Interoception and Eating in Neurodivergent Adults: Hunger, Fullness and Forgetting to Eat

If you’re autistic, ADHD or AuDHD, eating might not feel as simple as “get hungry → eat → feel full → stop.”

You might notice things like:

🗣 “I suddenly realise I’m starving and shaky… but I didn’t feel hungry before that.”
🗣 “I forget to eat all day, then binge at night and feel awful.”
🗣 “I can’t tell if I’m hungry, anxious, bored or just tired.”

These experiences are often connected to interoception – your ability to sense internal body signals like hunger, fullness, thirst, temperature, heartbeat and the urge to use the bathroom. Many neurodivergent adults have interoceptive differences that directly affect their relationship with food.

This article explains how that works, why it’s not a character flaw, and what gentle supports can help you reconnect with your body’s signals. If ADHD is part of your profile, this also fits neatly with the self‑mapping work you might do in Your ADHD Personal Deepdive and the practical tools in ADHD Coping Strategies.

Quick note: this is educational, not a substitute for medical or nutrition advice. If eating is very distressing, very rigid, or linked to strong body‑image distress, it’s important to speak with a healthcare professional or eating‑disorder‑informed clinician.

🧃 What is interoception?

Interoception is your internal sense of the body.

It includes noticing:

🍽 Hunger and fullness
🥤 Thirst
😴 Tiredness
🚽 The need to use the bathroom
💓 Heartbeat and breathing
😰 Physical sensations linked to emotion (tight chest, butterflies, nausea, heaviness, etc.)

In many neurotypical people, these signals feel:

🧭 Clear – easy to label (“I’m hungry”, “I’m full”, “I’m anxious”)
⏳ Timely – they arrive early enough to act on without drama
📌 Stable – the same signal often means roughly the same thing each time

In many autistic, ADHD and AuDHD adults, interoception can be:

😶 Faint – signals only show up when they’re already intense
🔀 Confusing – different states feel similar (hunger vs anxiety vs tiredness)
🎢 Inconsistent – sometimes overwhelming, sometimes almost absent

So instead of “I’m gradually getting hungry”, you may experience:

💥 “I feel nothing… nothing… nothing… and then I’m suddenly starving and unwell.”

🧠 Interoception, attention and neurodivergence

Interoception depends on:

🧠 Your nervous system’s sensitivity
🎯 Your brain’s ability to notice and prioritise body signals

ADHD and autism both affect attention and sensory processing:

🧠 ADHD brains often focus outward (on tasks, screens, people, ideas) and can easily tune out subtle body sensations.
🧠 Autistic brains may receive too much or too little internal and external information at once, making it hard to sort or label signals.

If you’re AuDHD, you can have:

🎧 Autistic sensory intensity
➕
⚡ ADHD tendency to ignore internal signals until they become urgent

That’s a pretty good recipe for “I didn’t feel hungry… until my body forced me to notice.”

🧩 How interoception differences show up in ND eating

Here are some common ways interoception differences affect food and eating in neurodivergent adults.

You may recognise:

🕒 “Forgetting to eat” until you’re shaky, nauseous or suddenly ravenous
🍽 Only noticing fullness when you’re uncomfortably stuffed or in pain
😵 Confusing hunger with anxiety, boredom or tiredness
🥤 Forgetting to drink and only noticing thirst when you feel heavy, headachy or foggy
😖 Having trouble describing body sensations (“I feel weird” rather than specific words)

From the outside this can look like:

💬 “They’re careless with food / health.”

From the inside it’s more like:

💬 “I don’t get useful signals until it’s already gone wrong.”

🍽 Common ND eating patterns linked to interoception

Not everyone will relate to all of these, but many autistic/ADHD/AuDHD adults recognise at least some.

🕒 “Forgetting to eat” until you crash

You might:

💻 Hyperfocus on work, hobbies or screens and completely lose track of time
😶 Not notice early hunger signals (or not get them at all)
💥 Suddenly feel shaky, weak, nauseous, headachy or emotionally overloaded

This is often a mix of:

🧠 Interoception differences (weak or delayed hunger signals)
⏳ ADHD time blindness (“I thought it had only been an hour”)
⚙️ Executive function challenges (planning, preparing and interrupting yourself to eat)

Once you crash, you may grab whatever is quickest, then feel guilty or unwell afterwards.

