The Fat Shaming Friend

My day wasn't horrible.  I just don't want to talk about it at the moment.

I have been watching The Biggest Loser documentary series on Netflix. I knew that show was garbage.  I got a couple of DVDs with the trainers from the show years ago thinking I would get into shape.  No.  I'm surprised I didn't wind up in the ER.  Bob seemed like a nice guy but there was a part of the DVD where they picked it up and I thought Oh, hell no.  After seeing the documentary I thought, what an ass. Jillian Michaels was and still is a sadist.  And she supports Trump?  I'd love to see her give him a workout.  

I felt bad seeing the fat shaming that went on with the show.  I get the appeal.  People losing weight and turning their lives around.  It also messed up their lives.  I understood the fat shaming.  

I was not in bad shape when I lost 30 plus pounds.  It took me some time to lose it but I did it over a 2 year period.  Weight Watchers wasn't in my budget so I would go through periods where I quit, do ok, gain a few pounds and get signed up again.  

I was working for the insurance broker back when I started and I made friends with one of the account reps.  Initially I thought she was a pain in the ass because she went to my manager and complained that someone didn't fill up the paper tray and she wanted to print something.  I guess that was my job but I thought why didn't you ask me?  We'll call her Karen.

We wound up talking more and I kind of liked her.  She had kind of a dry sense of humor and she would talk to me when she would stop by and talk to Josie and myself.  We sat in a separate room where the printers were and we were kind of isolated from the office which was nice at the time.  Karen started visiting with us more and we welcomed it.

Karen seemed to notice that I was losing weight and commented on it. I said I had been trying with Weight Watchers.  She kind of gave me a lot of tips and suggestions about food.  I took it in because well, I thought I needed it.  I was open to her suggestions.  

As time went on, she started criticizing the food that I ate.  If she saw me by the candy jar, she would say you're going to gain all the weight back.  One day I took a couple of pieces of licorice and she read me the riot act for it.  I was kind of stunned.  I walked away, embarrassed because she humiliated me in front of others.  

I was gone for a couple of days. I had paid time off and I came back to an ugly message from Karen about how she was only trying to help me and that I'm too sensitive.

Unreal. I apologized and I said I was out of the office. I showed the message to Josie who thought it was uncalled for at the time.  I said I am sensitive because I did have family members who were good about fat shaming all the time.  It was true.  My mom's side was good about it as well as my dad's sister.  My aunt Judy gained weight so she cut out the fat shaming later in life.  

It seemed like Karen didn't start to become nicer to me until I started losing weight. It was like I became good enough to be around her.  I noticed she constantly talked about her husband gaining weight.  She started with Josie about losing baby weight after she had her daughter.  Karen was never having kids so telling a mom that she needs to lose weight was stone cold mean.  She was good at shaming people for their weight.

I actually saw her maybe 8 or 9 years ago coming out of a Kohl's store.  She didn't recognize me because well, I gained all of my weight back and then some so I was thankful for that.  If she knew about my cancer diagnosis, guess what she would have blamed it on?  The weight.

People can lose weight eventually but meanness lasts forever.