Oooh don’t lose any more. You don’t want to lose any more. You’ve lost enough.

[MutherTrucker]

Fuck off fuck off.
Why do people do this?
Colleague yesterday unsolicited opinion on my weight loss.
I explained I was just aiming for a healthy BMI. It’s currently still in the overweight category.

Had to tell them to mind their own business in the end.
Why do people do this? Is it just that we look thinner if they’re used to is bigger? Is it genuine concern as colleague is a nice person.

Is the colleague fat?

This has happened to me, several times. My conclusion is that people are really really bad at judging visually whether someone is overweight or not. I am just into the healthy BMI range, by a tiny fraction so BMI of 24.9 or so. My lovely friend the other day described me as "lovely and slim" and expressed surprise when I said that I still wanted to lose up to a stone in order to get well into the healthy BMI range.

I dress in things that flatter my shape now, and I think that adds to the confusion. Plus, the majority of the UK population is overweight or obese, so being at the lower end of overweight or at the top of the healthy range is already smaller than the majority of the population.

Ah, the don’t you go getting all skinny and fabulous looking dig.
Or maybe it’s the please don’t be slimmer than me dig.
Or a dammit you’re not a fatso anymore, dig.

I love being healthy. I love being confident in my clothes and I especially love knowing it pisses some people off.

Enjoy your fabulousness OP and let the fuckers choke on their jealousy.

I had these comments off a few people when I was still a size 16 and very much overweight, it's bizarre. I started at size 22 and I don't think anyone had really noticed the loss up till that point.

I just ignored them, the ideal suggested BMI weight for height was 8st 7 ish and 9st felt bit too thin for my liking and very hard to maintain so floated around the 9.5-10st a size 10-12 and didn't have loads of people commenting that I was skeletal & needed to gain weight then.

IMO it’s this..

I think people can get very triggered by rapid weight loss in someone they know.

Sometimes it's because they're envious, or just prefer you to be fatter than them.

But sometimes I think it's genuine concern. Rapid weight loss has only been "normal" for a few years. Up until then, we had literal millenia of rapid weight loss meaning poor health, grief, depression, basically a sign of something bad. (Obviously there was such a thing as crash dieting, but for the majority of people it wouldn't really give the big, sustained long-term losses that WLI can.) People's brains are still catching up. They're used to seeing you at one size, and they kind of automatically get worried if they see you "wasting away," even if your new size is healthier and you actually still have a fair bit to lose. It's not really logical but it's a knee-jerk reaction.

It's just because you look different. It pings wrong. If you changed more slowly nobody would even notice, day to day.

When I went on WLI my friend was convinced I'd lied to get them. She was genuinely surprised when I showed her the scales.

And then she was concerned I'd lost too much. I was just back into my "medium" clothes. I wasn't even fitting into my thin trousers! She knew me when I was thinner.

She's a proper friend and she wasn't being nasty. She never expressed this concern when I was those weights in the past, because they are actually fine. It's just that we think we can judge by looking and we can't. We really can't.

Interesting that some people have assumed that the weight loss was rapid. Mine has taken almost 2 years to come off, just consistently losing weight each week. Maybe that’s considered rapid but it doesn’t seem like it to me.

Ive reached a healthy weight, bmi 21.5 and maintaining. Silly woman at work who I dont really like said these sort of things. . I like to look them in the face and say I have another 2 stone to go.

Obviously this would make me very ill and look terrible, but its fun watching them when you say it.

Why do people do this? probably because they were happy thinking 'at least I'm not as fat as Mia'. Now you are slim, they feel fat and envious.

I don’t think it’s jealousy or anything like that, I think it’s more because when people loose so much weight it’s get to a point where it ages them. Obviously it’s no ones business to be commenting on someone else’s weight loss though

It’s not this as my dad said it too me in the run up to my wedding.

Also some people look better at certain weights, for some it might be underweight, others middle BMI, some top BMI/cusp of overweight. Depends on face & body bone structure.

