We’re excited to share the newest episode of ADHDKC Conversations, featuring a powerful and eye-opening discussion with Dr. Matt Lindquist, who is triple board-certified in internal medicine, pediatrics, and obesity medicine, and founder of MoKan Weight Loss and Metabolic Health.
This conversation gets to the heart of something many families experience—but rarely hear explained clearly:
👉 Why are so many individuals with ADHD also struggling with weight, sleep, anxiety, or binge eating?
👉 Why does it feel like “lazy” is the label people get when something deeper is happening?
👉 And what does neuroscience actually tell us about these overlaps?
🧠 What We Talk About in This Episode
Dr. Lindquist walks us through:
The shared neurobiology between ADHD and obesity
How dopamine and reward pathways influence eating behaviors
Why “response inhibition” and emotional regulation matter
The powerful role of genetics in both ADHD and obesity
How anxiety and sleep disorders intensify everything
Why medication is not a failure—but often an evidence-based necessity
One of the most important takeaways?
Obesity, ADHD, anxiety, and binge eating are biologically driven conditions—not character flaws.
There are real brain-based mechanisms behind food responsiveness, impulsivity, emotional eating, and sleep disruption. When we understand that, shame starts to lift—and effective treatment becomes possible.
If you’ve ever wondered why you or your child feel constantly tired and hungry… or why evenings spiral into binge eating after a long day of holding it together… this episode connects the dots.
🎧 Listen now on your favorite podcast platform and share it with someone who needs to hear this. For those who would rather read the transcript, see the bottom of this newsletter.
Chapters
00:00Introduction to ADHD and Obesity
01:43Dr. Lindquist’s Journey in Medicine
03:57Identifying Gaps in Obesity Care
05:59Understanding Genetics in Obesity
08:21The Connection Between ADHD and Obesity
10:14Neurobiology of ADHD and Weight Management
12:51The Role of Anxiety and Sleep Disorders
15:37Personalized Treatment Approaches
17:51Addressing Stigma in Obesity and ADHD
19:42Final Thoughts and Future Conversations
📅 Coming Up: ADHDKC Parent Talk (Free & Online)
We’re also thrilled that Dr. Lindquist will be speaking live to the ADHDKC Parent Group!
🗓 Tuesday, April 14
⏰ 6:30 PM CST (Online)
🎟 Free event
Title: “Why You’re Tired and Hungry: How the ADHD Brain Impacts Weight, Sleep & Binge Eating”
In this deeper dive, parents will learn:
Why ADHD increases risk for metabolic issues
How sleep disruption fuels appetite and inattention
The connection between anxiety, binge eating, and dopamine
What individualized, evidence-based treatment actually looks like
How to reduce stigma and increase hope for your family
This is one of those topics that affects many families—but rarely gets discussed openly.
You can RSVP at ADHDKC to get your Zoom link:
💬 Why This Matters
As pediatricians and parent advocates, we see it all the time:
A child with ADHD who struggles with impulse control around food
A teen with metabolic syndrome and untreated anxiety
A parent who feels guilty and blames themselves
Families stuck in cycles of exhaustion and shame
Understanding the biology changes everything.
We hope you’ll:
🎧 Listen to the episode
📅 Register for the parent talk
📣 Share with another parent who might need this perspective
The more we understand the brain, the better we can support our kids—and ourselves.
See you on April 14.
Transcript
Kristen Stuppy (00:14)
welcome back to ADHDKC Conversations. I’m Dr. Kristen Stuppy and I’m here with my co-host, Sara Whelan.
Sara Whelan (00:22)
Hi everyone, we’re so glad you’re joining us. Each month we sit down with experts, parents and individuals in the ADHD community to explore topics that make a big difference for our families in Kansas City and even beyond Kansas City.
Kristen Stuppy (00:36)
And today we’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Matt Lindquist.
Dr. Lindquist is a triple board certified physician in internal medicine, pediatrics and obesity medicine, and is the founder of MoKan Weight Loss and Metabolic Health. He’s deeply passionate about teaching both patients and medical professionals about obesity as a disease and helping people find.
individualized paths to better health and well-being.
