From what I've experimented, ingame it's mostly just thickness, and not much to do with actually getting fat and the most you lose is muscle tone, especially with belly weight or anything. Of course it isn't that important, it's just for fun.
I always felt that TiTS leaves "thickness" as a vague concept so that it's up to the player whether it refers to a wide frame or being fat. Interestingly, and judging by some busts, there are characters who get the BBW looks, and you can give Ben/Bess a belly, so becoming a chubster or something more shouldn't be a difficult concept to grasp, except the CoC "the Champion does exercise every day, so s/he won't be neither too thin nor too fat" line applies for TiTS as well.
I feel like it isn't that important. You can get a beer belly just by getting fat, as it is the same thing just called something different.
Beer bellies get so big not because alcohol or the like affects your waistline, but because your liver burns alcohol instead of calories.
This is all not my knowledge, and comes second hand from a medical professional, a nurse not a doctor, talking to my boyfriend so I COULD BE WRONG.
If I'm right though, isn't there already a way to get fat in the game?
Men store fat primarily around the gut. It's not just beer that causes it, but beer is high in carbs (though not remarkably) and they are a cause of fat gain. "Beer" bellies could be caused by just about anything that causes a body to add fat.
It should just lower tone and increase thickness.
Nonsense, just make a single beer lower tone by 0.1 and increase thickness by 0.1
There's that, but I also thought it was weird that even if you have thickness and that men store weight in their bellies, that when you're really thick, belly weight in the codex is still 0.0
Write and submit it. I am now fully on board with this, since that actually seems like a good way to do it.
Oh I don't really want to, I was just giving a suggestion. Besides, it's not really a submission that can be written, just something that would have to be added into every scene involving drinking alcohol. Or better yet something like drinkAlcohol( amount:int = 0 ) where the amount is a multiplier for the body changes.
There's that, but I also thought it was weird that even if you have thickness and that men store weight in their bellies, that when you're really thick, belly weight in the codex is still 0.0
Belly weight is more for pregnancy, I believe? It's not that there's no fat there if you're high thickness/low tone, just that that specific number doesn't apply to it. Your PC appearance should be more accurate, though.