Intentional Weight Gain

Mrs. Claus: Papa, you haven't touched a morsel! I'll have to take this suit in. Eat!
Santa Claus: I'm busy, Mama. It's almost Christmas!
Mrs. Claus: Whoever heard of a skinny Santa? Eat! Eat!

— Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

While many people tend to be focused on losing weight, some people actually want to gain it. They'll eat tons of unhealthy food, refuse to exercise, and stay away from anything healthy, all in the name of gaining weight. Some reasons why a person would want to gain weight include:

1. Coming from a culture where being overweight is a sign of status or attractiveness.
2. Wanting to attract the attention of a Chubby Chaser.
3. Seeing themselves as too skinny.
4. Trying to ward off the attention of unwanted pursuers.
5. Martial artists often try to gain weight in order to qualify for a particular weight class.
6. A character with a superpower that is Cast from Calories might need to gain weight in order to fuel their powers
7. If the one gaining weight is an animal that practices hibernation or has traits of one of said animals, they might try to gain weight for the purpose of surviving the winter.

Characters who do this are almost always Big Eaters. Very likely to overlap with The Fat Episode. Overlaps with Weight Woe if a character is doing it because they believe that they are too skinny. If they try to gain weight by not exercising, they could become a Lazy Bum. If an actor does this for a role, that's Dyeing for Your Art. Compare Fat and Proud and Getting Sick Deliberately. Often ends up becoming Formerly Fit if they end up succeeding. Contrast Diet Episode, where a character tries to lose weight.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ai Kora: In chapter 88, Gokou Ooba, a chubby-chasing rich boy who fell for the fattened-up version of Ayame, slips a "bountiful body drug" into the dorm's water supply to fatten up girls in Hachibei's dorm. The chapter ends with each member of Gokou's Maid Corps realizing this and taking a dose of the drug, confessing their collective love for him, and inflicting severe bruises on their beloved master when the plumped-up maids all try to hug him at once. All girls (except Ayame) return back to normal thanks to the antidote.
  Maeda: Liking fat can be a problem...
• In Bleach, Kirio Hikifune can create Power-Up Food that drastically increases the reiatsu of those who eat it. But she rapidly loses weight due to infusing the food with her Reiatsu, forcing her to fatten herself up between feasts to survive each feast she cooks.
• Cowboy Bebop: Professional conman Whitney Haggis Matsumoto had fat surgically inserted into his body in order to fool bounty hunters still looking for him using his old face from his "Wanted!" Poster. Assuming he was actually telling the truth of how he got so fat compared to how he looked several years earlier.
• Crayon Shin-chan has a Diet Episode where the titular character gains some weight due to slacking in the summer, but after Shin-Chan had slimmed down, he overheard his crush, Nanako, talking on her phone that she thinks "sumo wrestlers are so cool..." cue Shin-Chan suddenly going back to binge-eating while daydreaming he's a sumo wrestler.
• In My Hero Academia, Fatgum's Kevlard Quirk requires him to pack on pounds in order to absorb blows properly. But he loses the weight when he uses the impact energy he's taken as Counter-Attack. This requires him to fatten himself up again by eating a lot to make his Quirk work normally.

Comic Books

• Adventure Comics: In #298, the Kent Family returns from vacation to find most of Smallville's in the middle of an obesity epidemic. The source is soon revealed to be due an irradiated shipment of milk, which Clark Kent's seen drinking at that very moment. To avoid blowing his secret identity, he uses Red Kryptonite to deliberately fatten himself up. Trouble is, he then has to hide that Superboy's gained weight too rather than simply pretending he's fat as Clark.
• Deadpool: Back before he was disfigured, Wade Wilson once spent several months undercover in Japan infiltrating a sumo wrestling ring. As a result, he gradually fattened up as he climbed the ranks. He lost the weight after leaving Japan when he decided to quit the mission, having gotten too attached to his intended target and his daughter.

Comic Strips

• A Big Nate storyline involves Nate trying to "bulk up" to become more threatening on the basketball court, though Nate's idea of bulking up involves eating a lot rather than exercising. Needless to say, it doesn't work out as planned.

