Accessible Wellness for Neurodivergent Folks with Jackie Silver

10 snips

Nov 20, 2023

Registered Dietitian Jackie Silver discusses strategies for making nutrition and wellness more accessible to neurodivergent individuals. Topics include challenges with irregular eating and meal planning, dangers of diet culture, and the importance of tailored approaches. They explore intuitive eating, mechanical eating, easy and accessible meals, and developing skills like calendar management. Tips for managing ADHD-related food challenges include mindful eating and self-compassion.

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Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Accessible Wellness for Neurodivergent Folks

02:45 • 9min

Prioritizing Weight Inclusive Lens and Positive Health Outcomes

11:35 • 2min

Developing Skills and Letting Go of Food Rules

13:06 • 4min

Understanding and Managing Hunger and Fullness Levels

16:56 • 6min

Tips for Dealing with ADHD and Food

23:01 • 2min

Hey team,

This week I'm talking with Jackie Silver about nutrition and wellness. Jackie is a Registered Dietitian with a Master of Health Science (MHSc) in Nutrition Communications. She has a firm belief that neurodivergent and disabled people deserve to live a healthy lifestyle but found the opportunities for these communities lacking, so she decided to start her own practice, Accessible Wellness. Her area of expertise is in working with kids, teens, and adults with autism, ADHD, and those with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

In our conversation today, we discuss strategies for making nutrition and wellness more accessible. We talk about some of the common challenges we can face while trying to feed ourselves with ADHD, like irregular eating, difficulty with meal planning/prep, and poor interoceptive skills. We look at how we want simplified, tailored strategies to help people where they're at, rather than simply overwhelming them. We also go into some of the dangers of diet culture and the need to have compassion for ourselves when trying out new strategies. The Hunger-Fullness Scale Neurodivergent-Friendly 30-Minute Meals Be sure to check out Accessible Wellness

On their Website
On Instagram

And these great articles from the blog:

Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/158 This Episode's Top Tips

Common challenges we can face when dealing with ADHD and food are irregular eating, difficulty with meal planning/prep, and poor interoceptive skills - that is recognizing when we are hungry or full or somewhere in between. To help combat this we can use strategies like eating schedules, snack cheat sheets, batch cooking, and using hunger/fullness scales to help build up that interoception.
We can work on practicing mindful eating by paying attention to tastes, textures, and fullness cues even when we have distractions around. Remember that we want to focus on meeting ourselves where we're at and doing things that work with our brains.
It's important to be compassionate with ourselves and focus on small, sustainable changes rather than demanding perfection.