Sinead Okafor had been avoiding eleven food groups when she arrived, on the basis of advice she had assembled herself over four years.

Maintenance is treated as a distinct phase with its own skills rather than as a victory lap, and the service is explicit that it is the harder half.

Maintenance is a separate skill

Nobody is discharged at the end of the programme. Contact steps down on a published schedule with a defined route back.

A restricted diet held indefinitely solves one problem and builds another. The end date is part of the prescription.

Aoife Delaney, dietetics

Why the group stayed closed

Nothing is weighed in front of anyone. Most of the group time is spent on what went badly, which is the part that generalises.

She now avoids two things instead of eleven. “Nine of them were never the problem,” she says.

gut

Contributing writer

Aoife Delaney

A demonstration byline created for this prototype. Not a real writer, and not a clinician.

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