In this part of my miniseries on target weights (which started here), I explore three ways in which they are presented as part of the solution but ultimately reinforce the problem, by propping up the numerical and fat-phobic underpinnings of anorexia.

There are many wonderful things to aim for in recovery from an eating disorder: all kinds of ways to live differently, to feel different, to love and think and laugh and eat and move and be different. Aiming to reach x kilos or pounds is not a wonderful thing. It’s not a thing to get inspired by. (An exception might arise for an individual who has long been kept unwell by obedience to a bodyweight number imposed by themselves or someone else, and who takes defiant pleasure in overstepping it.

This example takes us towards the category I discuss as potentially beneficial in the final part of this series.) Making a target weight one’s endpoint is a way of staying stuck in the thrall of the numerical, which for most people is a centrally life-sapping part of their experience of having anorexia. It’s an encouragement to keep counting this, and to keep counting many other things—calories in, calories out, steps, hours…—instead of getting on with living. Eating and moving by numbers is encouraged by many misguided advice-givers these days, including those with authority in government and public health, as well as by the ready availability of technologies to enable it; after all, counting is what computers do best.

Living by numbers is often, I think, a fear response to complexity for which education has ill-equipped us. And in the eating disorder context, continuing to count is normally a sign of partial recovery, and ditching all the numbers is normally a frightening and joyful part of getting more than partially better. And of course, if one has been led to believe that being well is contingent on weighing x—well, the jettisoning is going to be hard, if not impossible.

Some research........

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