Sara Whelan (01:00)
We’re especially excited to talk with Dr. Lindquist today because his work really sits at the intersection that isn’t discussed nearly enough. How ADHD, weight, sleep, anxiety, and eating behaviors can all really be connected at a neurobiological level.
Kristen Stuppy (01:17)
This conversation is a chance to get to know Dr. Lindquist, learn from his clinical experience, and start unpacking why these connections matter so much for individuals and families affected by ADHD. So with that, Dr. Lindquist, you’re triple board certified in internal medicine, pediatrics, and obesity medicine, which is a pretty unique combination. Can you walk us through your professional journey and what led you to focus your career on obesity and metabolic health?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (01:42)
Yeah, glad to. And first, you know, happy to be here. Appreciate you having me on the podcast and getting to, yeah, just getting to educate. love talking about this and getting, you know, reliable info out there to the public. So, yeah, I mean, I’m a true masochist, both in my training and day to day. So,
you know, that fits and like most of us in medicine, I I love to learn and if I have like a vice, apparently that’s it. But yeah, I feel like I had, you know, kind of this slow burn into obesity. You know, I knew from a pretty early age, I mean, one of my best friends, I, you know, I wanted to be a physician earlier than I thought I wanted to be apparently.
And then I remember seeing a couple of docs from small town North Dakota. And I remember during college coming back and seeing my eye doc and one of my friends’ dads who’s a family doc in town. I talked to them and one of them didn’t even want to retire because part of it was like that’s their social aspect of their life too.
And that really clicked with me in that I really love developing those like longitudinal relationships. And with internal medicine and pediatrics, similar to family med, I get to know that whole family and really see multiple generations. So.
where I was like, when I’d go into OR during surgery, I hated it. Like cut and run and no, patients are asleep, people love that and I wanted to see them out throughout their life. then, being, and this is kind of odd, I sometimes bring this up in clinic, but I was always just this skinny little fart.
you know, maybe like 130 pounds, soaking wet. So remember in high school, I was actually, I got into nutrition to kind of gain muscle and, you know, strength for sports. And that was, you know, that I think that was when I really like dipped my toes into just understanding nutrition, which unfortunately is not taught quite that well in both undergraduate and graduate medical education.
So it’s probably a little ahead of the curve there. then I think that just kind of snowballed on itself until I was about a second year resident in my combined internal medicine, pediatrics residency. And I spent a month with my mentor, Dr. Brooke Sweeney at Children’s Mercy.
Dr. Sara Hampel, who’s the mother of the program. that’s where I saw what, like the light bulb went off. I saw what good obesity medicine could be, and that was off to the races from there.
Kristen Stuppy (04:35)
you know, as a pediatrician, there’s a saying that we gave up our 20s for this because there’s so much of training that we really do have to give up part of our life to intensely study and be at the hospital and everything. And I cannot imagine being triple board certified. I only did one with the kids. So but you can tell, like if this is your passion and even since high school, if you had this love of the nutrition that very much fits how that could keep you motivated to do all that you do.
That’s fantastic.
Sara Whelan (05:04)
Yeah, I think it stands out too. It’s rare today to find a family to find a resource who has so many different layers and levels of your experience. But it’s just interest too in terms of looking at things from a family system, which is really so relevant and important with ADHD and with families.
You’ve helped build large academic programs and then went on to open MoKan weight loss and metabolic health. What gaps were you seeing in care that made you realize something different was needed and for you to go ahead and open your own practice?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (05:40)
Yeah, mean, you know, first, I mean, it’s a and it’s as some may know, it’s a pretty big leap to go from employed, employed practice to kind of bootstrapping your own clinic. so I would say one of the one of the biggest gaps was just my family time. So that was that was a major, major push. But yeah, you know, so.
I had started the University Health Weight Management Clinic about eight years ago or so now. And I was seeing...
