Being Bullied While Following a Diet

I truly love my readers and I want to share an experience that happened to me while following Dukan with you all.

Now I’m in my very early twenties, so I don’t have a family of my own and friends mean a lot to me, let me tell you, when I talk about Fat Friends (a few posts down) I truly mean it, I know what I am talking about.

In the very beginning of the Dukan Diet, up to about 50 lbs lost I had this entire group of fat friends I hung out with. I was really treated badly by them though the entirety of our friendship, and until I cut them out completely from my life. Terrible people.

Anyways.

It started off with the comments, the comments I get from everyone who hears about the diet. That it wont work, that I will gain all the weight back once I get off it (so far not true… I would like to point out, at almost 80 days through Consolidation), that it’s an unhealthy diet, etc. I’m sure you have all heard the comments. They come innocently from the friends who care for you, and judgementally from those who don’t.

The bullying progressed. I once had one of the girls from this group tell me that she could never see me as not fat, that no matter how much weight I lost I would always be the fat friend and she could never see me as thinner than her.

In comparison, one of my best friends in the entire world who was definitely NEVER a terrible fat friend, has told me recently, after seeing one of my ‘before’ pictures, that she was really shocked and surprised to see it because she never saw me that fat. She always saw me like I am now, even though we have known each other for years and years and years.

When I was with this group of friends we would go out to eat, they would never make an effort to accommodate my diet and would always insist on me eating their Chinese food, or pizza or whatever not-Dukan allowed foods they were having that day. They would pressure me, but hey, I resisted.

The comment I would always receive from them, and that I have received from many people, is that ‘just one bite wont make you gain all the weight back’. Yes, but have you ever stopped to think maybe I don’t want to eat that one bite? That I’m not suffering and can make my own decisions as a grown adult about what I want to put in my mouth?

Once we were in the food court and after the ‘One fry! One fry wont make you gain 30 lbs back, this is why it’s impossible, etc etc’ comment one of them thought it would be a great idea to press that fry on my mouth. Not just waving it in my face but taking that extra step and putting it on my mouth. When you are craving fries, what could be worst?

Oh I’ll tell you what could be worst…

One time, after they convinced me to go to yet another restaurant I could not eat at, and ordered chocolate cake for me, even though I insisted they do not do that, because I would not eat it. They all bit into it telling me how absolutely delicious it was and the ‘mmmmss’ and ‘ooooh my goodnessss you need to have a bite of this, best chocolate cake I have ever eaten!’

Well after all that they then tried to fork it into my mouth, like with the fry. Taking the extra step of hiding behind me in turn trying to catch me off guard while I was talking. They ended up getting some in my hair and on my glasses. Fantastic.

Would you believe I didn’t drop them as friends at that point?

It took them starting to exclude me, not invite me to things because ‘why bother, she can’t eat with us anyways’ and I’m going to say, although it might sound egotistical, just out of jealousy, for me to stop all communication with them and move forward with my life.

And I haven’t looked back.

So if you are being put in situations that make you feel uncomfortable, don’t hate yourself, don’t think it must be your fault and second guess your decision to be healthy. I would never want a fat friend to progress into a fat bully for you. Keep your eyes open for terrible people, because they exist my dears.

Keep up the great work, all of you! Don’t cheat today, just work hard and get to your goals because that is the number one way you can rub your success in their faces. By making fabulous new friends and moving on with your life.

xoxo