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UNF*CK YOUR WEIGHT LOSS

Other People’s Comments About Your Weight Loss

by | Jul 8, 2023

I wanted to talk to you today about other people. No, it’s not one of those, let’s talk about everybody. Not really. 

It’s about when other people comment on; 

  • Your weight, 
  • Your body,
  • Your weight loss,
  • Your efforts, 
  • What you’re wearing, 
  • How your body looks, 
  • How much weight you’ve lost? 
  • Are you trying to lose more? 
  • When will you stop? 
  • What kind of diet? 
  • What kind of program?
  • What do you eat? 
  • How much do you eat? 
  • When do you eat? 
  • Can you eat this? 
  • When does the diet end? 

All of that.

If this seems familiar to you, you’re not alone. 

I just want to normalize that all the people out there will comment. It’s not because;

  • They’re mean, 
  • They suck, 
  • They don’t know better, 
  • They’re rude,
  • They’re intrusive,
  • They’re being nosy,

or maybe they are. Maybe they are all of those things. And that is okay, too. 

We cannot control other people. 

We cannot. As much as we want to. As much as we think that person shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t think that, shouldn’t talk to me, shouldn’t ask me questions. It’s gonna happen. 

I just want to say, I’ve struggled with this, and I created boundaries for myself around it. In many ways, when I found that people would ask me, What are you eating? What else are you eating? What are you doing? You know, tell me all the things. I found it annoying, kind of in the same way. Almost like I can’t believe you’d even ask. 

It’s like if I went to the bathroom. You saw me go to the bathroom. You saw me shut the door. You see me come out of the bathroom. And then you ask me all the questions. What did you do in there? What else did you do in there? What was it? Like? How much toilet paper? That’s what it felt like to me. It felt inappropriate. I realized over time, that’s probably just my dramatic brain being extreme and making this a big problem. 

Ultimately, it is about what we make it mean.

I will prove this to you. We probably have different reactions based on who is asking us. If you are in the process of losing weight and your mom says something to you. How much more weight are you going to lose? What are you doing? When does this diet end? Your face looks so thin. You should eat something. It might feel different. 

Then when your friend at work says something or when a stranger, an acquaintance at the gym says hey, I noticed you’ve lost weight, great job. Can ask what you’re doing right? You just might feel different. We make it mean different things based on the person. That is okay, too. 

I want you to know, people are going to do people things. They are. The only thing that we can do is just manage our minds around it. We could yell at them. We could tell them to f*ck off. Tell them to mind our own business. We could be really angry and think about it and dwell on it and ruminate over it. Or we could just let it go. Because we’re creating our own suffering when we make a big deal of what other people say to us, and people are going to say things. 

Thankfully, most people don’t. I mean your mom might also do this while you look a little puffy, you’ll look a little tired. You’ll look like you’re getting old. You look like you’ve gained some weight. You look like those clothes don’t fit. Maybe mom does that. But luckily most other people don’t. I’m not saying you have a mom problem. You might, or a sister problem or a best friend problem. This is just part of navigating weight loss.

This is something that does come up and we can let it derail us and make it mean you know, oh geez, this isn’t worth the hassle. I don’t want anybody to notice. I don’t want people to comment on my body. So you know what? I’m gonna go back to eating. 

This is a form of self sabotage, this is a way that we get to protect ourselves by covering ourselves in extra weight. If I am not getting leaner or thinner or skinnier, and people don’t notice and don’t want to talk to me and don’t want to ask me a million questions, now I am safe. Now it is quiet. Now people will leave me alone, and I don’t feel so vulnerable. 

If you want to lose weight and keep it off, we want to expect this. 

Anticipate that people are going to say things. People will do people things, whether it’s right or wrong. If it makes you feel good, if it makes you feel shitty. Again, it’s what we make it mean. 

We can dwell on it, we can create a lot of drama and suffering around it. Or we can just say, you know, what, people do people things. We can also create boundaries. If it is an issue where it is somebody who you cannot avoid, if it is your mom or your dad or brother or sister, grandmother, whomever it is, you might want to say, “You know what, I appreciate that you’ve noticed that I’ve lost weight. I want to let you know that I just don’t really want to talk about it. Thank you for asking.” I know. That’s a boundary. 

The boundaries we set are for us. It is for us to feel comfortable in a relationship and in our own life. It is not about being punitive or to hurt someone’s feelings or to tell them they’re wrong or to tell them they can’t do something. It’s just letting them know, hey, when it comes to talking about me, or my weight loss, or my body or what it looks like, I’m just not comfortable doing that.  I appreciate you understanding that. End of sentence. 

Not I’m sorry. Not anything else. That takes practice. The only other thing you could do is just try to avoid it. If it is somebody in your family, then you can’t avoid it forever. 

I think it is something to practice. 

You could practice it:

  • In the mirror, 
  • In writing, 
  • By saying it out loud, 
  • By saying it into a tape recorder, 
  • By saying it into the voice notes in your phone.

