The ADHD Food Permission Slip: Stop Trying to Feed Everyone Perfectly and Why Good Enough Really is OK!

Feeding yourself and your family shouldn’t feel like another daily test you’re somehow failing. Especially when you already know what you “should” be eating — but your ADHD brain, energy and capacity aren’t always able to make it happen. This episode is your permission slip to release the nutritional perfectionism and let “good enough” genuinely be good enough. You're understanding your ADHD. But what happens when you’re ready to actually live differently? Join me live in Manchester this December for The Next Chapter — an immersive event for women ready to move beyond understanding their ADHD and explore what comes next with more confidence, self-compassion and permission to be themselves. All surrounded by like-minded neurodivergent women who truly get it. Ready for your next chapter? Find out more: Book your place here⁠. ________________________________________ You know you probably need more protein. You know eating regularly helps. You might even have plenty of food in the house. But then it’s 6pm, everyone needs feeding, you’re exhausted, you’ve made approximately a thousand decisions already that day and suddenly dinner feels like an emergency. In today’s episode of The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Podcast, I sit down with Amy Jones, Certified Functional Nutrition Practitioner, Certified ADHD Life Coach, Ontario Certified Teacher and MSc Applied Neuroscience candidate. And this conversation is really about everything that happens in the gap between knowing what might help us and actually being able to do it. Because for ADHD women, food isn’t simply about nutrition. There’s executive function. Decision fatigue. Sensory needs. Hormones. Parenting. Working memory. Energy. Our nervous systems. And the fact that our capacity can look completely different from one day to the next. Amy was diagnosed with ADHD at 45 after her youngest son’s diagnosis prompted her to look more closely at her own experiences. She now brings together nutrition, ADHD coaching, neuroscience and lived experience to help neurodivergent adults make food and self-care feel more manageable. We talk about why traditional meal planning can ask far too much of an already depleted brain, why Amy believes we should plan for our lowest-capacity days rather than our ideal ones, and some wonderfully simple ways to reduce the number of decisions food requires from us. There’s also a lot of permission in this conversation. Permission to assemble dinner instead of cooking it. To use convenience food. To order the takeaway. To make the fridge work for your ADHD brain. And to stop believing that nourishing yourself or your family has to look perfect to count. In this episode, we cover: Amy’s late ADHD diagnosis and how her son’s diagnosis changed her understanding of herself Why knowing what to eat and actually being able to do it are two very different things The executive-function load hidden inside meal planning, shopping and making dinner Why ADHD women can know exactly what would support them and still struggle to follow through Reducing decision fatigue and building food around the life you actually have Planning for low-capacity days rather than relying on your most motivated self Using visibility and your fridge as a practical working-memory support Consistent eating, hunger cues and making food easier to access Parenting neurodivergent children, food, sensory needs and after-school overwhelm Letting go of perfection, “shoulds” and shame around convenience food and takeaway Timestamps: 00:00 - Welcome and introducing Amy Jones 02:15 - Amy’s late ADHD diagnosis and her family’s experience of neurodivergence 04:30 - How nutrition became part of Amy’s ADHD work 05:20 - “I know what I should do, but I can’t do it” 07:00 - The gap between knowledge and behaviour 08:20 - Why meal planning is an executive-function problem 09:00 - Mapping food around your actual life 10:00 - The hidden steps involved in making dinner 11:00 - Motherhood, neurodivergent children and the mental load around food 12:50 - Why there isn’t one food system that works for every ADHD brain 13:20 - Planning for your lowest-capacity day 14:00 - Using your fridge as a working-memory support 15:00 - Making food visible and reducing preparation 16:00 - Dinner assembly rather than cooking a full meal 17:00 - Food, regulation and the after-school crash 18:45 - Amy’s WTF’s for Dinner approach 20:00 - Hunger cues, mini meals and consistent fuel 22:10 - Capacity, visibility and remembering what’s actually in the fridge 23:00 - Perimenopause and changing capacity around cooking 24:00 - Perfectionism in the kitchen 26:00 - Parenting, control and knowing when to step away 27:30 - Learning alongside our neurodivergent children 28:30 - What to keep available for low-capacity days 29:20 - Sharing the shopping and reducing cognitive load 30:00 - What dinner can look like when you have very little left 32:00 - Why “good enough” food really is good enough 33:30 - Using AI and external tools to reduce decision-making 35:00 - Why takeaway can be part of the plan 36:30 - Letting go of food shame 37:00 - Keeping food simple and flexible 38:00 - ADHD, hormones and not knowing what capacity you’ll have tomorrow 39:00 - Cooking because you enjoy it rather than because you “should” 40:00 - A permission slip to stop trying to feed everyone perfectly 41:00 - How to work with Amy and her WTF’s for Dinner system Links and Resources: Join me in Manchester for The Next Chapter Find my ADHD Women’s Wellbeing workshops and resources ⁠here⁠ Get my book, The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Toolkit, ⁠here⁠ Follow the podcast on Instagram: ⁠@adhd_womenswellbeing_pod⁠ Visit Amy’s website: amyjonesnutrition.com Follow Amy on Instagram: @amyjonesnutrition Find Amy on YouTube: @amyjonesnutrition Download Amy’s free resource for ADHDWW listeners, What To Do When Food Feels Like Too Much: get it here Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing author, coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed women with ADHD find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity. 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