It is really hard to deal with comments, glances, actions, etc. that are meant to humiliate us for being overweight. I think the worst part is that a little part of us believes in whatever we hear or experience. We really let those life's fleeting moments get us down, we let strangers get the best of us at times. And not just because they seem to catch us by surprise and out of the blue and leave us speechless...at least I don't think so. Shame is a a very powerful, negative thing. I'll share one and feel free to do the same!
I was once standing in line to get into an airplane and these two women directly in front of me were talking loud. One of them complains to the other that she doesn't understand why they let fat people travel. The person next to me turned to me, gave me a sympathetic look, and then turned. The woman who said that turned around and I smiled at her. She put her head down, but it still hurt.
......

WOW...Thats brutal!!!
Actually, one of my most humilating experiences came from the mouth of a child...Ahhhhh...
I was at a family gathering at my in-laws of all places...About three, maybe four years into my marriage...Already feeling out of place at the in laws, when my young niece who was maybe 4-5 at the time comes up to me in the middle of everyone and says \"Aunt Dawn, Why are you so fat?\"...
I mean, I was devestated...I left the room immediately and burst into tears...I couldnt even be mad at her for asking an honest question...But boy, did that hurt...(no one on my husbands side of the family even has a slight weight problem by the way!)
You would think I would have done something then, but I didnt...It took me about 9 more years to finally get fed up with being the fattest chic in the room!!! UGH!!!

Yes some people can be so cruel and as hard as we try to ignore the words or even just the looks it still gets to us because we are human and we have feeelings
Like Dawnie said children do have a way of speaking their minds and while it isnt near as bad because they dont realize what they are doing, but the adults do, it can still hurt as much or even more because of their bluntness. I think one thing that we can do is to teach our children to be respectful so that they also grow up to be respectful adults. Obviously the people you are talking about never learnt that and shame on them.
One of the best things we can do for ourselves is surround ourselves with people who do support us and thats why this is such a great place. I, like Dawnie, have a family of inlaws that are all thin and they really have no clue what its like to have this battle. While they aren\'t cruel and dont say mean things to me at least not to my face you still feel it.
All the best to you in your weight loss journey and I hope the support here helps you tremendously.

[b][FONT=\"Verdana,][size=2][color=#cc33cc]A few years ago, my friend and I met a couple people at a party. One night, my friend and I were online and one of the guys we met was online, too. My friend was talking to him and mentioned that she was at my house, and he resonds, \"Oh, she\'s the fat one?\"[IM

[FONT=\"Arial,]Complete strangers can be so crule. My moment was when I was working and a lady who knew I had a child already asked me when my second one was due................my son at the time was about the age of 2 and I was totally in shock because no one had ever mentioned my tummy before then.............why I never did something about it then...???? I guess I was comfortable with myself and my body...............Up until that point...........Shortly after I did become pregnant with my daughter..............now 6.5 years later I AM doing something about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/font]

I guess my age is going to show on this one. I\'ve been glared at, ridiculed, scorned and teased so much about my weight that it just doesn\'t get to me anymore. That doesn\'t mean it doesn\'t hurt, but I guess I\'ve just learned to deal with it.
One of the ways I\'ve done that (and maybe not the best way) is to speak up. If somebody makes a scathing remark about my weight, I tell them that if they want to judge me by what I look like on the outside instead of what and who I am on the inside, that\'s their loss.
And sometimes actions speak louder than words. I\'ve told this before, but I\'ll tell it again...Once at a restaurant, I\'d have very good day with my diet and had plenty of wiggle-room regarding what I was going to choose to eat. So I decided to have a very healthy meal (salmon, broccoli & baked potato) and then splurge on dessert. The thing is, having the dessert wasn\'t going to put me over my daily allowance of points/calories/fat.
When the waitress served my dessert, a woman sitting at the next table commented to her companion about how that dessert was just going to make me that much fatter. I looked at her, smiled, picked up my spoon and dug in. I savored every bite of that dessert and made it very obvious that I was doing so. Micheal laughed and said it looked like I was making love to that dessert!!!
You should have seen the expression on that woman\'s face!!! It was priceless! She had no right to judge me. She didn\'t know that I\'d already lost some weight, what I\'d had to eat that day, or that the dessert was figured into my daily food count. She just decided that because I was fat and having dessert, I was fair game.
But she knew about my sacrifices before we left. The waitress knew me and knew that I\'d been losing weight. She knew what I\'d ordered, and Micheal had told the waitress that I\'d been very conservative during the day so I could splurge on my favorite dessert. The waitress made it a point to tell that woman that she was way out of line. She probably didn\'t get a tip from her, but we more than made up for it!!

