ABSTRACT
The Dietary Rules module is indicated for young people who adopt extreme and rigid dietary rules. These may include rules on what, where and how to eat, as well as how much. The strategies adopted by enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT-E) for addressing the dietary rules are described in this chapter. These start with helping the patient to understand that the strict dieting is a problem, moving on to identifying dietary rules and breaking each rule in turn. By examining the implications of the managed rule-breaking, and experiencing that the feared consequences (weight gain and/or bingeing) do not, in reality, occur, the young patient gradually comes to experience dietary rules as a problem rather than a useful way of controlling eating and body weight.
