Were you ever bullied in school for being overweight? How di

PhatAndy

OMGosh!! What a horrible group of boys! I was verbally abused from about 1st grade until I moved from the dinky town in Iowa that I grew up in to a much larger town in Idaho. I went from living in a town with only about 1000 people to a town where the high school alone had about 1000 students!

The one moment that sticks out the most in my head is when I was 14. I did what all good Iowa teenagers do for money in the summer, and went to work in the corn fields. The most mortifying moment in my life was when we were told to check rows, and I was one of the last ones back from the other side of the field. When I was most of the way back to the bus that took us from field-to-field, one of the guys was standing on top of it yelling at the top of his lungs, “Suey! Pig, pig pig!” and all the kids in the bus were laughing. I went home and bawled all night.

Did this motivate you at all? was your personality affected? you seem to be doing an AMAZING job on the weight loss I just can not believe your picture its amazing!

Thank you :blushing:

I overcame by becoming a stronger person. I am more compassionate than I would have probably been had I not been picked on growing up. Because I didn't have many friends, I read a lot which made me really smart and I concentrated on my music. I got the last laugh when I was slected to tour Europe the summer after my senior year and got to spend a month touring and singing all over Europe and England.

I also have learned to stick up for myself and take small-minded people with a grain of salt.

Amazing! thank you for sharing this story. And yes, getting the last laugh is always pretty amazing =D

PNWriter

OMGosh!! What a horrible group of boys! I was verbally abused from about 1st grade until I moved from the dinky town in Iowa that I grew up in to a much larger town in Idaho. I went from living in a town with only about 1000 people to a town where the high school alone had about 1000 students!

The one moment that sticks out the most in my head is when I was 14. I did what all good Iowa teenagers do for money in the summer, and went to work in the corn fields. The most mortifying moment in my life was when we were told to check rows, and I was one of the last ones back from the other side of the field. When I was most of the way back to the bus that took us from field-to-field, one of the guys was standing on top of it yelling at the top of his lungs, “Suey! Pig, pig pig!” and all the kids in the bus were laughing. I went home and bawled all night.

Did this motivate you at all? was your personality affected? you seem to be doing an AMAZING job on the weight loss I just can not believe your picture its amazing!

Thank you :blushing:

I overcame by becoming a stronger person. I am more compassionate than I would have probably been had I not been picked on growing up. Because I didn't have many friends, I read a lot which made me really smart and I concentrated on my music. I got the last laugh when I was slected to tour Europe the summer after my senior year and got to spend a month touring and singing all over Europe and England.

I also have learned to stick up for myself and take small-minded people with a grain of salt.

Inspiring strength. Thank you for sharing

wilkin777

I was bullied at school and I have to say that, even though I am almost 30 years old, I still struggle with the effects of it. Your story was a very brave thing to post and I am sure not easy given the gravity of what was done to you. It is always hard to hear (or read) what people are capable of doing to each other and how much suffering they can cause. I dealt with my bullies by self harming so I guess they got what they wanted. I hated myself and it was because of them that I took it out on my own body. What a lot of people don't understand is that self harm comes in so many forms. I have cut and burned my body and I have over eaten. Sometimes to comfort and sometimes to punish. I used to think that eating a piece of cake would somehow "show them" until I realised that the only person who was being affected by it was me.
Depression has been a big part of my life and I am sure that the bullying was at least partly to blame.
There is an upside to all of this though...I am learning to love myself and to treat my body with the respect it deserves ( I have not self harmed in over 2 years now) and thanks to MFP I am also finding the support of others whether they have experiences like mine or not.
You are right though. Compassion, sensitivity and kindness are all things we have in common.

Churble

It's weird to me that I'm realizing now how much I never really counted the bullying by my family. It was just part of day to day life. My sister was a tiny, cute gymnast, so I never defended myself when she made fun of me for being overweight because I felt like she was right.

My mom put on weight watchers for the first time when I was 12. She told our extended family that I was dieting and would make me call my grandmother and tell her if I gained weight.

Of course that counts, it's just weird that I kind of accepted it because they were family.

Oh, it counts....read my previous post. Sounds like we were sisters!

Seriously.

It's just so weird the way that happens. Even now, at 31, my mom is watching me lose this weight and decided that she would diet too because "If you can lose this much, it should be a snap for me". I guess I just always looked at it as part of growing up in our house.

