Have you ever heard the phrase, “Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes?” It means that you shouldn’t criticize other people until you have had firsthand experience with what their life is like, and instead, you should show them empathy.
This 28-year-old woman used to cruelly judge fat people, and now she’s literally walking a mile in their shoes, because she’s currently obese, weighing in at over 300 pounds. Oh, how the tables turn (or should we say buffet tables).
That’s kind of an interesting twist of fate, isn’t it? She admits that she was fully fatphobic for the majority of her life, and being so judgmental came easily to her since she was quite the twig.
“Being skinny/average came to me without much trouble or food watching, and I was always very vocal about other people’s diets and weights,” she explained.
“In particular, my older sister and mother have always been quite fat, so I made my fair share of snide comments to them. I really couldn’t imagine why they couldn’t just exercise a bit more or put down the bag of chips when they knew what it was doing to their figures.”
The pandemic hit, and then she packed on pounds like you wouldn’t believe, marking the first time she could recall being the opposite of effortlessly thin.
Amid lockdown, she worked from home, leading to a more sedentary lifestyle. Additionally, her favorite hobbies, which were clubbing and dancing, were not happening because of the state of the world.
Out of nowhere, she had to be careful about what she put in her mouth, and she started to eat because she was bored and stressed, not because she was hungry.
Now, she weighs as much as a baby elephant at birth, or a queen-sized mattress, and she’s only 5’6,” meaning that’s a lot of weight for her to be carrying around. She’s more overweight than her mom and her sister, which is humiliating to her.
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“Only now am I realizing how hard it is to actually maintain your weight or lose any. My grandmother says I had it coming because my sister and mother were fat, so I was bound to [be] as well,” she continued.
“I myself feel like I got some serious karma, and I got punished for being rude about other people’s weight.”
She has found a therapist, who has told her she’s most likely still eating in order to self-soothe, so they’re trying to find a healthier coping strategy for her than turning to food.
She has said sorry to her sister, who still loves taunting her about how she used to be ruthlessly judgmental. She doesn’t exactly appreciate her sister’s grudge-holding, though she acknowledges she’s well within her rights to harass her about it.
As for her mom, she has forgiven her, it seems, for being mean about her weight and considers it firmly in the past, but she’s concerned about her current size.
What I find the most upsetting here is that she was so rude to two people she should have loved, regardless of their appearances, and who most likely loved her unconditionally in return: her mom and her sister. Life is too short to do that to your loved ones!
Genuinely kind people never do or say things like that to anyone around them, and I think she needs to take a good look at what’s rotten on the inside for her to have acted in such an unforgiveable way.
There’s more going on than her using food to manage her emotions, and she obviously has a deep-seated dislike of herself. If you like who you are, you don’t feel the need to tear other people down.
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
