Any of you have someone like this in your office?

My co-worker, the same one who always brought BAGS of candy and left them lying around, is trying to lose weight. The SAME ONE who was going to GAIN UP to a lap-band. The same one who OBVIOUSLY got irritated when I used to politely suggest that she not leave the candy bags right next to my computer where I could easily reach them.

She is "going lo-carb" and tells me yesterday that she is so absolutely positively sick of the whole situation because she has been doing lo-carb for a WHOLE MONTH and has only lost 10 lbs.

Now, mind you, this lady KNOWS how much weight I've lost, and she KNOWS how I've done it.

I told her that 10 lbs a month is FAST and that I only lose four or five a month.

But she just rolled her eyes and said she "should be able to lose MUCH FASTER but she has reactive hypoglycemia and a thyroid problem..."

I don't care what others eat, but MAN is she BUGGING me.

I can certainly relate. Except in this case the coworker hasn't lost any weight (which she's told me privately) but brags to everyone in the office about how she's lost 25 pounds and the weight is just melting off, etc. etc. Plus, I constantly get to hear about how none of her clothes fit because they're all too big etc (except that they're not... really. at all. they lean more towards being too small).

It irritates the heck out of me. I guess it bothers me so much because I work so hard for every flippin pound and here she is making it seem like it's not big deal. I feel like I'm working so hard to celebrate every pound and it drives me crazy to see her lie about how many she's lost, and then to see her minimize a 25 pound loss (made up or not). On top of that... she'll eat crap constantly and then be the first person to say something if I take a single bite of something I shouldn't. Argh. All the mean while telling me I should just do what she does because you know the weight is just melting off... and she never has cravings or eats anything she shouldn't. Blech.

Glad to know I'm not the only one!

Ooh, she'd bother me too. You should just refuse to talk to her about this stuff--don't engage. Smile, nod or shrug noncomittally, and walk away.

Wow. That sucks. I work mainly around men, and they're not nearly that weird about weight stuff. I'm so sorry for both of you!! That would be incredibly annoying to deal with such insensitive people who are both SOOO deep in denial!

ubergirl - I'd try to ignore her as much as possible and then just smile when the weight loss slows down for her. We all know it is faster in the beginning.

Southlake - I don't think I could not call her out on it. I'd be correcting her when she said she'd lost 25 pounds with "that's not what you told me". When she says her clothes are too big I'd be saying, "that's funny, they look too small on you".

There's a woman at work who constantly tries to tell me what I should be eating. I'm diabetic so she tries to tell me how I should not be eating fruit, bread, etc. She is not diabetic, but thinks she is an expert on everything. I just smile and tell her that what I'm doing must be working for me since it only took me 3 months from the time I was diagnosed to get back down to non-diabetic numbers and I've been there for 8 months.

Well, get it all out here. I love hearing stories like this because it has been a while since I have worked (stay-at-home mom), and it sort of makes me miss the drama. Slow and steady usually wins the race with dieting. I have a friend who has been doing low-carb for years off and on. I think it made her thing twice about how wonderful she felt not eating sugar and carbs once she saw me drop all my weight in a year. I ate all those things and enjoyed it, just watched my portions.

Not recently.

My reputation sort of precedes me, in the workplace, and no one tries to give me pointers anymore or brags about how much he or she has lost in my presence.

They do take me aside privately & ask me questions & confide in me. (I've mentioned before that the sinks in the ladies room seem to be a popular confessional booth -- if no one is in any of the stalls to overhear.)

They never do anything that I suggest to them, anyway. Not even reading up on food on their own time. When I told a particular colleague that snacking on something with protein might keep her from getting hungry so quickly after her snack-time, she didn't know what foods might be classified as a protein, and made an "ick" face at every foodstuff that I suggested over the next five minutes.

("Nope." "Nah." "Ugh." "Ewww.")

I told her she might want to Google it for more options. And that she might want to read up on that kind of thing. She still hasn't done it, three weeks later.

Do you think this coworker feels competitive with you in some way?

I have gotten that vibe before. I absolutely refuse to discuss food & eating with a so-called "competitive" dieter or to engage in the sport of (usually female) competitive dieting. I don't feel safe talking about this subject in an atmosphere that isn't supportive & I will end the conversation as quickly as I can.

Stories like this make me very glad that I work from my home. You have my sympathy but no advice.