🍟 All‑or‑nothing eating

You might swing between:

🍽 Very little or no food for long periods (forgetting, low appetite, executive paralysis)
🍕 Very large meals or intense snacking when hunger finally hits

This can be especially common if:

💼 Your schedule is irregular
😣 You feel shame or anxiety about eating in front of others
🧱 Food prep feels like a huge task rather than a simple step

It’s not lack of willpower. It’s a rhythm shaped by late signals + high effort + emotional load.

😖 Not noticing fullness until it hurts

Interoception differences can also affect the “stop” signal.

You might:

🍽 Eat quickly because you’re very hungry or overwhelmed
😶 Not feel fullness building up gradually
🤢 Only realise you’ve passed your limit when you feel bloated, sick or in pain

If you grew up being told to “finish everything on your plate” or you use mealtimes to mask distress, it can be even harder to tune into your own stop point.

🔁 Grazing, comfort eating and “background snacking”

On the other side, some ND adults:

🧃 Don’t feel clear waves of hunger/fullness
🍪 Eat small amounts almost constantly
🎧 Use food as sensory regulation (texture, temperature, flavour) or emotional comfort

This can be soothing, but it may also:

😴 Blur the connection between emotions and body signals
📉 Make it harder to notice when you’re genuinely hungry or full

🎯 Other factors that tangle with interoception

Interoception is only one piece of the puzzle. It often interacts with several other ND features.

🎧 Sensory profile

Food is sensory: taste, smell, texture, sound, temperature, appearance.

You may have:

😖 Strong aversions to certain textures (mushy, crunchy, mixed textures)
👃 Sensitivity to smells that makes some foods impossible
🎧 Sound sensitivity that makes busy mealtimes overwhelming

All of that can lead to:

🥣 Narrow “safe food” lists
🍽 Skipping meals when safe options aren’t available
😵 Pushing through sensory disgust and then feeling dysregulated

⚙️ Executive function and time blindness

Even if you know you should eat, your brain still has to:

🧠 Notice time passing
📋 Plan what to eat
🛒 Ensure food is in the house
🍳 Prepare it
🧼 Deal with mess afterwards

For ADHD / AuDHD brains, that chain can feel impossible, especially when stressed or burnt out. So “I’ll eat later” becomes “I accidentally skipped two meals.”

🎢 Emotion and trauma

For some ND adults, food and body signals are also tangled up with:

😣 Past criticism about eating, weight or body
🧱 Punishments or control around food in childhood
🔁 Using restriction or overeating as a way to manage big feelings

This can make it even harder to trust interoceptive signals. If this is a big part of your story, it may be especially helpful to have professional, eating‑disorder‑informed support alongside any self‑help work.

💊 Medication and sleep

Stimulant medication, non‑stimulants, antidepressants and other meds can:

🍽 Reduce or increase appetite
😴 Affect sleep, which then changes hunger signals
🧠 Alter how strongly you feel bodily sensations

Poor sleep also blurs hunger/fullness cues and increases cravings for quick energy.

When you look at your eating, it helps to consider:

🧃 “What might be my interoception, and what might be meds/sleep/stress?”

🧭 Mapping your own interoception–eating pattern

Before changing anything, it’s useful to understand how your body and brain currently interact.

For a week or two, you might gently note:

🕒 Rough times you eat or drink (not exact calories or grams)
🧃 How you felt before eating (signals, emotions, thoughts)
🍽 How you felt after (physically and emotionally)
😴 Sleep quality and key stressors that day

Keep it lightweight – this is not about perfection or diet tracking. It’s about questions like:

💭 “When do I most often forget to eat?”
💭 “Are there times of day when signals are clearer or fuzzier?”
💭 “What sensations usually mean ‘I needed food 2 hours ago’?”

If you’re already doing structured reflection in Your ADHD Personal Deepdive, you can weave this in as another layer: a “body signals” column next to focus, mood and energy.

🧰 Practical supports: working with your body, not against it

You can’t force your interoception to be neurotypical. But you can add scaffolding so food and body needs don’t depend only on subtle internal cues.

These are ideas to experiment with, not rules you must follow.