Fan Works

• In The Loud House fanfic Waxing Moon, Luna eats too much on Christmas and becomes a little pudgy. At first she wants to lose the weight, but when her girlfriend Sam reveals herself to be a Chubby Chaser, Luna actually wants to try to get fatter. However, Sam turns it down, since she doesn't want her girlfriend to have a body type she's uncomfortable with, and it might be unhealthy.
• Family Guy Fanon: In "Fattest in the West", Mayor Wild West gorges himself on McBurgertown food and becomes obese in order to please his most disliked community, the obesity community (something found out through a rushed study). And needless to say, it ends up causing more harm to Wild West then good, as he fails to account for how the rest of Quahog would react to it.

Film — Animated

• Charlotte's Web: Templeton gorges himself on discarded food at the state fair; the only reason he chose to go in the first place; eating enough to triple his size and seeming to revel in the experience.
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: The Mayor, harboring a desire to be "big", doesn't take long to start gorging on any and all food within his reach, quickly gaining so much weight that he starts needing a scooter to move around.
• Open Season 2: A Running Gag is people getting the weight of Boog the grizzly bear wrong, assuming he's 12,000 pounds when actually he's 900 pounds. At one point, he excuses himself by saying that the fur makes him look a hundred pounds heavier, and besides, he's been bulking up to hibernate.

Film — Live-Action

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Just like in the book, Greg doesn't want to wrestle with Fregley during wrestling class, so he tries to gain weight. Unlike in the book, he first tries eating a lot, then his father Frank suggests he go on an exercise routine and become buff, but Greg declines after learning this would take approximately three months. However, eating doesn't make him gain weight either, so he just borrows his mother Susan's ankle weights.
• Fat Slags: When a wealthy tycoon/socialite is hit on the head and openly declares his previously-secret love for fat women, he sparks a change in which pop culture now idolizes them, inspiring women all around the world to intentionally gain weight to get as big as possible. His assistant, Paige, who is in love with him, is heartbroken when he dismisses her as too skinny, so she too begins gorging and fattening herself up hoping that he will fall for her. She becomes quite large, only for him to return to denying his love of fat women.
• Pulp Fiction: Discussed when Fabienne tells Butch at length about her desire to have a pot belly. Considering how specifically she describes it ("Normal face, normal legs, normal hips, normal ass, but with a big, perfectly round pot belly"), many viewers have theorized she's hinting that she's pregnant.

Literature

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In the first book, Greg signs up for wrestling, but due to him and Fregley (whom Greg hates due to Fregley being a Cloud Cuckoolander) being the two lightest kids in the club, they have to wrestle each other. Greg tries to gain weight, first by eating a lot, then by lifting weights in an attempt to become buff, but neither attempt works, so he tries to pretend to gain weight by drawing on fake abs.
• In the world of Early Riser, humanity hibernates through the winter, so gorging oneself on food before hibernation is considered socially acceptable, with exercise being shunned for fear of running out of fat-reserves mid-winter and subsequently starving to death.
• James and the Giant Peach: In the main characters' song about James's aunt Spiker, she's portrayed as wanting to be fatter (due to being "thin as a wire") and attempting to gain weight by eating more sugar.
• Discussed in Living Dead Girl. Alice says that her plan for when she gets away from Ray is to eat and eat until she gains weight because he despises "overweight" women and has starved her for years.
• In the Mirror Dance in the Vorkosigan Saga, Mark Vorkosigan wants to be different from his elder brother Miles and to be his own person. So, he uses rapid weight gain to differentiate himself from Miles, preventing any attempts to use him to double for Miles.
• The Wheel of Time: Justified when Mat is reduced to Nothing but Skin and Bones by a Curse and a physically draining healing spell. For weeks afterwards, he eats huge amounts of food just to make up the deficit and get back to a moderate weight.

