5 Effects Of A “You’re Cute But Fat” Comment I Received At Age 16

How it led to a love-hate relationship with food

“Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem” — Virginia Satir

When I was younger, I didn’t have the tools necessary to cope with anxiety and stress. I found my stress fix in the form of ‘emotional eating.’ And my go-to snacks were chips and soda.

According to an article in Healthline, stress eating “involves using food as a coping mechanism to help you feel better. Typically, it has nothing to do with physical hunger and everything to do with soothing or suppressing uncomfortable feelings and situations.”

At 16, infatuation can seem like love like no other. When I fell head over heels into infatuation with someone in his twenties, I thought for sure that he was the one. Have you ever felt your heart beat faster, nervous, exhilarated and expectant each time you breathed the same rarefied air as your crush?

I dreamed of our life together, the places we would travel to, all the wonderful things we would do. Even though he was aware of my crush on him, he never teased me about it and always treated me as one would a younger sister…how mortifying! But me being me, I stubbornly held on to the hope that he would one day change his mind about me.

But that dream never got a chance to see fruition. He lost his life in a head-on collision with another car. The person driving the car he was in had been driving while drunk.

I would say my stress eating started sometime around that time. I couldn’t talk to my parents about how I was feeling and anyways, they were too busy. I wasn’t comfortable sharing my despair with my friends out of fear of having my pain minimized along the lines of “It was just a crush! You’ll get over it.”

No, it wasn’t just a silly teenage crush to me. I wouldn’t feel pain of such visceral intensity if it were just a silly crush. So I sought comfort in a variety of unhealthy snacks and suffice to say I packed on the pounds.

It took a few months for me to feel better enough to start enjoying life again. I vividly recall a party at a friend’s house I went to because I heard something that made me take a drastic decision.

The friend whose house I had gone to had a cousin from England who was visiting for the holidays and all the girls were going gaga over his looks and fancy accent. Later on, at the party, my friend came up to me and gushed “Guess who’s been asking about you? Luke, that’s who!”

I’m sure the other girls were envious that I had managed to capture Luke’s attention for reasons not yet known to me. The suspense didn’t last long because my ‘so-called friend’ was quick to spill the deets “He asked me who that pretty girl (me)was and I asked him which pretty girl he was referring to.” Here she paused for effect before the big reveal as to what Luke had said in reply:

“The one who is really cute for a fat girl!”

Well, the titters from the others who overheard her were enough to make me want the ground to open up and swallow me whole. How could she relish saying this to me? And who the hell did that guy think he was?

5 effects of that hurtful “cute but fat” comment

According to an article published by Stonewater Adolescent Recovery Center:

“Self-esteem is greatly altered when someone’s weight becomes the target of the latest teasing. Boys and girls differ in how they react to their peers commenting on their body type. With girls, they will begin a journey of wishing they could make change to their bodies and become obsessed with dieting.”

1. I might say if there was a silver lining to that humiliating experience, it was me swearing off junk food. I also started watching what I ate. And then I swerved to the other extreme, that is, I discovered that I’d lost my appetite for food. It wasn’t that I didn’t like food per se, it was just I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.

2. I lost all the weight that I had gained while recovering from heartbreak and then some. Now people commented on why I seemed to be losing so much weight…..

Give me a break already, people!

3. I eventually went on to win a beauty pageant and on his next visit, Luke, the cousin from England asked me out. Funny how I was now seen as good enough to be asked out by the likes of him.

It made me wonder whether I was lovable only because of the way I looked.

4. I continued to struggle with self-esteem issues. One may think with all the attention I was receiving that I would have fewer worries on that end. But no. I would spend so much time on how I looked, what I wore, constantly comparing myself to other pretty girls which made me even more insecure.

Insecurities are parasitic. They have a nasty habit of burrowing deep beneath the skin and filling you with falsehoods that can make you feel you are not enough.

It literally sucked the joy out of my life.

5. I developed health issues as a result of which I became even more stressed and anxious.

When things got too overwhelming, I reverted back to the comfort of stress eating. And the pattern continued.

According to an article published by the Polaris Teen Center, around 2.7% of teens in the US between the ages of 13 and 17 have an eating disorder. The article goes on to explain the reasons behind it.

“For many teenagers, entering into puberty can be a time wrought with intense emotions, confusion, and stress. This period of change is what makes teens susceptible to developing eating disorders.”

What I went through happened during my late teens and early twenties. I have since embarked on a journey of self-reflection and healing. In hindsight, I have realized that most of my insecurities stemmed from a lack of self-love. Learning to accept and love myself, warts and all has been an important part of the healing process.

Today, I try to eat more healthily and make every effort to exercise daily as I believe it contributes to my overall physical and mental wellbeing. In other words, I am taking care of myself not because I want to prove anything to anybody anymore but because of something along the lines of this Steve Maraboli quote:

“Love yourself. Forgive yourself. Be true to yourself. How you treat yourself sets the standard for how others will treat you.”

Eating disorders are mental illnesses that require specialized attention by a team of professionals. If you or a loved one may be struggling with an eating disorder, there is hope and help— waldeneatingdisorders.com

Thank you Ryan Fan of Invisible Illness. Shout outs to Jill (Conquering Cognitions) Sandra Pawula Zeenat Merchant Syal, M.A, M.Sc Spyder and Julia Winsa