Adderall & Zero Appetite, Best Strategy?

Hey guys - long time lurker, finally registered simply to post this message and get some feedback.

I take 20 mg of Adderall daily - with a prescription - to manage my adult ADHD. I’m 35. Anybody who has taken this crap knows what it does to your appetite - it makes you feel full for hours and hours.

I have serious ADHD - with the adderall I’m on top of my business, and literally at the number one spot in the undergraduate science courses (physics, chemistry, anatomy) I’m taking. Without it I can barely function - I’m a fun guy but nothing gets done.

What to do? I’m dropping muscle and feeling weak. I can manage about 500-600 calories of oatmeal and a protein shake in the morning. At the same time I take the pill, which kicks in about an hour later. After that it’s a solid 12 hours of no appetite, during which I can maybe manage another 500 calories if I really try. And unfortunately those 500 tend to be junk because eating clean while on Adderall? Forget it. I simply can’t choke down a chicken breast and a plate of spinach while on amphetamines. Then at night I pig out after the drugs wear off. The last two nights have been giant burritos. Despite this attempt at eating my chest, shoulders and biceps have visibly shrunk in only 4 weeks. My waist measurement is holding steady at 29.5 inches but it is ALSO getting FLABBY. I think I’m losing muscle and gaining fat from the poor diet intake and timing. And I’m not training because my diet has been thrown off so bad and I feel weak.

This really blows. Before I went on this stuff a month ago (going back to school, which is why I need it now - i took it years ago in school, stopped when i left school, and now i’m doing it again - anything less than A’s are not an option) I spent the winter ski racing, doing crossfit three days a week, and eating super clean (meal delivery service + protein shakes). I was at the leanest bodyfat of my life, the abs were starting to show, I was in the best shape of my life and I was toned. I had planned to stop crossfit and bulk up this summer with a typical gainer routine before the next ski season starts.

Okay - so what to do? Anybody in my boat?

1 - Train in the morning before the drugs hit, during the day while on adderall, or at night when it wears off?
2 - I’m gonna do whatever I can do get my calories back up to about 3,000-3,500 at least. But that means major eating at night. :confused: It is really hard to eat 2,000 calories of clean food in a 3 hour time span at night.

Another option - junk food + a ton of training?

Anything I can do to stave off muscle loss.

I’ll take any supplements that are legal.

I had “ADHD” and find that the stronger discipline you have in life, the less likely you are to be deemed as having this “disability”. When I was in high school i was on about 60mg a day and I never wanted to eat anything. However, I wanted to be bigger and literally force fed myself PB&J, chicken, potatoes, etc. It’s really hard though when you have a drug that powerful in your body. I don’t take it anymore on a daily basis because I felt that it was doing more harm to my body than good.

That being said, I take it when I’m cutting because I’ve found that when I’m on it keeps me EXTREMELY well disciplined. I take only 5mg because I believe that is really all I need.

It’s definitely worth seeing just how little may be needed. It likely is not necessary to obtain the maximum possible effect on enhanced performance; an entirely-sufficient effect might occur on a fraction of the dose.

I have a way of looking at it that’s not original but slightly differently worded. Namely, interests can be in the categories of intrinsic (things that the person is himself interested in regardless of anybody or anything else) and extrinsic (from outside causes.)

The brain of a person without attention-deficit balances these interests in a normal way, where the extrinsic demand gets a pretty high priority. For example, there’s an exam tomorrow, or a paper is supposed to be written. And, an idea has come to mind as to a theory of where quad-fin configurations may be a better choice than thruster for surfboards, and vice-versa. The first is an extrinsic demand; the second intrinsic. The normal person’s mind would naturally, without effort, discipline, or anything, weight the extrinsic interest much more highly than the intrinsic. This person would have no natural tendency to spend the next several hours finding out hydrodynamic information relevant to surfboard fins.

