The more you yo-yo the fatter you get. I learned that the hard way, trying to make my body smaller after having regained weight after a huge weight loss. My fat cells just like to swell up.

I'm very self conscious so I tend to notice the effects of my recent weight gain everyday but at your size it seems like a completely different ball game! Hope you see happy in your body nonetheless. 💜

My boyfriend is 12 years younger than me. I sincerely believe age doesn't matter when you're in love. I keep forgetting about our age difference until something or someone reminds me!

Dear Victoshka, I've read some of your posts in the forum and enjoyed them. I wish you lived closer to me because I feel having you as a friend would be very good for me and might help me make peace with food and my body, something I've never been able to do and have been struggling lately after an unexpected / accidental weight gain.

Like one of the posters above, a few years ago I was dangerously skinny after loosing half my body weight to anorexia. I had never been thin in my life before and to me it felt as exhilarating as getting fatter is to many people in the feedism community.

I've gained most of it back and I feel like a stranger in my own skin. I miss being able to see and feel my bones, which are now buried under a thick layer of fat. None of my pretty clothes fit anymore and I'm ashamed of what I've done to myself.

I've been on sick leave since May 2024 and my psychiatrist wants me to progressively go back to work soon. I'm terrified of the comments my coworkers will say, my body has changed so much since they last saw me. Thinking about this sends me into a dark spiral and I just want to stay in bed eating and sleeping all day.

I have a long way to go before I can stop feeling disgusted to embracing it. I don't know if I'll reach that point someday... I've kinda lost hope to be honest. But reading posts here has been helpful in my journey and that's why I keep coming back.

OMG! I'm on the spectrum too! Maybe that's why I relate to your posts the most.

I love your answer, it makes so much sense... Ad you know I'm not into gaining myself but I 100% agree with you about how simply being held can be so enjoyable / soothing.

I noticed yesterday that my boyfriend seems to have gained a bit of weight for the way his body felt against mine while we hugged.

Probably this is a combination of me having gained some weight too, but the upper part of his body felt closer and the bottom part farther, as if he's grown a little potbelly.

He expresses more often that he feels fat, and I used to answer that he isn't because I know how self he feels conscious about it.

I'm not sure how to go from there to saying it's OK and he doesn't have to worry about it. I've seen pictures from when he was fat and find him just as, if not even more attractive with more weight on.

I've already told him that, but I don't know if he believed me. Years of being bullied means we both have a lot of internalized fat phobia to work through.

I was obese until a few years ago and he's seen my pictures of me when I was obese. Unlike my previous boyfriend who once admitted he wouldn't have been attracted to me back then, he says I was just as pretty and he doesn't care about my weight.

In bed, when he's laying on his side, it's hard to resist the temptation to feel his new curves and press my fingers into his fat... When I wake up during the night and he's sound asleep, I gently touch his belly, careful not to wake him up. It's so soft...

I noticed his body temperature is higher too, when we cuddle up. I find it very comforting and sleeping in a spoon with him feels almost as good as sex itself.

I can attest that nuts and their butters are very fattening because I can't control myself around them and in the last months I had to upsize my whole wardrobe from XS-S to M-L.

Costco sells the best unsalted mixed nuts (cashews, almonds, pistachios and pecans) and I always keep a bag in my pantry. Most days, whenever I walk past it I'll grab a large handful and mindlessly snack on them while doing something else.

Same for the nut butters I buy from Bulk Barn. They never last for long as I can't help but eat spoonful after spoonful right from the jar.

Thanks to these habits, stress (a breakup, 2 deaths and a move) and a change in my medication that caused me to wake up at night to eat, I blew up in 2024.

Same with quality chocolate hazelnut spreads... but I feel a lot more guilty when I eat them because the anorexic part of me considers them a forbidden food.

I should have known better than getting some from the Lindt store because I ended up bingeing on it one night after smoking weed. What a waste of money...

I felt so ashamed I threw the empty container in the trash instead of washing and recycling it because I didn't want my boyfriend to know what a pig I am.

When he asked where is that jar of fancy Nutella, I lied that it must be at my place, hoping he'll forget about it before we sleep there again (our apartments are in the same building but we usually stay at his place).

What did you mean by "peanut butter is more harmful than any other butter"? Is it more fattening or bad for the health?

Same for me, my friends would be very surprised if they knew I was on this site. I also suffered from anorexia but unlike you I struggle to accept, much less embrace the 50 lbs I gained in recovery. I don't feel good in this skin, it feels... foreign? Not sure if it's the right word (I speak french).

I love the idea of gentle feederism and I agree that (too?) many people here are into extremes.

I know what you mean by "addictive personality", but - maybe because I'm a French speaker - I can't help but read if as "you have a personality that is addictive" (which also seems true of you).

As I've mentioned before, I've involuntarily gained 20-25 lbs pounds in 2024 (by now it's probably closer to 35-40 but I'm too afraid to step on the scale and face reality).

Knowing myself, if the number is much higher than I expected, I'll spiral deeper into my depression and the suicidal ideations will get even worse than they are right now.

I'm not in denial, however.

Looking in the mirror, I can see my waistline is less defined, the fat pads on my lower back and around my knees are thicker, my thighs and my boobs are bigger (I seldom wear a bra but the last time I couldn't wait to take it by the end of the day)... I'm AFAB but identify as agender so no, this isn't something I'm excited about.

Also, I've noticed that many of the M-L sized clothes I've bought in the last few months to replace my outgrown XS-S wardrobe are much tighter that I like them especially around the waistline and at the legs.

This is all the more concerning to me because I had intentionally bought them larger than necessary in order to feel more comfortable and less self conscious of my fuller figure.

Even at my skinniest (I got down to 90 lbs at the worst of the anorexia relapse), I've always preferred looser clothing as I hate feeling constricted.

Because of my autism and sensory hypersensitivities, I can't tolerate wearing tight clothes so I've increasingly been avoiding wearing most my new wardrobe.

I don't need to dress up in the morning as I've been on sick leave since May 2024 therefore most days I wear whatever I slept in the night before all day long.

I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but whereas I rarely wore longewear outside of the house when I was thinner, lately I've been shipping to the grocery store and droving my boyfriend to his school or workplace in my pyjamas and winter coat (which was much roomier when I got it in November) and I didn't care what people thought of me.

In case you were wondering, they weren't the type of nightwear that could easily be mistaken for actual clothes.

When I bother dressing up, I always reach for the loosest ones I own, usually sweatpants and hoodies. I know these habits aren't helping my weight loss because that's how I unknowingly got fatter in the first place...

It's only when I have to dress up for special occasions (like my friend's funeral in August or Christmas) that I can fully appreciate how much fatter I am now.

I'm definitely not thin anymore, I'm chubby and on my way to becoming fat. Unless I do something drastic like cut all sugars (including fruits and sweet vegetables) and starches from my diet, soon enough I'll be obese like I was before.

In August or September I tried the pretty dress I wore last year at my boyfriend's parents Christmas dinner and I was mortified when I couldn't zip it all the way up and it was obviously too small for me. I wouldn't dare trying it on today, the zip probably wouldn't go more than halfway up.

I hate myself for letting myself go like that... I fooled myself into believing a few chocolate bars, cookies and pastries wouldn't make me fat but after so many years of severe restriction and clean eating my metabolism is extremely slow and my body has been holding on to every extra calorie I fed it.