Kandis Joubert is a NASM-certified personal trainer and nutrition coach specializing in corrective exercise and fitness nutrition. She believes real transformation is multi-dimensional and therefore, founded Faceted Fitness LLC.
In 2025, it is estimated that over 400 million adults worldwide struggle with ADHD. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder can affect how an individual perceives themselves, the world, and their capabilities within it. Left unmanaged, this can leave one feeling discouraged, incapable, and demotivated when it comes to accomplishing goals in life. While physical fitness offers many functional benefits for the ADHD brain, the wrong approach can quickly lead to overwhelm and burnout.
As with approaching fitness, managing ADHD is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Most fitness programs and coaching have historically been created, presented, and coached with the neurotypical brain in mind, using the “Just Do It” approach. And while it does, in a sense, come down to “just doing it,” it’s not always that easy when starting something new and continuing something that becomes familiar or even mundane, despite being effective.
People with ADHD often have lower levels of dopamine. When we engage in physical activity and activate muscles, our brain releases neurotransmitters, including but not limited to dopamine, which help with focus, attention, and clarity. Some benefits that physical fitness can provide for adults (and children) with ADHD include:
Reduced stress, anxiety, and depression
Improved impulse control
Enhanced memory and cognition
Improved executive function, including skills needed to plan, organize, and recall details
Identifying the struggles of ADHD
While there are both positive traits and negative symptoms commonly associated with ADHD, those negative symptoms unfortunately often clash with traditional workplace and overall societal structure. More specifically, fitness, people with ADHD can face unique challenges when it comes to achieving their health and fitness goals as it relates to lifestyle, mindset, training, and nutrition habits.
Here’s what this can look like:
Lifestyle
Time management: Prioritizing fitness, especially if things are new, can be challenging for people with ADHD to fit into an existing busy schedule. They may struggle to identify things to cut out of their schedule and simultaneously underestimate the time needed for workouts, prepping meals, and other tasks required within their fitness program. Distractions and procrastination can lead to missed workouts, meals, and sleep.
Energy management and Overwhelm: Starting a new fitness journey and considering what needs to be done can feel overwhelming, especially after the urge to sign up for multiple programs has come and gone, leaving them realizing they’ve overcommitted again. ADHD can contribute to procrastination or avoidance, especially when goals feel too big or complex.
Impulsivity: People with ADHD might choose exercises, routines, or programs that aren't well-suited for their fitness levels or lifestyle, leading to burnout or injury. They may also jump from one fitness trend to the next without sticking with one tried and true method long enough to see the fruit of their labor.
Sleep: Poor sleep habits can derail fitness progress before it even starts to progress. Sleep is a foundational piece of training quality and recovery and aids our bodies in recovering from the current day and preparing for the next. A lack of quality sleep can also magnify the other ADHD struggles we’ve covered so far.
Mindset
Consistency: The lack of sustained focus and knack for impulsivity can cause people with ADHD to start workout plans but struggle with maintaining them over time, which is key to lasting results. Losing interest in programs quickly and switching routines often keeps them circling the same mountains month after month, year after year.
Motivation: Decreased dopamine levels in those with ADHD, among other things, can present challenges in feeling motivated or rewarded by physical activity. This can make it hard to stay motivated, resist cravings, push through tough workouts, or pick things back up after an off day or week, especially when progress feels slow.
Self-talk: Feeling discouraged easily and quitting when results aren’t immediate often breeds self-doubt in the ADHD mind. This can result in negative self-talk, subsequent doubt in one’s capability to “get it right” the next time, and reluctance to try or start again.
All-or-nothing thinking: Oftentimes, ADHDers will feel like if they miss one workout or skip their prepped lunch, they’ve failed. “If I can’t execute perfectly, why do it at all?”
Training
Focus: ADHD often involves trouble concentrating. During workouts, this can manifest as difficulty staying on task or focusing on form, tempos, and appropriate rest periods that affect the quality of the workouts and overall results.
Difficulty planning: Establishing and following a structured workout plan can be difficult for people with ADHD, as they may struggle with the planning and organization necessary to stick to a long-term program for sustained results. Being aware and honest about what is realistic can often be difficult to map out.
Inconsistent energy levels: People with ADHD often experience fluctuating energy levels that can significantly affect workout performance. On some days, they might feel energized, while on others, fatigue, brain fog, burnout, or lack of focus makes it hard to stay engaged and follow through.
Nutrition and dietary habits
Emotional eating: Emotional dysregulation is a common symptom of ADHD. Many times, the individual is unaware that emotional eating is a default pattern they’ve developed somewhere along the way to cope with stress, anxiety, or boredom.
Impulsive food choices: Impulsivity in ADHD can lead to making quick, unhealthy food decisions like grabbing fast food instead of planning healthier meals and sticking to them.
Failure to track: Although not always necessary, tracking one’s food, at the very least, provides awareness in moving forward. Forgetting or failing to record nutrition habits and intake can lead to discouragement, especially if it is overwhelming to start.
Skipping meals: Forgetting to eat due to hyperfocus on other tasks can derail progress, especially if meal timing and frequency are crucial for one’s particular fitness goals.
