Weight is a loaded topic in eating disorder recovery. Some people want to know the number. Others don’t. Some treatment centers share it, some don’t. And honestly, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. What matters most is what helps you move forward.
At Hohl Nutrition Group, we recommend not weighing yourself and leaving that responsibility to your treatment team. Recovery is about rebuilding trust with your body, consistently nourishing yourself, and reducing food anxiety. Blind weighing can help take the focus off the number and bring it back to what actually supports healing.
Why Weight Is Sometimes Monitored in Treatment
Weight can offer helpful clinical information, especially when there’s been malnutrition or medical instability. It can give your care team a sense of how your body is responding to treatment. But it’s not the whole picture.
In our work with clients, we’ve seen how easy it is for the scale to take center stage, even when everything else is moving in the right direction. That’s why the way weight is monitored matters just as much as if it’s monitored.
What is Blind Weighing?
Blind weighing means you’re weighed, but you don’t see or hear the number. This might look like turning around on the scale at the doctor’s office or using a scale where the display is covered. Either way, the number is recorded by your provider but not shared with you.
We’ve used blind weights with many of our clients across all stages of recovery. For some people, seeing their weight can trigger anxiety, self-doubt, or disordered behaviors. Blind weighing helps remove that trigger and keeps the focus on healing.
This isn’t about avoiding reality. It’s about setting aside information that often does more harm than good. Weight naturally fluctuates, and focusing on it can pull you out of the bigger picture. What matters most is how you’re eating, coping, and showing up for your recovery day to day.
Blind weighing allows your team to monitor important health trends without pulling you into a spiral over a number.
What About Knowing Your Weight?
For some people, seeing the number is neutral or even helpful. We’ve especially seen this with adults, where knowing their weight gives a sense of structure or progress. In some cases, it can help people push through the physical discomfort of re-nourishing by reinforcing that their efforts are working.
This isn’t just about preference. It’s about noticing what helps you, and what doesn’t. If knowing your weight helps you stay grounded, that’s okay. If it ramps up anxiety or changes how you treat your body, it might be time to reassess.
Where You Are in Recovery Matters
The way you approach weight might shift depending on what stage of recovery you’re in.
- Early recovery: Blind weights are often helpful here. They remove the focus from the number so you can concentrate on healing and re-nourishing without added stress.
- Mid-recovery: You might feel curious about your weight again. Some clients try reintroducing it. Others stick with blind weights. Both are valid.
- Later recovery: Some people feel completely neutral about their weight and choose to see it. Others don’t, and that’s valid too.
We often remind clients that they might come across their weight at some point, like on a medical summary, a lab result, or during a routine appointment. In later recovery, we may talk about desensitization, meaning the number feels less emotionally charged when it does show up. But there’s no set point where you have to start seeing it. Just because you can tolerate something doesn’t mean it’s helpful. Progress is about choosing what supports your recovery, not just what you can get through.
If seeing the number starts to get in the way, whether it’s adding stress, shifting how you eat, or pulling you back into old thought patterns, it’s okay to change course. You don’t have to power through something that’s not helping. At Hohl Nutrition Group, we recommend not weighing yourself outside of treatment. If weight needs to be tracked, your provider can do that for you. Blind weighing is always an option.
Your recovery deserves to be shaped around what actually supports it.
