Paying attention vs. paying compliments

The mere fact that we have a 'comments' section under our diary log would indicate that we are inviting people to 'comment'.

If you dont want comments, dont have a friendsonly/public diary!! It's a simple matter of choice!

Don't invite comments and then get the hump cos someone isn't an expert!! That's not the point of this site. Your friends are NOT experts, they are just 'friends' trying to support and help you! And perhaps share their successes with you?? The site is called My Fitness PALS, not my fitness EXPERTS!! You'd pay a lot of money for that kind of expert advice! :bigsmile:

And I agree with the OP if you ARE going to comment then LOOK at the diary first!! :laugh:

I think there's probably an appropriate time and place for all comments. The problem is, on here it's hard to tell which is which. If I was doing something wrong that I thought was fundamentally good, and had it pointed out to me with info that I didn't already know, I'd be very grateful. However, I normally log all things, good, bad, or ugly. I had a rough week last week, and made some really bad choices that I felt really crappy about, but chose to log them anyway to keep myself accountable. If someone had come along, looked at my diary, and in an attempt to be helpful commented about how crappy it was, I'd have felt even worse. Unless you've got a close relationship with a friend on here, and know their eating habits and patterns, it's hard to judge when it's appropriate to comment on something they are doing wrong.

In your example I would ask you, "What's up?" and not bash you. When you make a series of good choices and suddenly change up, something's going on. Changing habits takes time and effort. Support requires interaction to know what is going on. Thanks for mentioning this.

Oh God not another debate on eating back your exercise calories please. There must have been at least 10 threads on that last week.

It's a very individual choice. I'm very active and have been for years. I have never been obese, have no emotional issues with food and merely need to lose a few pounds after an injury. In general I know what I'm doing.

The last thing I would need is some complete stranger with no expertise in nutrition nor sports telling me what I need to do. Anyone making smart remarks when I haven't eaten back every single exercise calorie (a hugely debated issue anyway), when this isn't how I work, would be instantly de-friended.

backinthenines, it's great that you know what you're doing and know what works for you, but a lot of people don't, and those people try and try and don't see progress and become frustrated. Defriending someone because they offered a suggestion on your open diary is silly and just means you aren't interested in having friends that get results with another method and are willing to share.

It's a pretty poor method of supporting each other to just defriend someone rather than respond in a way to attempt to educate them on why your goal and plan is a particular way and how it's producing results for you.

Do you have any thoughts to add about blindly complimenting people when they are obviously acting counter productive to their own individual weight loss? It seems natural in a social environment that people would be willing to share the secrets of their success with people that are not having success left to their own devices rather than just telling them "good job!" every time they make a status update.
*not to inflame you further if I'm misinterpreting what's happening here, my comments are not meant as an attack
**yes, I'm taking a gamble and speaking for everyone on this point even though it's possible that some people might not agree because it would give them a reason to have an argument, and I've been accused of liking to argue just for the sake of it