Mean Things People Said That Ended Up Motivating You

"Nothing tastes as good as thin feels." which is true if you think about it.. But rude to say to a child!!

A good friend of mine said something like "you are turning into a fat cow". She was 100% correct, and I now appreciate her blunt, direct way of letting me know I was getting too fat.

The meanest things I've heard came from my ex:

"You need to lose weight"
"Why are you eating that" (shakes head in disgust)
"You need to stop, you can't eat what I eat"
"You are too big, like for real"

Then when I lost 45lbs
"Why you wearing that skirt, those are my legs all these dudes don't need to see them"
"Why you showing cleavage, those are mines"

He pretty much made me feel bad either way. The things he said hurt me pretty bad and I know that's why I didn't feel as beautiful as people said I was most days.

I was bullied an awful lot through primary school and high school. A girl in my year told another girl that I was sort of friends of not to talk to me because I was fat. This same girl tormented me for years, no matter what I did she would find a way to ridicule me and remind me of how fat I was. Guys in my school would ask me out as jokes and it's made me very insecure and if someone asks me out I think it's a joke. I've been with my boyfriend for 10 months now and when we were first together I kept asking if he really wanted to be with me! School was miserable and it made me incredibly insecure about myself. I went to college and hung out with some girls that were smaller than me. One girl made me feel bad by constantly bragging about how she never puts on weight. I felt awful.

Been determined to prove them all wrong now!

I recall teachers at school thought I'd be a failure. I was 12 and the form teacher looked at one of my 'report' cards and said: "Do you want to live to be 13" - my geography teacher poking fun of my heritage/family and coming up with rude comments that today would probably have him suspended from his job if not sacked but back in the 90's it was acceptable in grammar schools.... I had little interest entertaining their BS so never really paid attention to their curriculum and was often not turning up. Yet I still was one of only 2 of us to go to Oxbridge in my year. Was asked to return and do a 'talk' as if it would encourage like minded kids who had their souls crushed by grown adults suffering from their own insecurities and failures in life; and pretend that it was all chirpy? I wrote a letter back telling them to shove it. My mother was not pleased but screw it. Never signed up to their 'old boys club', either, and the best thing I ever did was a little bit of mischief a few years later on an English teacher's.... well, anyway: the guy was a complete twit who thought he was some master author just because he had some book published about classical motorcycles. Racist. Sexist. Xenophobic. In my heart of hearts and given the state of him back then health and age wise - I'm inclined to believe he's a gonner so that's 2-0 to me.

I moved into a building in 2012 when I was 20 kilos heavier than I am now. I've had the same next-door neighbours since then, but only became friends with them a few months ago. Once they asked me, after having dinner together: "How long have you been living in this building?" and I said "For 5 years now". They were shaking their heads and telling me that no, that was impossible, because before me there was a really obese girl living in this flat. "Do you remember her?" one says to the other. "She was a freaking mammoth".

That was me. The mammoth. Same person, only thin now. It hurt me they wouldn't even recognise me, notice my face or other features of my body/personality. The only thing they saw - and still see - is my weight.

I put on a lot of weight in a matter of months (6, 7 or something like that) and once I was strolling about a shopping centre and bumped into an old acquaintance of mine, a guy my age. First thing he said when he saw me was - sounding like he was completely disgusted by my appearance: "WHAT happened to you?!?!"

My ex-boyfriend, with whom I hadn't had the friendliest of break-ups, sent me a message through Facebook asking me how I managed to become so "large". That was the only purpose of the message. To ask me that question.

One of my closest female friends came over to my place around Easter a few years back. Upon her request, I had made pizzas from scratch. She'd told me she had a craving for pizza and that she loved the way I made them so there I was, making her wishes come true. She brought me a huge Easter egg as a present, left it on the table and then proceeded to stand next to my kitchen door, while watching me knead the dough. Lit up a cigarette, watched me from head to toe and said, unapologetically, "I am your friend so I've got to tell you this: you are FAT. You've gained a lot of weight recently. You should stop EATING."

Back at the time all these things really hurt me, but at the same time I feel like I used them as motivation to start working out again, eating healthier and "making them shut their mouths".