I'm glad this worked for you, but I don't think that you understand OP's central argument about the penalties imposed by the substantial ergonomic mismatch between ADHD "smart" and the conventional species, and may not have as strong a sense of what being on the inside of this condition feels like.
ADHD wiring essentially forces every task to be derived from a set of fundamental axioms about why the task must e done, why it must work the way it does, with an almost proof-like causal chain working all the way back to first principles, in order to simply remeber it in a stable way. Being interested in a subject can benefit you only in so far as it will provide you with motivation to build out a vast knowledge graph scaffold around the set of tasks that need to be done, in order to not feel like you are kicking a dead whale up the beach every time you have to start doing one of them.
But if you are presented with a subject where there is no time to do this, or the type of subject where it is actually not possible and only the muscle memory of rote memorization will power you through it, it doesn't matter how much it subjectively appeals to or interests you. You are going to be at the back of the pack despite your best efforts.
Attempts to give you help will only frustrate your (very likely memorization-gifted) tutors and mentors: they don't understand what's going on, so you merely look stupid, unmotivated or both. However, if you had enough runaway, they would find that not only you would catch up to wherever everyone else was (in one third of the time it took you,) but after another third share of prep time you would move from the bottom decile to the top, with gains still compounding. But this occasion almost never presents itself, because you're typically flushed out of the cycle long before you build enough inertia in the domain to show what you're capable of.
One can go almost sick with envy over the way neurotypically smart people are almkst unaware of how easily and quickly they retain multiple arbitrary lists of "how" steps in processes, even when these are largely self-contained and unconnected to any other chain of reasoning, and just get shit done without having to know how the entire superstructure is put together.
You'll be almost comically bad at (and find little pleasure in) all board games (except the most popular ones you've had years of exposure to), if you have not had time to master them ADHD style - even if you genuinely enjoy board games in principle. Whereas peers in your same nerd adjacent circle seem to reach competence or even mastery of any example in this genre of bureaucracy-as-a-sport within a few plays. Performing on stage, if there are more than a handful of lines to memorize, is utterly out of the question. Even if you love acting or theater, it's just not for you.
My own testament to this paradox is not from board games, but incredibly demoralizong experience trying to learn the piano (as an adult no less), something I had more than ample interest in and motivation to learn, but which in the initial stages presented almost insurmountable obstacles when it came to simply memorizing the basics of sight reading, scales, and the learner's songbook. skills that I watched 7 and 8 year olds, teens and even fellow adult learners, acquire in weeks but took me well over a year to reach parity. Since my job and self-image werent riding on being at the top of the class, I was able to keep with it accordimg to my own pace. And although I probably still wouldn't get hired even for a gig in the local shopping mall, my ability to improvise and stylize outside the set pieces I had received my basic training on inexorably began to surpass most of that cohort who had lapped me several times over back when we were just doing the rote basics.
Thanks for asking. I'll first explain the process (because I want to highlight why IF matters), and then I'll answer your question directly. It's going to take a little bit to properly elaborate, but I believe it's worth your time to read.
We first need to choose which of the following macronutrients contribute most to weight gain: protein, fat, or carbohydrates. Proteins (or, rather, amino acids) are not known for contributing to body fat in any significant manner. Fat was once thought to be the main contributor when calories--not carbohydrates--became accepted as fattening. However, modern science shows fat has little significant contribution to body fat and that the real contributor to body fat are carbohydrates. The discovery of leptin about 30 years ago finally shows why.
Carbs are sugars. Sugars, such as glucose, are the main source of fuel in the body, as they are eventually synthesized into ATP. Blood glucose levels are regulated by the hormone insulin. Elevated blood glucose levels increases insulin production, whereas low blood glucose decreases insulin production (with glucagon helping stabilize blood glucose levels). High insulin levels promotes anabolism, whereas low insulin levels promotes catabolism. Creating body fat is an anabolic process, whereas burning body fat is a catabolic process. Putting it all together, eating carbs inhibits the essential catabolic processes for burning fat.
While entirely cutting out carbs should be the answer, it's not. Many obese people report failure to lose weight on ketogenic diets. Why? The hormone leptin. See, leptin levels increase with insulin levels. Leptin signals the availability of energy reserves in the body. Adipose tissue (that is, body fat) is the primary producer of leptin. Importantly, leptin levels vary exponentially with body fat. The obese individual's body is so oversaturated with leptin, the body becomes resistant to leptin.
Decreased leptin levels will cause body fat to be burned. On a ketogenic diet, catabolic processes initially cause a reduction in body fat, which then decreases leptin production. Because the obese body has leptin resistance, the leptin production decrease is interpreted by the brain as a severe drop in available energy reserves, causing total energy expenditure to be immediately reduced and placing the body in "starvation mode." At this point, eliminating body fat actually becomes more difficult, as excess carbs become anabolized into body fat due to decreased energy expenditures.
So, to finally get to your question, how do carbs matter with respect to leptin? To lose weight over months and years, an obese person needs to eat carbs to (1) keep their leptin levels stable over the course of each week to prevent the body from entering starvation mode while (2) maximizing the efficacy of catabolic processes. As the body gradually recovers from its leptin resistance (which will likely take time), the body will shed fat without triggering the energy-minimization mode.
In this paradigm, your total energy expenditure determines how fast fat will be burned. According to the book "The Obesity Code", "total energy expenditure is the sum of basal metabolic rate, thermogenic effect of food, nonexercise activity thermogenesis, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption [(EPOC),] and exercise". Of these five factors, EPOC is mostly likely underutilized. A simple 10-minute HIIT routine every other day will regularly drive EPOC, which causes ATP synthesis. When an person isn't eating carbs, the body dips into fat stores to acquire the necessary glucose for ATP synthesis. Note that with this approach, exercise isn't strictly necessary but becomes extremely beneficial to maximize the efficacy of catabolic processes.
