Gaining

Couldn't have said it better myself. Of course, there's nothing wrong about getting an outside perspective. However, not all voices should be listened to. You have to decide for yourself what is important and what is not.

If you’re really skinny, then you will probably have a sort of grace period before people comment negatively on your weight gain. I was severely underweight when I started gaining (total gain from about 90 lbs to 135 lbs over the years, although unfortunately I’m currently back down to 130 lbs due to stress), and all the comments I received about it were totally positive for the first 20 pounds, then the comments just stopped entirely for the next 20. That’s a really significant gain and I think it gives plenty of space to decide if you like the feeling of gaining enough to risk the negative reactions you’ll face later on. I say gain a small to moderate amount at first (enough that you feel like you’re getting really fat, but that you still don’t look fat to an outside observer yet) and then decide how you feel and if you want to keep going. If you do, you can, and if you don’t, you can stop there without too much of impact on your life.