Seven weight-relevant personal constructs were elicited from 12 obese subjects participating in a weight-reduction group. Construct ordination, or the degree to which a construct integrates various self-understandings into an interrelated system, was then studied in the context of weight reduction. It was found that the more ordinating the construct of “myself as overweight—myself as not overweight” at the beginning of the group, the less weight loss occurred during treatment. The amount of change successful weight loss implied for the subject's understanding of the self on the elicited constructs was also investigated. Subjects tended to lose more weight when losing weight implied more changes in the person's construction of self.
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