Weighing and Weight Exposure
Regular, open weighing is a critical component of evidence-based treatments for eating disorders. Weight provides critical information for violating patients’ harm expectancies, and weighing offers a powerful learning opportunity for coping with anxiety. However, many clinicians collude with their patients in avoiding open weighing. The clinician’s job is to tolerate their own anxiety about things such as patient dropout while asking their patients to do likewise with their anxiety about knowing their weight. Therefore, clinician and patient need to learn the same thing—tolerance of uncertainty. This chapter details the rationale and methods for using exposure in the form of open weighing, so that the patient can overcome their fear of uncontrollable weight gain.