I let myself gain weight (I was never actually BMI overweight, but I was definitely too fat for my frame at one point) due too being a naturally thin child/teen and hearing non-stop how I needed to gain weight, how I'd look so much better if only I gained some weight, how I needed to eat more, being constantly offered extra food and all that stuff. I came to associate weight gain in my mind as a positive thing and rationalized my weight gain as "oh, well, everyone seems to hate skinny people anyway and I want to get on with others", even though deep down I knew I felt and looked worse because of the weight. Then one day it dawned on me. All the "eat a sandwich" comments had gone away but so had the "wow you have cheekbones for days" and the "you have a killer waistline" type of comments. I'd simply become average and invisible. Really? Could all those negative comments when I was skinny just have been...a reflection of other people's insecurity all along? Then I stood next to a beautiful thin elegant perfectly dressed woman while waiting for the train and...I felt it. She was what I once had been and now was not, and now I understood where all those bitter eat- a- sandwich comments had come from. I resolved to become that again, and haven't looked back.