Patients experienced extreme stress during these first meals. They were expected to follow the directions of the nurses and eat along with the other patients. The food evoked much aversion. The patients did not actually want to eat and were terrified of gaining weight.
In retrospect, the patients regarded the directional actions of the nursing staff as very helpful. They told the interviewers that they had lost all sense of how to eat properly and that they had needed the structure-based interventions to be able to resume their normal eating pattern. They had to relearn how to eat and gradually became aware that normal eating was, in fact, legitimate