Healthy Eating Week 2026: I Spent Decades Looking for the Perfect Diet

As a child I had a difficult relationship with vegetables. Except for potatoes - I loved potatoes! My diet was filled with chips. Jacket potatoes. Roast potatoes. Vegetables, however, were viewed with extreme suspicion. At the time nobody was talking about ADHD, the gut-brain connection or the microbiome. I was simply known as a “fussy eater”.

As I got older, my interest in health & wellbeing grew, and what started as curiosity slowly became a mission to understand why my body reacted differently to different foods. I had a new hyperfocus, and over the next few years spent thousands on books, courses, tests, and every fad diet under the sun. I was looking for answers.

Yet nobody could explain what was happening. Test results came back as ‘normal’. Yet, I still didn't feel normal. So I sought "the perfect diet" which is where my toxic relationships with emotionally unavailable diets began!

🥦 I met Paleo. Paleo seemed promising. We spent some time together. But Paleo was a bit of a control-freak so we drifted apart.

🥘 Keto arrived next. Keto was very charming and persuasive. However our relationship was short-lived because he was obsessed with Fat.

🥚 I had brief flings with a number of elimination diets, but they were far too boring and restrictive for my liking, and they didn’t listen to my needs. So I said TTFN.

During this time I became fascinated by the connection between the gut and the brain, and learnt that about the gut-brain axis (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0753332224010916). I discovered that digestive issues are reported more frequently in neurodivergent individuals (https://www.gastroenterologyadvisor.com/features/adhd-and-gi-disorders/). This doesn't mean ADHD causes gut problems. It simply means there may be more going on than we once realised.

After years of trying to remove foods, restrict foods and follow other people's rules, I eventually started paying attention to my own experience. One of the biggest surprises was discovering that foods I had spent years avoiding were actually helping me function better. After decades of searching, the biggest lesson wasn't about food at all. It was about listening.

Not listening to the latest trend, the loudest voices online, people promising miracle solutions, but listening to myself, and asking a different question.

Instead of: "What diet should I follow?" I now ask: "What is my body trying to tell me?" This shift has changed everything.

Healthy eating has become less about chasing perfection and more about building awareness. For me, healthy eating is no longer about finding the perfect diet. It's about developing a better relationship with my own body.

And perhaps that's where the next part of the journey begins.Because listening to your body sounds simple. Yet when you live with ADHD, stress, anxiety, overwhelm or hyperfocus, hearing those signals can be one of the hardest things to do.