The shame, blame, and ridicule was heaped on me from a very young age. Obesity is genetic in my family, as most of my relatives are what doctors consider “overweight” or “obese”, even though they eat healthily and exercise. I was about four when my parents got custody of me back, and at the time, I was a healthy, chubby little pre-schooler. I remember my mother grabbing my chub, and saying “we got to put you on a diet, you little porker”. I had no clue what a diet was at that age, but I remember those words ringing through my head. I remember eating my spaghetti at about the age of 5, and my mother and father were getting ready to go to a party. My mother said to my father “we got to get someone to supervise that pig eating over there” (looking for a babysitter). I still didn’t take those jabs to heart, because I didn’t understand what she meant, but I did later on, and it hurt. I was put on my first diet in kindergarten. I was only allowed steamed veggies and salads, and small bowl of plain oatmeal in the morning. My mother said to me one day as she swept me off the ground that summer and showered me with affection “you’re skinny! You did it! you’re perfect now!” I think I was still only 5 years old at that point, because she lifted me in the air without struggling, I remember now, that that love was only conditional, and it still is.

I was on and off parental-enforced diets until I was 11, when I started hating my body and restricting on my own. Whenever I lost weight, affection, love, and approval shone down upon me. If I hit a plateau or gained anything, abuse ensued, physical, mental, verbal, emotional, forced exercise and calorie counting. I became obsessed with “safe” foods, and became fully vegan, then I decided proteins and other higher calorie foods (beans, brown rice, nuts and seeds, oils) were off limits as well. My father got me a scale for my birthday (thanks a million, pop) and I began weighing in several times per day. My dad would shame me, I remember, for every morsel I ate. “You’re going to die alone if you eat that (insert food here), you know”. And “It must hurt you to exercise because your thighs rub together”. I hated his jabs, so I tried not to eat around anybody, and my days revolved around avoiding food, and how to lie to friends when they asked me if I’ve eaten or offered snacks. “I ate before I got here” or “I have an upset stomach” almost became my mantras.

My mother got me teen-aged targeted magazines with these airbrushed, impossibly thin images, and these became plastered on my bedroom wall, the refrigerator and cupboards, and on the bathroom mirror. I was severely depressed, and looked to cutting/burning to alleviate my anxiety and emotions. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without seeing myself as fat, contrary to what my friends were telling me. I remember on several occasions, taking a black marker to my thighs, stomach, arms, hips, circling what I thought I needed to lose in order to gain approval and acceptance. I started writing “thinspiration” quotes on my mirror with eyeliner, and writing body-hatred quotes on post-it notes on the refrigerator. 

Self-hatred was put into all three of us girls, my sister suffered from Anorexia, too, but I don’t think she will admit it. My mother compared us to each other constantly, and one of us was the favorite based on a weekly weigh-in. The inner dialogue was enough to kill me inside. I didn’t mind other people around me being overweight or chubby at all. I thought, all the power to them, I wish I could love my body as they love theirs. But I thought for myself, it was “morally reprehensible” for me to be happy with my own body the way I thought it was. 

I had a few exes, too, which if I had fat on any other part of my body other than my breasts, then I was fat. I had a bit, I was considered “normal”. He pulled the trigger by pointing out on tv when a model or actress was on the screen, stating that even some of the Victoria’s Secret runway models were “fat”, or if he saw what most considered underweight, he told me to take an example. I soon found out I was pregnant with my first child, and I started eating better for the baby. I gained weight from the pregnancy, but the fat shame kept being thrown my way. I overheard him joking with friends that I looked like a beached whale and that he was considering cheating on me, and that he was ashamed to be seen in public a fat chick, that I would order half of the entire restaurant menu if he took me out to dinner. He constantly told me that the pregnancy made me look fat. I paid no attention. I kept eating healthily. He left me shortly after the birth, because he said I looked warped and disgusting, and left me for a skinnier friend of mine.

Fast forward to 2008, I was newly married, and was pregnant with number 2. This was a time I still was recovered and loved my body, then my mother came back into my life shortly after the birth. I was called a balloon, a blimp, a whale, a porker, at several family dinners, including my aunts and uncles jabbing at me. I was afraid to even eat in front of others, and with the withdraw of love and affection, the negative inner dialogue came back, I was fighting it, but it came back, and I started a vegan diet again, for the weight loss, but it wasn’t working, and my family made a point of bringing it to my attention that the diet wasn’t working. I also had a group of friends my age, and they made cracks at people in public who walked by who happened to be people of size. I went to stores to find nice clothing, and sometimes the workers said, sorry, we have nothing in your size, why don’t you try the plus-sized stores? and laughed as I walked out. I’m 6’2”, so you could picture that I do have wider hips and a wider frame. I was ashamed of shopping, and started dressing in baggy black clothing to hide myself away.