Live-Action TV

• The Andy Griffith Show: Subverted. In "Barney's Physical," the state passes new height and weight requirements that would disqualify Barney from being a cop. While Andy is able to temporarily stretch Barney out a few inches (via a medical harness), Reality ensues when Barney tries overeating but has no chance of gaining enough weight in time to pass his physical... until Andy realizes Barney is allowed to wear an identification tag with a chain when he's weighed. Barney ends up wearing a huge, heavy-linked chain with his tag and squeaks by the physical.
• Get Smart, "Survival of the Fattest (season 1, episode 15): KAOS kidnaps a prince before he is to receive his weight in gold — the money required to keep his country solvent — and proceeds to slim him down (using an electrified exercise bicycle). In the end, he didn't make it back up to 300 pounds, but they gave him the gold anyway, and the whole country went on a diet.
• Gilligan's Island: In the episode "Physical Fatness", the Skipper realizes he needs to lose weight in order to re-enlist in the Navy if and when they are ever rescued. Gilligan, however, needs to gain weight to return to the service, so he eats everything in sight, including a bowl of the phosphorescent dye that the Professor developed to attract any nearby ships.
• How I Met Your Mother: In "Showdown" When the stress of wedding planning caused Lily to lose weight until she couldn't fit into her wedding dress, she tried to gain it back quickly by binging on junk food.
  Lily: Best wedding diet ever!
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In "How Mac Got Fat", Mac explains to an increasingly confused priest about why he intentionally gained 50 pounds. The Gang tried hiring "avatars" to replace themselves at Paddy's Pub. Mac got self-conscious at how muscular his avatar was, and vowed to bulk up to match him. Being a complete idiot, he ends up overeating and gains fat instead of muscle.
• Married... with Children: In the episode "Live Nude Peg", Bud convinces Kelly to gain weight so she can be the Before model in a weight loss commercial; Kelly is initially unsure but goes along once she hears how many stars gain weight for fame. She doesn't gain the weight evenly and it all ends up going to her butt, Zig-Zagging the trope as she's no longer happy with it once she loses out on the job.
• M*A*S*H: In the episode "The MASH Olympics", a soldier is in danger of being discharged because he's too overweight, and enlists the help of Hawkeye and BJ to help him lose weight before his next physical. Upon learning that one can be discharged for being overweight, Klinger starts eating excessively in hopes of gaining enough weight to go home (it ends as well as you think).
• One episode of Salute Your Shorts sees Donkeylips and Sponge trying out for the camp wrestling team after learning that the prize for competing is a lobster dinner, but Donkeylips is too heavy and Sponge is too light. Telly, who has appointed herself their fitness coach, designs a regime wherein Donkeylips runs laps while Sponge eats entire bunches of bananas so that the former can lose weight while the latter gains weight.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: One episode centers around both Maddie and London suffering from opposite forms of Weight Woe after London's model friend insults them for being too skinny and too fat respectively. To make matters worse, both are planning to appear on a fashion show soon. As a result, Maddie spends most of the episode gorging herself on food in order to look good for the show. She gains enough weight to rip her dress before the show, though she does not look any different.
• 30 Rock: Downplayed and Played for Laughs. Jenna spends a summer starring in a musical adaptation of Mystic Pizza that requires her to eat thirty-two pieces of the dish a week, and when she returns to television, she's developed a sizable gut. At first she's embarrassed and tries numerous diets, but when she starts getting Fat Comic Relief roles on TGS that earn her lots of attention, her diva side emerges and she decides to embrace her new size. As such, when Jenna starts losing the weight naturally, she tries to force herself to eat in order to keep her weight up, but it ultimately fails.

Music

• In the song "Hey Skinny Santa!" by JD McPherson, Santa gorges on American regional foods such as Chicago deep dish pizza and New Orleans jambalaya in order to gain weight in time for Christmas. He goes from a 32-inch waistline at the beginning of the song to a 99-inch waistline at the end.

Theatre

• 13: The Musical: In "13", when the kids are lamenting that they're growing up and going through changes, one kid complains that he needs to gain 20 pounds "by Friday", implied to be for the sake of sports.