However, the brain of the person with attention-deficit naturally weighs intrinsic interests quite high, and the extrinsic rather low, and it will be very easy to say the least for the intrinsic interest internally to outweigh the extrinsic and the studying or paper-writing does not get done, until such point as time pressure has caused the brain to give that a higher weight than the current intrinsic interest.

According to this theory, Adderall increases the brain’s weighting of the importance or urgency of extrinsic interests or demands. It does not necessarily take a large amount to make enough of a difference that willpower can pretty readily allow meeting these needs effectively, although a yet higher dose would make it where no willpower is required: the extrinsic becomes compelling and it would be very difficult to pursue the intrinsic even if intellectually wishing to.

Back to the appetite: Viewing food as fuel for bb’ing, with taste and appetite secondary and not the fundamental reason, may help. At worst, high calorie shakes (protein, a reaosnable amount of carbs, and for example olive oil plus coconut oil) can be drunk whether hungry or not.

Are you taking the XR? If you are, ask your doc to give you the tablets: they don’t last as long and seem to affect appetite much less.

Bill,

what are your thoughts for the OP on No-opept as a replacement?

Thanks you guys - those are some really excellent replies.

The Greek - yup I have the XR version. I’ll give the rapid release a shot again - good suggestion.

Bill Roberts - that’s the best explanation of how it feels to be ADHD I have yet heard. Yeah I am taking the smallest dose I can to still get the intrinsic/extrinsic effect. 20 mg of XR is pretty low on the dosage scale actually.

JerryRicePns - I hear what you’re saying, but for me it’s not about willpower. I have the big-picture willpower in life. I don’t party. Whatever I do in life I want to be the best and I ENJOY putting in the hours and work to achieve my goals - I achieved them in undergrad, then in business. Now my goal is to go to medical school. But it is not fun to have to constantly fight your own brain to finish tasks, and it wears you down.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to take a full time load of science courses, but to be the number one student in courses like that takes many hours of work each day. Zero procrastination is possible. Hours of memorization. Hours of practice solving problems. It’s honestly the same as training for sports, except you’re using a different muscle. My muscle is on or off. With adderall I can study 6 hours a day outside of class, and academically crush most any other students in humanities or sciences. Without it I’m trying to build surfboard fins, as Bill Roberts said.

My goal is to get into a top-10 medical school. The average acceptance rate for top 10 programs is about 3%.

For many pro-bodybuilders it takes optimal genetics, optimal training, optimal nutrition + steroids.

For many “pro students” today it takes a optimal genetics (high I.Q.), optimal study skills, optimal study volume + ADHD drugs. The competition for the top programs is insane. And the rat race doesn’t stop once you’re in med school - class rank and board scores seriously influence residency options. Anybody wanting orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, radiology, dermatology, plastic surgery needs to be toward the top of their med school class, which of course is already filled with smart people. It is what it is.

Every drug has a downside - only the individual can say whether the benefit is worth the cost.

People definitely abuse it though - the two categories I can think of are models I know who take it to stay abnormally thin, and fellow students who take it simply so that they can party and procrastinate, and still cram the night before a test to pull a C.

666Rich - That is fascinating. I’d never heard of Noopept - thanks.

I take adder all once in a while but doesn’t really affect my appetite but then again I make a CONSCIOUS effort to eat every 3 hours on it. So OP is it that your not hungry or you get lost in what your doing?

Wow man, good luck in your studies, you sound very driven to achieve your goals. I have the same issues in a top 10 MBA program (While working), and have used adderral to mitigate some of those issues of my brain floating around, too.

I would concur with the advice that calories and protein in liquid form may be beneficial to you, as it is easier than eating solid food.

[quote]666Rich wrote:
Bill,

what are your thoughts for the OP on No-opept as a replacement?[/quote]
Rich, I’ve only ever evaluated it personally on the basis of immediate perceived effect, rather than possible long term benefit. From 20 mg personally I noticed absolutely nothing of any kind, whereas 40 mg zonked me out badly and I didn’t feel fit to drive. (For comparison, the Russian pharmaceutical dose is 10 mg.) Of course, that’s only effect on one person, but as the interest was personal only, I didn’t go further with it.

