Shaking Off My Insecurities

A few months ago I was in the gym and I had just finished my 30 minutes of cardio and was moving to the weights when a man stopped me and asked me something. I couldn't hear what he said so I took my headphones out and said "sorry."  He then repeated himself but because my Dutch was still so limited at the time I couldn't understand what he said.  I politely told him I didn't speak Dutch and then he repeated himself in English, "Why are you lifting weights?" This is how the conversation progressed.. 

me: "Because it will help me reach my fitness goals."
random stranger: "You seem like you're here for the same reason as my wife, you want to           lose weight, right?"
me: "Yes, that is one of my fitness goals."
random stranger: "If you want to lose weight you shouldn't lift weights. You should just do cardio."
me: "Well thank you for your opinion, but I think I'll continue to do it my way and I believe your views about health, fitness and weight loss are a little outdated."

I then put my headphones back in and walked away and I was fuming made. I was shaking and nearly in tears. I honestly couldn't believe the nerve of this man. When you assume that someone is at the gym to lose weight, you're making your personal opinion known, and when your opinion is that someone needs to lose weight you should keep it to yourself. It is rude to point out to a complete stranger that they need to lose weight.  There's no other way around it.  I do believe that this man had good intentions, but not only did he go about trying to help me in the wrong way, his information was wrong, just plain wrong. 

Woman should strength train to help with weight loss.  It's a simple equation.  Muscle burns more calories than fat so just by increasing your muscle mass you will burn more calories.  Also my only fitness goal isn't to lose weight, I want to be fit and healthy and just because you lose a bunch of weight doesn't mean you're either of those things. 

After this encounter I stopped going to the gym for a few weeks and when I eventually did return I went at a different time in hopes of avoiding the man.  I could have and should have handled the situation better, but I didn't. The one thing I learned from this experience and through this blog is that the opinion of other's isn't as important as society makes it out to be.  When I first decided I wanted to try blogging again and really make something of it Rogier told me to share it with all my friends and family and my reaction was, my weight is on there, that's so embarrassing. I can't do that. 

That's when it hit me if people are truly my friends they already know that I'm overweight and that I've been trying to lose weight and they love and care about me, despite of all that. If a random person happens to stumble across my blog and think something negative about me, well that says more about him or her than it does about me.  

A huge part of this journey is learning to be comfortable in my own skin, at any size, and I think I'm making progress.  

On a happier note, I reached my first fitness goal today!! 3 sets of 5 pushups. It's not much but a goal is a goal and progress is progress no matter how small. My next goal will be 2 sets of 10 pushups, but that will take some working up to. I think I'm up for the challenge.  

Have you ever had someone inappropriately comment about your weight or fitness goals? How did you handle it?