Let me be the first to say that certain comments do bother people. I know, we all try to act like they don’t but deep down they really do. I’m sure some people have figured out the secret of how to not care about what anyone says but I think most of us struggle with this. I know I’m not the only one that goes over things in my head almost everyday about what that person really meant or why they dislike me so much. Being treated differently by doing something everyone else does or being so easily discarded can really take a toll on someone. But I’ll save that for another time.

The past few weeks people have made comments about my weight. I think most of these people have good intentions and just don’t realize how much something like that can bother someone. I guess I should give you a little more insight as to why this bothers me.

I’ve never been diagnosed with an eating disorder although some people from my past thought I had one. Some time in my teen years I started to starve myself and hardly ate at all. Being allowed to eat in my room made it extremely easy to toss my dinner to my dog. I assure you, he never complained. I went from a size five to a size zero in just a few months and I stayed that way for years until I became pregnant. After I had my son it took about a year to lose all of the weight I had gained. I ate normally for a long time and just went through spells of not being hungry or thinking that food was my enemy. The fact that I could half way control my problem made me believe that I didn’t have a disorder. I normally just stopped eating when I was extremely stressed out or depressed.

Then came a time when I could hardly eat at all due to dental problems. It hurt too much to eat most things so I lost even more weight. At my lowest point I weighed maybe 100 pounds. I’ve been able to eat normally for almost 2 years and it’s starting to pay off. I now weigh 120 pounds which happens to be my normal weight for my height. However, the comments have been a challenge. I’m sure you don’t hear of very many skinny people complain about people making comments about their weight but believe me it happens. As a matter of fact I once found a website dedicated to hating on skinny people.

Comments like “You’re finally getting some meat on those bones” or “You’re getting a little figure now” can be more damaging than I think anyone realizes. To some people that can mean that they must have not had a figure before, or weren’t good enough. Or maybe it could take a turn for the worst and make them want to lose all the weight they gained because now they just feel horrible about themselves. Believe me 15-20 pounds can make someone feel way different than what they use to. I’ve been sensitive about my weight for most of my life. I know most people don’t mean any harm but I can’t help but to think if those comments bother me like they do then what kind of affect would they have on someone who is recovering from an eating disorder. I don’t think anyone thinks about those things. Our weight shouldn’t define who we are anyways. We shouldn’t be living on a scale everyday to see if our weight matches up to the photo-shopped fashion model we saw in a magazine. The picture below on the left is from 3 years ago and the one of the right is from this year.

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I don’t know how well you can tell the difference but believe me there is one. And just from that small amount of difference, people have made it a point to comment on my weight.

I’m no stranger to judgments. People have had something to say about me most of my life. Even as an adult it hasn’t stopped. Some of the people I work with have judged me based on their lack of knowledge. I can come off as an uptight person but they don’t know why. They don’t know that I have social anxiety and they take my shyness for being stuck up. They don’t know that I have a fear of opening my mouth because of the possibility of screwing up everything that I say. You see, my brain has a habit of talking faster than my mouth can move which causes me to mess up and attempt to say the same word over and over until I either get it right or someone stops me and says it for me. It doesn’t happen often but it happens just enough to make me nervous to talk to people who don’t know me well. Drawing attention to it only makes it worse.

These two things go hand in hand with each other. The point of the story is that you never really know what someone else has gone though or is still going through when you make those comments about them or to them. You don’t actually know their life or their problems unless you’re one of the lucky people they have decided to open up to.

So what’s the point?