Getting fit and losing weight affects not just your looks and attitude but also the perception of how others around you see you. There will be a change in people’s attitudes towards the new, fit you.

Part of the changed view of you comes from the fact that your looks have changed, and that change in your body becomes noticeable at a first glance to others. This is why you are drawing the wanted or unwanted attention of your friends and acquaintances. You may find this to be pleasing, and it can even give you a temporary boost in motivation to workout harder. On the other hand, if you are like me, you will find all this sudden rush of attention unwelcome and have mixed feelings about people who unexpectedly shower you with compliments, and struggle with finding the best way to deal with all that sincere or false openness. Whatever your reaction is, one thing is sure: people will treat you differently after your weight loss.

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Let’s see how the different types of people around you will treat you after your weight loss:

1. Family and relatives

Family could be supportive of your attempts to build yourself a healthy life. However, if obesity runs in your family, then family and relatives will be opposed of your lifestyle changes. It will seem that your family wants you to keep your past identity of being overweight and out of shape. Relatives will not see your hard work behind you looking fit and healthy. Don’t expect to get support from family, as they will only see that you’ve gone too far, and as you are now unhealthily thin. You can try to persuade them otherwise, and can spend hours of talking about being happy and healthy, and present them with facts of how this is a normal weight range for your age and height on the body mass index (BMI) chart, they will stay skeptic. Family members could even criticize or try to disrupt your fitness undertakings in order to maintain stability in the family. An overweight child has a specific role in the family – he or she deflects attention from other issues there are in the family, so by losing weight and becoming fit disturbs the whole usual flow in the family and its members.

As we know, change is hard. But inevitable.

You can frustrate yourself over this (like I did), or choose to accept that you recognized how you’ve led an unhealthy lifestyle and now you’ve taken charge of it to change it for the better.

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2. Coworkers or classmates

Coworkers and classmates are the ones who see you every day of the workweek, and since you spend so much time with them, they will be the first to notice changes in your body. However, because you were identified as someone who is overweight and out of shape for years, when you get fit, the balance changes – they may start to feel threatened.

They will start to be jealous of your new fit body, and start commenting your success. The other option is that they will start to feel guilty because they’ve let themselves get out of shape and now the tables have turned and you are the sexy one in the office/classroom.

I work with women who were considered really hot back when I was obese. Fast forward a few years: I started lifting weights, they gained weight. Now the tables have turned – I am the one with the fit body. I try not to bring it up, but boy, they are jealous. You can see their faces lightning up with envy whenever someone walks into the office and comments on my new found good looks. But then again, they could use the stairs instead of the elevator too. Plus they shouldn’t have pizza for breakfast every morning.

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3. Boyfriend or husband or a significant other

   

People tend to get involved with a partner who’s attractiveness is alike. So if you are overweight, chances are that your significant other is also on the bigger side. If you are lucky, you are on your journey to slim town together, so you have each others’ support and are going through the lifestyle change together. If this is not the case, and only you decided to lose weight, it slowly generates tension in your relationship. The other party will start to feel threatened when their partner becomes more attractive to the opposite sex. It will also produce a sense of inadequacy. This is exactly what breeds small fights, and can lead to serious problems in the relationship that are very hard to overcome. Yet again, both parties need to change: if you’ve changed on the outside, your partner will need to change on the outside too or on the inside in order to deal with the changes that your healthy lifestyle brings. Your best bet is to face the changes together, and develop a life with a healthy diet and exercise together that will benefit the both of you.

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4. Exes

The satisfaction you feel when meeting your ex about yourself and your weight loss is equally proportional to the amount of the drama you two had breaking up.

If weight was an issue in your past relationship, the guilty, dirty pleasure gets multiplied. That said, this is not a healthy attitude to have and you should not strive to motivate yourself to lose weight for your ex (either to get back to them or to get them back).

Do your workout because you want it and need it for yourself, and not for anyone else!

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5. Jealous friends

   

Loosing weight by changing your lifestyle comes with gaining a bunch of self confidence. So be prepared that you might loose a best friend when you get high self esteem if it was based on low self esteem issues. Just remember that you are the one that changed, not your friends – so if they are judging your new appearance, it means that they were always so judgmental. It’s just that when you were heavy, they never said anything to your face because they were ashamed to show their judgement in front of you.  They are jealous of your achievements because now they feel insecure when they are around you. Their jealousy and resentment towards you is a reflection of their own insecurities and lack of self esteem they are projecting on you.

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6. Supportive friends

If a friend shows no difference in how they treat you now that you are fit and before you were heavier, it means that you chose wisely about friends that you keep around you. A supportive friend reinforces the positive changes that his or her friend makes. You should look for friends like this. Just keep in mind: successful and fulfilling friendships are a two-way street.

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So however people might treat you differently after your weight loss, you need to remember that you got fit for yourself. You are doing it all for yourself, and not your ex, boyfriend or to make girlfriends jealous! Many things in your life changed after your drastic weight loss, and almost all of them were positive. Find a motivation to stay fit for yourself, and start caring less about what others think of your new fit body. Especially since what other people think of you is none of your business!

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