I was seeing people with heart failure, kidney failure, dialysis, and pretty advanced disease states. And I was sitting there in a 20-minute slot, which is inappropriate for them anyways, let alone anyone, pretty much. And I was doing absolutely fundamental nutrition stuff, for example, while talking about, hey, so what is a protein?
while also managing these meds and okay, well if you’re on dialysis, don’t worry about how it’s metabolized by the kidney. A little bit more complex medicine stuff. And I just, mean, even fighting for a dietician and a psychologist and a sleep psychologist, like.
still those resources were still so limited. And I was having to do so much of that and it just like we couldn’t scale. And so I really wanted to do something where I could really reach more people. And then I wanted to see families. maybe 5 % of my practice I was like trying to coordinate between
you know, the pediatric hospital and my adult clinic, but it just wasn’t, you know, wasn’t very easy to do.
Yeah, so it was just not easy to coordinate care between the two hospital systems for the parents and their kids. And also, I was pretty passionate about it, and I knew there wasn’t really a resource in town. So that’s been really fun to be able to see families in my clinic now, see them back-to-back appointments. It’s more convenient for them.
And the other, and actually what I did not realize was such a gap, and this is partly just a, yeah, potentially a local or regional gap was for kids with more like class one, class two obesity. So, you know, I think class one, class two, class three, or quote unquote morbid obesity, it’s kind of the, you how we think about them. So.
when I was at the pizza hospital, I’d see a lot of class three. And they’re just bad, really tough genetics and just really advanced disease states. then we have kind of a bread and butter nutrition clinic, if you will. And what I started seeing when I opened MoKan was all these kids with, they’ve got...
kind of tough genetics, you know, as far as their risk for obesity and maybe diabetes. But they have pretty good resources. you know, and their parents were thoughtful about their diets and exercise and sleep. And so they’re getting all the things, but they still had a genetic disease. And they really just needed, a lot of times, pretty simple, appropriate meds. And it’s...
easy to take care of them. And so rewarding to see, you know, like a 15 year old kid with metabolic syndrome, which we know is a risk factor right now for, you know, heart disease and whatnot down the road. And within a year or so with pretty simple treatment, it’s gone. And they feel great. And the parents are just relieved that they don’t have to worry about their kids’ health.
Kristen Stuppy (09:32)
There’s a lot of stigma with weight and obesity, but also a lot of evidence-based approaches that address the biological, behavioral, and environmental factors of weight management. And you just mentioned genetics several times in there. How do you incorporate the genetic considerations, medications, lifestyle changes into a comprehensive treatment plan?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (09:48)
Yeah, great question. So first, I always get a good picture of the family history. mean, obesity is one of the most heritable diseases in all of medicine. Historically, we have not approached it that way. And in one thing, lot of patients and families, they come to me looking for answers, like, hey, why is this a problem for me? And at least like half the time, it’s right there in their initial questionnaire.
It’s like, oh, OK, well, I ask, who else in the family has obesity? And it’s like, OK. And they’re like, everyone. I go, OK, well, we can stop thinking about that question, because you just answered it. I was just talking to a patient about this this morning that I find it’s really fascinating that if we have a family with breast cancer, we call that a BRCA mutation.
Right? A bunch of autoimmune disorders that might be HLA-B27, know, it’s like genetic predisposition. If you have a whole family with obesity, they’re called lazy. You know, so like there’s this huge discrepancy. but we’ve known for a long time that it’s a strong genetic disease. So so one, you know, I just I like to paint that picture for families just in
man, the relief that they get knowing that, yeah, this is not our fault. I don’t know. I get mad with my staff. I always have if we’re low on or if we’re out of Kleenex in my exam rooms, because there’s a lot of tears are shed, just giving that validation.
Sara Whelan (11:12)
Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy (11:29)
There’s so much guilt associated with it because people feel like they did something wrong. They ate the wrong things or they didn’t exercise. They are lazy. They feel like they are responsible for their own weight problems.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (11:29)
And then, ⁓ yeah.
Right, well, mean, that’s the message they’ve been given for, you know, pretty much all of our history so far.
