Making peace with snacks
Snacks have always been an interesting one. They're not something I ever really thought were very important, or even something I needed for myself, so they weren't part of my day. Along this path of getting to know myself all over again and understanding ADHD, it has become apparent that snacks are actually essential—especially on a work day.
(side bar: this is a really good time to remind you that I'm not a dietician and you shouldn't take this article as formal nutritional advice. Please speak to your GP or dietician for that kind of support. In addition, if you want to read more about the topic I suggest starting here: https://www.additudemag.com/nutrition-harmonizes-adhd-brain . When reading up on food and ADHD always choose reputable sources and use a critical eye.)
A Day Without Snacks
Here’s how a day would pan out for me food-wise:
First thing: Breakfast (usually) + coffee
Mid-morning: Second coffee
Lunch: 12 and not a minute later because I'm starving
Afternoon: Various cups of tea, possibly a 3rd coffee if I'm on struggle street at work. Maybe a crappy Arnott’s bikkie from the office.
Evening: Get home from work too ravenous to think and either fumble a barely edible dinner, or order Uber Eats. OR wander around the supermarket like a zombie, buy some random food, get home and still order Uber Eats.
Something that has absolutely influenced this is diet culture. There’s so much shame and guilt around food that after a while I started to associate snacks and hunger with some really negative thoughts. When the cheese plate comes out and I have to fight the urge to inhale the whole thing, my brain defaults to blame instead of acknowledging that it’s ok to be hungry.
Now this isn’t to say I’m hungry because I’m not eating enough—I was. The timing was the issue. I was missing the hunger cues my body was giving me, a common issue with ADHD.
Interoception & Hunger Cues
Something I only learned recently is that the whole “missing hunger cues” thing isn’t just me being a space cadet—it has a name. It’s called interoception. Interoception is basically your body’s ability to sense what’s going on inside: hunger, thirst, temperature, the need to pee, when you’re tired, all that internal messaging. For a lot of people with ADHD, those signals don’t come through clearly, or they don’t register until they’re already at maximum volume.
For me, that looks like suddenly realizing at 4pm that I haven’t had any water all day, or only noticing I need to pee when it feels urgent. With hunger, it means I don’t pick up the early whispers—like “a little snack would keep things steady”—and instead I crash headfirst into “I am starving, feed me right now or I’ll actually die.” Snacks have become a way to bridge that gap. Even if I don’t feel hungry in the moment, I’ve learned to check in and have something small, which helps me stay ahead of the crash.
So no, it’s not that I have an iron bladder that can hold until the apocalypse—I’m just not noticing that I need to pee. Yet another thing on the list of “things I thought were my unique and special personality but actually are my ADHD.”
Food, ADHD, and Diet Culture
Living in a larger body that came of age in the Y2K era means I get to live under the illusion of being liberated from negative diet culture thinking, while it reality it’s deeply entrenched in my everyday life. Listening to Maintenance Phase podcast really helped me start to let go of guilt and shame around food and I cannot say enough good things about that show.
The reason for spending a minute to focus on this is to understand that issues around food are complex and nuanced. Getting the “ick,” eating the same thing over and over, medication-related appetite issues and more are all part of the picture—but they aren’t the whole picture. Tackling my challenges around eating with ADHD has also had to involve unlearning some really harmful crap.
In particular, these episodes stood out to me:
The Trouble with Calories
Zombie Statistics Spectacular
Is Being Fat Bad for You
The Body Mass Index
Weight Watchers
Anti-Fat Bias
Diet culture really did a number on how I viewed snacks. They were either demonized as “bad” foods or sanitized into 100-calorie packs and protein bars that didn’t actually satisfy me (nor did I want to eat them so they'd be destined to be slowly pulverised into sad packets of crumbs in the bottom of my handbag). I internalized that snacks = weakness, meals = discipline. Which meant I’d either avoid them altogether or feel guilty about having them. Don't even start me on a friend's mother who had a rule that more than 2 biscuits meant you were a pig. To this day eating a 3rd biscuit feels like giving her a joyful middle finger.
Reframing snacks as legitimate fuel for my brain (instead of a guilty pleasure) has been huge. Once I started seeing snacks as part of a balanced, ADHD-friendly system instead of something to “earn” or feel shame about, they stopped being so loaded.
ADHD + Food Challenges
Snacks aren’t just about keeping the hangry away—they’re also a workaround for some of the ADHD-specific hurdles around food:
Decision paralysis: Too many options = nothing happens. Having a handful of ready-to-go snacks takes the choice fatigue out of it.
Executive dysfunction: Even “easy” cooking can feel impossible when you’re low on spoons. Snacks are a form of outsourcing future problems.
Sensory stuff: Some days a texture or flavour you usually love suddenly feels unbearable. Having a mix of snack types makes it easier to pivot without skipping food entirely.
