there are some great stories in the story section that chronicle people's real experiences - they are some of my favorites! definitely would be interested!

i was really fit until i was about 40, before i started gaining. looking back, when i but on my first 100 lbs, i really was living large - booze, eating like crazy. and then the pandemic hit, i wasn't exercising at all and eating all day long out of boredom. so eventually i got to the point where i'd tripled in size!

but i had no health issues, and i chalked that up to my having been so fit and athletic for so many years prior.

well, a couple of years ago, my luck ran out. all of my blood work results went bad, my blood pressure shot up... i think it was just the combination of my lifestyle catching up and my age.

after some lifestyle changes i am back to being healthy again. i lost some weight, but am starting to put some of that back on again now, hopefully in a more healthy way so i can keep going!

these are two pieces of advice which are really important and i would recommend from my experience: wear your backpack properly (high and tight) and do some exercises to strengthen your core without burning unnecessary calories.

i would also recommend looking into some stretches for the lower back, or even some yoga. this helped me a lot. i should probably do more of it now! lol

what a perfect response! i love it!

great points, i don't entirely disagree, but maybe your vision of "community" is different than theirs. certainly they have a "verified creator" status that allows users to flog their wares/sites, etc. so they do openly embrace it. i've personally reported non-verified creators who were flogging/begging, and the feabie admins did a good, quick job of removing them. (ff admins are far superior - that is true!)

personally, i have found community on feabie. there is a group of friends there that i've now known for several years. we have even had some in-person gatherings. one of feabie's best features is that you can curate your own experience in who you follow, establishing a personal news feed which filters out all the noise of that "endless stream" of social media noise in the global news feed.

ff is great. feabie is fine, too. they're different. they both suggest you will find a date. sure, maybe you will. i hope you do, if that is what you're looking for! my partner found me on wooplus - a site for which i have read many, many negative things. but it worked for us! and the odds were probably against that, too. and yes, i interacted with some questionable folks there before em, but in those situations i just politely excuse myself from the interaction and move along.

that has totally not been my experience there, very much the opposite.

sounds to me like you are targeting a very specific group of people - and that's their prerogative. they're on the site as a means to an end.

so, i am going to go off on a bit of a tangent now, but i'm interested in seeing if anyone else sees things the same way... but first, my qualifiers: i am a (relatively) old guy who has a partner and is not using social media or websites to date anyone.

i see a lot of people - mostly single men - participate on site like feabie (and here, to a much lesser extent) only by responding to the posts of women sharing photos, etc. they don't spend any effort on their profile, they don't post very much of their own material (ie: they aren't contributing - just responding). now, the women who post the most are creators who treat their contributions like a job - because it is, to them. but they're not really that interested in what any one person has to say. some of them are community minded, but i would argue most are not.

now, these guys are following women who are being followed by dozens of other guys. and when the guy feels like he's invested enough (though from what any other user can see, he's contributed nothing), he may ask for something... and this is where the woman essentially says "pay up or shut up." and then they post a message like the one quoted above.

but my thesis is this.... that user is chasing someone who is interested in commerce. they are acting like it's a dating site - it's not (go to wooplus for that - it worked for me!). it's a community, just like this. do people find dates and relationships on it? yes! but it's only 0.1% of users that do! they are the extreme outlier. the fact is that they are being drawn in by someone who is sharing themselves (whether for money or not), but that person almost always has no interest in them. but guys (especially guys, and especially especially guys online) start to feel a sense of entitlement, even just by being acknowledged.

sorry for the length, but i am really interested if anyone else sees this phenomenon?

i am soooo tired of reading guys posts about how everyone else is out to scam them - i know it can't possibly be true because it hardly ever happens to me... but then, i am almost never asking women online for anything. no photos, no fat chat, not to meet me on another website.

thoughts?

i love the idea of codified images like this - like a secret signal to others in the community.

of course, the secrecy aspect would have worked a lot better in the days before the interwebs.

i am bi, so the fact that it was a guy (and a reasonably attractive one, too) didn't bother me... but there is nothing attractive or erotic about that sequence, in my opinion.

appetite is a little disconnected from your weight, i think. it has more to do with stomach capacity.

a couple years ago i had to adjust my eating/drinking habits, and i ended up losing 50+ lbs along the way. over that time i guess my stomach must have shrunk because i was eating much less and feeling full. recently, now my health is good again, my partner has been pushing my limits again... but my capacity is still way less than it was at my max, but i am still over 400 lbs.

obviously there is a relationship. if your capacity is really big, you'll maintain a certain weight more easily. but when i started to eat less, eventually my weight loss kind of stopped, or at least slowed way down, so the two became a little disconnected.

all good, valid points. but i would ask, why bother probing further? why even bring it up here on this website in the first place?

if you don't like it, don't go there. but coming here and telling others to stay away just makes me feel like they have an axe to grind, and it probably says more about the individual than the site they're slandering.