Impaired interoception (delayed body signals)
In some neurodivergent people the brain reads internal body signals weakly or late — hunger, fullness, thirst, fatigue, needing the toilet. The research is mixed, but where it applies the signal can be too faint or too late.
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Background
Interoception is the sense of the body’s internal state. In some neurodivergent people it may be impaired or harder to interpret: you don’t register in time that you’re hungry, full, thirsty, tired, or need the toilet. The research is genuinely mixed, though — the impairment is clearer in autistic children than adults, and some autistic people actually report stronger bodily sensations. Where it applies, it isn’t willpower — it’s a lack of usable body data.
It is associated with some co-occurring problems — obesity and disordered eating in particular — but these links are correlational with no established causal direction (it’s unknown whether weak interoception causes or results from them); the type-2-diabetes and sleep connections are more indirect. Sometimes physiological strain also shows up before you consciously notice it — e.g. HRV on a wearable may already be low — but treat this as a rough signal, not a reliable early-warning system: outside the lab HRV correlates only weakly with felt stress and can miss chronic stress entirely.
Practical upshot despite the uncertainty: if you recognise this in yourself, don’t rely only on how you feel — externalise body signals (food and water on a schedule, planned breaks) instead of waiting for the sensation to arrive.