I'm in a verbose state of mind right now so bear with me. You're right in some twisted way, I owe these people for making me who I am. But let me explain.
I've looked at pictures of me when I was a toddler and while I wasn't a scrawny kid, I wasn't fat. Somewhere along the line I started getting labelled the fat kid and teased. Each school photo shows me progressively heavier than the last. Somewhere along the line, I internalized the idea that I was a fat kid and lived up to it by, well, being fat. I've never confused the teasing for being fat as a cause. But it certainly didn't help me get into better shape. The teasing sucked, but it was tolerable. Instead, a couple of incidents that actually had me feeling worried for my physical well-being really sparked the change.
The bullying in high school hit a low point when I was doing a science presentation in a class the teacher could not even control. Two of the guys in the gang I referred to in my first post started tagging my freaking presentation board with gang symbols. It's a hilariously stupid scenario in hindsight. Honestly, I laugh about it now. But at the time I was freaked out, and angry because this meant I couldn't use it for the science fair later. It wasn't them teasing me about my weight that prompted me to lose weight, but rather fear of physical harm from them. I had to sit beside these guys in class and I'd see them come to school with knives and pull them out and pretend to stab people with them. In hindsight, they wouldn't have been dumb enough to hurt me so long as I didn't give them a reason. But not giving them a reason to hurt me felt like such a cowardly thing. It was letting them frame the "debate" and to hell if I would let them do that. It was never about me, it was about them and their issues with their father beating them or something.
So quite honestly, I was partly motivated to start losing weight out of survival instinct. I wanted to be able to defend myself if it ever got to that point, so I started pumping iron so I would be stronger than them should things ever get to that point.
The thing is, I wasn't even really the primary target of these bullies. So as ridiculous as my account above is, other guys had it worse. They really did get beaten up. There's a fine line between being pushed to the brink and being broken. I wasn't France in WWII, I was Britain. I had options available and I responded accordingly.
To your point however, my gym teacher also had a part in motivating me to lose weight. He would never cut me any slack. Jocks would get remedial attention in math courses they were having problems with. There is no special education for gym. In gym, when we had to say do gymnastics on hanging rings or flips on mats, I never got any slack. My teacher would make me get up there and fail, very publicly, and in a humiliating way. He gave me a C for effort.
Bullying issues aside, I think my school did exactly what it needed to help me out. The gym classes included lots of talks by our gym teacher about how we would all gain weight as we got older, got office jobs, and became immobile. And some humility is good. I couldn't even hang off of the gymnastic rings let alone do what was required to get an A. If this were an Algebra course, I wouldn't have been able to count. If anything, they were a bit indifferent about my situation. It's one thing to point out to a kid that he has problems. It's another to give him options about how to solve them. I stumbled upon weight lifting as an option only because my older brother was a wrestler and I'd seen him do it.
As far as the worst bullies go, that's a whole other kettle of fish. The solution to treating those sort of bullies these days is to shuffle them around the school system until they either play out the clock and graduate or drop out. My school was considered a "good school" which had the effect of encouraging principals at troubled schools of sending their worst offenders to our school to discipline them. So 99% of the students were good but had to face 1% of the school population which were probably psychopaths. I don't think schools can treat these bullies. They simply don't have the jurisdiction. For a lot of those kids, you'd have to remove them from broken homes.
For your casual bullying, I'd say the best approach is to play both sides of the coin. Tell the bullies to get over themselves and tell the victims to do the same. If you're that hung up over getting bullied for being 120 lbs at 6'0" tall, maybe it is you that has an issue with your weight. At that point, the bullies are merely amplifying your discontent. You can either learn to accept it and let the comments slide off of you because they no longer hurt, or you can do something about it and gain weight.
One of these days I need to learn how to be more concise :-)
You mention that the bullies you had to put up with used to carry knives. Did weight lifting really help against bullies pulling a knife on you? I'd say it takes more specialized training to be able to face a knife wielding opponent.
To be technically correct, France and Britain had a well-publicized mutual-defense treaty with Poland (among others), and when Germany attacked Poland (knowing full well of the alliance) the signatories had no choice but to declare war. In fact, Britain and France gave Germany an ultimatum to pull out of Poland before initiating hostilities.
Furthermore, Germany actually didn't even bother declaring war on Poland first before launching their first attacks.
