Why people are mean?

I think some people are mean because they feel negative about not doing the same positive actions achieved by others. Rather than deal with their own issues, they externalize it and look for reasons to justify their own behavior.
For example your friend about the muffin. It wasn't about you eating a bit of the muffin. For her, she was "shouting from the rooftops" because it justifies her not being able to control herself.
Don't let it get to you. 60 lbs is one hell of an accomplishment. I'm at 32 lbs down now and hope to be where you are in another 3 months.

Stand tall and be proud! you owe them nothing

I think it's best not to paint people with broad brushes.

Your friend at the party was possibly just excited about the special dessert she made and wanted people to enjoy it and tell her how amazing it was.

Friends who ridicule you do not seem like very good friends. This is what eyerolls and comments like "are you a four year old?" are for. And finding better friends.

But some people might be concerned that you aren't eating enough for your long term health. If you are concerned about the rumor you had a bite of a muffin, that is a troubling mindset. Eating an occasional pastry or treat is not a sin. You don't have to be afraid or ashamed of a few bites of muffin. Be confident in yourself. You may want to consider if counseling would help.

You're grown.
Your profile says you're 38 years old.

Stand strong & don't cave to peer pressure, which in & of itself is a very odd thing to have to deal if you're not a tween or teenager.

You don't have to justify anything you do. It's your body, your life and you can have a treat as you see fit. Stay above the fray.

Congratulations on your loss!

I have no idea what size 2-4 is but 60 pounds is a hell of a lot of weight to lose. I don't know if i'd call it gradual but i would call it excellent.

I think its great the way you've handled your peers. I don't know whether they are jealous or not? Are they overweight themselves? Yes? Then they are probably jealous but they may not be totally aware of what they are doing. But it doesn't matter. I'd say eat the darn thing and get back to doing your thing. Well eat it if you want to, don't if you don't.

I thought i'd tell you what i'd do because i also have been dieting 10.5 months now. And i haven't lost as much as you but i got pretty close to goal and now i'm just doing maintenance. I had a bit of a glitch in the last few days with some bingy behaviour and i learnt something that might be useful to you too. I'm not saying we are exactly the same but there may be something in common here.

Firstly, one of the key things with my plan for this year, was to quit sugar. Of course i stayed away from other junk foods but pizzas and the like aren't a problem for me anyway. Sugar on the other hand is a huge issue for me. So i quit. But the way i quit, i am allowed to eat sugar when its offered to me. So in the situations you found yourself in, i may have taken the offer and been pretty happy that the offer came up. I determined at some point early on in the year that situations like this were low risk for me, so long as i kept myself to one serve. I rejected offers for the first three months but after that i started accepting them. In the first six months, i think i accepted about one a month.

The thing is, although i liked the idea of quitting sugar forever, on some level, i felt it wasn't acceptable to never be able to eat it again. So i came up with some out clauses - some situations where i felt i would be able to handle some sugar but not go back to the sugar monster i'd been before. Since then i've figured out situations that are safe for me and some which are not so safe. And some of these things i've realised along the way. I didn't have all the answers at the beginning. In the beginning i just knew i had to quit sugar.

My latest realisation is that i think i've really done with the habit of being a sugar junkie. I've just had a few days of binging on nuts and cream and got over it. And during that time when i just wanted to eat non-stop, i didn't have a sugar craving and was not in the slightest bit tempted to go and buy a block of chocolate etc. I feel firm and committed as ever to my sugar free life. But i wasn't too happy about the binging. So i decided to go see my psychologist for a chat and i don't really know how but as usual it helped. I say i don't really know how because this time, i wasn't stressed but i had recognised my mood was down and this seemed closely linked to my problematic appetite.

So i'm trying to address my mood and focus on eating healthy as possible even if i need to eat more than is ideal for maintaining. there is a theory out there that if we are paying attention, this appetite will settle down after a little while. Today i haven't binged so i feel good. This suggests to me that my mood must be a little better and i think it is.

I have pushed at the boundaries of my rules a bit this year to try to see how far out i can stretch things and some situations i've realised are not safe for me. I'll come back to those.

Anyway back to other low risk situations.

So i don't bring sweets home. I don't cook sweets. And i don't buy them for myself. I rely on fruit, mostly fresh, for sweetness. I eat quite a lot of fresh fruit. I love it. And it satisfies the love of sweetness i have but doesn't trigger a binge or demand i eat more. I also add 2tsp of mixed seeds to my fruit salad sometimes + yoghurt breakfasts or desserts. I also love stewed fruit. I never add sugar to it except if its rhubarb where it is essential but then i don't put too much. So life at home is low risk because there's no sugar about. Also of course when i'm shopping I'm stay out of the sweets aisles, in recipe books i try not to spend time looking at the desserts. Just out of sight out of mind works.

