Embarassing Fat Girl Moment
 

I am just wondering if this happens to anyone else. :?:
I work with a lot of thin girls. Today one of them was telling a story about this "morbidly obese" lady she had seen. (I am uncomfortable in this conversation from the beginning but she goes on anyway.) She continued on to say "She must have weighed like 200lbs!!"
At that moment I wanted to crawl in a hole and die! I weigh way MORE than 200lbs. If she thought this lady in the story was "totally morbidly obese", what does she think of ME????!!

Does anyone else wonder what people think of them or wonder what they see when they look at you??

You know, it's kind of interesting that people have such a warped view on how sizes and weights go together. It seems to me that women are generally dishonest about their weight which causes people to underestimate the numbers. I know that someone was surprised that I was "that heavy" when I told them I was 135 pounds.

But yeah, I do wonder at times after the 30 lbs I've lost so far if I am delusional and other people see me as larger than I think I am.

I'm guessing that the lady probably actually weighed way more than 200 pounds. Your coworker is thin so 200 pounds is probably a lot more than she weighs. So in her mind that lady looked 200 pounds. She just doesn't have a firm grip on weight reality

Oh ya...this happens to me ALL the time. I asked my boyfriend what he thought I weighed when I started my weightloss journey...he said 30 lbs lighter than I was! When I told him my real weight, he was SHOCKED! We hear this all the time, but weight is just a number... 200 lbs on someone 5' 1" is going to look a **** of a lot different on someone that's 5' 9"...

Don't make comments like that get you down. AND...Who cares what she thinks of you!! No matter what anyone weighs, she will probably judge them just because that's obviously the kind of person she is! This is something I have to remember ALLLL the time! It's hard, but it can be done :)

Oh honey, I have totally had those moments before... It is super awkward to hear people talk about someone and then they say the weight and you are like "****, I would PAY to weigh that much!"

You know what I say about that though??.... F*** THEM. They obviously don't deal with this stuff or they wouldn't be saying those things in the first place.

I like to think about what would happen to those toothpick girls if something ever fell on them... Like a piano...I mean, lets face it.. my chubby self would probably be fine, but they would be squashed like a bug. :carrot:

(Okay... fine.. that was a joke. But hopefully it made you smile :D)

Have you known your coworker to be inconsiderate to your feelings before? If not, then I would think that she assumes you weigh no where near 200 lbs. I know that I have NEVER been able to accurately guess someone's weight. I'm sure she didn't mean to be inconsiderate, but I'm sorry that she hurt your feelings. :hug:

I went to one of those "I guess your weight or you win a prize" booths at a fair. He had no reason to try and flatter me, and let me tell you, I won big! He was off by over 100 pounds. People are usually clueless about such things!

I'm seconding vdaybaby.

A lot of thinner people lose perspective of what higher weights look like, and given all the variations of height, bones, muscles, gender... It's pretty easy to misjudge. I definitely have before.

A friend of mine worked at a plus-size store. People would shop for their daughter/whatever and ask to hold clothing up to my friend saying "she looks about your size". My friend resented that, because she knew that eye-judgement would be wrong.

That co-worker will be shocked when she heards that "totally morbidly obese" people are actually, 300, 400 lbs. I hope she generally isn't a mean person, and this was just a naive moment.

I figure if she said it in front of you, she probably thinks you weigh less.

Those skinny girls won't all stay skinny either so there may some poetic justice somewhere down the line. The last 5 years I've stayed the same overweight size or lost weight while all my skinny co-workers have gotten fatter....

Its not so much that she hurt my feelings (she is kind of a mean person all the time), she just embarassed me. It made me feel like I needed to apologize for my fatness. I don't know, it just made me feel like I needed to apologize for being fat in her presence. Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else ever had moments like that. .
Vladadog - I have seen this girl's mom and I think you are right. I feel like genetics are going to catch her off guard (especially if she keeps eating the way she does as she gets older). Some day she will be embarassed about HER weight.
La Vie - Hey neighbor! You did put a smile on my face! Thanks.

My FIL thought that at my highest, I must have weighed "like, 200 lbs". Yeah, he was off. By almost 100 lbs!

People who don't struggle with weight don't seem to have the same ability to gauge sizes. To them, 200 lbs is, like, HUGE.

