I have lost weight & started taking care of myself and I have lost every friend I ever had!

[dinkydolphin]

In January I decided I was going to change my lifestyle for the better.
Starting January first I started doing things to make MYSELF happy. I lost a stone, started wearing makeup, bought nicer clothes, started getting my nails and hair done and wore makeup regularly. On top of this I started socialising more with my partner and together we went out more and over all and generally I was a lot more confident in my skin.
However, as of last night I have lost some of my closest friends. Women who I knew since high school. Many of them have been trying to lose weight for a while or I guess were used to be looking different but, my last original friend last night told me I just wasn't myself anymore.

I am obviously going to keep on the track that boosts my confidence but, it's been very very sad losing good friends.

What.is MLM?

What are you milking? What discussion did you have about outfits? Were you trying to sell her anything?

I had a friend who lost 3 stone. She went on a strict diet and exercise regime, all of this was documented on FB. It was great, we were all pleased for her and she did look more confident and fabulous in all the dresses she was 'over posing' in every. single. day.

She reached her goal and by god, she picked at everything we ate or did. The final straw for me was when she started lecturing her sister who was also 3 stone overweight and really struggled to diet. Her poor sister would be eating something and the 'friend' would lecture her on how many calories was in that meal and how she too could lose weight if she just tried harder

I am not suggesting this is you, just another personality trait that comes with lifestyle changes

OP you really need to answer the MLM question, it's very relevant.

I'd be inclined to think if it's all your friends, the problem is more likely to be you rather than them.

If you're involved in a MLM then the problem is definitely you!

Theres more to this, well done on the weight loss and all that but 1 stone really isn’t a lot .

Line @pepperpot99 what's MLM?

*like

Even if you’ve been a diet/ lifestyle bore, we’re 4 months into the year. To be dropped by long time friends over something so trivial and in such a short time says they weren’t good friends to begin with.
Assuming you had been preachy, I would tell any half decent friend to turn it down a notch, not drop them like a hot potato.
Just carry on what your doing and hopefully some better friends will come along for you soon.

It sounds very very odd to have an absolutely fine conversation with someone - and then 17 minutes later get a text about how you aren't the same person anymore and you don’t have the same friendship.

Is it possible that you said something during that phonecall that’s been badly misinterpreted by your friend?

Congratulations on your weight loss but I too don't think it can be just that.

I'm 5ft tall and lost 1st 7lb recently and I'm now slimmish, I look better, but I still look like me. I still am me but just able to wear a much wider range of clothes than 4 months ago. No friends have changed towards me or commented beyond the "You look really well/fantastic!" stuff that you often get anyway.
I do think that you must have been banging on about it more than you realise, it is really hard not to with any life change. Some people become wedding or pregnancy bores, some become vegetarian/vegan bores (my daughter was a teeny bit guilty), some people become diet or fitness bores.
I think diet and fitness are particularly potent triggers because they do take a lot of mental capacity initially and it's actually helpful to become a bit obsessed. Then you are rightly so chuffed when you lose weight/can run 5k - whatever.
However it is quite boring to hear about and what's worse, can easily veer towards smug or critical - if at a lunch you comment - "I can't believe that last year I'd have polished this off AND had a pudding!" type comments, or evangelising about how it's only now you realise how crap sugar was making you feel, - particularly if you make these comments when other people are talking about being knackered or hoovering their lemon meringue.
If you ARE evangelising about any MLM type thing like coffee/aloe/shakes, then yes, everyone will hate you I'm afraid.

MLM = Multi-level marketing. The new name for pyramid selling.

Multi level marketing eg selling products and being evangelical about them

MLM is Multi Level Marketing. Stuff like Juice Plus, Forever Living etc.

People tend to lose their personalities and hound their friends for orders to make money, hence why they usually lose all their friends!

"We discussed outfits..."

Tell us more about that part of your conversation? Would you have discussed outfits before you had your lifestyle overhaul?

They weren't your friends, OP.

Sometimes when our interests change we drift apart.

For instance (not saying you did but) if one of my friends suddenly became very interested in fitness and appearance, that would constitute a change of "wavelength" and might gradually eat into the stuff we share, and this is one way relationships can fizzle out, not sharing so much.

Well they were never really friends were they. I lots four stone with Slimming World when I joined with a friend. The weight fell off me faster than her's did. I kept telling her it was not a race, I was just pleased to support her.

When I was a stone away from target she start getting snippy about how awful my face was looking. I should stop now etc. I kept going to my goal and seriously I looked and felt so much better. We don't see much of each other now.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing

Basically, you work for yourself (work without pay) by buying the company’s products to sell to all your friends (who then end up hiding from you.) The gap between what you pay and what you can charge is such that the only way to actually make any money is to convince your friends to become ‘sellers’ too as you then get a % of their sales as you signed them up. Then they convince their friends to sell. This goes on and on, with a tiny number of people at the very top of the suspiciously pyramid shaped organisation who actually make some money supported by layers of sellers below them who alienate their friends and families for a garage full of unsold products and very little else to show for it.

OP's silence on the MLM question is telling. Come on, OP, have you started to see your former friends merely as people you can sell stuff to??

*A good friend of mine has lost some weight, she looks good and is pleased but by God do I know about it. We had a weekend break and the constant hand wringing ‘oh I’m going to be good today, I feel gross I ate that’ and ‘oh I shouldn’t have eaten that cake!’ Narrative was beyond tedious. The demonising of foods, or herself, and by proxy of everyone else got quite intense.

I’ve done the dieting, and you do have to embrace it to stick to it, but it’s much like any other habit/hobby, it can consume you whole to the point of no longer being recognisable as the friend they knew and loved.*

This in spades. I've had a couple of friends do this. I fully understand being proud of your achievements as I've lost weight myself but I kept the gloating/droning on about food/calories/exercise for my husband who had no choice liked to listen about it! It just becomes exhausting being around people who won't stop talking about food in a negative way and I'm very aware of it myself. I'd hate to be that friend going on about how much better I feel about myself and how amazing I am etc etc leaving other people feeling shit.

Whether we like it or not, people compare themselves. It's an annoying, but innate, human trait. Imagine you were paupers and you had a friend constantly going on about how much money they had and all the great stuff they were buying... of course you wouldn't want to hang around too long as you'd feel shite about yourself every time you saw them!

get so evangelical about it that they literally talk about nothing else

This. All you wrote about was how much you've changed and then wonder why they may have distanced themselves.

My first thought was MLM too.. it screams from the first post!

Surely if they’re a MLM bot they’ll be too busy posting on social media about how when crabs are put in a bucket and one tries to climb out the others try to drag it back down #hatersgonnahate.

How do you know when you have lost a friend, particularly the last one?

Do they tell you?

It’s definitely MLM 😂