For context, I've gained roughly ~10 pounds over the past few months. I'm a short woman (5'2) and show it's quite evident on my body. For reference, here are the before and after photos. The first photo was taken in June. The last in March.

To be fair, I was on the bordering line of underweight in the first photo and it was a constant struggle to maintain there (I don't want to give my weight here, because I have an awful relationship with the scale). It does make me less miserable to be at my higher weight now, but I still struggle a lot with being heavier now.

In regards to the weight gain, it was due to a lot of different pressures that caused me to seek comfort in food, which ended up turning into a full-on binge eating disorder that I continue to struggle a lot with today. To keep it brief, I was facing a lot of problems at home with my dad's infidelity, and academic pressures in school. I'm also quite isolated from the social environment at my college, and this amplified the issue because I spent my weekends eating tubs of ice cream to feel less bad about not having friends to go to house parties with.

While my BF has repeatedly told me that he loves me at any size, he sometimes drops comments that feel triggering to me. For example, he'll constantly lament about how fat he is even though he's still within the normal BMI range. He also told me this week that the last time I came over to his house, he liked the "bit of stomach fat" I had because it was "normal" for woman to have fat.

This feel inconsistent with his previous comments when I was smaller, where he would note how impressive it was that I "had a flat stomach." It's also been a pattern in the relationship where he frequently tells me that he enjoys that I am "tiny" because he has a preference for "petite" girls. All of this has led me to hypothesize that perhaps he doesn't enjoy the weight gain, and it makes me feel extra worse that I'm bigger.

I had a couple of guys who would ask me out at my lower weight too, and I can't help but feel that the fat on me has dull a lot of my defined features. It also doesn't help that my face is naturally round because of my chubby cheeks.

But the issue here is that, in order for me to get back to my lowest weight -- it would mean months and months of eating below 1200 calories just to reach a weight I'm not sure I can maintain. I'm already having a hard time with my binge eating disorder, and restriction would do the opposite to my progress. At the same time, I hate feeling like I'm less attractive to him. I've expressed to him that I dislike conversations on weight loss and dieting, but he's taken it to mean an attack / policing of his words.

He tells me that his self-deprecation for being fat is completely unrelated to me, but I've expressed to him that his constant self-flogging for eating two or three too many oranges has an unintended effect on me when I hear him complain after I've eaten 3 bags of family-sized chips.