure talking to you. Yes.

Thank you.