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    Chrissy Metz Opens Up About Her Abusive Stepfather And His Cruel Weigh-Ins

    "My body seemed to offend him."

    In a new issue of People magazine, Chrissy Metz shared heartbreaking passages from her upcoming memoir, This Is Me, about growing up with a physically and mentally abusive stepfather.

    Chrissy was only eight years old when her father left, leaving her mom to raise Chrissy and her siblings on her own. Denise eventually met and married Chrissy's stepfather, a man named Trigger. It didn't take long for the mistreatment to begin.

    "My body seemed to offend him, but he couldn’t help but stare, especially when I was eating. He joked about putting a lock on the refrigerator."

    "We had lived with a lack of food for so long that when it was there, I felt like I had to eat it before it disappeared. Food was my only happiness."

    The This Is Us star remembers sneaking food in the middle of the night and trying to eat it as fast as she could, so no one could watch her eat.

    Although she tried to hide her cravings, Chrissy could not hide her weight...which seemed to anger her stepfather more. That's when the physical abuse began.

    "I don’t remember why Trigger hit me the first time. He never punched my face. Just my body, the thing that offended him so much."

    "He shoved me, slapped me, punched my arm. He would hit me if he thought I looked at him wrong. I remember being on the kitchen floor begging to know what I did."

    The abuse didn't stop there. At age 14, Trigger used to force Chrissy on a scale to monitor her weight and embarrass her.

    "He’d get the scale from the bathroom and clang it hard on the kitchen floor. ‘Well, get on the damn thing!’ Trigger would yell. ‘This is what you need to know.’”

    The 37-year-old Florida native said her stepfather would deliberately sit in a chair right next to the scale and yell out "Good God almighty!" each time she stepped on.

    But despite the abuse, Chrissy still managed to save some love in her heart for Trigger. Although he hurt her, Trigger was the only father-figure she ever really knew and he provided for their family.

    "We have a relationship now,” says Metz. “I do love him and I do care about him."

    To read more passages from her book in the latest issue of People magazine, click here. And look out for Chrissy Metz's memoir, on sale March 27.