invisibility was my pay off. I was thin when I was younger and I was social and gregarious and excitable and I was really involved in the local music scene.. but then a few things happened in my life that made me want to sink into the background. A lot of my friends got married and moved away or left for school or jobs. I realized that being a social butterfly was exhausting and I started gaining weight and liked that people stopped bothering me and expecting me to be the center of attention. I was, kind of, afraid to make new friends and meet new people.. and once I started gaining weight I was told "You're not very pretty, but it's okay- punks are supposed to be ugly" and I guess I didn't realize how much that got to me until recently.

Having just moved to a new state with my fiance I've been really itching for new friends so we can have people to hang out with and go out sometimes... and I sorta miss being social now. Hopefully with the confidence I've been gaining because of the weight I've been losing I'll be able to make some new friends, and maybe get involved in the music scene down here.

I've often thought about this and I don't know the answer for sure.

What I find funny is that I am such an organized Type A personality. I planned my life exactly as I had wanted it and so far it is going exactly to plan. Married to a great guy (check), gave birth to a girl and a boy (check), great job (check), great church/spiritual life (check), dream house (check)......so I just could never figure out what kept me from losing this weight!

Sometimes I wonder if deep down I feel guilty about having so many blessings and so I "punish" myself by eating.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I have all of the above PLUS a fit body. It is more blessing than one person can handle I think!

well, THAT is news to me!

punks are not supposed to be "ugly" - extreme, yes, that's what punk is all about, but not "ugly". unless, of course, they ARE ugly in which case they are to celebrate it, not try to be something they're not.

i was a punk of the Old Skool variety - mosh pits, way-back-combed hair, shredded tights, black harley tees with the sleeves cut off and the armholes down to the waist, ammo belt, chains, blue and black makeup (eyeshadow, blush, AND lipstick), genuine doc martens (the fakes got their feet stepped on - the ones we wore were steel-toed, lol) etc. we always looked good - just different - and being big or small wasn't a factor except the big gals could carry a whole lot more hardware than i could.

It was news to me, too! I never thought of myself as ugly before then (I remember that this particular comment came my way soon after the "bros" and frat boys decided punk rock was a good excuse to get into a pit just to beat people up- shortly before the integrity of a good punk show was nothing more than a memory).. admittedly I was extreme but I always felt, like you said, I looked good, even if it was different.. mosh pits, dark make up, torn up clothes, mohawk, piercings (I still have my septum ring, it's my favorite of all the piercings I had and I don't want to get rid of it just yet), tattoos, steel toed boots, brass knuckles.. crude humor.. yep. I mean, I still have my days when I it all comes back but I've mellowed out a lot. I'm not any different as a person, I just don't look it much anymore. Ever since I was a little kid I thought punk rock girls were super pretty.

I don't think I got or stayed fat for a "payoff". My parents just did a lousy job of making sure I stayed at a healthy weight when I was too young to take responsibility for that myself, they failed to serve meals that were as healthy or balanced as they could have been, and they failed to teach me sound nutritional knowledge and healthy eating habits.

When I grew up and my weight suddenly became my responsibility and a big problem for them , my attempts to put the nutritional knowledge I gained as an adult into practice to lose weight and keep it off were impeded by the fact that I had undiagnosed ADHD and by that point was so screwed up and burned out that I could barely function at all, much less lose weight on top of working and/or going to school.

Diagnosis and treatment have allowed me to become much more functional generally, and my ability to stick to a fairly non-restrictive "plan" without becoming overwhelmed or forgetting about it completely when other parts of life demanded any attention at all is simply part of that.

My weight is my way of punishing my body for betraying me (infertility when all I ever wanted in life was to have a baby, hysterectomy to save my life so it will never happen). Comfort eating through some traumatic events in my family and fear of trying to lose weight and failing.

The only payoff is getting to indulge in any of my cravings at any moment without limit or boundary. I get excited when I think ahead to eating something really good. I get to celebrate every occasion with food, and drown my sorrows in it.

*sigh* The payoff just isn't good enough now. I'd rather be thin, have confidence, feel beautiful, wear what I want, be healthy than continue to eat what I want. It's a small price to pay.

I dont know 100% why I choose to be fat, but all I know is I like to snack on chips. I think something happened to me when I was a child, but I cant recall what exactly, but I can tell that something or someone traumatized me. Its the way I see people. Being fat makes me not have to show how socially awkward I am, and how Im such a nerd. Also, men ignore me, so I never have to worry about them rejecting me because I know that they already are not interested. I guess I have a lot of emotional baggage.

But I do know that if I were skinny, I would see things differently.

Like a lot of you, my payoff for being big is being invisible to most men. I've never liked attention and I have a serious fear/distrust of men.

If I'm big:

~ Men don't notice me.

~ I'm not afraid to walk my dog after dark.

~ I don't have to stand there awkwardly and try to think of something to say if a guy is hitting on me, even subtly.

