i was an avid gym jock for 20 years, and then i took a break "for a few months..." at the time i was with a ssbbw gf, and her enthusiasm for food and life rubbed off on me. went from 150 to over 200 pretty quick.

so i panicked a bit out how fast i had porked up, and how out of shape i was becoming. so i made a couple of attempts to return, several months apart.

the first thing i remember is how embarrassed i felt coming out of the change room for the first time in my too-tight gym sorts and a jiggling gut that my t-shirt could not camouflage. then the next thing was what you found - my cardio had gone to crap. a couple of minutes on the treadmill destroyed me, and the sensation of running with my gut, butt and love handles bouncing was just too much.

then i went to the weights, and after having been away for some months, having to reduce the size of the dumbbells i used to lift, and take plates off the bars just felt so humiliating. it was like i was a beginner again almost. at the end of my workout i sat on some mats to do crunches, and of course that was a disaster, too!

i was so discouraged from that attempt at working out (and so sore for days after!) that it was months before i would go back again. it was pretty much the same: months went by, i had packed on another 25 or 30 lbs, and i panicked. but the result was the same, only worse. i know what you mean when you say the machines are not made for big people - they are even worse for big bellied people!

i felt like a huge whale, everyone else in the place seemed to be a lean bodybuilder. one person even tried to encourage me and gave me tips, and i was just thinking, "i used to be like you!"

so after that humiliating experience, i quickly reconciled myself to enjoying my lifestyle rather than punishing myself at the gym.

i find it particularly funny when i am with average-sized co-workers or casual acquaintances who do this, while i am sitting right there in front of them lol!

i think a lot of what you've expressed is pretty universal. a lot of those concerns are shared by all kinds of people at your stage of life. so know that you're not alone in how you are feeling and the things that are worrying you. when i was your age, even though i was fit and athletic, i still had a lot of the same concerns about what i wanted to do, and what the impacts of choosing a path would be.

i can't tell you what the right path is for you - but i can give you whatever passes for the wisdom of an old guy who has lived thru it... in looking back, i can say that none of those concerns really mattered in the long haul. do the things that will bring you joy, and know that the people who really care about you just want you to be happy. they may have concerns about health and well-being, and they may not understand or agree, but they will adjust if they see that you are happy.

my only regrets are when, looking back, i didn't treat people with the degree of empathy i should have. maybe some of those lessons have to be learned the hard way? but i don't regret the years i spent in the gym being fit, nor do i regret the decision to stop exercising and getting fat. it's all been a wonderful experience, and i feel like i've been given the chance to live several different lives in one lifetime!

best of luck to you at school, and remember not to be too hard on yourself!

wow, that is so great! i wish there was an archive of the pre-2005 dims website, too, but i think that old foum, etc. is gone.

for me, health issues and immobility are not the goal, and those ideas are not the thing that arouse me.

i've gained more than i ever expected or tried to. for a long time my health was fine, which i chalked up to my first 40 years of being in shape and eating well. more recently, i've started to have some warning signs about potential health issues, so it seems my lucky streak was coming to and end.

i've made some changes to my diet, and tried (and mostly failed) to get more active to try to maintain my health without having to change my lifestyle too much... i've cut out drinking, which should help.

but one of the things about becoming a feedee, the draw of eating and overindulging, of being stuffed, is so enticing that it's hard to resist! i am supposed to cut out carbs/sugars, but the feeling of being so stuffed after eating a whole pizza (or more) is just hard to resist!

also, to me, while immobility would be a frightening position to find myself in, less drastic difficulties are very, very hot - having to stop or sit down, while my partner teases me...
when my belly presses into the table and prevents me from reaching something...
when i can't lift myself up from a chair...
when i can't reach a shelf because my belly is pressing into a counter...
the limitations to my range of motion and my flexibility, which allow my partner to dominate me physically...
even the limitation in having sex have been something that is really hot!

but if i couldn't get myself to the bathroom when i needed to go, that would be a problem, i think. the fantasy of being "trapped" is better than the reality, i think.

i am another fan of contrast. when i was fit and thin, i loved feeding my partners and seeing them grow soft. my last partner at a fit man was a ssbbw who was almost 3-times my size when we met - that contrast was amazing!

now as a fat guy, i am enjoying contrast from the other side - i am more than twice the size of my current partner.

being the "bigger one" in a pairing wasn't ever a goal or desire of mine, but i will say that when it happened i've really grown (pun intended) to love it.

i know the functionality makes sense in some ways - if you want to delete, you don't necessarily want to leave anything behind. but in terms of stories, it really is a shame to see so many stories vanish. it would be nice if there were an archive like there used to be on the old dimensions site.

this 100%. in my mind, there's no difference between not talking about fat and not talking about bdsm - with my relatives or anyone else that has no business talking to me about my sex life.

that stuff should be left between you and your partner(s), or the other people in whatever community you share details of your sex life.

this is a topic that i really relate to. i was a thin, fit feeder for so much of my adult life. i started gaining by accident, and haven't really been able to stop it since.

i've posted about my experience over the last 4 or 5 years, so i won't rehash all that. but i wanted to talk about how lifestyle contributes to this. i sympathize with @otherday66 because i've tried to go back the gym a few times, i've tried to change my diet a few times over the years (including this year) and for the most part it hasn't been successful.

part of it is how seductive the feedist lifestyle is... it's kind of built on pleasure, abandon, and sloth. to move to a mode of discipline, effort and abstinence (from food!) is a really hard change to make. and it's too easy to be tempted back into indulgence, i find (again, and again...).

i'd be interested to hear from anyone who has found success in striking that balance after going to the fat-side?

portly