The Weight Number and E.D. Utopic Rhetoric

I am convinced that we all have one. An ideal. A less-than-ideal. A "I have become that guy" number. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps some Americans go about the world without even thinking about it. But with every other news story being related to "America's Obesity Epidemic" (talk about a misuse of the term epidemic), I have a hard time believing that even the most well-adjusted conscious consumer doesn't have a set of numbers shelved in the back of their subconscious, retrieved every once in awhile when insecurities come knocking.

When I went to my first nutritionist appointment in July, she asked if I had a number. She asked after we talked about my eating disorder medical records. I knew the "right" answer. "No," I said. "I would like to lose between 20-30 pounds because I think I would be healthier and closer to my weight range but I don't think my body will ever fit into the weight range doctors prescribed. I think my body will decide where it wants to be." She nodded in approval. This is what an eating disordered person in remission would say.

I don't believe this. But as a health conscious person, as a person seeking balance, as an academic who focuses the bulk of my research on the Women's Health Movement and the Disability Movement (including the anti-institutionalization movement), I want to believe this is true. I want to trust that my body knows something that the rest of me doesn't. But I actually think this kind of rhetoric is a utopic metaphor. I don't believe my body has a separate set of knowledge from my brain--the two work together and are also the same thing. Panic attacks are a great moment to realize how much the two are actually the same.

My partner-- an athlete, a radical lefty, a visual culture theorist-- recently got on a scale herself after six months of krav maga training. She confided that she was surprised that she weighed the most she ever has. After a few days, she followed up: "I decided I am just going to embrace it. I'm healthy." Which is true. But the medical charts would likely tell her to lose weight (those bmi models were created during the depression to regulate starvation and have not been updated since--yet we are basing an "obesity epidemic" on them).

Cat, the most balanced person I know, has a set of numbers. She doesn't fixate on them. She doesn't base her self-worth on them. But when she hits some sort of "oh shit" number, she takes some time to adjust. And I think following a "trust your body, it will do it's thing" model, which is a utopic premise reiterated like a mantra at many eating disorder clinics (including the one where I spent two years), ignores important cultural meanings that need to be thoughtfully contested. Numbers exist. The same medical industry that mainstream eating disorder treatment centers are pandering so hard to in order to be considered legitimate are emphasizing diagnostic models based on numbers. And while clinicians base much of their praxis following medical industry protocol, they are telling their patients that numbers don't matter. This is one way the medical industry is maintaining its control.

What happens to an industry's power when individuals question numbers, hold numbers accountable for representing well-being as opposed to ignoring them? Where is the balance between the practical reliance on numbers and the body/brain knowledge?