LiviLou2011

bullied in school for being fat..not that i remember, and not that i would care, i was silly and outgoing then..but as i got into my teens ( i was still thin) i wasnt thin enough for my mother or other family members and now that i look back, now that i am heavy i wonder why they said those things to me. for example.,i went out of town to live with my cousin and i came back and had lost alot of weight but they would say things like, oh dont worry you will gain it back soon, or you sit in the front seat of the car, i will fit in the back better then you will. My mom called me a whale...my grandfather said that ive i get any bigger im gonna blow up..and jezz now i am bigger and they say the same things. its not very nice, i think even when i get smaller they will still make comments like that, i think they were jealous and wanted me to be fat to feel better about themselves..of course that not why im fat and that not why im trying to lose weight i want to do it for myself so i can feel like me again. (ive lost nine pounds) its gonna be a long journey but its gonna be so worth it.

RunChinni

I feel your pain. I was an obese kid till the age of 18 and I did slip into bouts of depression. But I have a great set of parents and friends who stood by me through the tough times.

I remember most girls and boys in class being smaller than me. The girls would turn to me to help them out with school troubles, only because I was bigger than them. It didn't feel right then and it doesn't feel right now. I couldn't find clothes that would fit me. The concept of plus size clothing didnt exist in India back then. I would only wear black shirts and lose jeans. M wardrobe was very limited. So I would get teased for wearing pretty much the same clothes.
No one understood that it wasn't out of choice. Not even in college.

And where I come from, being called fat on your face is no big deal.

Until one day, when I couldn't handle it anymore. I decided to drop all that weight. My parents supported me. My parents, being doctors, monitored my weight loss very closely. And here I am toay, healthy and fit as a fiddle and I could give those who teased me a run for their money, literally.

I support people who are attempting to become healthy by just being for them and advising them when they need it. Because I lead no one to tel me that ( my parents tried, but we don't listen to them when we are kids) :-)

ahinescapron

Oh yeah, I was bullied all throughout school (not including the teasing and general humiliation I got from certain family members). It was very, very bad and I was suicidal a great deal of my adolescent years. I think it has made me more resilient and more empathetic. I ended up getting a counseling degree and working with troubled children and teens. Now, I am working on my PhD now and I am doing my dissertation on bullying in rural middle school students. My hope is to use my career to do more in-depth research and build more effective programs to combat bullying in schools (because the ones they have now don't work). So, I guess you could say I turned my experience into something positive.

PhatAndy

I was bullied at school and I have to say that, even though I am almost 30 years old, I still struggle with the effects of it. Your story was a very brave thing to post and I am sure not easy given the gravity of what was done to you. It is always hard to hear (or read) what people are capable of doing to each other and how much suffering they can cause. I dealt with my bullies by self harming so I guess they got what they wanted. I hated myself and it was because of them that I took it out on my own body. What a lot of people don't understand is that self harm comes in so many forms. I have cut and burned my body and I have over eaten. Sometimes to comfort and sometimes to punish. I used to think that eating a piece of cake would somehow "show them" until I realised that the only person who was being affected by it was me.
Depression has been a big part of my life and I am sure that the bullying was at least partly to blame.
There is an upside to all of this though...I am learning to love myself and to treat my body with the respect it deserves ( I have not self harmed in over 2 years now) and thanks to MFP I am also finding the support of others whether they have experiences like mine or not.
You are right though. Compassion, sensitivity and kindness are all things we have in common.

This is so beautifully bittersweet. I hear you about the depression, I tried to OD in january, I believe its all related. I was diagnosed with bordeline personality disorder and thrown on disability because of how much it affected me.. but theres a light at the end of the tunnel. there truely is.. and things do get better, it just takes time.

mestacy010

I'm sorry to hear about all your stories! People are disgusting, when I was younger I used to wear my sweatshirts all the time, they were comfy and i was dating someone outside of my school so it wasn't like I was trying to impress anyone, my dad would steal them and yell at me telling me that i need to lose weight instead of hiding myself behind a sweater, he always had something to say about my weight, so did my brother, I remember my brother saying I would never want to marry a girl if she was big like you, you know what's sad, is I was only maybe 180 and 5'6 so i wasn't huge, but they sure made me feel that way. Every day I have to remind myself that I'm a great person, I remember my dad saying " you have a great heart, but you sure are stupid. I mean what parents say that??