Fast forward to 2010, my (now ex) husband had problems with libido, but him and his ego, went into self-preservation mode. He blamed it on my weight. He told me that no woman should ever outweigh or be larger than the man she’s with, though I was nowhere near his size at the time. So I started restricting my already vegan diet again, and added exercise. I did so in the rain, the snow, windy weather, it was part of my routine. I joined calorie counting websites which shamed me for a small spread of butter on a piece of rye bread, labeling the “food grade” an F, even though the calories were low, so I cut out entire food groups. I still had the scale my father got me some time ago, because I wanted to track the progress, this site prompted you to weigh in every so often, with a “progress chart”. As I lost weight, I was getting increasingly depressed, because my goal was always set and reset to lose more. I cut from time to time when the pain and hopelessness felt like too much. Starving felt like elation and serenity, an so-called “hunger high”. I went through a small recovery period from 2011 to early 2012, (I was pregnant with number 3 late 2011. My changing body shape scared the living daylights out of me. I was (again) shamed, this time, by myself. I feared weight gain at this point, and restricted, severely. I lost more weight, and my ex-husband’s family didn’t know I had an eating disorder. They were telling me how good I looked, how beautiful I made pregnancy look, they thought my eating rituals were strange (cutting up food to tiny pieces, water in between, etc) but thought nothing of it. They told me they like how I slimmed down, and ask me how I did it, I had to lie, I told them diet and exercise, forced a smile, and walked away to distract myself. All of their gatherings were about food, and I would have to do anything to avoid eating, and if I did eat, I didn’t want people to see me. I keep remembering my mother’s and father’s harsh words as a little girl.

During the latest pregnancy, I decided to reach out to a doctor. I told him, when he thumbed through my medical history, that I was having a relapse. He chuckled, and said that my “ample fat storage” was enough to nourish my unborn baby. That meant to me, a green light. A go-ahead. I knew, deep in my heart, that I should have been eating healthily for the sake of the unborn baby, but I was terrified of becoming like my family after they had their children. They were all people of size. I gave birth to a healthy baby girl, with an insane amount of luck, she was fine. I regret letting the stigma and shame get to me during a pregnancy. I regret letting those words and encouragements put my baby girl in harm’s way, all because of anti-fat bias and crappy (dangerous) advice from a anti-fat obstetrician. 

I still was mortified by the way I looked after the birth, and started taking diet pills in 2012. My heart already had problems, it was atrophied. My blood pressure was extremely low. I was hospitalized for extreme electrolyte imbalances, heart palpitations, heart racing for no reason as if I ran a marathon, and fainting spells. I went into cardiac arrest at the hospital twice (luckily I was already there), they kept me there for only a week, deciding that I was underweight, but was still deemed not severely underweight enough to have a problem with an eating disorder. The hospital psychiatrist booked me in for a few outpatient treatments with the least helpful advice ever; just eat. You can’t be possibly suffering, as you don’t quite make the weight cut-off. This is what I’ve been told by doctors over the years, because of my frame. “you look fine”, “you’re healthy-looking”, “I wish I was your weight”. I would have liked to give them a day with aching kidneys and liver, heart palpitations, dizziness, fainting spells, severe bloating, constipation. Skinny does not equal healthy, though most doctors beg to differ. You would think that cardiac arrest was enough to tell them that I had a big problem. I’m 25 years old; I shouldn’t have to worry about heart attacks, blood pressure, weight and shape. I should be having fun, and loving myself at any size.

What was worse, was my family telling me that I’m so strong and have great willpower for going through with my weight loss despite that it came from an eating disorder, they were well aware of the fact that I had one. How I must be so brave because of the hospitalization. I have since then, cut my family out of my life, threw out my scale, my tape measure, most of my mirrors, and “thinspiration” pictures. Gone. And I will never allow those things in my home again. When you add life-long abuse and weight-shaming, overly critical parents and aunts, crappy doctors who don’t take you seriously if you need help but happen to look “overweight” or “chubby” or “fine”, crappy doctors telling me that an ED is fine as long as it helps me to lose weight, family genetic predisposition to being larger, being a people-pleaser and over-achiever, with an intense fear of weight gain, and a general societal hate and ignorance towards larger people, and you have a deadly cocktail. My body still aches, but my mental clarity is becoming better. My heart is healing from those painful wounds, and I will pick up and carry on.

I just started to recover, January 2013 was my new years resolution to love myself, eat right, repair the damage done to myself, and not give  flying **** about what others have to say about my body or size. I was happier being considered a person of size, than I was in the depths of an eating disorder. I am proud to say, that I am a survivor, a fighter, and I will be a role model for my children when it comes to Health At Every Size. 

I am thirty years old and I am crying my heart out. This makes our fifth therapy session about body acceptance and self-esteem. I cried the the whole time during those sessions too. 

“What did he say?” my therapist asked.

I’m too embarrassed to tell her. And she’s been my therapist for four years. She knows my inmost thoughts and dreams, but I can’t manage to tell her this. So I tell her the story, hoping that by the end, I’ll have the strength to say what he said. 