Probably the morbidly obese person they were talking about weighed far more than 200, and the person does probably think you weigh less.

That's something that gets me about "fat chick lit" (that's what I called the genre of "fat girl wants boy, works out gets to size 0, finds out she wants other boy and settles at size 6 or so" books).

They describe the women in the beginning of the books and you are imagining the largest person you've ever seen and then they mention that they're "200 lbs" or "size 16" and I instantly feel the size of a house even if I'm at my happy weight of 160.

I agree with everyone who has already said that most people tend to have a skewed view how much a person weighing 200 lbs actually looks. I'd also like to add that there's just something about the number that makes it easy to use as a generalization of someone who's overweight or obese.

Think about it - most women would be obese or at least overweight at 195 lbs, but no one ever uses it as a general number to convey the sense that someone is fat. There's just something about such a big round number of 200 (no pun intended) that people just tend to equate with "huge cow," and we all know how individual definitions of huge cow differ.


I actually stopped reading fat chick lit because it's predictable and never seemed to "get it right." I know that size of a house feeling, though. I always get it with the weight loss infomercials where they say "And Jane went from a size 10 to a size 0." But then it passes and I entertain fantasies of doing some serious damage to their corporate headquarters with a potato gun or last Christmas' fruitcake.

Fat is so taboo, that woman are actually encouraged or at least expected to lie about their weight. It almost seems as though there's some unspoken contest to get away with the biggest lie. As a result, it's very common for people to have absolutely no clue when it comes to estimating weight. It's no wonder that people think 200 lbs must be huge.

Camryn Manheim, in her book Wake Up, I'm Fat! writes of a similar experience when auditioning for roles. She was told that she was too thin for a role, because they needed someone "really, really big, like over 200 lbs," (I think she said she weighed something like 260 lbs at the time).

I remember one of the kids in a boy's home where I worked when I was in graduate school, asked me how much I weighed. He was about 15 or so, but didn't have the best social skills, so he didn't understand it might be considered an inappropriate question, so I told him "Some people don't like to talk about their weight, but I don't mind, but why don't you guess, first." He said, "a lot, like maybe 200 lbs," and I laughed and told him what I weighed, "308 lbs." (It's funny that I still remember the weight).

His jaw dropped open and his eyes bugged out and he said "No way, really?!"


I know this was a kid, I learned that adults don't have any better idea of what 200 lbs or 300 or 400 look like. I've had similar conversations with people as described in the original post - not just from kids but from adults too.

I can't tell you how often I've heard, "(S)he was really huge, oh, much, much bigger than you. I bet she weighed________" and the blank would be much lighter than me.

I respond to adults in the same way I responded to the kid. I laugh and tell them (in my best, amused, but condescending tone as in "Silly Rabbit,...") my actual weight. And usually I get the same initial response - utter astonishment. Then (unlike the boy who didn't know any better) shock is replaced by embarassment as they realize how rude or insensitive they sounded.

It's very hard to offend me, and extremely easy to amuse me, so I don't worry about what people think of me. I don't even really know why, I just don't. I think it's an inner confidence. I'm happy with who I am, so there's very little anyonce can say to change that. It's as if someone came up to me and told me the sky was yellow, when it was obviously blue or came up to me and accused me of being a butterfly.

The way I see it, there's no reason to be offended or threatend by someone who obviously doesn't know what the heck they're talking about. It's more a cause for pity and amusement than shame or embarassment. If someone is being an idiot (by design or unintentionally), that's not my fault.

First, I am so sorry you were in that uncomfortable situation! Some people really need to learn to think before they speak- especially if the only things they have to say are rude and judgemental!

:::raises hand::: ME! On a daily basis. I'm a gym manager and personal trainer who could stand to lose 20-30 pounds (or at the very least, tone up a lot!!) At least once a day I'll catch what I assume is a critical glance from someone. I try to convince myself that they have better things to think about than the way my jeans are fitting that day- but it's hard sometimes.

Especially with my teeny-tiny coworker. The day we met we were brainstorming places to distribute flyers, and I mentioned I would take some to Chili's with me that night. Her response "good idea. Fat people eat at restaurants" :o :(

It made me want to either A) change my date night plans with Alex or B) immediately justify my eating habits by talking about their healthier menu options. I ended up just saying nothing.
~Dagny