PhatAndy

bullied in school for being fat..not that i remember, and not that i would care, i was silly and outgoing then..but as i got into my teens ( i was still thin) i wasnt thin enough for my mother or other family members and now that i look back, now that i am heavy i wonder why they said those things to me. for example.,i went out of town to live with my cousin and i came back and had lost alot of weight but they would say things like, oh dont worry you will gain it back soon, or you sit in the front seat of the car, i will fit in the back better then you will. My mom called me a whale...my grandfather said that ive i get any bigger im gonna blow up..and jezz now i am bigger and they say the same things. its not very nice, i think even when i get smaller they will still make comments like that, i think they were jealous and wanted me to be fat to feel better about themselves..of course that not why im fat and that not why im trying to lose weight i want to do it for myself so i can feel like me again. (ive lost nine pounds) its gonna be a long journey but its gonna be so worth it.

It will totally be worth it and we are all here together on this journey, MFP is so supportive.

PhatAndy

I feel your pain. I was an obese kid till the age of 18 and I did slip into bouts of depression. But I have a great set of parents and friends who stood by me through the tough times.

I remember most girls and boys in class being smaller than me. The girls would turn to me to help them out with school troubles, only because I was bigger than them. It didn't feel right then and it doesn't feel right now. I couldn't find clothes that would fit me. The concept of plus size clothing didnt exist in India back then. I would only wear black shirts and lose jeans. M wardrobe was very limited. So I would get teased for wearing pretty much the same clothes.
No one understood that it wasn't out of choice. Not even in college.

And where I come from, being called fat on your face is no big deal.

Until one day, when I couldn't handle it anymore. I decided to drop all that weight. My parents supported me. My parents, being doctors, monitored my weight loss very closely. And here I am toay, healthy and fit as a fiddle and I could give those who teased me a run for their money, literally.

I support people who are attempting to become healthy by just being for them and advising them when they need it. Because I lead no one to tel me that ( my parents tried, but we don't listen to them when we are kids) :-)

GREAT story! thank you for this

PhatAndy

Oh yeah, I was bullied all throughout school (not including the teasing and general humiliation I got from certain family members). It was very, very bad and I was suicidal a great deal of my adolescent years. I think it has made me more resilient and more empathetic. I ended up getting a counseling degree and working with troubled children and teens. Now, I am working on my PhD now and I am doing my dissertation on bullying in rural middle school students. My hope is to use my career to do more in-depth research and build more effective programs to combat bullying in schools (because the ones they have now don't work). So, I guess you could say I turned my experience into something positive.

Funny enough, I decided myself to get my degree in child and youth care and work with troubled street kids Empathy, Compassion.

PhatAndy

I'm sorry to hear about all your stories! People are disgusting, when I was younger I used to wear my sweatshirts all the time, they were comfy and i was dating someone outside of my school so it wasn't like I was trying to impress anyone, my dad would steal them and yell at me telling me that i need to lose weight instead of hiding myself behind a sweater, he always had something to say about my weight, so did my brother, I remember my brother saying I would never want to marry a girl if she was big like you, you know what's sad, is I was only maybe 180 and 5'6 so i wasn't huge, but they sure made me feel that way. Every day I have to remind myself that I'm a great person, I remember my dad saying " you have a great heart, but you sure are stupid. I mean what parents say that??

Some parents should not be parents... wow, I am sorry this happened to you.

cjpg

I used to get bullied at home by my older brother a lot for being overweight. Not one week in my childhood can I remember not being harassed. He would humiliate me and make me feel worthless by beating me up and telling me I should be able to defend myself. Yet instead of teaching me, he'd be someone I'd have to defend myself against.

In primary school, it was all emotional bullying - never physical. I wouldn't have a lot of friends and the ones I did have would play games like "let's run away from him!" and because I was overweight, I could never keep up. That kind of scars me to this day because at times I can't help but feel like I'm running towards friendships that I'll never get close to.

In high school, I was always pushed from one group of friends to another because I wasn't confident enough to make enough jokes and be as popular as others. I lost a lot of good friendships this way. The lack of confidence was a result of me feeling inadequate due to being overweight.