Video Games

• Street Fighter 6: In World Tour Mode, you can find a restaurant that E Honda owns in Metro City, which has a number of aspiring sumo wrestlers trying to pack on pounds in order to improve their sumo abilities. One of the quests Honda gives you after you become his apprentice is to eat a bunch of different types of food in order to gain weight (though this has no effect on your character's appearance).
• In the Sushi Cat series, the titular Sushi Cat intentionally gains weight by eating tons of sushi for various purposes, such as being heavy enough to open an automatic door, enter a sumo contest, and rescue his beloved pink cat plushie.
• Tekken: Bob is an Acrofatic karate champion who gained weight in order to be able to defeat larger opponents, which he was unable to do when he was skinny.

Visual Novel

• Byakuya Togami in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair put on a lot of weight from his slim appearance in the first game. He is in fact not the real Byakuya, but an imposter who has no name, no home, no family, no identity, so he impersonates other people to get by. He's Fat and Proud, and while the primary reason he's fat is from eating fast food for comfort, he seems to imply that he purposely "sculpted his physique" to stay warm in the cold, since he tells the skinny Hajime that he is lucky they're stranded on a tropical island, else he would freeze to death. He also considers pork to be the best meat because it's highest in vitamin B1, which assists in converting glucose to energy, and therefore is best at packing on weight with.

Web Animation

• This animation by FattyDragonite (who specializes in animating fat characters) has a rabbit going through a Training Montage to get fatter in so he can get back onto a bobsled team.
• Etra chan saw it!: Yuri is a seventeen-year-old girl who receives a marriage proposal from Akamatsu, a forty-one-year-old man who wants to marry her because he's heard how attractive she was, though they won't actually meet until Yuri turns eighteen. Yuri can't just say no, as her family owes Akamatsu's family a lot of money, and Akamatsu's family has agreed to drop the debt in exchange for Yuri and Akamatsu's marriage. In order to avoid the marriage, Yuri decides to gain a bunch of weight so that Akamatsu won't be attracted to her. When Akamatsu sees Yuri, he's turned off and calls off the marriage.