Learning the strategies
While medication helps manage ADHD symptoms like impulsivity and focus, many adults still struggle with organization, time management, and emotional regulation that affect daily function. These challenges can be addressed with self-awareness, regulation, and some of these practical strategies as they relate to:
Lifestyle
Accommodations: Implement flexible schedules, varied or modified programs, and task prioritization tools.
Visuals: Utilize things like tracking apps, whiteboards, sticky notes, and calendars.
Limited Choices: Keep it simple- “this or that.”
Timers: Set alarms, reminders, and notifications for things like mealtimes, water, workouts, and bedtime to stay on track while also allowing some buffer time.
Habit stacking: Pair new habits like workouts, meal prepping, or earlier bedtime with an existing habit (i.e., stretching or cardio while watching TV, dimming the lights for bedtime after dinner, or drinking water upon waking before coffee).
Simplifying: Break down larger, more complex tasks into smaller, simpler ones. Suppose you can’t, recruit someone who excels at this, stat!
Boundaries: Learn to say no to things (even good things) that aren’t moving you in the direction you want to go.
Mindset
External motivation: Find an accountability partner, group challenge, or trainer/coach to walk this out with.
Fun factor: Although what may be considered “boring” is still often the most effective, it’s important to also include activities you genuinely enjoy (dancing, hiking, rock climbing, etc.) for movement variation, added challenge, and balance.
Self-compassion: Rather than giving up, give yourself grace. If you miss a workout or overeat, simply reset at the next meal or session. It may not always be easy, but it really is that simple. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be!
Training
Workout appointments: Schedule workouts as appointments with a very important person- yourself. Put them on your calendar with reminders. Treat them as non-negotiable. If you don’t, no one else will.
Plan B: Keep some alternatives in your back pocket (a trainer can help with this). On unavoidably busy days, do a quick 5-10 min bodyweight workout instead of skipping entirely. Likewise, if the allotted 30 minutes for cardio becomes 10 minutes, opt for interval runs or sprints instead of steady-state cardio. Something is always better than nothing, and you won’t regret something like you will nothing. Something still moves the needle faster than nothing.
Limited distractions: If and when possible, leave your phone elsewhere and turn off watch notifications. Use a stopwatch for timing rest periods. If you need your phone around, turn it on. Do not disturb it, and keep the clock open to use timers or gym apps for rest periods or intervals. If you’re a talker, consider less busy times at your gym or a home gym setting.
Nutrition
Simplicity: Stick to easy, repeatable meals that can be easily tweaked for variety. Batch-cook, freeze and stick to 3-5 go-to meals to reduce decision fatigue. Then, changing it up when you’re feeling it doesn’t seem so burdensome under pressure.
Proactivity: Keep easy, healthy foods (and water!) readily available to avoid impulsive eating, including on the go.
Mindfulness: Before mindlessly giving in to cravings, wait ten minutes and assess your emotions.
Recognition: Reward yourself with non-food items for consistency rather than just focusing on weight loss and fast results.
Reminders: Avoid forgetting meals and binge eating later with regular-paced alarms, alerts, and notifications. When you find yourself simply dismissing these, change it up.
Hydrate: Get a water bottle and put it in plain sight with time markers to remind you to drink, how much to drink, and how often to drink.
As the preventative and holistic approach to healthcare broadens, we will likely see a growing number of individuals who prefer proactive and multifaceted approaches to ADHD management, including those within the fitness space living with ADHD.
While medication will likely remain a key player in treating ADHD, it’s clear that relevant fitness and lifestyle coaching can play a critical role in helping individuals utilize the tools necessary for lasting success. Combining medication with such strategies can help one develop the skills needed to succeed beyond just managing symptoms. And you may find things that work for you that aren’t highlighted here! Rest assured, there are many driven individuals who have achieved remarkable success by leaning into their ADHD strengths like creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, adaptability, sensitivity and empathy, and hyper-focus. The ADHD doesn’t necessarily need to be “corrected.” It needs to be given an environment in which it can thrive versus solely survive.
Individuals with ADHD often do well with one-on-one coaching when easily distracted. Tailored one-on-one fitness coaching offers unique strategies to help clients develop self-awareness, effectively manage energy and time, improve organization, and maintain momentum for greater consistency and long-term success.
Real transformation is multi-faceted. Shape up, shine out.
If you’ve been considering one-on-one fitness coaching and can relate to this article, here’s your sign! Book a call with me, and let’s chat.
Kandis Joubert, Certified Personal Trainer & Nutrition Coach
Kandis Joubert is a NASM-certified personal trainer and nutrition coach specializing in corrective exercise and fitness nutrition. She believes real transformation is multi-dimensional and therefore founded Faceted Fitness LLC, where she uses a multi-faceted approach in helping other business owners and corporate professionals prioritize their health and preserve longevity to amplify their own distinct influence. Additional areas of expertise as it relates to human wellness include mobility and goniometric assessment, prehab and rehab, movement optimization, mindset, lifestyle change and adherence, and body recomposition.
