I took an approach to lose weight over many years and finally had success. This experience morphed into focusing on being strong and better nutrition. As I became successful, it attracted some attention. Not everyone around you is going to like the new role you are now playing in their life, in their mind. This can result in some difficult conversations, changes in relationships and sometimes walking away from relationships.

Your health and how you feel are not worth sacrificing. You don’t need to explain anything. Let them feel whatever they are feeling. You can not control that anyway. You can encourage them and invite them to workout with you.

Ignore childish negativity. Include, if you think there is a chance for receptivity.

Many occasions I got positive remarks about my body from people. I would never encourage taking any of this personal, even positive. I have no problem responding with, ‘Thank you.’ It took a lot of work after all.

Strangely enough, some adults will actually make fun of you and I did experience this many times. This is extremely childish and should just be ignored.

I also got some projection. People may see you losing weight and make a lot of assumptions. I did get some negativity from women. ‘Some’ feels like a lot in the moment. Women that have worked through that issue do not go around making body size a thing to judge others for, talk about, feel threatened by and use as a reason to be jealous or not like someone. Or a reason that they can not also get what they want.

Girls just wanna have fun. I have been the jealous one and the culprit just grabbed me by the hands and pulled me on the dance floor.

I certainly wasn’t the smallest person but I was not used to that kind of attention. When you can go to a safe home at the end of the day, this can be dealt with, but when you have an ongoing safety issue, it starts to feel like being thinner is coming at a cost.

I don’t have an answer to that, except to create safety at home and community.

Focus on the friends that don’t make it an issue. Personally, I don’t want people around me to feel like their weight is tied to their worth so I don’t even mention it if they lose weight.

I am certainly not a good example of how to deal with it but I have found trying to defuse the negativity with inclusion usually works. Girls just wanna have fun. I have been the jealous one and the culprit just grabbed me by the hands and pulled me on the dance floor. I felt no ill intent from her and was able to return the good deed when I saw that I was the culprit in the ongoing game with other women. Girls really do want to have fun and inclusion is the answer.

See also: http://thedowellbewell.com/how-not-being-perfect-can-help-you-and-when/