Intermittent fasting should work as long as the specific protocol doesn't decrease leptin levels such that the obese body enters starvation mode. In my opinion, the most workable approach for people is to try their best to completely eliminate carbs Monday-Friday, eat all the carbs they want on the weekends, and do the bare minimum of a 10-minutes HIIT routine every other day.
A shift in understanding the metabolism has been gradually occurring since the 1990s with the isolation of leptin.
What is leptin? Discovered in 1994, leptin is a hormone that signals the availability of energy reserves in the body. "High leptin levels are interpreted by the brain that energy reserves are high, whereas low leptin levels indicate that energy reserves are low", the latter causing the body to enter a resource-minimizing starvation mode [1]. More recently, leptin has also been shown to regulate "neuroendocrine and immune function and [play] a role in development" [2].
Why is leptin so important to obesity? "Most obesity occurs in the presence of increased leptin levels", which suggests a form of "leptin resistance" in obese individuals [2].
Leptin changes our understanding of body fat, also called adipose tissue. We generally think of body fat as simply stored energy reserves, so fat can be burned by decreasing our caloric intake (diet) and increasing our energy usage (exercise), forcing our body to dip into its reserves. This approach is generally referred to the calorie-in/calorie-out (CICO) model. While true to an extent, this perspective is too simplistic, given one key fact: leptin is primarily produced in adipose tissue [1]. This fact means body fat is actually an endocrine system organ.
Consider this: an obese individual has elevated leptin levels. A decrease in adipose tissue causes a decrease in their leptin production. Due to leptin resistance, low leptin levels causes the body to enter starvation mode, and hardcore dieting causes leptin levels to drop further, which makes weight loss even more difficult. What they mean by "metabolic adaptation" may be understood as "leptin adaptation", though I'm just speculating there.
It's strange that so many articles talk about weight loss and "metabolism adaptation" without mentioning the hormone signalling energy availability. With leptin, we clearly see the body has an energy availability feedback loop, and fighting the intrinsic dynamics of a feedback loop rarely leads to good outcomes.
On this vein, I want to highlight slothtrap's comments:
>The more frequent the dieting and steeper the caloric deficit, the worse metabolic adaptation gets, and the longer it takes to return to normal.
>I wonder if those who sustained higher levels of exercise were actually in a steeper caloric deficit.
>perhaps it's fair to say that if you're going to exercise, you best sustain it.
These comments align with present understanding of leptin dynamics. A steep caloric deficit pushes the obese body into starvation mode, so net energy expenditure from high levels of exercise will be decreased. Weight loss will be maintained once the body adjusts its leptin production and usage, which, as of now, can only be accomplished with habit.
It's also worth mentioning here the hormone ghrelin, which was identified in 1999 and is nicknamed the "hunger hormone" [3].
ADHD wiring essentially forces every task to be derived from a set of fundamental axioms about why the task must e done, why it must work the way it does, with an almost proof-like causal chain working all the way back to first principles, in order to simply remeber it in a stable way. Being interested in a subject can benefit you only in so far as it will provide you with motivation to build out a vast knowledge graph scaffold around the set of tasks that need to be done, in order to not feel like you are kicking a dead whale up the beach every time you have to start doing one of them.
But if you are presented with a subject where there is no time to do this, or the type of subject where it is actually not possible and only the muscle memory of rote memorization will power you through it, it doesn't matter how much it subjectively appeals to or interests you. You are going to be at the back of the pack despite your best efforts.
Attempts to give you help will only frustrate your (very likely memorization-gifted) tutors and mentors: they don't understand what's going on, so you merely look stupid, unmotivated or both. However, if you had enough runaway, they would find that not only you would catch up to wherever everyone else was (in one third of the time it took you,) but after another third share of prep time you would move from the bottom decile to the top, with gains still compounding. But this occasion almost never presents itself, because you're typically flushed out of the cycle long before you build enough inertia in the domain to show what you're capable of.
One can go almost sick with envy over the way neurotypically smart people are almkst unaware of how easily and quickly they retain multiple arbitrary lists of "how" steps in processes, even when these are largely self-contained and unconnected to any other chain of reasoning, and just get shit done without having to know how the entire superstructure is put together.
You'll be almost comically bad at (and find little pleasure in) all board games (except the most popular ones you've had years of exposure to), if you have not had time to master them ADHD style - even if you genuinely enjoy board games in principle. Whereas peers in your same nerd adjacent circle seem to reach competence or even mastery of any example in this genre of bureaucracy-as-a-sport within a few plays. Performing on stage, if there are more than a handful of lines to memorize, is utterly out of the question. Even if you love acting or theater, it's just not for you.
My own testament to this paradox is not from board games, but incredibly demoralizong experience trying to learn the piano (as an adult no less), something I had more than ample interest in and motivation to learn, but which in the initial stages presented almost insurmountable obstacles when it came to simply memorizing the basics of sight reading, scales, and the learner's songbook. skills that I watched 7 and 8 year olds, teens and even fellow adult learners, acquire in weeks but took me well over a year to reach parity. Since my job and self-image werent riding on being at the top of the class, I was able to keep with it accordimg to my own pace. And although I probably still wouldn't get hired even for a gig in the local shopping mall, my ability to improvise and stylize outside the set pieces I had received my basic training on inexorably began to surpass most of that cohort who had lapped me several times over back when we were just doing the rote basics.