counterregulatory eating counterregulatory eating counterregulatory eating is the psychological tendency for a person to eat more after having recently eaten. it is a behavior opposite to regulatory eating, which is the normal pattern of eating less if one has already eaten. it is more common among dieters, for whom a large "pre-load" (the food eaten first) is presumed to sabotage motivation for restricted eating. it was coined the "what-the-hell" effect by dieting researcher janet polivy in 2010. she describes this effect as the type of thinking which says, "what the hell, my diet's already broken, so i might as well eat everything in sight." it has been observed that reducing the guilt of overeating through self-forgiveness can mitigate counterregulatory eating.