finickyfeedee:
I know some people here have spoken about how once you start gaining, it can be difficult to stop even if you try. Is it possible to do things that would make that point come faster, or is it something that can only happen naturally over time from extended periods of overeating or from aging?

Gaining weight is exciting for me but right now it is still a chore to eat enough to accomplish it. I’d be satisfied with becoming what is referred to here as a “letting-goer,” and just be able to gain weight by eating whatever I want. What I really wish to become someday, though, is a person who not only can gain weight without trying, but who cannot help but gain more and more weight even when trying desperately to lose it. I want to hit a point where I can never be thin again no matter what I do. I want to change my habits and/or metabolism so completely and irreversibly that once I reach my goal weight and try to stop, I just keep gaining anyway and find that all my weight loss efforts end in failure even though it used to be so easy to lose weight.

finickyfeedee:
From research I’ve done, barring preexisting health issues or other unhealthy habits it seems the most important predictor of health at any weight is having a balanced diet and moderate exercise, and to not gain or lose weight too fast.

I think it would be difficult to get really fat that way, but if you managed to then you would probably still be pretty healthy unless you were dealing with other factors like drug use or preexisting health issues. There’s a reason a lot of studies show average size and slightly overweight people to be healthier than either underweight or obese people on average, a balanced lifestyle like that will usually make someone average sized or slightly overweight instead of very skinny or very fat.

Being too skinny can be very unhealthy, too, I have nearly been hospitalized for it in the past and I have long term health damage from it even now that I’m in the normal range. I’ll probably never fully recover from some of it, particularly the damage to my bone density. I think that most of the time, the point at which your weight itself (and not just the potentially unhealthy things you do to get to that weight and maintain it) becomes a big risk is when you go extreme, like when I got down to 90 pounds or when someone is so fat they’re near immobility.

Things like eating lots of junk food or being sedentary are of course bad for you even if you don’t gain any weight from them. So are a lot of other things people do all the time, though, so I think what’s most important is to keep an eye on your health and clean up your lifestyle if your health starts getting worse than you think is worth it. I think unless you have naturally very low blood pressure, that’s probably the most important number to keep an eye on for most people.

For me, gaining weight rapidly and eating junk food is worth it even though it is not good for my health. Right now, it’s safer for me than not trying to gain, because when I don’t pay a lot of attention to increasing my daily calories I sometimes end up only eating a few hundred a day and then I lose way too much weight very fast and get sick. I do not enjoy eating aside from as a tool to gain weight, I just really dislike the taste or texture of 99% of foods, and so it’s difficult for me to motivate myself to eat at all if it won’t make me gain. I do keep an eye on my bloodwork, blood pressure, how I generally feel, etc, so that if anything starts looking really bad I can make changes.

If you want to gain weight in as healthy a way as possible though, it’s safest to gain slowly by eating a balanced healthy diet with just enough calories to make you gain 1 or 2 pounds a week while also doing a little exercise. Maintaining or losing weight in a healthy way is the same, too, just with the amount of calories adjusted accordingly.