Just practicing saying, “hey, I really appreciate you noticed I lost weight. I am working on it. Thank you very much. But I don’t feel really comfortable discussing all of the details right now.” The end. That’s that.

If they don’t like that, you can simply get up and walk away or change the topic. You don’t have to make it mean that there’s something wrong with you or that weight loss is dangerous. It is not safe to lose weight, and that it is better and easier to gain the weight back. People will have comments. 

It’s always interesting. I can remember two things in the last six, seven months. 

I believe it was a conversation in my free group, Food Fitness Fat Loss for Real Life. It was about the scale and an acquaintance of mine said something to me like, of course you don’t use the scale because you’re skinny. I was like, what? Okay. I think it was kind of a backhanded compliment. That is how I took it. I kind of sat with it for a little while and I said, I think what’s happened for me, how I’ve changed my relationship with food, weight loss, and the scale, is I don’t put a lot of stock into it. I don’t use the scale because it’s not a weight loss tool for me, and that was that.

Not long after, there’s one neighborhood I walk in. It’s the only neighborhood I could walk in. I didn’t realize when I bought my house. I live on kind of a cut through the street with no sidewalks. It’s not like I have a lot of neighborhoods to walk in. There is one little development off of my street. I take two or three minutes to walk over there. Try not to get hit by a car. I walk in this development all the time. I’ve lived here since 2016, so I’ve been through that neighborhood many times. It was a Saturday. I’m walking by a house and a woman comes down the driveway. She’s walking down the driveway and I say hi. I don’t know her. I’ve never seen her before in my entire life. She said oh hey, you’re looking so skinny.  I was like, huh, I don’t know this person. I said, Oh, thanks. That’s a good thing,es? She said, Oh, yeah, I really gotta get back to walking. 

At first I was like, I don’t know what is happening here. I don’t know this person, but they knew me. They must have seen me all the time, over the course of many years. Maybe they thought I was somebody else, I have no idea. 

Honestly, she didn’t mean anything by it. She was a little bit older than me. Back in the day, I think in the 70s, 80s, and probably 90s, all of us used the word skinny to indicate you look lean or thin. Skinny is an interesting word. 

In any case, it was interesting what it did in my brain. I’m like, what is happening? Am I skinny? What do you know? What is going on here? I just give you those examples to let you know that whether you know someone or not, people are gonna say things. They’re not really thinking about it. I think the woman who saw me walking probably meant to say, you look like you’re in great shape. I need to get in shape. I need to start walking again. That’s probably what she meant. Because she’s older than me, maybe she’s in her 60s, she was kind of mom ish. She’s told me I look skinny. 

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that if this is happening, or has happened before, it is going to happen again. Unless you lock yourself in your house and you never leave. You just live in a virtual world and all of your zoom calls you do you wear with a big baggy sweater so no one can see you.

I don’t want you to live like that. That’s not fun. And I don’t want you to be afraid of people asking you questions. I just want you to be prepared that it could happen and to know it’s not about you. It’s not a bad thing. You don’t have to make it mean anything.

NOTES IN ANCHOR

“You’ve lost weight!”

“Don’t you think you should probably lose a little weight?”

“Those pants are looking a little snug.”

Ever heard any of these things from someone you care about?

People do people-y things. I think we can all agree that they are always going to talk. And sometimes they are even going to talk about your appearance. This is especially true for those who are close to us. They might have lots of comments about your weight, your body, your weight loss, your efforts, what you’re wearing, or how your body looks.

But you do not have to let their comments affect you. If their comments about your weight loss bother you, then you need to create boundaries around the topic. Let’s talk about how to do just that in episode 55 of the Unf*ck Your Weight Loss Podcast now!

ABOUT THE HOST

Bonnie Lefrak is a Life & Body Transformation Expert and Founder of Selfmade, a program designed to help you tackle the physical aspects of health and weight loss as well as the beliefs and thoughts that drive our habits and behaviors. It is her goal to help women create certainty in their own lives, their own results, and their own abilities.

Weight loss is not about the one “right” diet – it is about MUCH more than that. Weight loss is not about the one “right” workout. Weight loss is not about being positive and putting a big smile on.

Weight loss is about FEELINGS. All of them. Not trying to bury them or hide from them but knowing and allowing the full human experience. Weight loss is not about grinding hustling and will powering your way to some end line. Transformation (when done well) is done from the inside out.

By addressing both the physical and mental aspects of dieting and weight loss, she has coached thousands of women ages 30-55+ from all over and helped them ditch the mindsets that are holding them back, achieve permanent weight loss, and get the bangin’ body of their dreams.

Bonnie is an expert at Demystifying weight loss. She helps you u****k your diet brain. She is on a mission to help women love themselves, to find PEACE in the process of losing weight, taking care of themselves, and leveraging the power they do have to become who and want they want right now.

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UNF*UCK YOUR WEIGHT LOSS

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