Do you think being fat hurts your chances of closing deals and funding?

Being fat hurts your chances for everything in life. Being short doesn't help either. There is significant research supporting this for things like employment.

The most important thing is to not let it affect your own confidence. This can easily be seen by someone.

My suggestion is to also do significant weight training in addition to cardio, particularly core. Besides obvious benefits a side-effect of the muscle soreness is that you feel that instead of the fat, which is beneficial for confidence during meetings, etc.

Chubby guy who was once morbidly obese

While it's important to be flawless with your public image I don't think it's so relevant for business venture itself. At least not as an strict tendency. I'd pledge to solve this with the simple argument of subjectivity. It will totally depend on who's judging you and for what kind of venture. If they require your brain talent I don't think they should judge your appearance. But then again, it's only my humble opinion.

It's true, you should slim down if you can. But there are some fat founders (Reid Hoffman)

Best advice I can give you is just track your calories, myfitnesspal.com (no affiliation) is the best service out there. If your #1 goal is to lose weight, cardio isn't even necessary. Would you rather run for an hour or just skip that brownie or those cookies?

I think you're right and you'll get back to looking your best. In the meantime fake it. A good personality goes a long way but don't let your health slide, it just looks lazy (even if you're not).

Formerly obese guy here who is still struggling to tame the beast.

Being fat hurts you the most but also effects your relationship with others. One way you can combat your weight issue is by being the happiest, most outgoing, charismatic person that you can be. You have to put on a goddamn performance.

Unless you're voting for governor of New Jersey, who likes an aggressive, hard-lining, fat business guy?

I read somewhere that being fat affects women far worse than men. Men can be fat and still be promoted and taken seriously at work, while only the slim women are treated well. I think most of us have worked at places where there are fat bosses or high level executives who are males.

It still doesn't look good but for the most part we value men based on what they can do, whereas we tend to value women based on how they look. I know it's unfair, but that's how it is.

You raise a good point, but the topic is complicated. From what I can tell, handsome and charismatic men get more money but beautiful women aren't taken seriously. http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2014/04/30/venture-investors-prefer-to-fund-handsome-men/

Losing weight is great, if you can do it BUT don't put your company on hold.

If you think you will lose out on funding because of your looks than BRING IN THE GUY THAT INVESTORS WANT TO SEE.

That's right- find a handsome man who is great at sales and call him you VP Bizdev, or even call him your CEO it doesn't fucking matter.

If you haven't figured it out by now, this is all a game and for some bizarro reason, investors want to "fall in love" with their entrepreneur (which makes sense because they are usually trying to fuck them, natch). Play the game and play to win- give them someone to love.

What you need to do is Cyrano Deburgiac the situation.

You are focusing on it far more than the investors will. If you have a great business opportunity that is what they will care about.

Women and minorities have had to deal with this kind of pre-judgement forever. You just have to make sure what you have to offer is awesome and work a little bit harder than everyone else.

And a big smile always helps.