I had a similar situation. I was asked when I was due one time. On another occasion, I was told by someone (who saw me almost everyday) they didn\'t realize I was pregnant. I was still a teenager then. Unfortunately, I got much larger than that. What I thoroughly enjoyed was going back home for a visit after many, many years (much smaller) and seeing those same people.[

Heavy subject...no pun intended.
I will share my 1st and most recent experience.
The first one was when I was 9 yrs old, my father and I were on a vacation to Disney World, and were standing in line at the buffet for breakfast. The woman in line in front of me, turned around and took the doughnut off of my plate, put it back on the platter, patted my stomach and told me that it was high time someone told me not to eat so much. My father went balistic and almost ended up in a fist fight with the woman\'s husband, I was devistated.
The most recent was in the spring of 2004, while Ethan and I were doing some repairs on our home. We had just bought it and had yet to move in, it needed a lot of work.
Anyway I was standing on the sidewalk chipping the old paint off the garage door, when a car slowly drove past and a 20 something guy yelled out the window, \"You are not hot! MOOOOO!\"
I snapped, grabbed a rock and threw it at the car, I hit the back window. It didn\'t break..but they stopped the car and the guy that yelled got out of the car screaming \" You crazy fat bitch...\"
Well... this crazy fat bitch picked up the hammer and crowbar that were laying on the sidewalk and took off running towards the pig. I will spare you the string of obsenities that came flying out of my mouth, but the general gist of what I said was that they had pissed off the wrong fat bitch and that I was about to castrate him with the buisness end of the claw hammer.
True to the form of a coward, they high tailed it out of there very quickly, it was amazing how bold they were in a moving car, while speaking to a woman they thought wouldn\'t or couldn\'t stand up for herself.
Yes, Ethan almost had a heart-a-stroke. He didn\'t know what to do first, kill them or tackle me. He was in the front of the house and came running when he heard what they yelled.

My biggest humiliation came at a Lane Bryant store of all places. I was losing weight (yet again) and going to a smaller size than I started. I picked out this shirt that was questionable I thought, for my age. So I tried it on. As I came out to ask my girlfriend, this lady in the next room came out too and she immediately patted me on the shoulder and said...\"Just because they make it our size, doesn\'t mean we should wear it\". I don\'t know if she meant size or age since I was preconceived with the age thing but to this day, when I look at fad clothes, I always think about that remark. She\'s right. Some of these low rise jeans and short tops do not look good on certain body types, even though they make them in bigger sizes.
Oh..there also was this time that my girlfriend (who\'s small) had a new guy. My first meeting with him. She had to go do something, left us alone. I was trying to think of something to say. All of a sudden he came out with, \" I\'m scared of big women\". I said, \"pardon\"? He said he had never dated big women because he was scared of them. After being around him a few times, he told me that I had given him a new attitude toward big women and that he wasn\'t so afraid now. Do you think they\'re afraid we\'ll sit on them or something? Strange.
Cindy

Wow - These are traumatic experiences, and I am dumbfounded. I try to position myself in some of your shoes, but despite having the same reason for being put down, I can\'t. If you don\'t mind now, I feel like keeping this thing going, so I will mention a couple of more instances where I wanted to crawl under a rock...
Erika\'s childhood experience reminded me of one I had when young. I use to go to a bulk store and buy candy to resell for fundraising. I use to go buy boxes of chocolate, and such. I was checking out once with my parents, I think I was 14, and the cashier looks at the boxes, then at me, and says \"My, my, don\'t you think you have too much of a sweet tooth?\" And I gave her a blank look and said, \"I resell them\" - oh, I am sorry (yeah, sure). I stopped selling after that.
One is particularly heavy, and bothers me still - a lot, too much, unfortunately. I have let this stranger affect how I feel about myself for far too long: I was reading a book at a bus stop a very long time ago. I\'d say I was about 16 or so. A man passes me by and returns to me and says, you are the ugliest thing I have ever seen, and walks on. I was so speechless I didn\'t respond to that. Hours later, walking around completely devastated, another man passes me by and says that I am too pretty not to smile, and I was utterly confused. 2 strangers, 2 very different opinions about me. Unfortunately, I remember the face, the clothes, everything about the mean one, and I can\'t remember what the nice looked like at all.