I've gained a lot of weight since being a kid, but finally... I'm losing it! I'm halfway and... all of that stuff in the past that used to control me now is nothing but a memory that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The experiences hardened me into a very sensitive person who is a fierce friend to those I am close to. So I thank every single experience in my past for the person I've become.

I once heard a saying that "Only though hardship can true humility be attained. It's this knowledge that enriches life".

People don't understand the value of a smile or a pat on the back until they truly understand what its like to be deprived from it.

Oh yeah, and another one - "Even in the darkest storms, the sun is still shining behind them waiting for the time to shine".

Thank you so much for sharing this. you dont know how much your life sounds like mine. I actually developed a mental illness that I am now on disability for called borderline personality disorder.. I fear conflict more than anything in life.. My worst habbit is preservation of friendships. When i fear a friendship is about to fail I will completely cut off contact with that person isolating myself from them and the world because if they cant tell me they have a problem with me and dont want to be friends then we can continue to be friends....

Well how awesome are you to be able to talk so freely about it! That's really admirable.

A side effect of my upbringing is when I feel friendships (and especially my relationships) are in jeopardy through any conflict, I go into denial. I convince myself there is no problem, even if there is. I apologise for things THEY'VE done just to end the conflict.

My gf is well aware of this and always tells me to stop apologises for her own mistakes.

I think it's how I ended up working in a support environment in IT haha! I want to be able to help people with whatever conflict there is and take the blame!?

PhatAndy

Well how awesome are you to be able to talk so freely about it! That's really admirable.

A side effect of my upbringing is when I feel friendships (and especially my relationships) are in jeopardy through any conflict, I go into denial. I convince myself there is no problem, even if there is. I apologise for things THEY'VE done just to end the conflict.

My gf is well aware of this and always tells me to stop apologises for her own mistakes.

I think it's how I ended up working in a support environment in IT haha! I want to be able to help people with whatever conflict there is and take the blame!?

Me too! Denial! Apologies for everything that i Havent done, all about their happiness, as long as they are happy then theres no need for me to be happy because I have preserved the friendship. Wow, Amazing Cjpg. Happy to have met you.

smkcx♥

Im curious to see how many out there share my same story,

Were you overweight in Elementary school? High school? Were you the target for bullying? How did you overcome it and how does it affect your life today?

For me it was Bulling grade 2-12 and until i was about 21 or so. the height of it being in grade 9, cornered in the boys lockerroom and surrounded by 6 guys with basketballs. "We are about to do this to you because you are fat, you are ugly, you will never get a girlfriend, and you should kill yourself" They then proceeded to throw basketballs at my head until i bled out of my ears..


I know it got bad, but I kind of thank God for my crappy life. because its the things in life that form you into who you are today.

Most people who got bullied (Or at least the ones I know) turn out to be Sweet Compassionate Loving Sensitive people.

So my question is, Have you ever been bullied and how have you overcome?

*I was a chubby child, my mom put me in after school activities in elementry school- around 3rd grade (gymnastics and 'dancing') so I did slim down alot during those years and then I was in a school bus accident mid way through my 5th grade year and had to have my right arm in a sling for 4wks and after that I quit doing gymnastics and dance. through middleschool I was somewhat chubby (5'4 and weighing 150-160lbs) during my highschool years i was very much overweight, I gained 100lbs from the start of highschool until the start of my junior year (my father was in iraq, afganastian, bosnia, iran, ireland & iraq one more time all through my highschool years)

I was never targeted for bullying until I met a girl named Ivalea (i was probably just starting to pack on the weight when i met her) and for whatever reason she didnt like me and she would pick on me and therefore this boy (whom she liked who sat beside me) would pick on me, she would tell him to say things to me and he would and then laugh at me (like "i bet you have some huge stretchmarks dont you?) however, the boy quit picking on me midway into my freshman year and the semester switched and I no longer had classes with Ivalea.

How did I overcome it? my cousin took a picture of me at a birthday party, a hideous picture. I saw it and realized I needed to change (honest, i didnt see that when I looked in the mirror) I lost 80lbs (walking every day, eating meals the size of my fist and meals frequently)

How has it affected me? since meeting my fiance and having a child, ive packed on 30lbs of the 80lbs i lost and im my absolute worst critic. I feel horrible about myself at this weight, I stand in the mirror everyday and I tear myself down. Its not healthy and im working towards correcting it. I need to love myself no matter what the scale says and try to get myself to a better place while loosing weight.

but aside from my personal view of myself, im a very happy, sweet person (or atleast thats what im told) I treat people the way I want to be treated and I dont talk down to people who are packing on a few lbs. I dont think its right to put people down.

