Do you want to stick it to people?

When I was in junior high, I was not overweight, but I loved school lunch cafeteria food. All my friends were starting to diet, I guess, but I wasn't really that worried about eating too much. One day, a good friend told me, "Don't you think you eat too much? You're going to get fat!" I got mad and swore I would prove her wrong.

Well, in high school I got a little plump. I was also really socially awkward, more socially awkward than bad-looking really. But one distant family member told me I was probably boyfriendless because of my weight. Although I maintained a steady weight for my junior and senior years, I was also told that if I didn't "get my weight under control" (they meant lose weight) then I would "balloon" when I went to college. I was told that, "losing weight is easy, you just need to stop eating," by an acquaintance (who was one of the seemingly effortlessly thin girls in high school).

Well, in college, somehow the junk-food diet I was on let me lose weight all the way down to what my goal weight always was, without trying. (Yes, you can hate me, it's ok. *Hair flip*) I became less socially awkward and got a husband. But now in grad school I've put it back on and then some.

Now those comments are coming back to haunt me. I guess there was a part of me that enjoyed my initial weight loss, because I could be like, "HA--I am no longer boyfriendless. I didn't balloon like you said I would. And I lost weight without your stupid advice, on my own terms." But now that I've gained weight I feel like They've Won. I'm ballooning, just like they said I would. I'm an idiot who can't stop eating, unlike people who do just stop eating who are better than me. And if the boys in high school wouldn't ask me on one date because I looked back then exactly how I look now (except a decade older, with more cellulite), what must my husband think? (He says nothing critical in real life, it's just my own insecurity that says that.)

I do have good reasons, I swear, to lose weight--to be healthy, for myself and not anyone else. But I'm realizing that there's a small part of my motivation that comes from wanting to prove people in my past wrong. To be like, HAH--see, I'm not overweight, no thanks to you, because I did it by myself, and you were wrong when you told me I would fail, or judged me and acted like an expert in what is wrong with me or what my life will be like from here on out. So there.

Is there anyone else who wants to lose weight (in part) to spite nay-sayers?

Or is there anyone in your life who, after you lose/lost the weight, you are going to feel a bit of, "So There, Person!"?