What has anyone said to you that they meant in the best way possible, but it actually hurt in the long run. An example of what is always told to me is "you are sooo pretty to be your size."

Another thing a skinny girl once told me, not realizing my weight and state of depression, was that she would kill herself if she ever weighed 200lbs, then asked me "wouldn't you?" And I was thinking, I'm still alive you scrawny b****. I can laugh now, but it kept me depressed for years, oh Lord I have some stories of the goofy things people say to me, not realizing my position.

I was at a wedding two weeks ago and saw a cousin of mine whom I have not seen in a while. She is thin and fit, but self-admittedly bulimic. We were dancing at the wedding and I was having a good time. I take belly dance lessons and am relatively graceful. She says to me "You know what I LOVE about you?!", hollering over the music. I said "No, what?" And she said "That you can STILL feel sexy anyway!"

I stopped dancing after that. That one stung.

I've worked in child care for 4 years and not really had any comments from the children, but 7 weeks ago I started a new job. I'd been on this job for 5 days, when I got lectured by 4 & 5 year olds about being fat because I eat too much junk food (actually, I don't eat all that much at all).

I have two...

1. Someone once told me that if I lost weight, that I would be so pretty like my sisters. Well now my sisters are fat like me...still pretty too!

2. I was a nanny in college and one kid says to me (I was only like 18 or 19 and had a baby face at that...always looked younger), "How old are you?"...I replied, "How old do I look to you?" She says..."you look 49!" I was thinking OMG...I never got that before, so I had to ask why she thought that and her reply was..."Well my grandma is 49 and she is fat like you."

You know all I could do was laugh...it was funny how she equated my size with weight. She would think that I was 100 years old if she saw me now, LOL!

OMG...I just thought of another one...from my dad. He is not skinny though.

He had always tried to express his concerns to me about losing weight as best he could. Lose weight for your health, please lose weight so that you do not have to be like me, I love you and I want you to be healthy, etc. But one day out of the blue...I guess I had been on a weight gain or something and my dad pulls me over to him. "You know i love ya right?" "yes", I reply...then he says "well I know that you like boys but as your father, I do have to tell you that guys don't like fat girls...I know this because I AM a guy...baby, you have got to lose weight!"

I was like "no he did not just go there"!

You're all probably going to think I'm horrible, but ya know, sometimes things just come out before you have time to think. About 7 years ago I was on vacation with my kids who were young teenagers at the time. We were sitting in a restaurant having breakfast and a woman walked by with her daughter who was about 7 years old. The little girl stopped at our table and looked up at me and said "you're fat". I smiled sweetly at her and said "yes I am, but if you meet me back here next year I might be thin but I bet you'll still be an ugly little thing". Then I looked up at the mother and said "you aughta teach that kid some manners." She was horrified, grabbed the girl by the hand and quickly walked away.

I work for my PCP and now that I'm starting to loose she says things like now you are as pretty as you have always been on the inside. SO, guess that means I was hideous before, right?? That goes along with the...you have such a pretty face. I have also heard...OMG...look at the girl, she is so huge, she must weigh like 200lbs. Wow, then I am ginourmous! haha. Most people are just oblivious, but it is still hurtful to hear those things.

xgrl - I am from Iowa too! Dr. Glascock did my surgery on Oct. 7th!

I am sorry to hear that you had people be so cruel to you! I was thin until I was about 26, then kept putting on weight, had another baby, a bad marriage a bad relationship and the pounds kept piling on.

I have only had one experience with someone saying something mean to me and I am a bit of a bitch so I replied: I may be fat but you're ugly and I can lose weight! Which shut them up right away.:thumbs_up:

I get annoyed with my skinny friends who complain about being fat, i just tell them to shut up or I will push them down and sit on them! :frown:

I got the surgery so that I could improve my health. I was a smoker (my mom died from COPD), I have Type II diabetes, chronic back, hip and knee pain and sleep apnea. I want to be healthy to play with my 2 year old grandson, and to get off of all of the medicine that has made me miserable.

I get my first fill soon, so I am hoping it will speed up my weight loss so that I can be a "normal sized person" again!!

Oh my DIL says to me last night: "So when you lose all this weight you aren't gonna be a slutty grandma are you?" I said if you are slutty you would be that way fat or skinny, so am I slutty now???

I have a friend, who is heavier than I ever was, she has told me "You used to be my token fat friend". She also asked what size I was wore at my heaviest, when I told her 16/18 she said "No way I thought you were bigger than me". So the other day I called and we were talking I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was in the pantry eating her 3rd cinnamon roll. I asked her why she was in the pantry and she said that way if no one sees her the calories don't count. I had to laugh and than I asked her if the light was off that way she couldn't see the calories going straight to her as... I know it was mean to say, but this is supposed to be one my BFF and she has ragged on me since I started losing weight and I had finally had enough and just had to give her a dose of her own medicine.

