You’re Not a Gainer: Identity and Gaining

Gaining is Optional

Being attracted to fat or gaining doesn’t mean you need to gain. You don’t owe the gaining community your gains. You don’t owe yourself gains. You owe yourself a good life. Pursue what you believe is right and beneficial to you, your loved ones, and your community. This might include gaining. It might not. If you’re offered an identity all packaged up and ready to go, regard it with suspicion. Neither our culture nor your attractions predetermine the way you might best conduct yourself.

It’s important to establish clear thinking when it comes to making decisions about your body. Recognize the social pressures to stay thin, understand why people in your life might object, and decide which objections should be discarded and which should be confronted (in your own mind if nowhere else). But as gainer social media becomes normal for a lot of us, you also have to recognize the opposite influence should be confronted as well. There will always be someone telling you to get fatter no matter how prudent it might be in your case to do otherwise. After all, there are people out there advocating for anorexia (sadly a real thing).


Don’t bully yourself into staying thin or losing weight. Don’t bully yourself into gaining. Strive for objectivity and, far more frightening, realism.

Maintain Realism

There are things in your life that will conflict with gaining, or be entirely incompatible with it. This is where decisions and compromises must occur. Don’t ignore the things that are stopping you. They must be reckoned with to maintain mental and emotional stability.

Let’s take an extreme example. I am opposed to immobility. An individual can do as he pleases and argue for his lifestyle, but in my opinion, immobility is irresponsible and of negligible societal value. Gaining that much weight is excessively expensive, puts your health in danger, and can harm people who value you. These are the grim realities of the fantasy brought to life. Meet them head on and adjust your course accordingly.

Of course, most gainers don’t want to be immobile. But where do you draw the line? Your parents can’t give you the answer to that, but neither can supportive encouragers cheering for the next 50 pounds. There are irreversible changes to your body that occur when you gain, many of which you might love, but some of which you might regret. Consider all of those changes as best you can before embarking on your journey. Research. Know your family medical history. Be real with yourself.

Imagine the life that would most fully encompass the best of your physical and mental potential. What would it look like? Try to refine that image and take note of what steps would be necessary to bring that image into reality, belly and all.

Don’t Blame Others

Your decisions are your responsibility. You can mince around the topic of cultural influence all you want, but ultimately who is going to volunteer to take the blame for you? If you decide to stay thin and regret it, you missed the opportunity. If you gain and regret it, once again, this is on you.

The idea in pointing this out isn’t to make you feel bad. It’s to confirm that you are in charge of your own fate. And you are, at least to the extent that you can try your mightiest, succeed or fail.

If your efforts make you less traditionally attractive, that is a burden you must bear. Blaming culture and whining isn’t attractive. A lot of people are naturally less turned on by overweight people, and that’s fine. They have no obligation to be attracted to you. There are plenty of people who will find you appealing, or all the more appealing.

If this is a deal-breaker for gaining, go back to the drawing board and see how it affects your concept of your ideal life. Rinse and repeat with other potential pitfalls.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing I want to leave with you, it’s this: no one is in total a gainer. Sure, gaining is important to your sexuality, or you’re planning to gain weight, or whatever. But in the end, you are you. You’re full of nuance and passion and, if you’re lucky, a smack of intelligence. “Being” a thing doesn’t define or control you. You get to decide exactly what you do with your body, for better or worse.

It is my sincere wish, dear reader, that you gain or do not gain in accordance with the best will that you can muster, and that your life is full of purpose and satisfaction.

Then again, what does this random person online know? Perhaps very little. But likewise, what do you know? Try to know stuff. It’ll be good for you in the long run.