The doc is right, but unfortunately as it is that can mentally feel crushing in terms of progress. Like, you make your biggest first achievements and you don’t see any reward in it, at least in the moment.
I’ve never experienced it with mental health, but I have seen it in mental health hospitals, heard stories, and in reality shows.

Gosh this comic feels so real.

.

Doctors in the field rarely use subjective terms and stick to medically verifiable numbers or observations where possible.

@Power Play
The size of Ponies in G4 was always a bit nebulous and/or debated among fans. This might still be true in G5 and if so it could be a matter of the author’s fanon having them as them being 20% smaller volume and mass for a 20% less ideal body weight. In other words your 25 could very plausibly be 20 lbs on the scale.

Also, the stability of 4 legs vs 2 might help as long as she ONLY uses a walking gait and no trotting, cantering, galloping, jumping, or rollerblading?

@Power Play
The doctor probably didn’t want to scare her too much, so he suggested a small start. I’d say that Sunny is somewhere around 50 pounds underweight at this point.

I’d err more on the side of 25. I’ve seen people become just as underweight as Sunny on The Biggest Loser, to the point where they couldn’t even walk straight. Contrary to what a lot of people think about fat, you actually DO need a little, you can’t be all muscle, or skin and bones.

I like to call this necessary weight ‘stability fat’. Enough weight from fat, distributed that you can safely walk and run, or in Sunny’s case, trot, gallop or during her Alicorn Mode, fly without losing balance and potentially causing injury to yourself. The 20 recommended by the doctor is a good start, but even with that, she might still be at risk of loss of balance from still being as thin as a piece of paper. Like it or not, this is weight that Sunny has to gain in order to be back in shape.

Which she currently does not have. Her shape is that she has no shape. All her curves are inward, like she’s concave. There’s nothing wrong with convex. You just can’t be too convex.

@Illmaticc
So “Some weight.” or something vaguely like that instead of “Twenty pounds.”, is what you feel he should have said?

I am hardly skilled in this sort of thing (I’m more Honesty than Kindness) so I am honestly asking what phrasing you would recommend.

@Draco Dei
I’m not saying she should be allowed to leave, I’m saying that her eating disorder can’t let her eat anything and the idea of gaining so much weight must be scary for her

@Illmaticc
Are you saying she should be allowed to leave, or that he should be more vague about what the criterion is? The first appears to be a bad idea medically (I assume the artist knows the subject, their expertese almost certainly vastly exceeds my own.), and the second seems like it would be getting her hopes up only to crush them as it becomes obvious how long it will be.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell her that..

Listen to your doctor, Sunny.