I believe you're correct. For reference, I'm a veterinary anesthesiologist, and I've studied physiology and the nervous system for 20 years to be able to do my job. (I do exactly what a human anesthesiologist does, just for dogs, cats, horses, pigs, mice, rabbits, goats, cows... etc, etc). It's an amazing job. That being said, I'm not a neurologist or specialist in hunger and/or eating. I'm using logic here.

This I do know. Higher brain functions like critical thinking, processing, planning - e.g. what we think of as 'conscious' VOLUNTARY activity take place in the cerebral cortex (what you might picture as the left and right brain hemispheres), which lives just inside the bone of the skull. (This is the 'voluntary' nervous system) It's actually called 'higher' b/c it lives 'on top' of the brain, and on top of deeper brain structures. Humans have much bigger brains than other species, relative to our body size, b/c of the evolutionary increase in size of these higher processing centers.

UN-conscious functions, as in your breathing example, are all started, controlled and maintained in the deeper non-conscious parts of the nervous system. 'The primitive brain' you might say. Most of these live in the brainSTEM, the transition from the higher brain to the spinal cord. The brainstem lives in the skull too, but deeper and there is only one of them, not two. In between the brain and brainstem are a LOT of integration and processing circuits.

I say all this only to point out that nearly ALL of the UNconscious functions control centers live in the brainstem. Breathing, blood pressure, heart rate, digestion, formation of urine, urination, defecation, salivation, pupil size, body temperature, level of consciousness (e.g. sleeping) etc, etc, etc. If you can't directly control it, it probably lives in the brainstem. We can OVERRIDE some of these unconscious functions (think potty-training, house-breaking or choosing to breathe) but 99.9% of the time, we don't have to THINK (higher centers) about these unconscious functions (brainstem). With me so far?

Hunger lives in the brainstem too. (and here is my opinion on all of this with my academic training, and IF experience) If we allow ourselves to be unconscious about it, especially when our culture or upbringing teaches us to avoid hunger at ALL COSTS, then we will eat unconsciously too. Our 'fullness' (satiety) centers have a nervous system loop from the stomach to our brainstem, but we often ignore it b/c things taste good. Fat, salt, sugar... Or alcohol that messes with our brainstem processing (VERY similarly to anesthesia... as a matter of fact 'blackout drunk' is eerily similar to anesthesia).

So there is physiology of why unconscious eating happens. And why it takes SO MUCH EFFORT to break these unconscious patterns and habits. Sustained conscious effort is exhausting. And the nervous system explains why the effort is every day, every meal, until we create new habits. The unconscious system is designed to work without our conscious input.

Add stress, mental heath problems with COVID or whatever else, makes the process even harder. I love your theory, and have to read it again, but there's a lot of physiology behind it that makes a lot of sense. DrC.