Table 4.

Central ideas and collective subject discourse: third focus group.

CENTRAL IDEA	COLLECTIVE SUBJECT DISCOURSE
8) What would have been your experience if you had participated in an intervention with a diet prescription? What would be your weaknesses and strengths?
8A: If I were on a diet, I would have dropped out.	I would have dropped out. I think the following: you do a one-month diet, then you give up, and everything is ruined; it doesn’t work. I think it’s beyond telling that you’ve got to eat this and that. For example, in my house there’s a barbecue every weekend. I’ve had to learn how to manage that because people won’t change their routine and I want to be with my family. So what I think is, okay there’s a barbecue, I like it, so why can’t we do a salad? Or why not have some rice? Why can’t I pick a little less food, like just one steak? I didn’t want to include things that I eventually wouldn’t like to eat. Eating to me is related with satisfaction, pleasure, so I don’t want everything set for me. Life offers you a diversity of things and what will you say? You won’t go out anymore, you won’t visit places because there’ll be different things?
8B: I liked the intervention without a diet, but I think I would have adapted myself to other situations.	I think it was really nice the way it was proposed, but I also think I would have adapted myself to this other situation. I need control and I’m uncontrolled, so I can’t think I’ll be able to take the bull by the horns because I won’t. But I don’t see a diet as something that holds you back. I think that a little bit of control for someone who is uncontrolled is good. I guess in my case it would help because it’s hard for me to organize myself.
9) At the end of the intervention, which changes did you make in your eating habits?
9A: I could reduce the amount I ate.	I’ve learned that it’s possible to reduce by half what I used to eat. Okay sometimes you overeat; when it’s something I really like, I end up eating it, but then I know I won’t lack care later—I’m already satisfied. I can say: “that’s my limit, I’m satisfied, I don’t need this.” So, what matters is the quantity. Because you’ll never stop eating something that is pleasurable for you. It’s not what you eat, but how much.
9B: I could balance and divide my eating.	There’re a lot of details we keep calling to mind. For example, today I choose pasta and I picked a salad too; I started to analyze the labeling better, to remove some things that were still there. It also changed to start eating every three hours.
9C: I could manage emotional eating.	I haven’t realized that sometimes food functioned as a compensation for certain frustrations or certain situations that weren’t resolved and now I can realize and say “No, today I think I ate more than I needed and it wasn’t because I was hungry, it was because of another reason, so now I need to watch myself and mind myself to not do it again.”