~ I don't have to feel that horrible anxiety you get when a man is leering at you and you know they want something you can't give.

Of course, another payoff for being fat is the ability to eat anything and everything you want. I don't think any of us can lie and say that's not enjoyable, because of course it is. Food is great and having to restrict it isn't all that fun. But I'm doing this now not to look good (tbh I'll probably walk around in hoodies and jeans when I'm thin; I definitely don't want to attract attention) but to feel healthier and freer. At the moment I really do feel trapped by my body and it's slowly eroding the aspects of my life I do enjoy. I just want to be a normal person and blend into the crowd. Often my weight is what defines me and I hate that.

Hi ladies! I'm new to this forum, but wanted to chime in....

My payoff is that I didn't have to care. I am also a type A personality. I run, amnage, and control everything else in my life - husband, children,job, volunteer work .... it was nice not to have to worry about somethiung. I would just pop whatever I found into my mouth, ran through a drive through, or atenothing all day until I ate plate after plate at dinner.

I lost 60 pounds three year ago and gained it all back. What I have realized since then is that I must take care of me and put myself first. I don't always think I deserve that, but I have to make ME a priority too.

This is an interesting question, and I have recently tried to figure that out. I have been overweight my entire life, and really started packing on the pounds as an early teen. I know that my weight spiraled out of control once I became a target for bullying. Staying in the house became my safety net and combined with a lot of emotional eating, it's not surprising I gained a substantial amount of additional weight in a short amount of time.

But, as an adult, I have questioned what might be the new reason. As a person who has never had genuine friends or romances, I can't help but wonder if my weight is helping me from finding out something even more hurtful. I have always wanted to find that special guy and have great friends. I have yet to find either, and specifically in the romance department, I can argue that I run across a lot of superficial men that are focused on my exterior. I feel like meeting someone at this point would be more genuine. If I lost weight and people treated me different, I may have no way of knowing if it's genuine (unless it's someone that didn't want to be bothered with me at first). Then again, if nothing changed and I lost weight, I might have to accept that there's something inherent about me that seems to repel people.

I might sound overly skeptical, but I feel like if I lost weight, I might just give up on trying find those things in life. Hopefully, that makes sense...

my pay off is the amusement i get when i see people's reactions to things i eat, or physical activities i can do. probably not really what you meant, but it's about the only thing i get from being fat.

my husband has told me "if slim and fit were a mindset you'd be there" and after a year and making it a habit to eat right and exercise, i'm inclined to believe him.

I think the payoff was/is being able to eat whatever I want. when I'm trying to lose weight or maintain I can't do that. (That's also the cause if I had my eating under control I never would have gotten to this weight, I don't think I'd be skinny but I'd be around the 200lb range instead of the 300 range if I didn't consistently overindulge.).

Basically I get to be lazy.

Sad but true!

My 'payoff', I guess, would be that the people I considered my friends really got to know me and loved me because I was me, not for any shallow reasons. I never had a lot of friends but the ones I did have were very close and very reliable. I was never the fat friend, or looked down on in any way.

In the same way, all of the relationships I had as a teenager were all very meaningful. I started dating when I was 13, which sounds young but I've always been more grown up and kind of an 'old soul'.. And my first relationship lasted over a year, which is a long time all things considered. I dated 2 other guys, each lasting over a year til I met my now husband at 16. But each guy saw beyond my weight, even though they thought I was pretty (I was around 220-250 then) and really liked ME. Even after we broke up, I'm still very good friends with every single one of them to this day, and I believe it's because we were always great friends.

I was never able to eat what I wanted or use it as a shield. I never had any problems with people due to my weight, no one was ever cruel to me or mean. So my weight just made -me- feel like a failure, like the last piece that was keeping me from being 'perfect'. So, I was hard on my self. I couldn't do anything to escape it, if that makes any sense. I couldn't eat to make myself feel better because I scrutinized everything that went in my mouth and when I did binge it was more to punish myself instead of doing it for any kind of gratification.

Well when I was a kid, my mom and dad fed me what they ate - which was mostly fast food or things cooked in fat or layered with sugar. Even after I figured out how bad my eating was, it took me a few years to try to change it.

But I am not a kid anymore, and now I am feeding me!

The reason it took so long to change was an overwhelming fear of failure. I'd always been told I was so smart, so pretty, surely going to be a lawyer or a doctor some day, and while I realize it's far from the worst thing in the world to have parents and grandparents who are overly proud of you, it made me think strictly in terms of failure and success. What I'm doing now - trying new things with my diet, waiting for myself to slip in some way and then correcting it once I'd slipped - would have horrified me from even two years ago. But I grew up (which is the prerogative of every 20-something-year-old) and changed my mind (which is the prerogative of every women anywhere) about what failure really was, and I decided that not even trying to make myself better fit pretty neatly into my new definition of "failure."