How do you deal with family members making negative comments about your weight loss?

I've been losing weight, getting leaner, and building muscle, and lately I've been dealing with a lot of unsolicited comments about my body, mostly from family members.

For context, I'm 5'8" and around 140 lbs, so I'm well within a healthy weight range. I strength train regularly, focus on nutrition, and genuinely feel better than I have in years.

Before losing weight, I was experiencing a lot of physical discomfort, including ankle and foot pain, pretty rough health markers, sleep apnea, acid reflux, could barely walk without being out of breath and generally didn't feel great in my body. Since making these changes, I feel incredible. I'm stronger, more comfortable physically, and even my health markers have been improving.

But as my weight loss has become more noticeable, I've started getting comments like, "Oh gosh, you're looking skinny," "You're getting too skinny," or "Are you sure you should be losing more weight?" I'm not really losing actual weight anymore but I am leaning out.

It's not everyone, but it's been the majority of my family members, and I'm finding it increasingly frustrating.

It actually got to the point where I started questioning myself and went for a medical evaluation just to make sure everything was okay. I've been afraid of getting too lean and sickly so I wante to check in on myself. Everything came back fine, and I'm healthy. Part of me feels ridiculous for having let other people's comments make me doubt myself when I genuinely feel so good.

I understand that people are accustomed to seeing me at a certain size, and maybe seeing me look noticeably different takes some getting used to. I also recognize that some of these comments might come from genuine concern rather than bad intentions. It's just weird for me because this is all very new.

For those who have experienced something similar, especially with family, how do you handle it? Do you explain to them that you feel fine? Do you address the comments directly, set boundaries, or learn to ignore them? And how do you stop other people's perceptions of your body from making you second-guess yourself when you're genuinely feeling healthier and happier?

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Accuracy of heart rate zones during cardio for fat loss

I’m 22F and am on a weight loss journey right now. I’m currently in a calorie deficit and doing cardio plus weight training 5-6 times out of the week.

For cardio, I like to do 30 minutes on the stair master at 5 speed which is tiring but not too difficult. By the end of my session, I am pretty much dripping in sweat and breathing heavy but not to the point where I cannot talk or am borderline hyperventilating. I haven’t been using my Apple Watch too often because I forget to put it on but I have been trying to be better at wearing it to improve calorie tracking. I realized today that my heart rate during these sessions are in zone 4-5 which according to the internet and social media, is bad for fat loss.

The thing is, my body does not experience the physical effects of being in zone 5 cardio (gasping for air, unable to hold a conversation, only sustaining for 3-5 minutes). I often FaceTime friends during these sessions and can hold my conversations with little difficulty. I am also mindful about mouth breathing so I know for a fact I am breathing through my nose 99% of the time.

I am wondering how accurate Apple Watch heart rate is to begin with, and how accurate the standard formula to calculate maximum heart rate is to your actual MHR? For reference, I drink an energy drink everyday before the gym, take stimulants for my adhd and also vape.

TLDR: How accurate is calculating heart rate zone during cardio for fat loss when it doesn’t factor in lifestyle choices that may be increasing your heart rate?

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High-protein ranch made my life so much easier.

It's so much easier to stick to a plan when you're able to incorporate your favorite foods, even better when they taste good. I have had a bowl of this in my fridge almost every day for the last ~9 months or so - it helped me lose weight, and it helped me to maintain the weight loss. I've talked about it on this sub multiple times so I figured I'd finally share.

For anyone interested, here's the recipe:

• 315 grams of 2% Good Culture cottage cheese

• 60 grams greek yogurt (I use nonfat)

• 15 grams light mayo

• 1/2 cup milk (i use whole or skim)

• 1 packet restaurant-style ranch mix (I do hidden valley).

I use an immersion blender to blend everything except for the ranch mix packet until it's smooth, glossy, and there's no more chunks of cottage cheese, and then blend in the seasoning until just combined. It is possible to overblend and liquify it, so be careful if you're using a traditional blender. This usually keeps in my fridge for a couple weeks, as long as you're not dipping food directly into it.

Half a cup/110 grams made with skim milk is 74 calories and 11 grams of protein.

Pro tip for MFP: weigh your final product in grams and when you add your recipe, use that weight as your number of servings (i.e. if it weighs 530 grams, there's 530 servings). When you're logging in the future you can just weigh out what you're eating and log that as the number of servings you had (i.e. if you're eating 110 grams, you'd log 110 servings). Nice way to get around the MFP restrictions on recipes.