I can accept offers of sweets if i'm out but only one serve and only once a day. Even if the serve is very small.

I can eat dessert at a restaurant if i'm there with other people - mainly because i don't go to restaurants very often.

I have discovered that buffet situations are high risk. I didn't give in when faced with them but it was somewhat painful to restrict myself to one serve so from now on, buffet or party situations will be no sweets at all and only savoury but as much as i want/need but preferably not too much high fat or junk food options.

Luckily i've managed it that i've had christmas food already this year. I've had my christmas pudding so when Christmas does come round i'm going to try to resist all the sweets then too. My father will be scoffing them around me but i shall try to resist. Instead, i shall be cooking up some wonderful other savoury stuff and eat to my hearts content on that. I might overeat for a few days but so long as i'm eating lots of vegetables i think things will settle down again soon afterwards. I will drink alcohol. Luckily i don't have to be around a lot of big family food events where the stuff is all around me all the time.

Next year i'm going on holiday to Japan. Luckily they are not a big sweets culture but they do have sweets and i want to try some of their traditional sweets. So i will. At this stage in my planning, i will be allowed maximum one per day and none of them would be typical western style sweets that i can get at home. To achieve that, i won't be able to buy a packet of anything. I will have to buy it buy the piece so chances are i won't eat it everyday. Mostly i will focus on savouring the savoury foods. I hear the food is good in Japan.

So some tricky situations i've experimented with this year.
Dried fruit
Cooking sugar free desserts
buffets
and feeling bingy.

When i feel bingy now i will just go binge on something that won't trigger an ongoing problem and try to resume eating my vegetables and salads as normal. Also see my psychologist. It helps because if i'm feeling bingy, it probably means my mood is low or i'm stressed.

Dried fruit is fine but not on a regular basis. It is best part of a recipe and is not for snacking. I might have a dried fig or a dried date with part of a meal but that's got to be it.

I had a few successful attempts with high fat sugar free desserts but the last one i made which included nuts, dates and lots of butter, i ate the whole thing in half a day. So then i decided i can't do sugar free desserts after all.

One time i cooked someone from work a birthday cake. I knew i was really pushing my boundaries with that. Of course i had a few tastes as i went along but i was feeling fairly strong and held it together. Though i did recognise this wasn't something i could afford to do because i could see that sooner or later i would succumb to temptation and do something i regret. That said, the cake was excellent and everyone at worked loved it. It was over the top though. And i did relish my one serve at work the next day.

So for the most part, i don't eat sweets at all. I never buy them. And this i plan to try to do for the rest of my life. In the meanwhile, its important for me to make the food i am allowed to eat to be delicious and really healthy with a lot of vegetables. I find vegetables really healing. But i rarely eat them simply steamed or boiled. I make really nice dishes with my vegies inspired by cuisines from around the world. And that is how i've learnt to love eating them so much.

"I'll have a bite later, I'm not very hungry"
"Oh I don't like $ingredient so I'll pass but thank you"
or just plain
"No thank you" (though I have a coworker this does not work on and he will continually go on and on and on about some food he thinks I should eat--despite also not shutting up about one day a YEAR ago when I ate two kolaches for breakfast that he brought for the team... some people are just jerks)

When people just go on about it, either ignore it or if you're feeling snarky and it's otherwise not going to be someone who plays much role in your life at work or home, just say "hey what's it to you, anyway? Why is choosing what I do and don't eat a big deal to you, person who is in no way invested in my life?" Tell them to mind their own dang business.

These people are bucket crabs. If you succeed, look great, and have done very well at weight loss, it means that they don't HAVE to be fat anymore if they choose to follow the same path, and that's HARD and not doing it is easier, and it's easier not to think about it if they can get you to go back to a version of yourself they are more comfortable with (because they don't have to think about how hard they're failing). And screw that! You're the only one that needs to be comfy with you.

As for confronting your friend, just tell her you don't appreciate her childish behavior. If she's making fun, she honestly doesn't sound like a great friend. Maybe she needs to see that.

Maybe you are just finding insult where none was intended. Try to be positive and not worry about what others think and say. I am 43 and feel that I don't worry what others may think and I can do my own thing.

Seriously? Don't let them get to you. This is your journey/mission, not theirs. "Haters gonna' hate." Just let it roll off your (shrinking) back.

you do what you want to and I will do what I want to. (Tell them this!) I have been taking this advice in other areas of my life also, people not minding their own business but enjoy minding mine.