Gaining & Cognitive Dissonance

Gaining is not easy. Regardless of how naturally the weight comes on, there are plenty of complications: affording food and clothes, contending with social pressure, and coming to terms with how the whole process affects your romantic life and sense of self. Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of gaining, however, is its interaction with health.

The obvious reply is that there are many activities that adults choose which harm the human body in excess: smoking, alcohol, video games, and sports are much like food in that they can be carried to unhealthy extremes both physically and mentally. Obesity, however, has earned a place in our culture as our generation's greatest health concern, leading to not a few hyperbolic headlines. Finding personal justification for our deviant behavior is something that I find necessary. (As deviant as one can consider emulating the diet of a significant minority of the population.)

The overbearing pressure of the way we've internalized our upbringing and culture makes it difficult to adopt so strange a behavior as gaining without some kind of cognitive dissonance. Some people try to resolve this dissonance by claiming obesity can be healthy. Some solve it by vilifying obesity and anyone who refuses to denounce it with equal fervor. Some try to ignore it. But it is an uncomfortable question that demands an answer: how do we reconcile science, morality, and desire?


Maybe in the future this kink will be forgotten, but for now we have to deal with the reality that health and gaining are not as easily reconciled as fat acceptance activists might wish. And so I'm going to try to talk through it. After all, who doesn't like a little armchair psychology?

The Fun of Cognitive Dissonance

According to Ye Olde Wikipedia, "cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values."

My contention is that cognitive dissonance at some point plagues us during our gaining journey, and resolving such feelings plays a role in living happily with a gainer-related sexuality. It is only through the decisions of the mind that we are able to achieve any tangible progress in our lives. Without some degree of mental well-being, we find ourselves crippled when it comes to achieving our personal goals, physical or otherwise.

Here are some beliefs a gainer might hold at once:

• Fat guys are hot, and I want to be one or be with one
• Muscular guys are hot
• Being fit is better than being fat
• Gaining will endanger my health
• Gaining won't endanger my health

It's not difficult to imagine how holding some combination of these and similar notions can cause mental discomfort over time. How many of these things can be simultaneously true? What efforts do we make to justify which side of the fence we end up on?

A Two-Edged Sword

I again quote the great internet encyclopedia: "Effort justification is a person's tendency to attribute a value to an outcome, which they had to put effort into achieving, greater than the objective value of the outcome."

Effort justification is something we can use to resolve our doubts about gaining. For a lot of us, the process is difficult or, at the very least, not natural to us apart from our sexuality. When we find ourselves facing dissonance between our desires and social/medical expectations, one tactic our mind uses to resolve the dissonance is effort justification: because this process took a lot of work, we are more likely to evaluate it as worthwhile or higher in value than it may objectively be. Example: "It's fine that I have back pain, it was difficult to get the body I wanted." Perhaps in reality, effort justification might be clouding your thinking.

This principle goes the other way, however. Upon giving up gaining, the value of weight loss may be inflated in our minds through the same process. Because losing weight takes effort, it must be of value, relieving us of some of the guilt we might feel on giving up on gaining to our goal weight.

Regardless, there is value in being aware of the ways in which we might be rationalizing our thoughts and behaviors.

A Case Study

This case study is me, the easiest study of all. This blog, after all, is me dragging a clumsy finger across the watery depths of my brain in hopes of gleaning some useful resource for others (but at the very least useful to me me, my most diligent reader).

Background

I was raised in a conservative environment, made more conservative by my religious surroundings until I was in my early 20s. Though I've moved to the center, the impact of these ideas still linger with me. Indeed, a few of them still hold appeal. But I'm not here to talk about which parts of conservative or liberal ideologies hold merit.

I'm here to say that it's important to recognize what ideas are molding your thinking. A good friend of mine who grew up in a similar environment put it well when he said there were so many things he didn't want to feel conservative about, but it was difficult simply change his thoughts and feelings.

I didn't come out to myself until I was in my 20s, with the rest of the process following over the next few years. When I was on my own and in a good position to give it a try, I gained around 70 lbs in about a year. The experience was, in my own words, better than I could have hoped. But if it was that simple, this piece wouldn't exist.

The Problem

Ever since completing my first significant gain, I've been gradually losing steam. I'll throw myself into it for a while, hit my highest weight, then lose interest and often weight. The cycle repeats. Lately, I've not only stopped gaining, but lost more weight than I ever have. Part of this can be blamed on my genetics, which are disposed toward thinness, but I also am to blame.

I take perhaps too much delight in eating less, and I have been exercising more. The latter is commendable regardless, but I must consider whether the pleasure I take in eating less is a way to justify giving up on gaining (effort justification), a byproduct of my upbringing, or a twisted way to feel morally superior.

The Solution

I don't have a neat solution for myself, or for you. But I can say that my ability to use my intelligence as a way to stymie my personal growth is in full force here. Why not take life as it comes like a sensible person? Why, indeed.

Without the willingness to confront malfunctions of my own good sense, I risk justifying mistakes that might rob me of living a more authentic and satisfying life. I know that I feel healthier now than I did before, but I also know that being bigger is an important component of my personality that, on some level, I have to reckon with.

Resolving my own cognitive dissonance is a task I'll be undertaking in 2018, and I hope that my struggles, however academically expressed, inspire you to strive for your own goals in the coming year.

Thanks for reading my ramblings! Email me at thoughtfulgainer@gmail.com to ask any questions or recommend a topic for the future.