When I regained last year, I decided to accept my fatty self the way I was. I was chubby, looked good as a chubby woman so why was I going to strain myself through another diet? After all there all hundreds of good looking chubby women around me, like my friend X.
X is a chubby woman. Fluffy everywhere. Loooves to eat. And yet beautiful and seems to have come to good terms with her body. X is never on diet, X doesn't exercise as much as I do, X this, X that. So I decided to accept my weight and be a good looking trendy fatty just like X.
Problem is, I can't stop piling weight up on my body when I reason like that! Day in day out, I wear more and more lbs. I don't eat more. I just eat well everyday, and do not exercise.
X however has remained the same chubby fluffy fatty the whole time! She never loses one gram, and never gains one gram.
BIIIIG SIGH! Why is nature this unfair?

Comparison is the thief of joy, and beware of poison envy.

There is a big difference between accepting yourself and not taking care of yourself. Every body is different, and even if you're happy at a certain weight, you may need to take steps (like exercise) to maintain. Besides, don't you feel better with exercise? I do. I really think the trick is making it "play" and not forcing yourself to do something that you hate. Try everything in the book until you find what you like. And eat what you want, but consider the nutrients you're getting and how you'll feel your best by what you eat. The Mark's daily apple blog is a good site for info on "play" and it's benefits.

I also wouldn't assume that "X" doesn't have to work for her body. She may have habits or disciplines that you don't see. Weight and how we treat our bodies is a very personal thing.

Bottom line. You can be a trendy fatty (if that's what you want to call yourself), but make sure you FEEL GOOD doing it. I feel fabulous at the weight I am now, and I'm still very heavy. But that's because I move and I eat well. It needs to be about health, and if you're gaining constantly, you won't be feeling very good.

I think there is some merit to the concept of set points. For women, from what I have read, our set points are determined during puberty, pregnancy and menopause.

I was morbidly obese as a child. But around puberty, I did thin out to a mere over weight lol. When I reach my adult height, I seemed to at about 165ish pound. And from my later teens until pregnancy, if I stopped dieting (but did not binge, that's different) worked out moderately, I'd settle right around 160-165, pretty much effortlessly. Now when I got pregnant the first time, I just went crazy eating whatever...And I gained to about 240 (see siggy)...after pregnancy, I did have to try to lose, but getting to my previous set point was not too too hard. With my other two pregnancies I was more careful about what I ate, and I exercised the last 2 trimesters with my last, but the weight just got within the 200 something range.

The crazy part is, the way I ate when pregnant, I can mirror that when not preg and I will get to maybe 170ish...No matter how much a binged and sat around I never got over 200 not pregnant! So I think there is something true about set points.

I do believe that to maintain a lower weight 145 or 130 I will have to be more mindful of my exercise (run a higher weekly mileage) and a bit more careful with what I eat. But I do think its doable.

I could be totally wrong here. This is just the theory I subscribe to. lol

Your friend has not dieted before, (I presume). Every time you have dieted, you have caused your metabolism to reduce the number of calories it burns at rest. This is what I have read, anyway.

Once you have dieted, you need to stick with a healthy way of eating permanently, or you will have a tendency to gain weight that a person who has not dieted will not have.

Yo Yo dieting will cause you to have a propensity towards weight gain.

Exercise, however, is great. It will give you muscles that will make your body look better even if you are overweight.

There are thousands of variables involved in weight, there is no "fairness" in it. Some thin folks eat a lot, don't exercise and stay thin (though some will start to gain after certain life events, such as; puberty, pregnancy, middle age, retirement...)

Even if you tried to live exactly like X you might not get the same results, but there's a good chance that you weren't living as much like her as you may have thought. You did say that X exercised less than you did (but didn't say she never exercised), but you did imply that you gave up exercise altogether. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but that's what came across.

In my 30's, after yoyo dieting since kindergarten, I gave up dieting. I became a fat accepting, joy embracing fat person at a high but stable weight. I gained about 10 lbs above my highest weight and stayed there at a stable weight for several years.

But just because I wasn't dieting, didn't mean I wasn't conscious of my diet. The only reason I didn't continue gaining into infinity, is because I did focus on eating healthfully most of the time. I didn't eat less, but I did eat differently. I also exercised - not so much by going to the gym, but by doing so many of the things I didn't let my dieting self do. Going shopping just for fun, not because I needed to. Doing all the fun, active things I didn't think fat girls should do (at least in public) like going out with friends, dancing, swimming more...

There are just too many variables to account for weight and weight pattern differences between people, which is why I believe trying to model your behavior after someone else is usally futile.

There's so much wisdom on this forum, really.
I wish I came here earlier to avoid myself some stupid decisions.
Thanks to all who replied.