eating on adderall

[coldkate]

SWIM has been on adderall for a good few years... she knows that obviously some people use it for help with weight loss, but she doesn't. she legitimately has ADD. recently she is just noticing she seems to have aversion towards food and was wondering if others had/have this problem.

she always had problems with food on adderall but she would go through weird phases of only wanting one food, so she could usually get herself to eat. she would actually crave one particular food. for instance, she'd go a week eating only frozen fruit pops.. then a week she'd only want fried eggs. just weirdness like that was the only food she felt like eating.

anyway, now, she is still normally taking her adderall (30mgxr daily) and she gets starving physically but ALL food seems... disgusting. she has to force herself to eat breakfast and then throughout the day she can't seem to eat anything at all. this has been going on for a while and she's just wondering if others have this problem and what they do about it. or if others have had the weird food obsessions? thanks

[Fox101]

Swim may want to look into smoking marijuana.

[SuprSonik]

SWIM also has trouble eating on Adderall, but if he smokes a bit of weed his appetite comes back and he can eat all he wants. SWIM thinks that you should try smoking before you want to eat if you haven't already. You should really think about taking a multivitamin too, if you aren't already.

[thenightwatch]

My friend has found that maintaining a steady intake of water decreases his aversion to food while on stimulants. A multivitamin is a good idea too. I would be cautious in adding ANOTHER drug to counteract the negative side-effects of one drug, but I have heard as well that cannabis is a very good counter to stimulant-induced anorexia.

[Shagmelon]

Swim also had this problem but is also subscribed to 200mg seroquel for night time, which gives him an unrelenting appetite similar to marijuana. And yeah for swim it was spaghetti for a couple a weeks. Also I would tell your doctor about the hunger problem.

[JudgeJudy]

Whoa, SWIM has the same problem.

One month it was cheese pop corn only, then for two weeks oatmeal, then cheez-it and now it's tuna helper WTF????

SWIM doesn't eat pizza or anything she used to like to eat. It seems that the food craving goes for weeks at a time and nothing else will do. Very very weird! Glad to hear there are others out there.

After the medication wears off SWIM can eat a few different things, but it's forced.

[GForce]

Adderall is a stimulant so naturally its going to suppress your appetite. Because ampehtamine and d-amphetamine are considered powerful psycho-stimulants (or CNS, whatever you want to call them) their effects are going to be powerful as well. Eating on Adderall is pretty much hit or miss. I've had a prescription for my ADHD for almost 2 years now and I still find it extremely difficult to motivate myself to eat when I'm taking the medication for studying, classes, etc (what it was prescribed for). Even if I do convince myself to buy something, I often eat very little of it and the rest goes to waste. Every so often if I'm very hungry before taking my Adderall I remain hungry once it has fully kicked in, but that's about the only time I can eat personally other than forcing myself. I feel like it's almost not seeing food as unappetizing, but being apathetic or indifferent towards eating because I don't find myself thinking about, and being turned-off by, food so much as I find food just gets put on the back burner when I'm working. And when I do try to address the issue, as mentioned before, I feel like I'm wasting time eating because I'm not enjoying it and it just seems like another task in a person with ADHD's Adderall organized brain.

Anyways, it is definitely important to eat, although I have gone days without more than Gatorade (needs to be glacial freeze) and maybe a candy bar. For a person like me, Adderall is used to study for exams and writing papers primarily. Since I'm an auditory learner, but too unmotivated to attend class, Adderall is the most effective way of me reading lecture notes and reviewing. That being said, the information I learn will be all for nothing if I don't keep at least some calories in the furnace. Not eating has adverse effects on memory retention (not good if you're trying to remember specific thigns) and test performance. So, despite my indifference towards food while taking my medication, I usually force something light down into my stomach every so often so that I don't make the stupid mistake of preparing intensely for an exam, only to disadvantage myself because I'm malnourished.

On the other end of the spectrum my brother, who has been taking Adderall longer than me, takes it so regularly (being in HS still) that he doesn't find it difficult to eat at all, except every once in a while. I don't know how he manages but he never takes a few bites of something like I would and be done. He eats like a normal person despite being on Adderall. I guess the implication here is that the side effects vary in types and intensity for everyone.

Either way, always try to eat something. Starving your body is not healthy, especially when your metabolism is sped up and you're likely exerting a lot of energy from being on a stimulant on the first place.

[UpAllNiteOCXTC]

swim thought taking vitamins with adderall lessened the effectiveness?

UpAllNiteOCXTC added 12 Minutes and 19 Seconds later...

swim feels like absolute shit.