Everything You Need to Know About the “Eating Reflex”

One strategy for managing health when you have obesity is weight loss. If you’ve gone down that road before, you know that weight loss can be challenging. Part of the reason it is challenging is because we all have a built-in "eating reflex." Understanding what is happening to your body when you try to eat less and lose weight is an important step toward overcoming challenges.

Understanding this “eating reflex” is helpful so that you stop being unreasonably hard on yourself. When you understand why you are hungry when you try to eat less, you may stop blaming yourself for eating more than you planned. When you reach your goal weight but notice it starts to creep back up a few weeks later, you won’t feel down on yourself if you understand why.

How to stop blaming yourself

The truth is that many negative experiences of weight loss are related to this "eating reflex," and they are not fully under your control. It is important to stop blaming yourself because you are not the culprit for these "failures." And you cannot progress in your journey if you always blame the wrong culprit.

Instead of being a martyr for your weight loss attempts that didn’t work out, a better understanding of your "eating reflex" shifts the blame away from you and your willpower. That way you can start solving the actual problem. And that can break the endless cycle of weight loss attempts, "failures," and self-stigma.

What is the "eating reflex?"

If I asked you, "Can you hold your breath?" I am sure you would say, "Sure!"

But how long can you hold it? Because I’ll tell you next that you need to hold it for as long as you can, for as often as you can. The answer to this comes more slowly, with some hesitation once you realize I am asking you to keep holding it indefinitely, all the time.

Humans typically breathe about 12 times per minute automatically. When people try to hold their breath, most can last about 1 minute. Only with intense training, some people can last about 15 minutes. A lot of research is still ongoing to uncover the exact mechanism for this reflex.¹

The reason I give this example is because it is very relatable and is relevant to what happens to your body when you try to eat less. Just as we breathe 12 times per minute automatically, we also eat about the same amount of energy that our body needs automatically, without really thinking about it.²

So as soon as we intentionally try to eat less than that, just as there is a reflex to ensure we breathe, there is also a reflex that kicks in to make sure we eat enough. I call it your "eating reflex."²

Why does the "eating reflex" matter?

If someone told you that breathing less is good for health, I am sure you would try to breathe less when you can. But no one would blame you if you only hold your breath occasionally.

Everyone knows that it takes a lot of concentration and effort to hold your breath, and that when you do so, it won’t be for long. And you would need to put a pause button on the rest of life. And you certainly wouldn’t blame yourself when you start breathing again, or when you don’t do it constantly to achieve better health.

Unfortunately, although it takes the same attention and training to eat less as it does to hold your breath, most people don't know that. Maybe you didn’t know that until now. But I am going to ask you to remember that from now on. And for you to be kinder to yourself if you can’t eat less because of this reflex all the time, every day, for the rest of your life.

Finding more effective ways to manage weight and health

I hope you share this with your loved ones, so they can be kinder about it too. And so they can offer you better support when you do decide it’s time to fight your "eating reflex."

Finally, I hope you also remind your doctor of this. The newest medical treatments for obesity help keep the "eating reflex" at bay so that you can eat less, for longer, without it kicking in. And as soon as you realize it’s perfectly reasonable to get help fighting a natural reflex that is part of your biology, the sooner you’ll stop blaming yourself and you’ll find more effective ways to manage your health and weight.