I'm glad this thread got resurrected. :eek: I LOVE it!

Comments from parents hurt a lot. When I was 12ish, my dad was mentioning that I needed to lose weight (never mind that I wasn't obese, just about 20 pounds overweight) and I said "What? Boys love curves!" And he said "Not those kinds of curves." Sting ola!

As I started to gain weight (was never really skinny) in my mid 20's my mom would say how I would be so happy if I would just "trim down" and find a boyfriend. Sorry Mom-- Happiness isn't the job with a Fortune100 company, my own secretary, staff and a degree or owning my own house at 27 but being skinny and finally getting a boyfriend.

Joke is on her-- my fiance met me fat, proposed to me when I was fatter, and doesn't care about my size. HA! I did this for my health and our future--The skinner part is a bonus.

And whenever I visit her up north she says things like "i would lend you a sweater but it wont fit you and you'll stretch it all out". Or "I have the cutest pants/dress/shirt but you won't fit in it". She doesn't know I got banded. The other night I was telling her about this low fat baked spinach and chicken I had made earlier in the week (she is a gourmet cook-went to culinary school and everything) but that it was so good we didn't have any left and so we were having sloppy joes for dinner. I left out that I wasn't eating mine with a bun but a little salad. She says "I thought you were finally trying to eat better and lose some weight--What happenned? ". )@(*)#($*)#*$)(@)* What happenned is that your constant bagering and hurtful comments paired with a heaping side of butter laced, cream based, put it on a giant piece of home made bread food gave me an unhealthy relationship with food!

HAHA! I can't wait till she sees me at Christmas!

If men don't live fat women, then how do you explain all those men who will only date BBWs? Just because one man who happens to be your father doesn't like fat women, doesn't mean all men are the same!

Kimmy, sorry but your mum is a bitch. I hope you give her as good as she gives you at xmas. Not in a nasty way, just a way that says you won't be taking her emotional abuse anymore - because that's what it is.

What saddens me most about this thread is not all the nasty comments that people make or the tactless attempts at compliments that end up just stinging worse than insults, but that for so many people, the put downs come from their immediate family. Family is supposed to love and support you, not humiliate and belittle you. I will be eternally grateful that my parents, brothers, daughter and other relations have loved me and supported me through thick and thin (literally). I love my family.

Oh Fanny, you are SO blessed to have family like that! I think most of us have had well-meaning parents who tried to "make us thin" when we were growing up. Mine, at least, felt it a moral obligation to make sure I knew I was getting fat and that I should stop. My mom and dad still have a hard time with their comments, but my siblings are all very supportive. So I, too, am blessed in my own way. Somehow, though, the parental comments seem to dig deepest. I think my siblings and I have all just learned that our parents are like that and to take it all with a grain of salt...

Thanks for your very kind comments and observations about family!

Believe me, Deana, I know how lucky I am. In a world where it seems most people I know have a poor relationship with at least some members of their family, my family has always stood out as unusual as everyone gets along well and all love and support each other - right out to the large extended network of aunts, uncles and cousins. No matter what else in my life might have gone right or wrong, I've always had that solid rock of foundation beneath me and that has made all the difference in my life.

We remind each other of how lucky we are often and it always amazes new in-laws coming into the clan that there is so much love and easy friendships amongst us all. I don't think I've ever known another family like it. When I read other people's stories about how their mother or their siblings have been so thoughtless and cruel, I just want to cry and hug them. It seems so unfair that people get treated that way.

Fanny- I agree. I suppose it's the ones from family we remember the most. My parents are great people who meant well, and I do consider myself to be very close to them. My dad has never really made comments about my weight. My mom on the other hand, my sisters and I just ignore her and those types of comments. She and my aunt will discuss some health food kick, like eating raw, or only eating things with certain ingredients... it's a never ending show of unhealthy fad after another... and she will say "I wish my girls would eat this, but they don't touch anything green." For the love! She doesn't see us eat! How in the world does she know what we eat? I think she just likes being the one who knows it all, and wants the attention from my aunt. It's like she wants my aunt to think, "Oh, goodness, your girls are so fat and unhealthy, if only they followed us." It's like the old women talking on the porch about youngun's.

I'm glad you have such a supportive family. I have been lucky to have a husband very supportive. He, like Kimmy's fiance, loved me when I was fat, proposed when I was fatter, pulled me off the couch during surgery, and constantly tells me I'm beautiful no matter what size I am.