Time blindness: Hours vanish, and suddenly it’s mid-afternoon and you haven’t eaten since breakfast. Snacks act like safety nets in those lost stretches.
For me, acknowledging these challenges stopped me from seeing snacks as a “failure to meal plan” and reframed them as a supportive tool.
How Snacks Help Me
Batch cooking becomes more palatable. The textures and flavours in your day are more varied, overcoming two of my personal barriers with eating batch-cooked food.
My brain works better. The peaks and troughs are so much smoother throughout the day. During the work day I’m able to be much more consistent with my output and things are less of a struggle.
Dinner isn’t a desperate scramble. I’m not so ravenous at dinner time and am more likely to be able to prep something than order Uber Eats. Not always, but it really helps.
It’s easier on the wallet. Even though the weekly grocery bill is higher initially, I’m spending less on takeaway options.
Less waste. Focusing less on a fridge full of fresh produce that needs to be turned into a meal, and more on a fridge that has healthy ready-to-eat options means I’m using more and tossing less.
Beyond the practical stuff—less waste, fewer Uber Eats splurges—snacks have also softened how I treat myself. Snacks are a way of saying: “I deserve to keep my energy steady. I deserve food that feels good and keeps me going.” That’s a radical thought when you’ve grown up marinating in diet culture. For me, giving myself permission to snack has been a quiet but powerful form of resistance.
My Snack Journey
Kids really get it when it comes to snacks. Not only do they appreciate them, they know how to have some really good ones. I am completely unashamed to say my initial “snackspiration” came in part from what my friend was giving her 4-year-old, and revisiting some of the greatest hits from my own childhood. This was especially helpful as I started this during a really intense burnout phase and it needed to be things that were zero effort.
Some of the things I snacked on at the time:
Cheese sticks (the ones that aren’t overtly kid-branded so at least I had some dignity)
Pink Lady apples—I’m so fussy about apples but these are always good
Cheese and bacon rolls from the supermarket
Pikelets, again pre-made from the supermarket
Smoked almonds
Regular almonds with dried apricots
Rice crackers—the sour cream and chives ones from Peckish. IYKYK.
Pre-cut carrot sticks and hummus
Just like everything else these got boring and I had to work out a rotation of new snacks. In the weeks I had more energy it could include things like boiled eggs, yoghurt portioned into snack tubs ready to go, frozen grapes, sliced capsicum sticks and more.
I did get a little overexcited one night and deep-dived a bunch of recipes for things like onigiri, zucchini slice and pizza scrolls on Taste.com.au. I bought all these ingredients and—you guessed it—made none of it. So I’ve set a rule that it has to be close to zero prep to count. I’ll allow slicing and divvying up into containers but not much more or it’s too high-risk.
One of my more pleasing efforts.
Snacks in Practice
I bought a fancy lunch bag and started carting an outrageous amount of containers to and from work. For a while there I was taking more than I knew I was going to eat because I was working on the theory that if I had the illusion of choice over what to eat, I’d be less likely to reject what I had in my bag. Besides, given how rough mornings can be, how could I possibly know what food to choose for the next few hours when I could barely get myself out the door on time?
This worked really well until I got sick of the sheer volume of stuff I was carrying. By then the habit was somewhat established and I didn’t need to trick my brain into wanting the food so I was able to reduce how much I took to work. Now when I do groceries, I start with snacks before I even think about what dinners I need to buy ingredients for. They’re the focus of my grocery shop, and when I shop this way those are my most successful weeks on the eating front.
To give you a clearer picture, here’s what snacks look like woven into a typical work day for me:
Mid-morning: Boiled, salted egg at my desk making emails more palatable. Oh, and a 2nd coffee.
After lunch: Rice crackers. Hommus if I'm organised
Mid-afternoon: Yoghurt or maybe some fruit for that afternoon sugar hit (am always trying to eat more fruit, doesn't always work)
Dinner prep time: Munch a handful of cherry tomatoes or baby qukes or a cheese stick while staring into the fridge waiting for inspiration to strike. Eating something when cooking dinner sounds counter-intuitive but has become very necessary for me
Having those built into my day keeps me from hitting the 6pm wall where I’d usually panic-order Uber Eats. It’s not perfect, but it’s a massive improvement. Also sometimes the snacks are things like tim tams and packets of potato chips, let's not pretend I’m some healthy eating guru.
Closing Thoughts
One thing I want this blog to be is a space where food talk isn’t laced with shame. Snacks are allowed. Snacks are good. Snacks are fuel. So if you’ve got a favourite zero-prep snack, please share it in the comments—let’s build a stash of ideas together.
And stay tuned for the next post: I’ll be sharing a snack toolkit that breaks down categories of ADHD-friendly snack ideas to help you build a grocery list you can take straight to the shops.