In other words, this was not a Pearl Harbor, Germany knew full well what they were getting into. Yeah, Britain and France were not iconic examples of bully victims, but if you're suggesting Germany is, you'd be mistaken.
The analogy is that while the enemy wasn't beating him up and "occupying" him as badly as they did others, he still had to deal with a bit of a blitz and ended up using his ingenuity to break their enigmatic code, develop a radar against future attacks, and ultimately develop a world class force of his own to contend with them.
Of course, the analogy breaks down around there unless he made friends with an even-less-bullied kid and another bully who suddenly became outcast and bullied in his own right, and worked together to defeat the other bullies once and for all.
I've looked at pictures of me when I was a toddler and while I wasn't a scrawny kid, I wasn't fat. Somewhere along the line I started getting labelled the fat kid and teased. Each school photo shows me progressively heavier than the last. Somewhere along the line, I internalized the idea that I was a fat kid and lived up to it by, well, being fat. I've never confused the teasing for being fat as a cause. But it certainly didn't help me get into better shape. The teasing sucked, but it was tolerable. Instead, a couple of incidents that actually had me feeling worried for my physical well-being really sparked the change.
The bullying in high school hit a low point when I was doing a science presentation in a class the teacher could not even control. Two of the guys in the gang I referred to in my first post started tagging my freaking presentation board with gang symbols. It's a hilariously stupid scenario in hindsight. Honestly, I laugh about it now. But at the time I was freaked out, and angry because this meant I couldn't use it for the science fair later. It wasn't them teasing me about my weight that prompted me to lose weight, but rather fear of physical harm from them. I had to sit beside these guys in class and I'd see them come to school with knives and pull them out and pretend to stab people with them. In hindsight, they wouldn't have been dumb enough to hurt me so long as I didn't give them a reason. But not giving them a reason to hurt me felt like such a cowardly thing. It was letting them frame the "debate" and to hell if I would let them do that. It was never about me, it was about them and their issues with their father beating them or something.
So quite honestly, I was partly motivated to start losing weight out of survival instinct. I wanted to be able to defend myself if it ever got to that point, so I started pumping iron so I would be stronger than them should things ever get to that point.
The thing is, I wasn't even really the primary target of these bullies. So as ridiculous as my account above is, other guys had it worse. They really did get beaten up. There's a fine line between being pushed to the brink and being broken. I wasn't France in WWII, I was Britain. I had options available and I responded accordingly.
To your point however, my gym teacher also had a part in motivating me to lose weight. He would never cut me any slack. Jocks would get remedial attention in math courses they were having problems with. There is no special education for gym. In gym, when we had to say do gymnastics on hanging rings or flips on mats, I never got any slack. My teacher would make me get up there and fail, very publicly, and in a humiliating way. He gave me a C for effort.
Bullying issues aside, I think my school did exactly what it needed to help me out. The gym classes included lots of talks by our gym teacher about how we would all gain weight as we got older, got office jobs, and became immobile. And some humility is good. I couldn't even hang off of the gymnastic rings let alone do what was required to get an A. If this were an Algebra course, I wouldn't have been able to count. If anything, they were a bit indifferent about my situation. It's one thing to point out to a kid that he has problems. It's another to give him options about how to solve them. I stumbled upon weight lifting as an option only because my older brother was a wrestler and I'd seen him do it.
As far as the worst bullies go, that's a whole other kettle of fish. The solution to treating those sort of bullies these days is to shuffle them around the school system until they either play out the clock and graduate or drop out. My school was considered a "good school" which had the effect of encouraging principals at troubled schools of sending their worst offenders to our school to discipline them. So 99% of the students were good but had to face 1% of the school population which were probably psychopaths. I don't think schools can treat these bullies. They simply don't have the jurisdiction. For a lot of those kids, you'd have to remove them from broken homes.
For your casual bullying, I'd say the best approach is to play both sides of the coin. Tell the bullies to get over themselves and tell the victims to do the same. If you're that hung up over getting bullied for being 120 lbs at 6'0" tall, maybe it is you that has an issue with your weight. At that point, the bullies are merely amplifying your discontent. You can either learn to accept it and let the comments slide off of you because they no longer hurt, or you can do something about it and gain weight.
One of these days I need to learn how to be more concise :-)