Gaining

I like to say that there are three types of being an FA:

- you like fat on the group of people to which you might be sexually attracted (women of your general type, in your case). Fat as an erotic thing.
- People whom you are not generally going to find sexually attractive. Fat as a general aesthetic thing.
- Yourself. Fat as either an auto-erotic thing or a self-identity thing.

People can be any one, two, or all three of those (and in varying degrees at that). It sounds like you are the first case, not the third case, and I don't know about the middle one. This is pretty common in heterosexual FA, but I don't see why it can't be the case in homosexual ones too. For that matter look at the male homosexual community, where, if I understand correctly, a lot of the guys interested in the 'bears' are themselves slender.

So I don't think there is anything strange about it.

Having said that, finding a way to come to peace with your body would be good....

I'm with Bella in desiring, in different ways, to be both bigger and smaller, and the tension between those two keeping me kind of stuck in the middle. Although I don't know how well my body would take to being much bigger or smaller anyway.....

...and that is always an issue: no matter what you'd like in your mind, your body may or may not cooperate with that. Learning to get along with your body always helps. I think it is almost always better to say: "I'm going to make these changes in my lifestyle, which might result in a change in my body" rather than "I'm going to gain/lose this much weight." You can control what you do, you can't control how your body reacts to it.

I'm glad you are enjoying biking and that it is paying off for you--that is the exercise of choice for my wife and I too.