[kelly315]

I'm not a maintainer, but I thought you would be the best people to ask. After your weight loss, especially those of you that had extreme transformations, did you find yourself growing apart from the people you were friends with before?

Or perhaps making new friends that the new you has lots in common with?

How about family and other loved ones? Have your relationships changed? Your husband/wife?

Thanks for your answers and openness. I've only lost about 50 pounds so far, and I plan to lose at least 100, so I worry about this kind of thing.

[Meg]

Hi Kelly and it's great to see you in Maintainers. Congrats on the 50 pounds -- that's awesome!

You ask a really good question and it's one I never thought about when I was losing weight. So when it happened, it kind of caught me off guard. I lost two very close friendships and I don't think it was the result of anything I did besides losing weight. Both of these friends were quite overweight (as was I!) and they were the kind of friendships where we sat around eating cookies and talking about how hard (impossible) it is to lose weight.

Well, I joined a gym and changed everything about my life ... and starting losing weight, lots of weight. And they pulled back from me, stopped answering my phone calls, and just generally became cold and distant. It hurt me tremendously and I kept analyzing whether I was being smug or superior about weight loss, but I honestly don't think I was.

In hindsight, I think I made them feel guilty because I was actually doing what we all said was impossible. Which meant if I could do it, then THEY could do it if they wanted to. And being around me was a constant reminder that they didn't want to make the same choices that I made.

In the past seven years, I've made my peace with it, but losing their friendships still makes me sad.

I'm made a lot of new friends at the gym for the reason you suggested -- because I have a lot in common with them. Not all of them are fit by any stretch of the imagination, but everyone has a common interest in being healthy and bettering themselves. So we always have lots to talk about.

As for DH, my relationship with him didn't change a bit. He loved me fat, he loves me now. In fact, I had to tell him when I reached 100 pounds lost one night at dinner and he looked startled because he hadn't realized I had lost nearly so much weight. (I didn't usually talk about my weight loss because I had done so much talking and failing over the years so I wanted my actions to speak for themselves) He honestly hadn't noticed. Now he says that he's only happy that I'm healthier and happy with myself (yes, he's a keeper ).

I'm interested in reading everyone else's answers!

[BlueToBlue]

My group of friends hasn't changed at all. They are all at varying points on the weight/health spectrum, but most were already practicing healthier lifestyles than I was. And they are all very happy for me about the changes I've made in my life. I have really great friends.

It's really helped my relationship with my sister. She suffers from depression and for the past few years, it really drove a wedge into our relationship. She was just so depressed and just seeing me seemed to make it worse (she has always compared herself unfavorably to me). She has always been more athletic than me, but after having kids and falling into such a deep funk (I suspect undiagnosed post-partum depression), she stopped any kind of exercise. But I think seeing me change my life so drastically inspired her to start exercising again. And you know what--exercise can really help with depression. It has completely changed her personality and we are much closer now. I can't say for sure that my exercising inspired her; she's never said that, but it seems a little coincidental.

On the other hand, it's been damaging to my relationship with my SO. But it's not him, it's me. It's changed the way I feel about myself and made me think that maybe I could do better. There are a number of things about my relationship that I'm not thrilled with but until I lost weight, it didn't occur to me that maybe I didn't have to put up with them. I'm not sure I'm comfortable posting it all in an online discussion forum (but I'll ramble on and on about my sister's depression ), so suffice it to say that losing weight had changed the way I feel about myself and that in turn has made me question my relationship. It's something I am really struggling with, to the point of even seeing a therapist about it. We're not married, but we've been in a committed relationship for 14 years (living together for the past eight years) so it's a very big decision.

[WaterRat]

I don't think it's changed my friends group much if at all. At my age (63), most of my close friends have been around awhile, and we've seen each other through weight loss/gain, deaths, divorces, marriages, kids, etc. When one of us succeeds, we all are glad. Friends that have moved away are still close by email/phone, and visits.

Barbara, I feel for you having gone through the same issues with DH when he was a an SO. We finally did get married after living toghether for 16 years and will have been married for 21 years in January. BUt there was a lot of counseling and hard work in there..... Glad to hear about your sister though. I have a sister who suffers from depression, and amazingly this morning when I talked to her (she lives on the east coast) she has been laid and yet - so far - has maintained a positive outlook and seems to be take proactive action to find a new job - something she wouldn't have done in the past.

[Pink Geranium]

I can think of one friend I have lost, for the same reasons as mentioned above - the balance of the friendship shifted when I took the chance to make changes and succeeded, and she did not and felt my successes were a judgement on her. I'm sorry this happened, but there is nothing to be done about it. I've had to make my peace with that.

Otherwise I've become more outgoing and happy about life in general, and that has translated into being a better friend to the ones I already had (there were not too many, I didn't make much effort in the past for a variety of reasons). I've also met many new people in my exercise worlds (I swim and run, and also go to a gym, and I've found like minded people in all these different areas), and socialize a lot more along with working out.

My husband also lost a significant amount of weight right along with me and the whole process has really strengthened our relationship in a number of ways - having a common goal and supporting each other has resulted in a lot of good things. Sharing the work made it easier and we helped each other when we were discouraged and tired of the effort.

My son, age 20, has also been supportive and proud of me, and I'm glad I could show him that I could change for the better and accomplish something like this.

My parents and sibling have pretty much ignored the whole thing (I do not live near them and don't see them, communication is all long-distance). I think they don't have much idea of what I did or am doing, but I am not very involved in their daily lives, either, so I did not expect or feel deprived of their attention given the situation.

So I would say overall that losing weight has been nothing but good for me and my friendships and close family relationships, I feel really lucky.