I don't think it's your mind calculating.. when you eat your stomach expands. When it expands to a certian point, your mind says I'm full, just like when you're bladder's full, your mind says take a piss.

People addicted to food, eat past that limit, stretch thier stomach, and therefor can eat more before feeling full, likewise I eat very little now, and feel full with about half them amount of food I used to eat.

But I'm no doctor.

 

Our White German Shepherd STARR! is a grazer, we just fill her bowl up with food and she eats a little at a time, some days she will eat up to about 15 cups of food, other days she will only eat about 3 cups of food. When her dish is empty we fill it, it holds 3 cups at a time.
When we had our Chocolate Lab, Sara, you would fill her bowl and it was gone before you got your hands out of the way. We could only put food down in front of her when she was being fed, otherwise she would have eaten until she popped.

 

My dogs will stop eating after a while and leave food in their bowl for later. I don't know if they are just "full" or distracted.

 

Biology student

 

my dog eats stuf he loves until he barfs. Then he eats more.

 

That's nothing. My dog has eaten her own sh!t!

 

i leave dry dog food, which makes up 95% of their diet, out continous. none of the animals seem to lose or gain weight.

 

I think it depends on the food. Dog food, yeah they usually control themselves. Throw some meat (lamb, steak etc) and they will eat and eat and eat.

 

 

I didn't want to mention it, but if you replace food with poop in my original post, that's happened too. Nothing worse than a hurled poop underneath your bed in the middle of the night! Talk about a rude awakening...