I went back and found a post I made long ago about the "rules" I set up for myself to help me gain:

When I was actively gaining, I made myself eat something every two hours while awake (at the top of every even-numbered hour, so 10am, noon, etc.), as well as any time I happened to wake up in the middle of the night. I also had to go to bed stuffed.

On top of this, I also had to eat any time I felt any hunger or a desire to eat for any reason, and I had to satisfy any craving I got, even if it was just a quick impulse. These didn't count towards the "every two hours" obligations.

If I failed to keep to this system at any point, I wasn't allowed to pleasure myself until I completed a successful day.

If two hours is too much or too little for you, you can scale it as needed. It made things a lot of fun for me!

I tend to go off-and-on. When I'm not into it, I can lose some of the weight I've gained, but never all of it. Throughout 2017 and 2018, the switch was mostly turned off for me, but I still only got down from 285 to the high 240s. The switch is just now starting to turn on again, but I think I'm just going to get in the habit of eating a lot, counterbalancing it with long walks a few times a week (I personally have to watch my blood pressure, and moderate exercise helps that regardless of weight), and letting my weight do whatever.

It's worth noting that even when the switch is off, I never regret gaining or feel bad about my body; I just naturally lose weight due to the exercise and my eating reverting to normal levels.

I like to mix it up. Sometimes literotica does more for me and sometimes pics do. Videos can be good too, but that's rarer for me.

I knew I wanted to be fat by age 8 and actually started doing something about it at 12. Some people know really early.

There are a LOT of things that Tumblr considers slurs or bigotry that general society doesn't. Whether or not you think that's a good thing (in general or in this specific case) is up to you.

The health risks become greater the older you get, so I'm in the camp of going for it while as young as possible. Hell, I started at 12 and tripled my weight over the following five years and didn't develop any major health issues. It's up to each individual person and their circumstances, though.

The opinion of a layperson (regardless of any "deep research" they do, whatever the hell that means) is not equal to that of a doctor who has devoted many years to just learning enough to be able to legally practice at all. I love this fetish, but I'm not anti-science. People are not obligated to make the healthy choice or listen to their doc, but they should at least know what they're doing.

I've also seen "health at every size" mentioned in this thread, and that upsets me. That's crossing the line from fat positivity to anti-science and bullcrap. It's no different from the anti-vax crowd. We have to accept that health risks are just something that comes with this choice in lifestyle, and that's okay!

I'm going to go ahead and copy something I said in another thread recently:

"Let's not be part of "that" crowd that dismisses commonly accepted medical advice; that's putting yourself in the same category as an anti-vaxxer. What's important to note is that leading a lifestyle that carries health risks is okay. Do what makes you happy, but don't lie to yourself or other people."

We need to shift the discussion away from health effects and towards the philosophy that doing unhealthy things is okay. I regularly find myself a little annoyed with the HaES "movement", because it crosses the line from body positivity to rejection of science.

Well said, curiousv. Let's not be part of "that" crowd that dismisses commonly accepted medical advice; that's putting yourself in the same category as an anti-vaxxer. What's important to note is that leading a lifestyle that carries health risks is okay. Do what makes you happy, but don't lie to yourself or other people.

I liked fat people on some level from my earliest memories, but my first specific person was a classmate in middle school who claimed she was 140 but was clearly at least 20 pounds above that. She was ADDICTED to food. She once told me that she was always craving at least one food item at any given moment, and I never once saw her turn down food that was offered to her (and you better believe that I tested that). When the cravings got strong enough, she had a hard time focusing on anything else until she satisfied them. And when she did, she would sometimes literally shiver in delight and relief. Popcorn and ice cream were her two biggest weaknesses overall, but she could be temporarily hooked on anything. She didn't like being fat, but she didn't even pretend to be willing to stop eating so much.

To be honest, I don't know how she wasn't 200+. I never saw her go more than a couple foodless hours without getting uncomfortable. I can only imagine how much she ate at home, but I remember a couple of occasions where we were talking on the phone and she said she had to hang up so that she could go eat whatever she was craving.

Sadly, I lost touch with her after we went to different high schools, but I still have yet to meet anyone else who experiences food urges as strongly as she did. I really regret not asking her out, even if a relationship at that age would have never survived in the long run.