MaisieMuffin

Truth be told, having grown in a culture rife with fatphobia, gaining weight can be one of the scariest things! I know how much pain and struggle it takes to reverse old patterns. This community has surprisingly much to offer, no matter how you approach it or what role you do or don't play. At the very least, it celebrates the inherent goodness and joy of food and softness. Take care! 🍰

I think our gains are slowing but we're still growing! The last five or so years in the U.S. alone has brought an appreciable change. So many people and types of people who, ten years ago, I would have expected to always stay thin have since gotten fat or at least chubby. And the pandemic really normalized weight gain in a big way. These days everyone's walking around with thick thighs and a belly like it's no big thing! But yes truly. I was recently traveling in Asia for the first time in over a decade, and the difference between then and now is truly noticeable! In some countries, it's like people are making up for lost time and are fattening up with fervor.

Hmm, well she used to be super fat-phobic and talk about how she hates fat people. But then her best friend (me) and her boyfriend both gained a similar amount of weight (around 80lbs for me, less for him), even our coworker has put on around as much. So she's now surrounded by a few relatively fat persons. And while she's lamented her boyfriend's gain (he has lost a little from his peak), she's also mentioned that he's now more soft and comfortable. She's cooled off on her fatphobia, for sure, though she has said to me on a few occasions that I should make sure not to get any bigger or that I should lose weight. I think it's been a source of security for her boyfriend that I've also gotten fat. He makes so many jokes about my weight! If I didn't have a feedism kink, I'd probably be super offended. The two of them have taken to referring to me as a food trash can. Even my boss is in on it. It's like, "Oh, too much food? Don't worry, Maisie will eat it!" All in all, though, she doesn't shame me or anything. It was even her idea to get the donuts I mentioned above. She's very thin and eats little but she's happy accompanying me if I want to go eat, so there have been many occasions where she's just sitting across the table watching me eat. I know what that sounds like, lol, but she's 100% not a feeder. I mean, she enjoys cooking and derives satisfaction from others enjoying her food but she has no interest in fattening them up!

This one is actually about me! I recently went on a hike with a friend of mine, and discovered some limitations of my body along the way. Backstory: she and I have gone on plenty of hikes before. I actually used to be the one to keep us driving forward, needing to stop every now and then to give her a rest. But that was 80 lbs ago... This time around, like in the past, I chose the trail, but while this was admittedly one of the most difficult trails of my life (and I've been on many), our roles were more than reversed. Not too far in, I was already falling behind, panting at the bottom of a steep slope. Keep in mind, I'm about 100 lbs heavier than her. I could hear her up ahead, "C'mon! Hurry up!" I pushed myself, but my heart was pounding and I was pouring sweat. 💦 I had to ask her to wait up so I could explain that, despite my best efforts, my body isn't capable of moving the speeds she was. I told her she was free to go on ahead but that I was going to have to take it slowly and take frequent breaks. 🥵 You could say I was fortunate when not too long after my friend realized that she'd misplaced her motor-scooter key and wanted to go back and find it. I couldn't protest and was glad to be going back down instead of continuing further up. Then, after we got back down and found her key, we drove back into town, where I found a cozy, shaded bench to enjoy some donuts and sticky rice. 😋 We casually explored around nature awhile longer, but when we came upon another trailhead and she asked, "You want to go up this one?", I simply moaned and returned, "No thank you!" All was well in the end, when we eventually returned to the city, where I had a hot bath and some McDonald's delivery, finishing my night with a double-patty and fried mozzarella burger, chicken nuggets, french fries and corn chowder. 🐽 Edit: added some photos of my McDonald's dinner

New tank top, size XL. How much do you think I weigh? Also taking bets on how long this top will fit. 🌮💜🍩

Glad to have you here! Good luck on your journey and enjoy! 💜

None of it was really fat-phobic, save maybe what seemed like a dismissal of weight discrimination being an issue outside of the feedist community. Whoa whoa, not a victim, no victim cards. Just disagreement and discussion. Though I have friends who've gotten a fair amount of shit, etc. because of their weight. It may be relevant or not, but women I know seem to get the worst of it. Do I come off as obsessed? I'm just expressing relevant ideas in a thread on the subject. It's not like this is my entire waking life. Though I have been listening to Maintenance Phase (100% recommend!) podcast on my work commutes for the last few weeks, so a lot of this is more on my mind than usual. I'm cool, though, lol. (Maybe not 'calmer than you are' 🙃) But I relish a good debate, so please excuse me for coming in hot. 🤝