I guess this is one of the positives of living in a place where the obesity rate is so low. In my department of about a dozen people, only 3 of us are overweight - the rest are all normal or slim (a couple are TOO thin IMO). One person is overweight but only slightly and she dropped a fair amount of weight in the last year or so and I think is happy with where she is and is maintaining and not trying to lose. The other person used to be very slim but gained a lot with pregnancy and doesn't seem to be interesting in taking it back off, at least she never made any visible change to her eating (and she eats a lot) or talks about diet.

I think in a different part of the country, the stats would likely be quite different and I'd likely be dealing with more dieting (and potentially annoying!) coworkers.

If I were faced with some of the ones people have described here, I'd have a very hard time not showing what I thought!

Well I had a lady who works in the same complex as me but not directly with me stop me yesterday and say how great I was looking. I engaged in conversation with her as she seemed interested and wanted to know what I was doing but not in a magic pill search kind of way. I've had one lady tell me multiple times that I'm too skinny (last I checked I was still obese but very close to overweight.) but I think it just might be her way of complimenting me. I've got food allergies so they may just be attributing my "weird" eating to that. There is always a table full of food and snacks but they haven't bugged me to eat it. It took only a few times of me saying I had allergies for that to start. One woman who is heavier than I made a backhanded compliment about how I could wear the outfit that someone else in the office who is thin was wearing. Mind you, she had just finished berating the outfit as ugly, unprofessional, not right for someone over 40, etc. Lol

I try to be sympathetic, even to the annoying - because most of us have not been raised in a "healthy" environment when it comes to weight-loss. Weight loss is a subject that carries a lot more emotion than objectivity, especially for women and it gets wrapped up in people's self-worth and self-confidence. Many of us have also been taught that it's a subject on which it's ok to evade the truth, or even lie outright. Even though our bodies are on display for all the world to see, it's seen as ok (sometimes even expected) for a woman to lie about her weight. It's even often considered RUDE to even bring up the subject of obesity or weight loss.

I think like a lot of social problems of the past, obesity will be a bigger problem than it has to be, because of the "culture of silence." Until it's ok to talk about (and even ok to have "stupid opinions" about) in public, I think it will continue to be a problem that people suffer in silence with because they don't know how or when to ask for help.

Whenever someone starts to bore, annoy, or upset me on the topic of weight loss, I ask myself if I would be as upset if the person were ranting, complaining or bragging about any other subject. Would I feel the same about a person bragging about a car they probably don't have or an imaginary girl/boy friend (instead of weight they probably didn't lose). If someone had a stupid opinion about the weather, would I resent them for it?.......

I want this to be a world where obesity and weight loss can be discussed openly, doesn't have to be hidden or discussed in whispers, on which people don't have to walk on eggshells because it's a "sensitive" topic.

Thanks for your take on things, guys.

Saef, I think maybe she is a competitive dieter. We are about the same height and age, and during this time I've been going down, she has looked to be packing it on... Five of the women I work with are normal weight, but the other two obese ones used to be thinner, but now are fatter. That's where I've noticed a little bit of an edge here and there-- among the people who used to be overweight but still a lot thinner than me. Some of those people are now fatter than me, and it definitely makes them uncomfortable. I was so used to ALWAYS being the fattest person in the room, that I used to think everyone else was THIN.

Since I'm kind of naughty sometimes, I'm almost positive I would have said something off the wall to this comment....like..."REALLY??? that is all you lost? You LOOK like you have lost MUCH more than 10 pounds." (hehe )

I have the same sort of issue. But mine is a relative as well lol we work together. He started losing weight about 6 months after I started. he has lost almost 50 lbs since then. It's good sometimes but sometimes its almost like he is bragging about things. Especially when it comes to running -- lol

So yes i feel your pain!

Yeah, Uber, then it's no wonder. How dare you change yourself? How dare you succeed at something that someone you work with has found very difficult? You're making that particular woman feel insecure about her already tenuous place in the hierarchy of female good looks/weight that was already established within that particular group. Therefore, they can't enforce the old pecking order anymore because you're now in a different place.

It's only the most insecure people who ever react like this -- as if there's a zero-sum game involved, and that if someone else loses weight, it somehow demeans them because of the implied comparison.

Secure people realize there can be all kinds of winners & that they don't lose anything personally as a result of someone else becoming more healthy & attractive.