Why Anorexia Doesn't Feel Like a Habit, New Research Is Starting to Explain Why

One of the things families often say to me is: "She knows she needs to eat. So why won't she just do it?"

It's a fair question. And new research is starting to give us a better answer.

The old explanation

For a long time, the dominant idea in science was that compulsive behaviours, including the rigid food rules, rituals, and repetitive thinking seen in anorexia, were essentially habits gone wrong. The idea was that the brain had slipped into autopilot. That restriction or avoidance had become so practised it was now automatic, below conscious control, like a loop the person couldn't switch off.

This explanation made a kind of sense. But it never quite matched what people with anorexia actually describe.

Because for most of them, it doesn't feel automatic at all.

It feels exhausting.

What people actually experience

Ask someone in the middle of anorexia what it's like, and you'll rarely hear "I don't think about it." You'll hear the opposite.

"I think about it constantly."

"Every meal takes so much mental effort."

"I know what I'm supposed to do. I just can't make myself do it."

The rigidity isn't effortless. It's consuming. There is a constant, exhausting negotiation happening inside, rules being checked, fears being managed, decisions being made and remade. It feels deliberate, even when the person desperately wishes it wasn't.

This has always been a bit of a puzzle. If these behaviours are just habits, why do they feel so hard?

What new research found

In February 2026, researchers from the University of Technology Sydney published a study that offers a genuinely different way of thinking about this.

They were studying a part of the brain called the striatum, an area involved in how we make decisions and choose actions. They already knew that people with compulsive disorders often show signs of inflammation in this region. So they triggered that same kind of inflammation in rats, and watched what happened.

They expected the rats to become more automatic. More habit-driven. More "stuck on autopilot."

Instead, the opposite happened.

The rats became more deliberate. More locked into effortful, outcome-focused thinking, even in situations where their brains would normally have relaxed into a more automatic pattern. The inflammation didn't switch off conscious control. It appeared to crank it up in a way that became excessive and exhausting.

The researchers traced this back to a type of brain cell called astrocytes, support cells that help keep the brain's circuits balanced and running smoothly. When inflammation occurred, these cells multiplied and disrupted the surrounding circuitry, pushing the brain toward a kind of overactive, over-controlled state.

Why this matters for anorexia

Here's the part I find most interesting.

We already know from other research that starvation significantly disrupts astrocyte function in the brain. The same cells. The same region. A different disruption, but one that may have an overlapping effect on how the brain regulates thinking and control.

What this new research suggests is that the rigidity we see in anorexia may not be the brain going blank and automatic. It may be the brain getting stuck in a state of too much deliberate control, endlessly checking, evaluating, and managing, without being able to ease off.

That matches what people describe far better than the old habit explanation.

And it points to something important about recovery.

What this means for recovery

If rigidity in anorexia is partly a brain stuck in an over-controlled, over-effortful state, then the path out isn't simply about breaking habits.

It's about restoring the biological conditions that allow the brain to find balance again.

That means food. Adequate, consistent, sustained nutrition, not because food is a reward or a symbol, but because the brain literally requires nourishment to restore the cellular environment that supports flexible thinking.

This is something I write about in depth in Food Mad: The Nutritional Neuroscience of the Starved Brain, the idea that feeding the brain isn't optional or secondary in eating disorder recovery. It is the foundation on which everything else is built.

A brain that is under-nourished cannot easily shift out of rigid, survival-focused thinking. Not because the person lacks willpower or insight. But the brain doesn't yet have what it needs to do that work.

A note on the science

It's important to be honest here: this study was done in rats, not humans. We don't yet know whether the exact same mechanisms play out in people with anorexia. More research is needed before we can draw firm conclusions.

But the finding is worth paying attention to, because it offers a possible explanation for something clinicians, families, and people with lived experience have observed for years. The exhausting, relentless, deliberate quality of the rigidity in anorexia. The sense that the brain is working too hard, not too little.

When human research catches up, this may become an important piece of the puzzle.

For now, it's a reminder that what looks like stubbornness or choice from the outside is almost always something far more complicated, and far more biological, on the inside.

Victoria Schonwald is a Registered Dietitian and the author of Food Mad: The Nutritional Neuroscience of the Starved Brain. She works with individuals and families navigating eating disorder recovery at The Eat Clinic in Christchurch, New Zealand.