How to Treat Someone Losing Weight

It's a scary place for most people. The realm of weight loss or gain. We shy away from all topics weight related after asking someone if she is pregnant in our twenties only to discover she delivered 14 months before. After that we only comment on pregnancy if a woman's water breaks before our very eyes in the checkout line. "Are you kidding? You are pregnant?"

As friends, sisters, cousins, and spouses, however, we can play a valuable role in helping our friends and family to lose weight. It is a long, difficult journey. We need your help. Granted you might feel like you are sticking your hand into a fox trap. But it's really no scarier than your average carnival ride. Climb aboard.

Support us. Notice and acknowledge positive changes in behavior. Use the sportscaster technique. You only need to narrate what's going on. No wisecracks or sarcasm please. "You made such a beautiful healthy salad. It's so colorful. It looks delicious." This is considerably better than jokes about rabbit food.

Notice progress. If clothes are looking loose. If fewer curves are showing. If more curves are apparent, make a polite compliment. Make it something you'd say to your eldest aunt, not your youngest sibling. Keep it kind, neutral, forward looking, and positive. Instead of "the last time you wore that Jimmy Carter was sworn into the White House," try, "That dress looks fantastic on you, you look beautiful."

Be careful about calling someone slender, thin or skinny because she may not see herself as that quite yet. But we all can feel and look beautiful, sexy, wonderful, glamorous, fantastic, or fabulous at any size. You can, however, share observations about weight loss, "I can see progress from all your hard work. I am so proud of you."

The most difficult challenge for significant others of those losing weight is how to react when their partner is falling off the wagon. Commonly, the default is something like this, "Are you sure you want to do that?" This answer to this question might be a cast iron pan with wings.

A better approach might be to start with a compliment, offer affirmation, express concern, and ask an open ended question. "I am so proud of how hard you have been working to lose weight. I know how difficult it is. I am guessing that you might be having trouble tonight. Can you tell me what is going on?" Your next assignment is to listen to whatever that person's co-worker, sister, mother, or automobile is doing to make life difficult without trying to solve it, but just to hear her or him out.

Don't second guess some one's progress. It can be hard to watch someone transform before you eyes from an 18 to an 8. If you have always seen someone as round it is hard to adjust to a shrinking silhouette. Please refrain from telling someone they look gaunt, sickly, tired, too skinny, or anorexic. It is a bad idea to say something like, "Do you have cancer? Is that why you are losing so much weight?"

Don't tell someone to stop losing weight. This is never received well from a successful dieter who may or may not have reached goal weight. This is sometimes offered as advice to women who are sizes 12, 10, or 8. This response negates the progress she has made and plans to make. Know that as an observer of some one's transformation, it is you who is having trouble adjusting to her new body image. If someone is dipping into a danger zone of sizes 4, 2, or 0 and you suspect an eating disorder, you will want to be much more cautious in expressing your concerns for their health. Telling someone with an eating disorder to stop losing weight will most likely not interrupt the behavior. Therefore, if this is your greatest concern, you will need a different approach.

If you are trying to lose weight, tell people what you need, what you want, what helps, and what doesn't. If you love someone who is trying to lose weight, ask what she or he needs and wants, and what is helpful and what is not. If you do, you will find a source of support, courage, and assistance, that will help you to reach your goal together. The reward will be greater than matching track suits...to have conquered the greatest challenge possible together.

Those losing weight

Heading in Reverse Directions

If every time you backed out your driveway your car bottomed out, you'd take another route, right? Maybe you'd take a sharp left or go much slower. But chances are you wouldn't do the same thing twice, right? If only the same was true for weight management.

Instead of recognizing that we are on a path headed for a loud thud, we forge ahead blindly time and time again, taking the same path we did last time, somehow expecting a different outcome.

Let me paint you a picture. It's Saturday night. We've rented a movie, bought a bottle of wine, have a fridge stocked full of groceries. I know, based on history, that if I open that bottle of wine and that new stick of cheese and box of crackers and they are all placed on the coffee table that things will quickly get out of control.

Yet, I silence that inner voice. Instead, I channel a food network hostess who would always put out an ample supply of snacks and choices for her guests. I imagine parsley garnishes, decorative toothpicks, and smiling friends around a fondue pot. I search for the grapes and a paper doily. Well, it's just me and my husband. He wouldn't notice if I was slicing cheese with my toes, instead of my fingers. I am not entertaining for eight. An entire box of crackers and a brick of cheese, just for two? Who am I kidding? There's no weekly series about that on the food channel, although I think there was a place for us in Dante's Inferno. With a two-hour movie going, we'll do some serious damage to that block of cheddar, way more than we should. Much worse than if I had simply prepared small side plates for each of us.

Is it magical thinking, denial, stupidity, or, worse, self-sabotage? If I am trying to lose or maintain weight, why would I will place myself on a known path of self-destruction? Whether it's a pizza place, all-you-can-eat buffet or ice cream stand--I put myself there with little more than hope and a prayer hoping somehow it will turn out differently. Color me surprised when it doesn't.

It doesn't take but one hit to back end of my vehicle when backing out of the driveway to learn that I need to take a different path. Yet, I can bottom out time and time again in my weight management before I realize I need to bypass that bump with a different approach. Could it be I care more about my car than my own body? Or is it that I am not really ready to change what I need to to accomplish what I want? How can that be? My main carriage is my body and it is taking quite a beating. Last I knew the Cash for Clunkers program didn't apply to me. I don't get to trade this one in. I'm stuck with it.

Haunted Cabinets

I can hear crackers. They talk to me.

Shhh. Listen. "I'm here for you, just waiting," three thousand little Pepperidge Farm Goldfish tease from behind a closed kitchen cabinet. "We are salty and crispy. Pair us with a nice cold Chardonnay. Don't forget about that cajun spice you bought in New Orleans. Sprinkle a little on top"

I put yellow post-it notes on this troublesome kitchen cabinet where crackers, pretzels, and cereals are stored. Little hopeful messages like "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels. You can do it. Celebrate your success."

The Goldfish counter the messages. "Cheddar crackers taste better than celery sticks. You lost the weight. What's the worry? Celebrate with a little snack. You earned it."

"Stop it!" I shout to the plump orange happy fish. Why did they have to imprint smiles on them?

"Did you see that we are now made with whole wheat flour? It's a whole grain. You know you love those," they reply.

These are cunning Goldfish. Slipping into the weaknesses of my psyche with the long red nozzle of a can of WD-40.

How did they get into the house? Who let them in? Oh. I did. I had to buy a snack for nature summer camp. Good. They must be presented in tack--the over-sized square carton sealed and secure. That's my solution.

Hopefully, the teacher won't comment about the duct tape and bungee cord I wrapped around the box.

If she's got ears, or hips, she'll understand.