Where is the desire to eat actually at?

When the desire to eat actually at? Is it in the gut, or just a mind sensation? Depending on who' paper one reads, it varies. And when we get right down to it, it may be all of the above.

from;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/where-addiction-meets-your-brain/201404/your-lizard-brain

The point to all of this is that 12-step recovery recognized (before the limbic system was described) that we all have this tendency to do what we don’t want to do and we are powerless about certain behaviors. Understanding this automatic behavior allows us to surrender to what we cannot control. It frees us to do the next right thing by staying in the present rather than worrying about the future or being shamed and experience guilt about the past. It takes practice. And more practice.

So this suggest the desire to eat is encoded into the R or L portions of our brain and recognizing this, that we are powerless over the desire allows us to let go of the desire and not act on it. Well OK, he can think that, but is it true?

Understanding that this behavior is automatic is likely true, as that is the way it feels. 

So https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/obesely-speaking/201311/compulsive-overeating-and-habit-formation ties it all to eating perhaps.

The stimulus may vary (boredom, anger, happiness, sexual frustration, fear, or anxiety) Ah but, the stimulus may have long been fixed, but the habit or automatic behavior remains... so we are left with distraction... in the present time.

So what do we have... a trained in automatic response to presence of food... so how does one beat that????   

http://www.cres.gr/behave/framework_theory_2.htm  so what is a habitual behaviors, automatic behavior. Given the presence of food, the desire to eat arises, and likely the action.