PhatAndy

Im curious to see how many out there share my same story,

Were you overweight in Elementary school? High school? Were you the target for bullying? How did you overcome it and how does it affect your life today?

For me it was Bulling grade 2-12 and until i was about 21 or so. the height of it being in grade 9, cornered in the boys lockerroom and surrounded by 6 guys with basketballs. "We are about to do this to you because you are fat, you are ugly, you will never get a girlfriend, and you should kill yourself" They then proceeded to throw basketballs at my head until i bled out of my ears..


I know it got bad, but I kind of thank God for my crappy life. because its the things in life that form you into who you are today.

Most people who got bullied (Or at least the ones I know) turn out to be Sweet Compassionate Loving Sensitive people.

So my question is, Have you ever been bullied and how have you overcome?

*I was a chubby child, my mom put me in after school activities in elementry school- around 3rd grade (gymnastics and 'dancing') so I did slim down alot during those years and then I was in a school bus accident mid way through my 5th grade year and had to have my right arm in a sling for 4wks and after that I quit doing gymnastics and dance. through middleschool I was somewhat chubby (5'4 and weighing 150-160lbs) during my highschool years i was very much overweight, I gained 100lbs from the start of highschool until the start of my junior year (my father was in iraq, afganastian, bosnia, iran, ireland & iraq one more time all through my highschool years)

I was never targeted for bullying until I met a girl named Ivalea (i was probably just starting to pack on the weight when i met her) and for whatever reason she didnt like me and she would pick on me and therefore this boy (whom she liked who sat beside me) would pick on me, she would tell him to say things to me and he would and then laugh at me (like "i bet you have some huge stretchmarks dont you?) however, the boy quit picking on me midway into my freshman year and the semester switched and I no longer had classes with Ivalea.

How did I overcome it? my cousin took a picture of me at a birthday party, a hideous picture. I saw it and realized I needed to change (honest, i didnt see that when I looked in the mirror) I lost 80lbs (walking every day, eating meals the size of my fist and meals frequently)

How has it affected me? since meeting my fiance and having a child, ive packed on 30lbs of the 80lbs i lost and im my absolute worst critic. I feel horrible about myself at this weight, I stand in the mirror everyday and I tear myself down. Its not healthy and im working towards correcting it. I need to love myself no matter what the scale says and try to get myself to a better place while loosing weight.

You are on the right track, you are eating smaller meals, you are eating healthy.. for that alone you should love yourself. you should throw out your scale, its about the inches and how you feel about yourself, scales lie and they are just numbers. I am sorry you had such a bad experience.

Rayman79

Great thread, I'm sure it is good for a lot of people to be reassured that they are not the only victims of bullying, and that there is everychance they will come out the other side of it a better person for having endured.

I was also bullied through school, for some reason they thought it would be appropriate to pick on the short chubby kid (who also wore daggy clothes as his parents didn't have enough money to buy the same clothes as the other kids). Looking back I was certainly a pretty easy target.

I think I am a lot more fortunate in the fact that I did have a group of decent friends, and certainly didn't cop a lot of the physical beatings some people have had. Still, just the threats of violence and the verbal abuse were enough to make me physically ill, and is a feeling in the pit of my stomach I will NEVER forget. I do genuinely think that this has affected the person I am today, and I am determined to make sure my kids are neither the victims nor the purpotrators of bullying!

Funnily enough, I also studied a social work degree after high school (out to save the world and all that), but havent pursued that as a career... turns out I like commercialism too much to be a social worker or live or their salary So I married a Social Worker instead, now I get community service by proxy haha!:laugh:

PhatAndy

Ahahah that was great, Rayman! I believe the social work/support worker for teens/kids is a side effect of the Compassion and sensitivity towards others not wanting it to happen to them, to feel like you can fix the world

Hernandeak11

I got made fun of mostly in Elementary School by one or two people..let's just say karma got the best of them now that we're in our 20s

In high school the weight shifted to 'all the right' places, and I had a great couple of years.
Goal=get back to my High School glory lol