Recently, after switching my six-year drug habit for a five-day-a-week Ben & Jerry’s one, I got fat. This was news to me at the time, as I appeared to be suffering from an acute case of reverse anorexia. I’d look in the mirror and see the same svelte me that had always been there, but my illusions were promptly shattered when a loved one came up to me and said, “Holy fuck, you’ve put on weight recently. How did you get so fat?”

I was appalled, especially as I’d only ever been visibly obese once before in my life—when one of my elderly Austrian relatives lovingly stuffed me with wurst-omelette and homemade cake during a childhood visit to her home—but my typically speedy metabolism had promptly taken care of that as soon as I had left. Most of my life I’d been putting away more chocolate than the prison-industrial complex and going through more pizza than a team of Ninja Turtles, but suddenly my body decided that enough was enough and that it simply couldn’t work magic with all those thousands of empty calories and a total absence of exercise in my daily life anymore.

So I did what most guys finding themselves with onset man-titties would do—I put down the pudding. I started eating healthfully and working out constantly. While my genetic history is mired by all kinds of physical and mental ailments, I was able to drop the excess weight within a number of weeks. Staying thin is now a matter of maintenance—and I’m glad I’m putting the work in—but mother of pearl, do I ever miss junk food. I’ve given up wheat, milk, and even dried fruit to restore my slender frame, and I fully intend to stay committed to the principles of fitness, but as soon as I stop giving a shit about getting laid, which will hopefully be any day now, I’m going to eat myself into a fat fucking frenzy.

People act like getting fat is the worst thing in the world. It isn’t—getting horribly burned or falsely imprisoned for child molestation are both far worse things that can happen to a person, and those are just off the top of my head. The truth is that there are many advantages to ballooning up like Violet Beauregarde after she chewed the experimental Wonka gum, and I’m here to tell you what they are. Read this list carefully, then bury your head in a triple-deck Nutella-and-Oreo cheesecake. I’ll see you on the other side:

1. The Food

No more counting calories or trying to convince yourself that those organic raisin bars you bought from the vegan market aren’t horribly depressing. When you’re fat you can eat what you want when you want, and to hell with the consequences. Macaroni and cheese is my favorite ingestible substance on the planet—I’d have shot it up by now if the pasta pieces could fit through a needle—and as soon as I pass my prime I fully intend to fill a bathtub with the stuff and then die in it. You are what you eat, and there’s nothing more satisfying than eating a jumbo stack of pancakes.

2. Fat is Fun

Sure, if you’re a miserable person now, adding 100 pounds to your frame will just make you a fat miserable fuck instead of a skinny one, but the fact is that adipose tissue does not define who you are to others—it simply draws attention to the perks and flaws of your character. If you’re fun-loving and charismatic, getting chunky will only acentuate this; just look at Gabriel Iglesias. People love that guy.

3. The Clothes

Fat-guy clothes are the best. I don’t know how easy it is for larger women to find comfortable clothing, as I gave up cross-dressing long before I put on my extra pounds, but when you’re a dude with an extra chin or two, the fashion world is your deep-fried oyster. XXXL T-shirts, carpenter jeans, hoodies that could keep an entire immigrant family warm for the winter—when you’re fat you can dress like a rapper every day, and nobody gets all pissy-eyed about you approprating their culture. Plus, if you decide to go on a diet your stuff still looks amazing. It’s the exact opposite feeling of finding out your jeans suddenly don’t fit anymore.

4. The Sex

I’ve never been the big one in a fat-sex session (another gender double standard that nobody’s working to fix), but if my experiences of banging overweight girls are anything to go by, it’s safe to say that plus-sized pooning is the gastronomically enhanced bomb. There’s something about writhing under a human beanbag cushion with a beautiful face that is so simaltaenously terrifying and arousing that you want to swallow a gallon of custard so the two of you can form an extra-wide yin/yang together. Rubens had the right idea; fat can be damned sexy.

5. Social Justice

There are a lot of sniveling, self-righteous social-justice movements out there, but the fat-rights movement is probably the most agreeable. Some of them are outright ridiculous, with their demands that dating sites stop categorizing by weight (some people care, get a grip) and that Gabourey Sidibe be put on the cover of Elle (what? She WAS?), but they make some excellent points. For one thing, they’re tired of fat people being the go-to subject for lazy joke writers, and as a lifelong comedy aficionado I couldn’t agree with them more.

I work incredibly hard on my fat jokes and am constantly disappointed to see my peers failing to put in the same effort. If you’re looking for a cause to fight for (and most of you are), you could do a lot worse than the fat-rights movement. Just make sure you actually get fat before you sign up, or they’ll only classify you as an “ally” and won’t invite you to any of the parties.