About 8 weeks ago, before I had decided to lose weight, I was standing waiting for a streetcar with my two dogs. I was feeling good on a sunny day until this car passes and some young man yells out the window, "your dogs are good looking but you aren't!" Now my dogs are gorgeous if I do say so myself, and I'll never be as beautiful as them, but even so...now I could write what I thought about how he looked and how he was dressed and make all kinds of snap judgements about him, but I'm not going to! Anyone else receive cruelty from strangers that sticks in your head way longer than it's worth? I still think about this and think "I'll show him! I'll lose 50lbs!" but why should I care about him? I'm not doing this for strangers!

Don't pay any attention to him obviously he is not playing with a full deck.

Thanks. I know. I'm not overly hurt or distressed, just wondered if anyone else found they didn't forget this kind of stuff.

After 8 weeks -- or long before that actually -- I think I would just "consider the source" and let it go and forget about it. The person who said it was the ignorant one; not you.

Anyone that feels the need to insult a stranger is only attempting to feel better about themselves for some reason.

I remember as a child... about 10 or so.. there was an older girl on the school bus doing her best to make me feel bad and let me tell you she was trying hard for the whole trip while I ignored her but all along I was thinking to myself that she was one to talk with the amount of makeup she was wearing she looked that she was ready to go sell herself on a street corner.

My mother always said, regarding such things, "It is better to be the one it is done to than the one doing it. Just make sure you are never the one doing it to someone else."

Words CAN sting, especially if they happen to hit our tender, sensitive spots. It is far more fun to try to find a few words to encourage someone; just never know how much it is going to perhaps mean to them.

Your mother's quote is so wise for us to remind ourselves even as adults and then your follow-up rang so true to me. I wish I could say both of them to everyone I know and meet. The world surely would be a nicer place.

A few years ago when I was living in NYC, I was walking along broadway with a friend, and this car full of men in their early 20's made some harsh comments to me...To this day, I still think about that but I also used them, and other insidents as part of my modivation to keep me going....Like, "I'll show those B**tards,"

Feel better by knowing that your not the type of person to do that, and by that alone, your a better person then this man will ever be.

People like that are not worth listening to.

However, just for the record, being who I am, I would've given them the bird!

I love this and am going to save this for my children!

OP - Yes, I've had similar experiences. Ironically I can't remember any off the top of my head (LOL), but stranger's comments have bothered me in the past. Sometimes you just can't help it, even though you know that they're sorry excuses for human beings and what they have to say doesn't matter in the least bit.

I think Misti in Seattle said it best....I also don't even let this kind of stuff bother me anymore....there is always someone out there who will say something mean, but it does not hurt you unless you let it....now that I'm in my 50's I've gotten to the point I just don't care what mean people say anymore...they are not worth my time.

Usually people that do that have issues themselves. putting down and making comments to a complete stranger, especially in a passing car where you can't even snap a comment back is just being a coward and trying to make themselves feel better for their own shortcomings. So just think about all the bad things that must be going in their life that they have to do something like that to make themselves feel better!

After reading that, I want to see your dogs! (I'm so puppy deprived TT^TT)

Seriously, though, those people aren't you. They haven't lived your life and don't know that you're actively working hard to change yourself. They don't know if there were some events or underlying causes that made you gain weight in the first place. They're just shallow jerks hiding behind the fact that their car can whisk them away before they have to see that words can really hurt people. Good on you for taking the high road and using it for motivation...try not to let them get to you.

Personally I'm built like a dump truck, but can bench press more than my own weight. Maybe I'm not pretty, but I give off enough of an aura of "I can kick your ***" that I generally don't get mean comments from strangers. I DO, however, work in elementary schools--where the kids have perfectly good intentions, but haven't entirely developed a proper filter between their brains and their mouths...so they'll do things like walk up, pat my stomach and make a drum sound, then tell me that I'm much fatter than their old English teacher before giving me a hug and skipping away. That happened about in July, and it's stuck with me more because it WASN'T mean-spirited than for any other reason...it was just an innocent little kid truthfully saying what came to mind, and the honest truth can sting like a b****.

Nice.

Thanks everybody. Very good stuff. You are bunch of beautiful and wise people! I love this forum!

And I would love to show you my dogs but I don't want to highjack the thread with "how do I post pictures?" also I am on an iPad so it may not work at all.

Happy holidays everyone!

Oh yeah. If I tried (and it wouldn't be very hard) I could pull up about a dozen or so random comments from strangers, some said up close, some yelled from cars or upper story windows -- going all the way back to my childhood. And, they hurt. Man, did they hurt. I never respond; things happen so quickly, and a snappy comeback takes a few minutes to materialize for me.

Just realize that you're, in fact, "bigger" (pun intended) than they are. It would never occur to most people to say such mean-spirited things. I don't know why they do it, and I can't believe someone could be so twisted as to get pleasure from hurling insults at a stranger. In my neck of the woods, there's apparently a market for "No Fat Chicks" bumper stickers, too. Ugh!

Keep your chin up, and keep on with your plan for health. This, too, shall pass. Hug your pups, they love you!