Kristen Stuppy (11:48)
Right?
Sara Whelan (11:49)
Many people don’t automatically connect ADHD with weight or metabolic health. When did you start noticing in your work a meaningful overlap between ADHD and obesity?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (12:02)
Yeah, was definitely when I was at the metabolic bariatric clinic at Children’s Mercy with a great clinical psychologist that some of you may know, Dr. Amy Beck, who has worked with ADHDKC in the past and has gladly joined the staff here at MoKan.
But she was, I mean, it was just really helpful having her to identify and really clarify the behavioral health conditions for our families and patients. And then helping me and the other doc in the clinic come up with really good medication plans based on this. And kind of over time, we were, one academic center,
in that particular clinic, we just had more layers of those resources. So I could see it followed, like, okay, yep, hey, we got the formal diagnosis of ADHD. And then over time, just that ADHD became so obvious with certain families and certain behaviors that either were a major driver for their obesity and weight gain.
and or were just a barrier to success in the program. as you guys know, just life in general. yeah, so it just is, yeah, just time in that clinic with Dr. Beck and how, yeah, seeing how it drove the disease and then kind of worsened or limited our success.
Kristen Stuppy (13:17)
Mm-hmm.
Sara Whelan (13:36)
Yeah, yeah. I think we were talking about stigma earlier and there’s with obesity, well, also with ADHD in terms of control and feeling like, just change your behavior. So, so helpful then that you kind of have your eye on.
and understand it from a different framework for families to really, like you were saying, to validate and provide some real quality information, but also just support that typically they may not get just from society. So yeah, really helpful.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (14:11)
Yeah, mean, I feel like another disease state, if you will, that a lot of patients and families get labeled as like lazy. And they come in, they’re like self labeling. Or someone else mentions that. And I can’t remember, was some years ago that.
Sara Whelan (14:29)
Right.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (14:37)
I go, okay, I don’t believe in lazy, or anything in that realm. To me, it’s either some undiagnosed mental health condition, whether it’s depression, anxiety, or ADHD, or a sleep disorder. But yeah, it’s just misunderstood. And in the context of some of our old...
how we used to approach anxiety and depression, especially in primary care. I was like, oh, just make yourself happier or whatever. And then we learned like, OK, well, that’s not quite right. It’s like, oh, be more focused. Great, thanks for the guidance. How about let’s change my biology, please.
Sara Whelan (15:04)
to stop.
Will cover.
Kristen Stuppy (15:15)
Right. And when we talk about ADHD, we often focus on the attention or the behaviors, but not always what’s really happening in the brain. And ADHD is associated with a shortened lifespan because of many factors. But can you talk a little bit about the shared neurobiology between ADHD and obesity, which is of course one of the relations to the shortened lifespan.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (15:37)
Yeah, is, there was a great study, or just a review published years ago by Dr. O’Hara out in Maine, kind of prominent pediatric obesity doc. And this was a, this is kind of a light bulb moment for me thinking about this, because.
One, Dr. Stuppy as you know, when we see, so as pediatricians, we see like eczema and asthma and allergies. We know, like these are like really shared things and they’re in this like grouping where if you see one of them, you’re likely to see its friends. That doesn’t mean they have to be there, but they’re generally lurking around somewhere.
And this really, know, really shone a light on that for me. And what we know about it is there’s, it’s the link between the two is primarily like dysfunction in our like dopamine and like reward pathways. Right? that’s, there’s, you know, a little bit more to that, but that’s kind of the main, you know, the main center where we have some trouble.
And in fact, so there’s like there’s some functional MRI studies And so for You folks out there that don’t know what that is You know, we look at the MRI. It’s like the you know, 4k TV where an x-ray was like, you know TV sets of the 1960s so so really detailed view of In this case her brain and then the functional is like actually we’re you know, you’re doing something like we’re know looking at cards or
watching something, so we’re looking at changes in your brain while you’re doing something. And what we’ve seen with this overlap of ADHD and obesity is like three kind of specific areas. One is like reward processing. and this is actually, so part of this is like food responsiveness, okay? So you like see food, not.
not shrimp, but you visualize it. And is your brain kind of lighten up or you’re like, I’m fine. So that accounts for about 64 % of the effect of between ADHD and our fat mass. And then two is response inhibition. So you’re like, OK, again, I see this or we drive by one of the thousand billboards that tell you you’re hungry.
