That's as much your brain saying it.

Pretty much every meal. Hot cheese and carbs until we die, probably younger than we'd like.

You and me both brothersister

The 400 calorie day sounds like me before I started calorie counting, to make sure I at least eat a minimum of 1500 calories. I just don't notice when I should eat, and then food is hard to put together so I put it off.

Drink, on the other hand, I'm good at. I'm up to maybe 3 liters a day because salty water helps my circulation and makes me feel good.

Your story about overeating sweets and feeling like crap and not putting it together... that reminds me of taking a daily multivitamin with my lunch, then consistently feeling so very sick to my stomach an hour later. Took me maybe 2 weeks to figure out the pill was the problem. (I went back to Flintstones with iron, no problem. I'm hesitant to try an adult multivitamin again because I had such a bad reaction before. Plus, I like chewable pills.)

And then there's my body:

"Drink. Water. Always.

Also sometimes Whiskey, and 1-2 'caffeine' a day, but have a water open at the same time."

It's in my hand as I type this..

For some reason, in the last 6 years, I lost the ability to feel full up at lunch. It doesn't affect me at breakfast or dinner, but once I have lunch, I will continue to feel hungrier and hungrier and I end up bingeing on junk and then feeling disgusted with myself. So I just have to skip lunch now.

The only way to stop the munchies is to immediately play a video game, but I have to want to play it for it to work. It's annoying because lunch is the only time I want to load up on vegetables. By dinnertime, I can't be bothered to do more than microwave a bowl of sweetcorn with my oven chips.

This is a fantastic comment. Not necessarily because it's universally true, but because it highlights variance in lived experience. There is a truth, but not the truth.

It highlights the reality that your body sends a demand for action, but it diminishes and oversimplifies the great challenge, the true mountain, of consciously mapping a instinctive solution, to a true need, to an optimal course of action to meet the need.

I want chips? Am I hungry? Is my blood sugar low? Am I experiencing an acute deficiency of saturated fats? Are my electrolytes imbalanced? Although it's likely chips will solve it, there are several distinct underlying issues your body says chips are the solution. "Belly not full" is a gross oversimplification of what the issue may be, and without a full comprehension of the specific nature of the desire for chips, it's possible and likely an attempt to outsmart yourself will end in failure.

I bring this specific case up... I even shared it and my surrounding confusion with my doctor... because a few weeks after starting vyvans I had the desire to eat a vegetable for the first time in approximately 40 years. It was SHOCKING to me to realize that my body was already able to add meaningful specificity to my brutish and animal nature.

And to be honest... "chips" is probably by a large margin the least complex. A cigarette. An energy drink. Alcohol. The depth of confusion of root cause on the alchemy your subconscious has been formulating for decades of trial and error, behind your back?

When Karen says to listen to your body, they are saying one thing. It is not the thing that ADHD people need to hear. They are not the same thing. That is OPs point, and they are right. The mechanics are fundamentally different. It isn't wrong to highlight that Karen's communicative intention is flatly based on a distinct experience which is not directly applicable in a meaningful way.

You're saying "Listen to your body... and know that it is giving you a solution rather than telling you a problem, your goal is to bridge that gap".

Karen isn't false. OP isn't false. You aren't false. You're all just expressing lived experience.

Could you please give a couple of examples of what listening to your body looks like? I'm trying to understand myself better, I've existed as this body for 40+years and still don't understand it. I was 30 before I realized hunger and thirst feel the same for me. Halp

I think you have to, like, psychologically reanimate the ghost of your mother and then have her tell you what to do.

Doesn't matter if she's still alive, you need a functioning ghost.

Treat yourself like you would that Labrador puppy. Set guardrails and habit patterns in place. Use positive feedback to turn them into good habits and behaviour loops.

And just like training said Labrador, it's a LOT fucking easier to say than to actually do!

The autistic part of my brain (It doesn't always work out well)

My wife. Saves a ton of money.

A therapist.

So fuckin real I can literally sleep as long as I want in a day, sometimes 14-20 hours at a time. Funnily enough I can never sleep when I WANT to.

Awake for 36 hours with 2 hours if sleep, and have an important meeting tomorrow? ZERO sleep. Nothing urgent? 17 hours of sleep.

The welding trades are rampant with adhd mfers. See also, fire departments.

Yes that lady is a poet.

Stomach says "I want salt"

It's not the stomach. It's still the brain.

Not sure what you call them in America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_(container)