Webcomic

• Housepets!: In this page, the fitness-obsessed Kevin has been unnecessarily trying to get the best score possible on a simple physical exam. His efforts backfire when the doctor informs him that his body fat is dangerously low and recommends that he change his diet for a few weeks. In the last panel he is eating donuts and whole milk and complaining that it feels wrong.
• The Order of the Stick: The Blood Empress is a red dragon who has been intentionally gorging herself for years because she misunderstood the rules about dragons becoming more powerful the bigger they are and thought it was about weight gain rather than becoming Stronger with Age.
• Spinnerette: Greta Gravity in her backstory was focused on losing weight while she and Dr. Universe were in prison. Part of Universe's plan to escape required her to use her gravity-manipulating powers. Her powers are tied to her weight: greater mass means greater manipulation, so she began putting on weight in order to escape government control. While not precisely her choice, she has maintained her great weight since her powers are useful when dealing with threats to their freedom.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: In "The American Dad After School Special," Francine and Hayley conspire to tamper with Stan's diet to make him gain weight. While he thinks they're trying to make him fat as revenge for insulting Steve's girlfriend Debbie, they're actually trying to help him because he doesn't realize he's developed anorexia and becoming dangerously underweight.
• The Angry Beavers: In "Fat Chance", Daggett tries to fatten himself up to prepare for winter. He failed but Norbert manages to fatten up himself accidentally when he was helping Daggett.
• Betty Boop: "Betty Boop and Little Jimmy" involves Betty Boop and a young boy deliberately making themselves fat by laughing.
• Camp Lazlo: "The Big Weigh In" centers around Lumpus mistakenly believing he's dangerously underweight because he cut in line in for the results of his physical and heard Lazlo's weight read to him instead of his own, so he tries to gain weight in order to avoid dying. He tries to eat an obese bird, the lard-a-doodle, but after being eaten and spat out by the beast, he’s convinced to not go through with it. The lard-a-doodle decides to feed Lumpus like one of her babies. By the end of the episode, he's become so fat, that he's immobile.
• CatDog: In "Sumo Enchanted Evening", Catdog hastily gains weight to get an extra advantage against Rancid Rabbit during a sumo match.
• Doug: In "Doug Tips The Scales," Skeeter's shown vigorously eating junk food while Doug struggles to lose a few pounds. Skeeter explains he's worried that he's too skinny to be seen in a bathing suit at Beebe Bluff's upcoming pool party. By the end of the episode, he hasn't gained a single pound.
• Ducktales 1987: The episode "The Status Seekers" has a tribal chieftain trading a one-of-a-kind mask to Scrooge in exchange for a jar of high-calorie peanut butter; this is because in the chieftain's culture, being fat is considered a status symbol.
• In the Ed, Edd n Eddy Episode "One Size Fits Ed", the Eds feed Jimmy a copious amount of peaches and cream so he'll get fat enough that he can become a sumo wrestler (which, as Eddy finds out too late, is only popular in Japan).
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In "The Big Picture", Frankie tells Coco that she feels she is too skinny and broke the house’s scale to read as several pounds heavier. She then starts eating the bag of cookies Coco was eating with this trope implied.
• ¡Mucha Lucha!: In the episode "Weight Gaining" Rickochet wishes to challenge Potato Potata Jr., El Haystack Grande and Francisco of the Forest to a 3-on-1 wrestling match after they make fun of him. He binges on food until he grows to the size of a giant, at which point he's not allowed to wrestle them (or anyone else) because he's too big, forcing him to diet until he's back to his original size.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "King-Size Homer", Homer willingly makes himself obese so he can qualify for disability and work from home. He also does it to get out of doing the plant's new morning calisthenics program.
  • In "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses," Bart and Lisa catch sight of Rainier Wolfcastle walking out of the Kwik-E-Mart stuffing his face with junk food and sporting a huge gut. Wolfcastle claims he's bulking up for a fat secret agent role, but it's unclear if he was lying about it.
• Downplayed in Xiaolin Showdown in the episode "Dreamscape." When it's decided that the episode's showdown will be a sumo wrestling match between the warriors and their worst fears, their bodies are magically fattened up to go with the bout.

Real Life

• This is the driving principle behind the "feederism" fetish, where one gets sexual pleasure from causing a partner to gain weight (known as the feeder) or from gaining weight outright (known as the feedee).
• In cultures where being fat is considered an attractive trait, some parents will actually force-feed their children in order to attract prospective spouses.
• In the 1950s, a death row inmate in Sing Sing prison named Donald Snyder deliberately put on weight in hopes of becoming too fat to fit in the electric chair. He gained over 150 pounds in the ensuing months, more than doubling his body weight; on the allotted day of his execution, he bragged that he'd cause a media frenzy when the press learns he's too fat to fry. But much to his horror, "the hot seat fitted him as though it had been made to order," as one news article put it. His execution went off without a hitch.
• Several actors have gained weight for roles. For example:
  • Vincent D'Onofrio put on 70 pounds for his role in Full Metal Jacket over a period of seven months. He lost said weight over a period of nine months.
  • Renée Zellweger deliberately gained weight to play the title role in Bridget Jones's Diary.
• Sometimes boxers or wrestlers will gain weight to go up a weight class.
• Gaining weight is also a major part of training for Sumo Wrestling, where having a lower center of gravity gives a major advantage.
• Cancer patients going through chemotherapy often need to go on weight-gaining supplements due to the treatment causing significant weight loss, and being underweight can make the treatment dangerous to the patient. It's why some hospitals will actually have a fast food restaurant either on the premises or close by, as weird as it may sound. YouTube content creator and cancer survivor Billiam mentions in one of his videos how the hospital he got his treatment at had a McDonald's on the premises that helped keep weight on him during his treatment.
• Gladiators ate a diet that was high in carbohydrates in order to pack on a layer of fat. This let them take shallow slashes from opponents' blades that would bleed and look impressive to the crowds with less risk of getting a slow-to-heal muscle injury or a life-threatening organ injury.

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