I wondered when we’d get the “aging” comments starting. Always great to hear that although I’m now a healthy weight I still must look bad because now I’ve excessively “aged” myself.

My friend who commented with surprise when I said I wanted to lose another stone, do you think she was actually thinking that I would end up looking so wizened that I might be mistaken for a raisin?

I think often it’s more about their own insecurities than you. Shame they just can’t keep their thoughts to themselves or be pleasant if they must say something. And some people just have to have an opinion on everything.

It doesn't age them though does it? What do you actually mean? It adds years to their life. It gives them all the health advantages of a slimmer person. Do you mean it makes them look slimmer in the face? This is true, but it's a good thing as a reflection of their health improvement. Surely no one would sacrifice health for prettiness.

100% this. Well said.

When I lost 35kg it was always, always the unhealthy fat lard arses, including members of my own family, who were saying ‘you’ve lost enough weight’, ‘don’t lose any more’, or repeatedly trying to persuade me to eat crap.

The slim, fit, healthy people were inevitably supportive. ‘Well done you’ ‘Fancy going for a run / hill walk / bike ride?’ etc etc.

When some women over a certain age loose a lot of weight it can make them look older than they actually are. Usually when they loose to much. You might not agree but I know several women and thought that about them (I’d never voice that for obvious reasons!)
Obviously it is more important to be healthy but I don’t think we can say no one would sacrifice their health for prettiness

Google says that the average BMI of both men and women in the UK is 27.6 which is in the middle of the overweight category. That might partially explain why people are unsure about what a healthy body weight looks like.

When I had got down from BMI 62.5 to BMI 32 one of my neighbours stopped me in the street to tell me that I was "taking it too far" and was starting to look gaunt and ill, and must stop dieting immediately.

When I said my BMI was still well into the obese range she bridled and wanted to know who had been filling my head with nonsense! I tried to explain that BMI is a mathematical calculation that isn't the least bit subjective, just a tool for evaluating body mass in a standardised way. Don't think it went in. So then I showed her that the dress I was wearing was very tight and it was a size 22, and asked what size her top was, knowing full well that she wears a size 10/12. She harrumphed a bit then, and told me to be careful.

Afterwards I wondered if it was the way my face was sagging into folds that made me look "gaunt". That was the stage where I'd lost a lot of padding and my old skin wasn't pinging back the way it used to do after weight loss. With the biggest pads of fat gone from my cheeks and neck I was left looking like an unholy cross between Sid James and a grumpy bulldog.

Just want to reassure the older women here that though it is true your skin takes longer to adjust it does gradually go back to fitting normally.

It just takes a lot longer and you have to put up with having creases and jowls on your face, a neck like a melted candle, shar pei puppy skin folds on your back and baggy wrinkled skin above your knees and elbows, but it does improve gradually.

Two years after their first appearance all the shar pei folds are gone, along with most of the creases and jowls on my face which now looks a lot younger (and has a jawline).

I did sometimes wonder if I'd be left with a size 36 skin hanging from a size 12 frame because of my age. So thought I'd post to reassure anyone else wondering the same thing that the hanging folds of empty skin are temporary, and it isn't worth having painful surgery to cut them off when you could just wait 24 months.

Edited to add I'll be 69 this summer.

One of my colleagues did this when I lost weight a few years ago. She was my height, not overweight but not tiny, about a size 12. When I got to a similar size to her she kept telling me I'd gone far enough and not to lose any more. Most bizarre

Sometimes it is jealousy but also when people lose weight, particularly beyond a certain age, it can cause changes around the face and neck (irrespective of the method or reason for the weight loss).

These can, even subconsciously, be perceived by others as looking unwell, a bit tired or older.

Where did the op say it was rapid?

I think people have lost sight of what a healthy body looks like as so many people are overweight.

It doesn’t age them though, does it, I know we like to peddle that shit, but we all know it makes them look younger, going under weight can be ageing but a healthy weight is more youthful. And over weight is terribly ageing, the matronly bust and big belly, it’s as ageing as it gets.

🤷🏻‍♀️