I wasn't really talking of the healthcare field as a whole so much as the anti-obesity sectors of healthcare and beyond. And certainly, no one is going into healthcare because of their fatphobia. I've also acknowledged health risks and correlations, and am not attempting to dismiss or undermine them. Also, desired or not, every fat person takes at least some part of their identity from their size. It's impossible not to. Navigating and interacting with the world is different when your fat versus thin. The way people act toward you is different, accessibility is different. You mention that anti-fatness is probably nowhere as as big a deal to anyone else who isn't a feedist? Excuse me? Have you talked with your non-feedist fat friends about their experiences, particularly when navigating healthcare? Yes, I consider myself a feedist, but most of the information and beliefs I'm bringing here come from beyond this community. How aware and versed are in fat liberation, fat activism, etc.? Outside of your kink, do you have a clear fat-politic? Outside of faps and f**ks, what kind of ally are you? Truly one of the most frustrating aspects of the feedism community is how ironically rife fatphobia still is here, at times more so than in many other non-feedist spaces and communities. "Basically, what I'm trying to say is let others live their life and don't assume the worst of them." - The exact advice that should be adopted by more people regarding their opinions and treatment of fat people.

It may help if you reexamine what you see as a "fat fetish." Because, while it's certainly possible to fetishize fatness, having an increased attraction to or preference for fat bodies isn't a fetish in itself. Soooooo many people around the world adore fat bodies, the vast majority of whom aren't feedists. Sure it may be a smaller number than those who prefer thinner bodies, but that shouldn't be enough to qualify your preference as fetishistic. Nobody ever villainizes someone for having a "skinny fetish." Fatphobia is baked into society and our lives in ways we don't even notice, just because it's so omnipresent. Your wife has a long way to go in dismantling her own internalized fatphobia, but we can all do more to challenge our long-held assumptions and beliefs around fatness.

I mean, think of what might have been achieved if all the time, money and resources that have been dedicated to eradicating fatness had instead been put toward treating health conditions regardless of weight. The huge portion of society that has been committed to making people thin has pretty much failed across the board. They like to pretend that fat people are a historical anomaly- that they didn't really exist in the past and shouldn't exist in the future. And while there are correlations between higher weights and health complications, this isn't really the root of their concern: their fatphobia is rooted more deeply in aesthetic, moral and status concerns. As far as medical interventions for weight-loss, bariatric surgery is usually pretty effective, but also requires lifelong side effects/consequences. Pills, etc. that induce weight-loss, well... you'd pretty much have to stay on them indefinitely or regain the weight. Who knows what sort of side effects they'll come with, as artificially manipulating metabolism has traditionally not gone so well. But again, why not take the resources put toward weight-loss drugs and try to design medicines that, I don't know, provide some of the same positive health benefits of exercise, for example? It's pretty obvious that, as a whole, if there's less need for movement, we're going to move less. I don't quite see the point in trying to fight super common, innate tendencies of humanity.

Here's a little something from late last year. I plan to have new content soon.

I see this topic time and time again, so I thought I'd share this article written by someone outside of the community for a fresh, unbiased take: https://www.irishtimes.com/health/your-wellness/2023/02/12/i-love-my-girlfriends-weight-gain-but-she-doesnt-how-can-i-boost-her-confidence/ (It's behind a paywall 🤫🤫🤫 but check out the screenshots below)

P.S. I dream about those WALL-E chairs. 🤤

It's definitely true that civilization/survival demands less physical exertion of us. Though I also think there's a growing movement toward physical activity for enjoyment and better health beyond weight loss, which is a huge positive trend imo. Plus food is much more available than ever before. The factors that influence body weight are so many and complex, however, that I don't think people's heavier weight on average is 100% accounted for by these two trends alone. I would say that acute stressors are fewer today but that we've exchanged them for a more or less chronic level of stress/anxiety that probably also has something to do with people gaining weight. On top of that, I genuinely believe that, ironically, diet culture has probably led to huge amounts of weight gain at the population level due to the stress and other effects on our body and metabolism that it induces. So, funnily enough, I think if diet culture shriveled up and disappeared, people would actually be thinner overall! As a feedist and someone attracted to fat bodies, I've never quite understood the whole "taboo" aspect. I mean, I can get why it would be hot to some, but it just doesn't do anything for me. I'd prefer to see less stigma and taboo-ness around weight. The U.S. is certainly dystopian in more than one regard, but I wouldn't say our size is one of them... 😕