And then I want it, and I know it’s not great for my health or my goals, whatever, but I got to have it anyways. Or like a hyper fixation with ADHD, et cetera. It’s just a wonderful, terrible combination. And then the third part is emotional regulation. And I see that clinically a lot with just emotional eating.
So, yeah, so those are the kind of the main shared pathways between the two and that we see, you know, I see pretty regularly in clinic.
Sara Whelan (18:27)
You also work with patients who have anxiety, binge eating, and sleep disorders. How do you see these issues interacting with ADHD in your patients?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (18:37)
man, like I said before, they’re close friends. So one, anxiety is the most commonly associated behavioral health diagnosis associated with binge eating, which I think a lot of people don’t know is the most common eating disorder there is. And depending on your setting with like so.
like a bariatric surgery center versus an outpatient clinic like mine. I mean, we can see 50 % of people coming in with somewhere on that binge eating disorder spectrum, up to like 75 % if you’re in bariatric surgery. And a big part of this, again, that reward pathway, right? So dopamine reward. But then, of course, people with ADHD,
that have more impulse control issues, which particularly is more prevalent in kids. So that part of it, thankfully, lessens a little bit over time. But especially with kids, impulse control is huge. And then as you guys know,
ADHD can worsen the anxiety, or anxiety can worsen ADHD. And then both of those can kind of swell into this rest for binge eating disorder later. And then sleep disorders, which are one of the most important things that we think about in obesity and just our metabolic health long term, it’s a huge risk for these patients.
You know, one insomnia, so trouble falling asleep, that can be due to kind of circadian rhythm problems or anxiety. know, one of our patients are like, hey, my mind is just racing at night. I’m worried. And that could be either anxiety and or ADHD. And then, and then when you have sleep disorder and poor either quantity or quality sleep, that can worsen the inattention or anxiety symptoms.
And then, you know, and it’s like this snowball of not goodness.
Kristen Stuppy (20:40)
Right. They all like to play together, which is not healthy for us.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (20:45)
It’s not
great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like the troublesome kids on the block and they just like, they just hang out together. And when one of them gets wild, the other, you know, the other two get like even more turned off. It’s, it’s rough.
Kristen Stuppy (20:56)
Yeah.
Sara Whelan (20:57)
You’ve emphasized genetics and individualized treatment in your work. Why is having a personalized approach especially important when ADHD is part of the picture?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (21:07)
Yeah, it’s a great question. one, I like to think about treatment over a long term. So I can teach a monkey how to help someone get 15, 20 pound weight loss in six months. Anyone with ill intentions and a script pad can probably accomplish that these days. But.
But one, we’ve known for years that if you find the right treatment for the right person, and kind of what we call like a phenotype, and so, you know, in this setting, I often worry about that kind of, you know, hedonic eating, so like more like emotional slash binge eating. Again, oftentimes associated with like ADHD or anxiety, they’re gonna respond much better to certain medications.
And then, you know, and then if you’re ADHD, then okay, if you’re not having great effects with your treatment, like, okay, are you forgetting your meds? You do you have troubles like planning the meals that we talked about, or are you just like, oh man, I forgot breakfast and lunch. And now, you know, it’s like, it’s just.
appetites off the rails in the evening and a binge. So it’s really important to get to those like fundamental things that are a barrier to you just taking care of your health. Because really the weight loss often is so, I mean, I wouldn’t say easy. The challenge is really like, how do we guide you to just have a healthy, you know, happy life? Like that’s...
That’s what I’m trying to get for or aim for for my patients. And you just can’t ignore something so foundational like ADHD.
