"You don't need to lose any more weight!"

sarah2954

Does any one else get this? It's so irritating. I think people are trying to be nice when they say it, but how do you respond? In my profile pic (taken today) I'm 156. I was 110 (5'3") previously, and that's where I want to be. When I tell people that (when they ask) they say "you shouldn't lose that much more" or "you look fine now" or "you'll be too skinny". Do you get this and how do you handle it?

Polly758

It's because people think that slender people are just that way naturally-- that belief excuses them from doing the work to get slender themselves. So when they see someone else doing the work, they get guilty, and then annoyed. Example:

I just had a body fat analysis done at work at the employee benefits fair today, just out of curiosity. So I'm looking at the little form they give me with the ranges for males and females and I was really surprised that males can have such lower percentages! I walk over to a coworker's desk to chat about it and she gets ALL DEFENSIVE. First of all that my body fat is in the healthy range, she got annoyed about that, but I didn't go there to brag, she asked. Second that males have more muscles and they burn more fat and they are just skinny skin bones, and she was severely annoyed about how unfair it all is. I was trying to say that well yeah, I forgot about that, how males have more testosterone so they tend to have more muscles naturally, which changes the percentage of fat, and metabolism is based on a lot of different factors, but she really was not listening. It is just all so unfair to her.

My point is, some people really have talked themselves out of a healthy lifestyle because of things that are supposedly out of their control. My coworker seems to tell herself, "I'm female, I'm 50, it's literally impossible, NOT FAIR, oh well at least everyone else is a little chubby like me." And then someone like me comes along, yeah I'm younger, but I also put effort into my fitness, and her view of reality is challenged! She starts to hear things that sound a lot like "it's your own fault you're fat" and she has to insist that it's all out of her control, it's so easy for everyone else to be slender and healthy but she's special and different and it's not her fault. Then she sees other people putting in the effort that she KNOWS FULL WELL she should, but she has other priorities. And fine, that's her choice, but my efforts are my choices too.

If she really wanted it, she would put in the effort, and then it's only a matter of time. That's why I'm slender and fit, because I put in effort-- as much effort as necessary! And if the amount of work you're willing to do isn't enough to give you the results you want, then either 1. change your efforts or 2. change your goals. Otherwise you'll be stuck in this perpetual cycle of not doing enough work and complaining that it's not working.

I'm not trying to be a blaming blamer of fat people, I am only talking about people who are not trying hard enough because of their own excuses.