“I’ve been called all sorts of things. Bitch, cunt, much worse. They roll off me and don’t mean a thing. I’ve had internet trolls tell me I should be raped to death. Doesn’t keep me awake at night. But the thing that’s hurt me most, the worst thing I think anyone has ever said to me was when I was 12. We were getting ready for church. The whole family was already in the car, and as usual, I was the last in. I remember exactly what I was wearing. A blouse. A black, knee-length skirt. Some horrible early nineties dress shoes. And some dark hose, almost tights, to cover what I already thought were my huge, fat legs.”

I stop here, remembering standing in front of the mirror, looking at myself in that outfit. 

“My dad stopped me. He said “Your legs look like tree trunks.” I’m not sure what he said after that, the blood rushing to my ears and my pounding heart made the rest of what he said a blur. I knew he told me to go back inside and change.

So I did. But I lingered another moment before the mirror, staring at my legs. I had started to get hips and thighs. I know now, that I wasn’t fat then, wasn’t even overweight. 

But I changed into a long dress.

And I never wore another skirt that showed my legs again. I didn’t wear a bathing suit for nearly twenty years after that. I still haven’t worn shorts. I never wore another tank top. Or sleeveless shirt. I stopped participating in sports because I’d have to reveal too much skin.

It helped start a terrible cycle of self-hatred, low self-esteem and obsession with my weight. I’m still fighting it. 

-Amy from Wellington

Woman passenger beaten by train thugs — for being FAT

By Julie Moult

Last updated at 9:21 PM on 19th October 2009

Abused: The attack on Marsha Coupe left her with a black eye

A woman who claims to have been beaten up because she is overweight is campaigning to see discrimination against fat people outlawed.

Marsha Coupe, 53 was attacked on a train by a woman who began verbally abusing her for her size.

‘I was returning home one night on a train and a woman sat across from me started kicking me and said, Hey fattie! You should not be on the train, you need two seats, she said.

Mrs Coupe, a marketing manager, was left shaken and badly bruised after the attack in May last year.

‘I had probably 30 to 40 bruises over my chest and my neck.

I was terrified I was going to lose my eye.

‘London prides itself on being diverse yet there is almost a zero-tolerance on anyone of size.

You cannot walk the streets without being verbally or physically assaulted.

The American who now lives in Hayes, Kent and weighs 22 stone was travelling home from London late at night in May last year when she was set upon.

She has now joined forces with a group of other women to lobby mayor Boris Johnson to make the capital more fat friendly.

In the US city of San Francisco it is illegal to discriminate against people because of their size and the women are hoping to see similar moves introduced.

Cinemas and restaurants have to provide larger seats, and doctors are even asked to ‘respect the wishes’ of fat patients who do not want to discuss their weight.

The plight of overweight people in the capital was illustrated on a BBC documentary Inside Out aired last night.

Eve Hart, 25, an emergency services phone operator from Ilford, Essex told how she was often turned away from nightclubs because she is overweight.

‘When you go out, you get ready and look your best, and then get abuse. I feel more embarrassed than anything for my friends than myself, she said.

Kathryn Szrodecki, an overweight presenter from Fulham, travelled to San Francisco in the documentary to research the law and is determined to make similar changes in London.

She says: “Mayor Boris, I have seen the law in action. I have my scales with me and I’m on my way to your office to begin the transformation of London.”

The idea from this blog came from the amazing efforts of people all over the country in response to the string of gay suicides. It was covered by the media, new anti bullying policies were put in place in many schools across the nation, the It Gets Better campaign was started, and the majority of the country came together to support those in the LGBT community who may be considering suicide. As a member of the LGBT community myself I found these efforts to be heart warming and overwhelming in their compassion and love for fellow human beings in pain. I feel lucky to have been surrounded by people who didn’t care about my sexuality. I may have gotten an eyebrow raised in my direction, but I never faced the horrors that many LGBT people face. 

Unfortunately, as a fat person I have not been so lucky. While I rejoyced at this new swell of LGBT acceptance and support, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that while these gay suicides were catching the media’s attention and more focus was being put on bullying of LGBT people (though it seemed mostly focused on LG people- I think we can do better here), there were still people getting bullied, contemplating, attempting, and completing suicide because of their weight. I couldn’t help but wonder, where is our awareness campaigns? Our media coverage? Our “It Gets Better” videos? 

Unfortunately the sad truth is that, for many fat people, it doesn’t get better. The abuse doesn’t stop just because you grow up and move to a liberal neighborhood. Fat people face constant verbal abuse and bullying, fear of physical attacks, job discrimination including a fat wage gap, they can be denied insurance or even certain medical procedures, have their health and lives put in jeopardy from dangerous weight loss methods (in the name of health no less), and are constantly degraded and dehumanized in the media. The truth is that fat people are more at risk for both eating disorders and suicide as a direct result of weight stigma. 

This blog is to share the stories of the survivors of this war. Those who have suffered through physical and mental injury in the name of thinness. Eating disorders, self harm, surgery and more. These are their stories in a hope to show people that war always has casualties. My goal is that this will help people accept themselves, know that they’re not alone, and maybe, just a little, help to end the war on fat which is, after all, a war on fat people.