Eating Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: An ...

ody shape or weight (Haase, Mountford, & Waller, 2007; Mountford et al., 2006;
Shafran et al., 2004). Until recently, body checking behaviours have been overlooked
as a behavioural expression of body, shape, and weight concerns, and have been
conceptualised within the umbrella of body image (Fairburn, Cooper, Doll, & Welch,
1999; Mountford et al., 2006). Theorists now advocate that body checking behaviours
facilitate the maintenance of eating disorders and that repeated checking of specific
body parts interacts with cognitive biases such as selective attention (Fairburn et al.,
1999; Fairburn et al., 2003a). Each episode of body checking can typically last from
several seconds to a few minutes, with episodes being associated with an
intensification of body dissatisfaction (Mountford et al., 2006; Reas et al., 2002). This
notion has been articulated by Fairburn and colleagues (1999), who reported that body
checking exacerbates perceived imperfections of body shape and elevates fixations on
shape and weight.
Although research on body checking in clinical eating disorder patients is
accumulating, few studies have focused on how these behaviours relate to dietary
restraint, cognitive biases, or concern over shape and weight (Shafran et al., 2004).
Reas and colleagues (2002) found that individuals with AN, BN, or EDNOS had
significantly higher scores on the Body Checking Questionnaire (BCQ) when compared
with a sample of undergraduate college students. This finding has been replicated in a
comprehensive study on body checking that was conducted by Shafran and colleagues
(2004). This research recruited 64 participants with either AN (n = 22) , BN (n = 11), or
EDNOS (n = 31), and found that whilst 92% of the sample engaged in body checking,
61% experienced periods where they actively avoided checking their bodies and only
5% reported that checking improved their mood. In addition, concerns over shape and
weight were more profound in those individuals who were high on body checking, and
regardless of a recent increase or decrease in weight, dietary restriction was a regular
consequence of body checking (Shafran et al., 2004).
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