Table 3 Illustrative Participant Quotations for Theme 2: Control and Tolerance of Weight Uncertainty
From: Blind versus open weighing from an eating disorder patient perspective
Subtheme | Illustrative participant quotations | |
|---|---|---|
2.1 Need of control | BW | “Especially because once you’re in here [treatment], you have no control … and sometimes you just want to hold onto one thing. And not just another thing that you lose.” (Need for control, BW111) |
OW | “I would never be blind weighed. … what I care about is numbers. If I don’t know the number, then I don’t feel in control … It’s like the one thing you can control … you don’t have control over how much petrol is going to be, if there’s going to be red lights or green lights, you don’t have control if there’s going to be crashes. So, the one constant thing I can control is what I put in my body and what my weight will be.” (Need for control, OW211) “If you knew the number, there was a kind of disorder mindset where it had to keep going down and if it wasn’t, then that wasn’t okay.” (Need for control over weight, R310) “[If I had been OW], I don’t think I could’ve been able to keep going once I saw that I had hit a certain number.” (Acceptable number, R316) | |
2.2 Tolerance of Weight Uncertainty | BW | “[BW] is definitely good that you don’t have that preoccupation around the number, but still there’s a worry that obviously you constantly have about how much you are weighing and how much weight you are gaining doing this program.” (Intolerance of weight uncertainty, BW110) “I’ve been in other clinics where I have had to see my weight every week and it’s been traumatising, and it sucks. And like, I find ignorance is bliss.” (Reduced weight-related anxiety, BW113) “I think it’s just one less thing to worry about... I think that it’s very easy to fixate on individual numbers and figures whereas what I think is most important in here is the overall trend... and I just find it less stressful not having another number to deal with in my head, as long as I know that my weight is going up, that’s all I really need to know.” (Reduced weight-related anxiety, BW107) “For me personally, there is a bit less fear around weight change at the moment because I’m not going to see the weight change. Like, I just kind of have to accept whatever’s happening and just roll with it, since I can’t see it.” (Reduced weight-related anxiety, BW109) “I don’t think normal people would like, would weigh themselves like every day. It’s not something they think about, they might just do it.... I would, probably like to just never have to weigh myself again, and not care about it. And just be healthy.” (Normalising lack of control over weight, BW106) “Having to relinquish that control [over my weight] was terrifying but was also a huge relief and it really helped me to learn to be at peace with my body and to trust [my body].” (Increased body trust, R310) “When I think about what I want my life to be in recovery, I don’t want to know, and I want to be okay not knowing, because to me, that sounds like a more free life to me, than one where I have to know.” (Tolerance of weight uncertainty, R316) “I think it [BW] kind of sets the platform for you to then be able to then take the focus off the weight when you go back into the real world and to be able to go ‘actually it [not knowing my weight] hasn’t killed me, it’s not the worst thing in the world, and it’s okay.” (Tolerance of weight uncertainty, R315) “I don’t weigh myself now. I am happy knowing that I look and feel healthy. “(Tolerance of weight uncertainty, R304) |
OW | “I couldn’t cope [not seeing the number].” (Inability to cope with weight uncertainty, OW211) | |
2.3 ED-Self vs. Healthy-Self | BW | It annoys me [not seeing my weight], but at the same time, that’s my eating disorder that it annoys, but like, for my healthy self, it’s good.” (Need for control is ED-driven, BW101) “[BW] takes control away from the eating disorder rather than the person.” (Need for control is ED-driven, BW109) “I feel like my eating disorder was very much like control, and about controlling... just my life. And it was, as soon as I let go of the control of the scales … it was easier to just let that part of me go. So that control... that inner voice that had control over me just went away.” (Need for control is ED-driven, R302) “I do know of other people … that did see their number … they would feel really shit about it but still maintain ‘oh no it’s important that I see it because I know where my weight is’ and I was like ‘is it important for you or is it important for your eating disorder?’” (Need for control is ED-driven, R310) “As soon as I stopped looking at the scales, I had to stop thinking about the number, and it stopped controlling me … then I learnt how to eat better...and treat my body well, and it wasn’t about losing weight or gaining weight because I just let it go.” (Increased body trust, R311) |
2.4 Food-Weight Associations | BW | “I guess because it’s over the week, and we have three weigh-ins. I don’t know when I gained the most weight or anything. I just know the overall trend so that means I can’t pinpoint to ‘oh my god that was that meal!’ BW helps not associating certain weight gains with certain meals.” (Challenged food-weight associations, BW105) |
OW | “I just think it [OW] would be so much harder to like complete meals or like keep going forward because the thoughts in your head, it’s saying like ‘Oh, if I eat this I’m going to gain weight” and then you’re actually seeing it happen, it’s like reinforcing it all.’ (Maintenance of food-weight associations, BW113) One part of me wants to know [my weight] I guess so I can micromanage things, and be like, ‘Okay, what do you think would have tipped it over?’” (Maintenance of food-weight associations, OW213) “If numbers had been there and it had been tracked closely I think for me personally it would have been really hard to separate those really intertwined concepts of food and weight.” (Maintenance of food-weight associations, R310) |