I've gained fat around my face and more of a double chin. I feel like the increased fat in my chin/neck is sometimes making it hard to breathe when I lay certain ways or when I bend forward to wash my hair in the tub. Is this common?

I do think its common!

I am also in the “fat face, double chin gang” (we need jackets), and when I gained weight during recovery from a health condition, I also noticed it changed how my body felt and moved, especially when I slept. I think this is one reason that recent weight gain is a predictor of snoring.

I know we are trained to think that any change in our bodies that is associated with weight gain is bad, and that any change in our bodies that affects how we move is bad – be it changes from aging, a health condition, or weight gain. But I don’t think this is a helpful way to think about these types of changes in our bodies. Instead, when our bodies change and that change makes it difficult or impossible to do things the way we have done things for years, we have to develop new ways of doing things. And that’s okay.

For sleeping, laying on your back and propping yourself up on many pillows (try creating a little ramp by staggering four pillows) or sleeping on your side with two or three thick pillows under your shoulders and neck can help. That way gravity pulls your chest and neck fat away from your airway where it can’t try to hug you to death. Maybe you can think of a similar hack for when you bend forward to wash your hair.

(And because I know some misguided person will say, “Wow, just lose weight!1!,” remember that intentional weight loss is not healthy, almost never permanent, and usually makes you fatter anyway.)