The other day I was commiserating with another guy at work who has also lost quite a bit of weight in recent years. The thing is people have such negative stereotypes about people who choose healthier lifestyles, though they usually say it in the most backhanded ways.

• Oh, I see you have lost a lot of weight. Are you sick, dying of cancer, etc.
• People always comment about weight loss but never weight gain. In a lot of people’s minds, it’s just mean to tell somebody that they’ve gotten fat but loosing weight is a compliment in the sense have you ducking lost your mind.
• People, especially obese people are constantly sharing recipes and cooking techniques usually involving frying or including a few vegetables in lard, cheese or sugar. As apparently you just need a few good calorie dense recipes to cure your weight loss.
• People this idea that healthy food must taste disgusting and should be eaten in moderation. Sprinkle some kale on a plate next to a big greasy steak and top your mega sized ice cream with a cherry and you’ll have a healthy meal when the opposite is true. The steak is fine but two thirds of your plate should be greens. Ice cream should be about the blueberries or fruit up top, the actual portion of the ice cream small.
• Weight loss is all about moderation and portion control. Actually if you have to control portions of what you are eating it probably is not healthy food to start out with and shouldn’t be eating it or very little of it. But in general, the focus should be on nutritious and diverse vitamin and fiber rich food that fills you up quickly and doesn’t leave much room for junk food. It’s hard to over indulge in junk if you have a full stomach.
• It must be you are doing a lot of exercise. The thing is it’s so easy today to get cheap calories, fats and sugars that one can easily eat 1,500 calories in a meal which works out to be like 3 ½ hours worth of walking to burn off or 1½ hours of intensive cardiovascular exercise like weight lifting or running to burn off. It’s much easier to skip calories, it is really hard to burn them off with exercise.
• You’ve become a very picky eater, one who only eats nasty raw food that tastes like cardboard. Actually many raw or minimally cooked foods have a lot of naturally flavor and don’t require a ton of salt, fat and sugar to taste good. After a short while of eating healthy, diverse foods, you get to where you prefer it over the salt, sugar and fat encrusted foods that cover up the rich natural tastes.
• People are very worried about you needing new clothes when you loose weight. The thing is over time clothes wear out and the thing is if clothes are a bit loose fitting for a while it’s not the end of the world. Moreover it can be hard to keep weight off so rushing to buy smaller clothes is foolish. That said the baggy look, trying to hide the loose waistline and my much oversized boxers and undershirts do get me thinking about replacing them.