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The scale was never low enough. Zero was the only acceptable number these days.
Jesse Pinkman never had control over his life. His parents - strict and forceful - had overprotected to the point of pushing him away. They monitored his life and screamed at him when they discovered his coping mechanisms. To this day he didn't know why they were shocked over the weed, him needing an escape was the most obvious thing in the world.
His room was searched every morning and every evening, his computer's search history inspected any chance they got, and his schoolbag was ransacked as soon as he walked through the door.
Needless to say, Jesse didn't feel any control. His powerlessness left him isolated and depressed, as he wasn't allowed to leave the house in case he misbehaved, nor was he allowed to see his friends - as they were considered "bad influences".
It would be years until his baby brother was old enough to hold a genuine conversation with. So Jesse was alone. And everytime he tried to run away from home the police caught him.
There was only one way to get any sense of power.
To stop eating.
And he felt drunk from it.
Jesse's disorder began somewhat harmlessly. He wanted to control something, anything, so he skipped breakfast. Most of the time he didn't eat lunch at school (even before he'd decided to starve he would often save his week's lunch money and buy a new hoodie - or eventually save up enough for an ounce of weed). So Jesse didn't eat until dinner, and when - a few months into this routine - he stopped coming downstairs to even eat dinner with his family: they completely ignored it.
It wasn't about his weight, he was an average size teen boy. Starving obviously made him lose weight, but not nearly as much as he would've thought.
His body didn't show many symptoms, but he could feel them internally. His brain was more sluggish, and he couldn't get his legs to move as quickly as he wanted them to. Headaches were more frequent. He felt nauseous at the idea of food - and yet couldn't stop thinking about it most the time.
But Jesse didn't care about his weight. He was just doing this for fun, right, an escape. He didn't need to be thinner. And if he was on his computer at 2 PM looking through photos of half-naked men with their ribs showing - that was nothing to do with his own wants.
Jesse did eat sometimes. He knew that he would die if he didn't, and he wasn't genuinely suicidal. He would eat salads a few times a week, drinking diet sodas as if they were meals. And yet... occasionally after eleven PM he would find himself in the kitchen eating bowl after bowl of cereal, consuming anything he could find, and then sitting with his knees to his chest - regret, pain, and self-hatred exploding within him. But, y'know, that had absolutely nothing to do with Jesse and his weight.
He never made himself vomit. He considered it. After binges. But he didn't.
If Jesse purged then that meant he had a genuine eating disorder.
And he didn't.
It had been a year and a half of this cycle, of horrific eating behaviours and a body that struggled to cope with it, when Jesse looked in the mirror and actually saw results.
Maybe other people would've seen results earlier, but it's not like he took his shirt off around anyone. His love of layers and thick hoodies covered up his body, working as an extra layer of warmth across his suffering body.
Staring in the mirror, genuinely looking at himself, Jesse could see his ribs through his skin. His belly was flat and his knees wide against his thin and bony legs. He had bruises up and down his arms and legs, and his nails were bleeding from picking at them too much. Jesse, stood in his boxers in front of the mirror, grimaced at his reflection. He wasn't thin enough.
...Maybe it was to do with his weight after all.
But also maybe he wanted his parents to notice. Maybe they needed to worry about him. Sit him down and talk to him, with love and genuine concern, about his wellbeing.
They never did.