@Background Pony #88C6
Other people have said that gaining muscle is much slower. This sounds very plausible to me since fat cells are a lot simpler in their functionality than muscle (and tendon, ligament, and bone, which are more required for muscle than fat).

As a long-term goal… might depend on how much sexual dimorphism Little Ponies have? I would THINK that putting on, say 10-20% more muscle mass than the average would be easier for a HUMAN male than a HUMAN female?

I would suspect she needs the mass first, and then has the OPTION to start sorting it more towards muscle rather than fat later in her recovery, with CAREFUL monitoring. In any case, she is going to be getting both I suspect.

She may even need special exercise to get back on track with her “Alicorning-Up” and flight and horn-magic afterward, or even just with her plant-growing magic. Fantasy characters with real-world problems may require a mix of mundane and magical work-outs to recover. I was inspired to mention this because I think the author said that going alicorn uses a lot of calories (but is it per minute she maintains the state, a high startup cost, or some ratio of the two?). This could be important because it has been mentioned that her ability to help defend against the unknown threat (the audience knows it is Opalescence, but the characters do not).

Regarding that last point: I wonder how militaries deal with frontliners who start to develop anorexia?

how about getting big muscles? That would be the other opposite to being too fat. Still it’s good to remember that a little amount of fat is actually healthier than no fat

Well you’re not.

There you have it. The nature of addiction. Drugs create a physical need, which is bad, but a psychological need is so much worse.

@Power Play
Numeric details are an insane trigger for someone suffering with a restrictive eating disorder. The phrase “fatten up” is even more so triggering.

Called it. Sunny is going to see this as a setback. I’m feeling so sorry for her.

Sunny, let me put it in a way you can understand.

In your current state, your sparkle is completely going to fade away if you don’t manage to fatten up.

In your condition, muscle is nowhere near an option so fat is the only way to get you to a weight that is anywhere remotely healthy. Is too much fat bad? Of course it is, that’s why you did this in the first place. But right now don’t HAVE any fat to get rid of. If you try to lose any more weight, you’re going to have a complete body shutdown and your sparkle is going to disappear.

Izzy will know this and she will be crying for weeks.

None of us want that.