⏰ Externalise hunger cues

If your body doesn’t reliably alert you early, let external cues do some of the work.

You might:

⏰ Set gentle reminders at a few anchor times (for example: mid‑morning, mid‑afternoon, evening) to check: “Have I eaten? Do I need food or a drink?”
☕ Tie eating to existing habits – for example, “When I make coffee/tea, I also grab a snack or small meal.”
📆 Treat “food breaks” like appointments in your planner rather than optional extras.

The reminder is not “you must eat now”. It’s “pause and see what your body needs.”

🍱 Make eating lower‑effort

For many ND adults, the main barrier is not desire – it’s effort.

You could:

🥣 Keep simple, low‑prep options available (yogurt, nuts, pre‑washed fruit/veg, microwave meals, toast, soup, instant options)
🍱 Batch‑cook or assemble bigger portions when you do have energy, then portion into containers for later
🧃 Store food where you’ll see it (front of the fridge, on the counter if safe) rather than hidden behind visual clutter

The aim is not perfect nutrition, but making “something” easy enough that you actually eat.

🌡 Build a simple “body check‑in”

If interoceptive signals feel vague (“I feel weird”), it can help to practise naming sensations.

A couple of times a day, pause and ask:

💭 “What’s happening in my body right now?”

You might scan:

👁 Head – heavy, light, headache, spacey?
🫁 Chest – tight, open, fluttery, calm?
🍽 Stomach – empty, tense, heavy, neutral, gurgling?
🦴 Muscles – shaky, restless, tired, OK?

Then gently guess:

💬 “This might be hunger.”
💬 “This might be anxiety plus low blood sugar.”
💬 “This might be tiredness more than hunger.”

You don’t have to get it “right”. The goal is to practise listening and labelling without judgment.

😴 Protect basics: sleep, fluids, blood sugar

Because interoception is part of a whole system, small stabilising habits help.

You might:

🥤 Keep water (or a preferred drink) within reach during the day
😴 Treat sleep as a core need, not an optional upgrade
🍽 Aim for some predictable intake across the day, even if it’s not at ideal times

These are the same foundations that often show up in ADHD‑focused work like ADHD Coping Strategies – they matter just as much for body signals as they do for focus and emotion.

🤝 Talking about this with professionals

If eating patterns are causing distress or health concerns, it can be useful to speak with:

👩‍⚕️ A GP / primary care doctor
🥗 A dietitian or nutritionist with experience in neurodivergence and/or eating disorders
🧠 A therapist who understands ND sensory and interoceptive differences

When you do, you might say things like:

💬 “I’m autistic/ADHD/AuDHD and I often don’t notice hunger or fullness until I’m either shaky or overfull.”
💬 “I’d like help planning ways to eat more regularly that take sensory issues and executive function into account.”
💬 “I’m not looking for weight‑loss advice; I’m looking for support around patterns linked to being neurodivergent.”

If a professional dismisses interoception or neurodivergence, that’s about their knowledge limits, not your legitimacy.

📘 Summary

Interoception is your internal sense of the body. In many neurodivergent adults, it’s:

🧃 Quieter, later or more confusing than in neurotypicals
🧩 Heavily influenced by sensory differences, executive function, time blindness and emotions
🍽 Deeply entangled with how, when and what you eat

Key ideas:

💡 “Forgetting to eat” or overshooting fullness is often about delayed or fuzzy body signals, not laziness or lack of care.
💡 ADHD and autism can both pull your attention away from early hunger/fullness cues, especially during hyperfocus or sensory overload.
💡 Mapping your own patterns – and seeing how they link with sleep, stress and routine – gives you information, not a verdict.
💡 Gentle scaffolding (reminders, low‑effort food, small body check‑ins) can help you eat more regularly without demanding that your interoception become “normal.”

A more helpful question than:

💬 “Why can’t I just eat like a normal person?”

is:

🧭 “Given how my autistic/ADHD/AuDHD brain processes body signals, what supports and routines would make it easier for my body to get what it needs – without relying on signals that often arrive too late?”

As you explore this, combining self‑reflection tools like Your ADHD Personal Deepdive, practical habit support from ADHD Coping Strategies, and (if needed) professional input can give you a grounded, compassionate framework for caring for both your brain and your body.