I was savagely fat-shamed at the gym because my body didn’t match my ‘pretty face’ – my worst nightmare came true
A WOMAN has revealed her “worst gym nightmare” came true when she was fat-shamed WHILE working out.
Sofia has been working on strength training with her personal trainer at the gym in Dubai, where she lives.
But when she went to work out without her trainer recently, she was approached by another trainer who she always sees there.
The woman asked her what nationality she was, because she “had a friend who looks exactly like me”.
When Sofia told her she was Russian-Canadian, the trainer showed her a picture of her friend and things were very pally between the pair.
But things took a turn when Sofia started doing bicep curls as part of her arm workout regime and the woman told her she should be doing more “functional training”.
“‘Some cardio movements, some compound movements because you’re just doing bicep curls and you’re just building muscle, but in reality you actually need to lose weight‘,” Sofia recalled her saying in a video on her TikTok page.
“And then she said, ‘You know, people in Dubai pay attention more to the body than to the face, and you have a beautiful face, all you need to do is just lose some weight’.
“She said that she tells her friend this all the time too because her friend is also curvier, I could tell by the picture she showed me, and she’s like, ‘I tell her this all the time too, she has such a pretty face, but she just needs to lose a little bit of weight’.”
Sofia admitted she was left stunned by the fat-shaming comment, as she said: “I’ve never heard somebody say more wrong things to me in my life.
“And the audacity that she has – she sees me at the gym all the time, I’m with my trainer, sometimes I’m without.
“She can see that I’m progressing in my weights and she’s a trainer, and she’s a woman!
“The audacity that some people have is truly baffling to me.
“Because I’m literally at the gym, working out, exercising, doing whatever that needs to be done to be healthy, and she’s telling me that it’s not enough and I should change up my workouts to lose weight!”
Sofia also credited her own trainer for pushing her “enough while being nice to” her, adding that she’s had trainers in the past whose sole aim is to get her to lose weight.
“She also doesn’t know I’m in a calorie deficit,” Sofia continued.
“Who the f**k is she to tell me what I need to do at the gym?
“Obviously I’m shocked”.
She continued to say that because she’s confident in herself, she was able to move past the embarrassing encounter.
But she urged other curvier women who might find themselves in similar situations to remember their own worth and not take any notice of what anyone else says.
“I cannot believe she said that to me!” Sofia added in her video caption.
“In moments like these I’m reminded of how blessed I am to be confident.”
Other people weighed in on the nightmare encounter in comments on the video, with many sharing similar stories of their own.
“One time I told a fitness manager that I had an eating disorder in the past and he said ‘great so you know how to count calories’,” one wrote.
To which Sofia replied: “OMG i’m so sorry wtf!”
“A trainer told me ‘you really need to lose weight’ 3 months postpartum,” another admitted.
As a third said: “Once in a yoga class none showed up but me so the instructor turned it into cardio class because ‘I need it’.”