Table 4 Supporting quotes from post-intervention interviews exploring the intervention accessibility, acceptability and adherence

Theme 1: Accessibility of telehealth appointments

  Quote 1: I suppose the fact that you didn’t have to travel to an appointment and find extra time to put into it was good.

  Q2: It was good to have some flexibility if a time [for a telehealth appointment] didn’t suit.

  Q3: If possible in the future you have the [initial] face-to-face, do all that [baseline testing] and the rest of it would be just zoom.

  Q4: Yep. That was good [flexible appointment scheduling with telehealth], because I’m a shift worker, so it was good to have some flexibility if a time didn’t suit.

  Q5: It [follow up appointments] didn’t need to be face-to-face and lucky for that because we didn’t have any face-to-face opportunities [due to COVID-19 restrictions]. But still, like with using Zoom and all that, it’s nearly like sitting in the same room anyhow.

  Q6: Once I got my head around the Zoom, sort of sorted that out, in my brain, it was fine. I’ve got no issue with it [using telehealth instead of face-to-face].

Theme 2: Acceptability of the dietary intervention

  Q7: Actually, throughout the diet I found that, when I adhered to it [anti-inflammatory diet], I was far less likely to eat between meals, which was good.

  Q8: Yes. I’m going to continue the diet because I felt better.

  Q9: Yeah, I will [continue the diet]. Because, clearly my pain levels have diminished and, yeah, I’m not a big carbohydrate eater anyway, so if I don’t have those foods, it won’t bother me.

  Q10: Yeah. Generally, I really enjoyed it [the dietary intervention]

  Q11: ..After two or three weeks, it was quite enjoyable and the recipes that you provided and everything were really nice. So, that makes it easier, to have something tasty

  Q12: … I would recommend it to anybody who has got the problems [osteoarthritis] that I have got.

Theme 3: Adherence to the dietary intervention

  Q13: I think everyday I adhered to it.

  Q14: Perfect … I was perfect [adhering to diet]. I didn’t do anything naughty at all.

  Q15: I suppose, when I was having positive results out of it, when my knee was not hurting as much, when I could actually see that the swelling on my knee.. was going down, plus seeing the weight loss and everything. So, it wasn’t hard to adhere to it.

  Q16: I was really pleased we were in lockdown, I must admit. I think that would have been much more difficult to maintain [adherence to diet] going in and out of work everyday.

Theme 4: Comparison to exercise-intervention

  Q17: Oh, the diet was easier to follow [compared to exercise intervention]. The diet was much easier to follow.

  Q18: It was easier to follow the eating plan. Because I did GLA:D [exercise intervention] post a total knee replacement. So, that was hard for pain.

  Q19: Oh, it [diet] was much easier because I find the exercises very tiring and hard.

  Q20: I didn’t really find the diet that hard to stick to. So, I would probably sort of say equal.