Sara Whelan (22:51)
Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy (22:52)
Yeah, there’s
a lot of confusion and fear around medications, both for ADHD, weight management, and other things that have a lot of stigma attached to them. So how do you help patients think about the pharmacotherapy for obesity in a thoughtful and evidence-based way?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (23:05)
Yeah, great question. So one, think we have to do it. mean, it’s just humbly, it would be the first answer. And this kind of goes back to just understanding the genetics and the biology of all this. So I mean, as you all know, ADHD often doesn’t come out of nowhere. That’s, you know, we’ve.
find that somewhere in the family and obesity is very similar. so, I like to, one, just tie in that context and then I always ask about what are your goals? What are your goals in life? What are your goals for your health and life? And oftentimes that’s, you know,
By this time, they’re seeing me for a reason. And this is not about like you’re a failure or you can’t do it on your own. It’s just some disease states would need medications to have our healthiest life. And we have a lot of evidence with these medications, a lot of evidence of what happens if you don’t do them. So I just like to just.
paint that picture that it’s not, this is there for you, the goals that you told me about before I even met you, in your questionnaire, and it’s not a failure. It’d be like if you had cancer, or diabetes. We wouldn’t question, oh, why are you on meds? Well, yeah, I’ve got a disease that can cause problems. These are not, they’re different, but not that dramatically.
Sara Whelan (24:41)
So yeah, so helpful. And I know that for parents who may be listening and there are some light bulbs going off or going, hmm, this explains a lot about their own child or even, like we said, with families, it’s genetic themselves. What’s one shift in mindset or how they look at things that you hope that they can take away from our conversation today?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (25:03)
Ooh.
Yeah, you know, think one that, you know, again, this is is biologically based. But, you know, ADHD, anxiety, obesity. Does that mean you can’t control it? No. You know, there are a lot of things we can do to help to help all of them. But, you know, but also some people just need. The treatment. And.
and ideally someone that knows the disease state. get evidence-based experience guidance because they’re nuanced and they’re kind of difficult too.
Kristen Stuppy (25:39)
Yeah.
Sara Whelan (25:40)
think that’d be really so helpful in creating some hope for families, but also confidence, having a reliable, well-educated, knowledgeable physician to get guidance from. So can be hard to know where to go.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (25:56)
Not everyone has a Dr. Stuppy he as their pediatrician.
Sara Whelan (25:59)
Right.
Kristen Stuppy (26:00)
When
I do not do this, I’ve actually referred patients to you because it’s well outside my scope of practice. We all have to stay in our lanes. But I am very excited that you’re speaking with the ADHD parent group because I do think this is something that is very common, but not talked about. Again, this obesity medicine has even more stigma than ADHD. ADHD in some realms, there’s almost people like want to be.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (26:17)
Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy (26:26)
neurodivergent because it’s kind of that catchphrase right now. It’s kind of But nobody wants to be unhealthy. so I am very glad that you’re going to be speaking to our parent group on Tuesday, April 14th at 6.30, online Central Time. And without giving too much away, what are you most excited for parents to understand after hearing your talk? Why you’re tired and hungry? How the ADHD brain impacts weight, sleep, and binge eating?
Dr. Matt Lindquist (26:28)
Yeah, for sure.
Sara Whelan (26:29)
Dijour.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (26:48)
Man, I feel like the title, you know, does it. That’s what I’m excited about. No, you know, man, when I mentioned that to families in clinic, it’s like, the light bulb goes off. They’re like, I feel like you saw right through me. So, yeah, I think kind of painting that full picture of...
those unfortunate friends and how we can address them and identify any things that are making potentially all of them worse at the same time. yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
Sara Whelan (27:22)
to thank you so much for joining us today and for helping really bring clarity to a topic that’s often so overlooked.
Kristen Stuppy (27:31)
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. Again, if you are interested, go to adhdkc.org and hit the events tab to learn more and sign up. It’s free and it will be on Tuesday, April 14th at 6.30 PM Central.
Dr. Matt Lindquist (27:31)
Yeah, pleasure. Pleasure being here.
All right, thanks for having me.
Kristen Stuppy (27:52)
Thank you.