What recipes have you created or found that have replaced your former favorites?

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Compliments on weight loss

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed how often people compliment my already skinny friend on losing around 5-8 kg. She mentions it to me all the time, people keep noticing her weight loss and compliment her on it.

I’ve been losing quite a bit of weight myself (around 20 kg), yet nobody seems to notice, let alone compliment me on it.

Sometimes, I can’t help but overthink it and wonder why this happens. Why is it that when someone who is already slim loses a few kilos, people are so quick to notice and praise them, whereas when someone who is overweight loses weight, people often don’t acknowledge it or offer the same encouragement?

It seems like people are much more likely to celebrate a smaller person losing a little weight than someone who is overweight making significant progress. Why is that?

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What’s one thing you’re grateful for that makes your weight loss journey easier/possible?

I try to stay grateful for the things that are helping me along my weight loss journey, especially on days/weeks when progress feels slower (or nonexistent lol). One huge thing I’m grateful for daily is having a job that's mostly remote. This allows me to get my workouts in before work, during my lunch or immediately after work most days. This morning, I was able to take an hour walk around my neighborhood before I started my day. And I’ll do a real workout during my lunch break.

I previously worked fully remote for over 5 years.
Then I ended up having to go back to a hybrid schedule, and I was spending 3 hours of my day commuting to and from the office! In addition to having to wake up 2.5 hours earlier in the morning to get ready for work, plus commute 1.5 hours to work each way. My company also went through some significant changes, resulting in a lot of people in my department getting let go. The extra work was piled onto us remaining employees. So I would get home around 7, and then have to log back on and keep working for 2-3 extra hours most days.

During that time, I completely fell off the wagon with weight loss. I used to workout in the time right before or after work, but now I was spending that time commuting. I also went from regularly getting 6-8 hours of sleep down to 4-5. I also stopped cooking as much and started eating a lot more takeout. I stopped counting calories. Everything was going downhill. I gained 15 pounds in a year of extreme stress!

I’m super grateful that I left that toxic company and was able to find another job that’s mostly remote. Now I have the time to get back on track with my weight loss/workout routine, and I definitely don’t take this extra time for granted.

What are you grateful for?

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If you consider yourself "lightly active" in TDEE calculators, please tell me about your activity levels.

I (F5'6", age 26) am currently at 145 lbs, down from 180 over the course of this year. When I began my journey in January, I had long been sedentary and so calculated my deficit with that in mind - which was at the time quite modest, I was eating 1500 cals with about 1880 maintenance.

My regular habits have changed a lot over this year and while at the beginning I was regularly meeting 10k daily steps I have averaged to about 6-7k daily which I'm happy with. For the last few weeks, I've also recently incorporated strength training twice a week (~1-hour full-body sessions) which I see myself managing to stick with. I realized I should likely increase my calorie intake so bumped up to 1600 for a couple weeks and still saw weight loss. Thinking I may want to take a temporary break from fat loss (would like to eventually be back to about 135 lbs to be in the middle BMI range for my height) to focus on muscle gain because I've been seeing more hair shed than usual which I know often means underfueling, and I don't want that.

Would you consider 6-7k daily steps and twice weekly strength training "lightly active"? My job is sedentary and I currently don't do any cardio other than walking. If you calculate using this parameter please fill me in about what your activity levels are like (and if you're my height would be curious what your maintenance cals are). A TDEE calculator is suggesting my maintenance at that level would be 1945 which seems so high, but that might be because I'm just so used to 1500-1600.

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Just endlessly chasing losing weight while neglecting resistance training will not get you the dream physique

Please, please, please for anyone on their weight loss journey - do not neglect your resistance training and protein, and get into the habit now rather than waiting to get smaller first. I found out the hard way myself that just dropping the calories and the weight endlessly will not end up where you want.

For reference, I used to be very sedentary, and just continually dropped the cals and upped the steps to get from 110kg to 52kg (5foot10) and still just ended up looking like a sad, emaciated, and shrunk down version of my obese self - rather than the athletic/lean look I imagined. I had no muscle on my frame, and probably lost a fair bit during the weight loss, and was terrified of upping the calories in case I gained the weight back. I am testament to the fact that you can be underweight and still have a high body fat%.

It's taken over a year of solid gym work and eating more than I was comfortable with get back up to 80kg and a decent foundation of muscle to the point where I am ready to finally go back onto another weight loss phase now.

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