Last December, I made the decision to let go and give intentional gaining a try after reading about it and being fascinated by it for over a decade. I found I really enjoyed it, but for various and sundry reasons, I had to stop for a while. I've picked it up again recently, and have found it to be delightfully liberating.

The last thing that made me let go and start (or in my case, restart,) gaining was the realization that I like being fat, I like gaining weight, and I no longer give two you-know-whats about what people think.

I've gained around 90 lbs since I started putting on weight late in high school around 2000/2001, though all but the last 15-20 lbs have been more or less unintentional - I only started intentionally gaining in December 2013, and have been off and on until recently.

I've been hearing about this new craze involving butter instead of cream in coffee. Has anyone tried this? I read about a hot chocolate recipe on here involving butter, and since then, I've been discreetly adding it to my hot chocolate for that little extra richness. It's delish, but has anyone tried it in coffee? Or tried it with cream in their coffee?

You know you're a fatty when your belt keeps requiring new holes.

You know you're a fatty when you tie all your shoelaces without your feet in your shoes, and leave them tied (or just invest in slip-on shoes.)

You know you're a fatty when the question isn't "do I want a buffet," but "which buffet do I want?"

You know you're a fatty when your first destination in the grocery store is the bulk candy aisle (because chocolate-covered gummy bears.)

You know you're a fatty when your gaming group orders pizza, you order an extra one just for yourself, and nobody thinks anything of it.

I was never a gym rat per se, but I did swim varsity in high school, and was very active when I was younger. I wound up not swimming my senior year in high school, and my physical activity dropped sharply off from there, with my weight steadily increasing ever since high school.

I started going to a gym again a couple years ago, and I still go 2-3 times/week, but I only work out for 30-40 minutes, and it's mostly just because I enjoy swimming.

For me, any belly is a good belly. My wife has a beautiful double belly that I simply adore.

~275 lbs, and I usually don't go without eating for more than 4-5 hours.

I also picked up more than a few stretch marks when I was young, mostly on my inner thighs, belly, inner arms, and love handles. Most have faded over the years, and they freaked me out at first, but I've come to like them over the years.

My wife seems fairly indifferent - she doesn't seem to mind them (and I figure after 13 years, she'd have said something either way,) nor does she seem to particularly enjoy them.

I've actually found Costco to be a good clothing source. They have a decent range of sizes, and their pricing is usually quite reasonable. I'm pushing 280 lbs, and I can always find a decent pair of dress pants that fit me there.

I remember eating most of a box of Hershey bars from the pantry when I was a kid. Nobody was eating them or baking with them, so I figured they wouldn't be missed. I was right until my mom needed one a few weeks later, and found the box nearly empty. Nobody else fessed up, and I started bawling when she asked me, so I guess you'd call that busted.

As for the other thing, I've never been busted, and have recently deleted the photo stash for various and sundry reasons, but I'd suggest hiding it in the open. I kept it hidden in a folder on my hard drive, but hid it with an innocuous name in a subdirectory where nobody would ever look. For example: I was exploring Ruby programming a while back, and created a folder called Ruby to house my coding projects. Within that folder are several subdirectories, each containing various files, further subdirectories, more files, etc. Only one of the many folders was THE folder, and apart from me, nobody ever went looking for it. The only catches are to remember to save an innocuous image somewhere other than THE folder every once in a while, lest someone go to save a file, and "whoa, what's in this folder?", and to make sure not to share the folder. The last thing you want is a guest exploring your wifi network and finding it ^.^