One study found that it was more potent as an anxiolytic than a nootropic, meaning that the EC50 (serum concentration giving 50% effectiveness) was considerably lower as an anxiolytic than as a nootropic. In other words, with increasing doses, effective anxiolytic effect was reached before effective nootropic effect was reached. I don’t, unfortunately, recall how this was measured. Typically “nootropic” activity is measured in terms of learning performance or retention of learning for rats in various types of experiments.

That suggests to me that it may be more suited to those for whom some anxiolytic effect is a good thing anyway, and perhaps not so well suited to those who have no need of an anxiolytic or find anxiolytics to be undesirable.

Noopept certainly has effect on the brain that can be relevant for some users. Effects may include increased communication between the brain hemispheres.

It seems to work entirely differently than Adderall.

I’m on 60mg of Vyvanse a day and don’t really get an appetite either. Here’s what I do:

Mornings - protein shake + mega-dose fish-oil + coffee with coconut oil (just about 400-500 calories)
Afternoons - (don’t eat much at work) lots of nuts or spoons of peanut butter + another protein shake + any little thing of food that seems stomach-able (doubtfully more than another 500 calories, although I’ve managed to eat 1100kcal of nuts during lunch… made my jaw tired)
Post-workout - Surge Recovery (330kcal)
Dinner - cram 1500-2200kcal in before bed

It works out really well for me, but even before the Vyvanse, i could fast all day if I wanted to.

Intermittent fast!

I have not been diagnosed with ADHD/ADD but I have some serious attention problems if I am around possible stimuli pc/ipad/tv… etc.
I dont take pills but, I manage to study 6h per day when I close my self in the library silent room with ear pads, leaving my smartphone home.

And it’s not only about being in a place where you can study - have some reachable goals too. For example, “today I will review chapter 1-4, understand chapter 5, do problems x-z”. And only allow yourself to leave when you are finished. You can bring snacks with you and have a break every 50min if you want.

Usually working out before studying calms me down too.

So you could try that with a lesser dose like Bill Roberts suggested, and you will have a bigger appetite.

I have the same problem you do with poor skin. never had the problem before and was building my body with eaze. just recently I started using craze the pre workout. furious pete gives it a 10/10. I take it first thing in the morning. the stuff is just like adderall but without the negative side affects.

believe me you’ll be ready to go. I’ve been researching every possible way to stop the poor skin which is primarly on the glutes, quads. and then various other places. I believe that the problem is that adderrall is a collagen destroyer. and it also has a body tissue wasting effect. some things that help stop the problem have been a good B-12 vitamin. and a Vitamix. get tumeric root and blend it with any vegtables you want. make sure not to over heat the mixture. pulse and use the plunger. and then store the thick mixture in ball jars.

when needed mix 50/50 green concentrate with clean water… stay away from spicy foods, oranges and strawberries and chocolate. run every day. warm up 2 miles. find the steepest grade or hill you can. sprint up or blast your way to the top and walk down. repeat 6 times. this cleans the blood and gets the built up toxins out. as soon as you get in take a shower. I went natural using all kinds of different soaps. but that didn’t work well.

I tried to get away from Lareth sulfate. but recently I found that MEN+CARE by Dove Anti Dandruff Shampoo with caffeine and pyrithoion zinc is working better than anything else that I’ve used. Still searching for the best fix but all of these things are working together. stay away from any sugar. and that means fruits. if you must have fruit make it wild blue berries and only 1 cup a day. make greens your best friend. kale, mushrooms, etc…

give it a try. never mix fruits with your green juice because it will run right through you and bacteria will prosper in your gut and body.

one more thing. I believe the B 12 really helps because its a destressor. and I beleive that this is a side effect of adderrall.

Let me know if you discover anything new.

Thanks
Russ