Formerly Fit

A character used to be fit, but now isn't.

There are many reasons for it:

• It can be comfort weight gained after a period of inactivity. This tends to be the most common. Think of someone whose former job had them be a Big Eater but now they lack the exercise needed to burn those calories.
• It could be Drowning My Sorrows.
• It can be pregnancy weight that was never fully burnt off.
• An increasing trend is seeing a once svelte woman gain extra weight, usually enough to be healthy, and become Fat and Proud for it. After all, being underweight is just as dangerous as being overweight.

Compare I Was Quite a Looker. Contrast Acrofatic and Formerly Fat.

Examples of Formerly Fit include:

Anime and Manga

• In Urusei Yatsura, Lum's father Mr. Invader was very well-built as a young man. But as years passed, Lum's Hot Mom started feeding him her excellent (in alien standards) food, and he let himself go...

Film

• Played for Laughs in Avengers: Infinity War where the Guardians all gang up on Quill for gaining weight with Rocket saying that he's "one sandwich from fat." To be fair, compared to Thor, everyone is one sandwich from fat.
  • Played rather more seriously in Avengers: Endgame where it's revealed that his failure to stop Thanos' Badass Finger-Snap gave Thor a massive beer belly. In the climax, this trope gets him thrown around by Thanos while in the previous one, his Roaring Rampage of Revenge gave him enough adrenaline to overpower the Mad Titan even when Thanos had all six Stones. He's Formerly Fat by the time of Thor: Love and Thunder.
• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story sees White go from a slim fitness guru into an immobile tub of lard after he's defeated.
• Both Bob and Helen in The Incredibles. To Bob's credit, he does work out to get back into shape but he's nowhere near as slim as he was in his youth.
• Like everything else in Mean Girls, this trope is downplayed but treated like it's been turned Up to Eleven. Regina gained honestly very little weight but in her mind, she's this times ten.
• Puss in Boots in the Alternate Universe shown in Shrek: Forever After.

Literature

• This is implied to be the case for Alia Atreides in the Dune saga, the text speaking of "a plumpness which had begun to bulge her body".

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory.
  • In one episode, the characters theorize what would have happened if they'd never met Sheldon. In Raj's mind, he and Leonard would be roommates (as Leonard wouldn't live with Howard's mom) and the two's lack of girlfriends, combined with Raj's cooking, would make them both overweight.
  • Howard's mother.
• Hitchcock and Scully are revealed to be this in their self-titled episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Seeing pictures of them in their youth made even Jake and Charles hot for them leading them to question what happened. The ending reveals that they got a free bucket of ribs and they never came out of the restaurant.
• Daphne is Season 8 of Frasier. After some failed attempts at Hide Your Pregnancy, the writers just gave Daphne a junk food addiction and sent her off to a weight spa so they could wait out Jane Leeves' pregnancy.
• Friends had its own What If episode where Joey and Monica dated. Take Joey being a Big Eater and Monica's love of cooking and you get this trope.
• Barney and Robin, though mainly Barney, in Season 5 of How I Met Your Mother as they began playing relationship chicken and start letting themselves go. Future Ted notes that this is actually a Downplayed Trope but in the eyes of him, Marshall, and Lily, it became an exaggerated one.
• Andy in Season 7 of Modern Family.

Video Games

• In the first Street Fighter game and the Street Fighter Alpha series, Birdie was a very muscular man. Come Street Fighter V, however. . .
• In Fire Emblem Awakening, if the Big Eater Stahl marries the Ninja Maid Cherche, he eventually puts on weight from eating her extremely delicious food.

Western Animation

• Played with in Batman: The Brave And The Bold. Elasti-Girl is introduced as an overweight Spoiled Brat but she quickly shows that she can shed this whenever she chooses.
• The Cleveland Show:
  • Cleveland Jr. debuted in Family Guy as extremely thin but is now morbidly obese. Though this might not be the case as one episode suggests that he's not the real Cleveland Jr. but a secret agent who pulled a Kill and Replace on the genuine, thin, article.
  • Kendra.
• Ember in the Bad Future of Danny Phantom.
• Hermes Conrad of Futurama was once a famous limbo champion. Twelve years of "the munchies" have given him a prominent gut. But he can still limbo quite well.
• Kris and Jessica by the end of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. Justified given that the cold climate of the North Pole means that they need fat to keep warm, their sedentary lifestyle and elder age, and... well, they weren't going to keep Santa Claus thin now were they?
  • The later set, but released earlier, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer features a thin Santa with Mrs. Claus trying to fatten him up for Christmas Eve. She's successful.
• The Simpsons:
  • Flashbacks to his time in high school show Homer as being much thinner than he is now.
  • Episode 9 of Season 22 saw Fat Tony die and be replaced by his cousin Fit Tony. The stress of running the mob soon turned Fit Tony into Fit Fat Tony who everyone just called Fat Tony.
• Season 3 of Young Justice sees a Rare Male Example of the last option with Roy now having gained a healthy amount of weight as opposed to being malnourished in Season 2.
• In the Season 1 finale of Hazbin Hotel, Lucifer implies this about Adam. And Adam is shown to be constantly snacking when not in battle and is drawn to be much larger than the other Exorcists with much looser robes.