When I was married my husband, understandably, felt frustrated by my weight. I sympathized, but somehow i felt defeated and unmotivated by his attitude, his name-calling, his lack of affection. In the end he flat out said to me that his willingness to stay in the marriage was conditional on my losing weight. There were many more grievances on both sides, of course, but that sort of ended it all.

Upon moving back near to where my parents live, my father started in. He has written me letters, sent me e-mails, given me lectures, made hurtful comments and taken every opportunity he can to tell me I need to lose weight. Though I know he is concerned about my health, there has also been a very huge underlining feeling for me that his desire to see me thin is more about his own interests than mine.

Then tonight I was visiting my parents and of course they brought it up again, but this time my dad said to me, "You'd be a knockout if you lost some weight." And for some reason this made me feel good, and also feel motivated. It felt a lot less about what somebody wanted for themselves, and more about who I could be.

Does it make sense to anyone that that sort of comment could inspire me to want to work at weight loss vs. feel defeated? How do i keep that feeling and that belief in myself going when I need to push myself and that kind of support isn't there?

Personally, I haven't ever found such comments from others very inspiring. Telling me what I could be is too much like telling me what I should be.

I get to tell me what I could, should, and will be, and even I need to be careful about building up rather than shooting down my confidence. I don't let anyone, even myself get away with telling me that I have to lose weight to be awesome. I'm awesome NOW, and health-conscious eating and exercising are things I do to reward and pamper the awesome me, not things I have to do to become awesome.

We take much better care of things we consider awesome and valuable. We don't take as good care of things we don't consider valuable (even when we know, with a little work, they could be made valuable).

You are awesome and valuable right now, start treating yourself that way. Don't put your life on hold as you try to mold yourself into something you can love and value.

We're often taught to use self-hatred as a motivator for weight loss. We think we have to hate our current self to become a better version. I don't think that works out very well, because it's very, very difficult to help people we do not like and respect, even (maybe especially) when that person is ourself.

So, eat and exercise to take care of the body you have, because you deserve to treat yourself like you matter, because you do.

Nothing anyone else says (me included) can make you feel worthy or unworthy of a healthy lifestyle. You have to be the one that tells yourself good things and reward the awesome you that exists right now. You're worth it.

He may feel that others think he didn't teach you good eating habits or something. I don't know. Do you have any brothers or sisters?

I have a young daughter who has been difficult around food her whole life. She's constantly begging for food, always hungry, always wants to eat. When little she would whine, cry and carry on constantly, but now she just asks repeatedly for food, a dozen times an hour or more. She doesn't like exercise and often protests going on walks with me (which is for both of us, really.) But it's all I can do to keep her from being too big. My son, on the other hand, almost has to be force-fed, this kid just doesn't care about food, and he loves exercise.

I didn't teach this to either of them and there's not much that lessons can do to help either of them have a normal appetite. I get this, but it seems a lot of parents don't. I know they judge me because my daughter isn't thin. Maybe that judgment is what your father is afraid of.

In my experience, though, you have to be ready to lose weight before you do it. Nothing anyone said ever would have convinced me. I did hear that "I'm worried about your health" thing a lot. Funny thing is I had little desire to lose weight until it actually did start to affect my health.

A lot of people seem to have the misconception that if they make someone feel ashamed of their weight, it will inspire them to lose the weight. In reality there have been studies that show this type of behavior actually encourages weight gain. People in general just don't do well with negative support. That doesn't mean some people don't, but overall it just doesn't work for the majority.

I use to get motivated by the idea of being pretty, which to me meant thin. That'd always die down sometime along the way and I'd lose motivation completely, or because of all my negative self-talk, I'd just want to be thin and not really care about the cost (physically/mentally). I just wanted people to stop saying mean stuff, so I tried some very risky diets.

Now, that's just me.. if you found inspiration from the negative, you could be one of the few that actually finds that sort of thing motivating. That's completely okay too. The only thing I would say is to make sure you're in this for you, and no one else.. and make sure you pick a healthy route to weight loss.

Your story made me very sad and angry. I hope some day you can see that telling your wife or daugther every day that she needs to lose weight is abuse and the good intentions that may lay behind it fade away when they don't stop even when they see you hurt again and again or if you ask them to stop and they don't! Getting out of your dad's house would be a good thing to do right now, because it's going to be hard to work on your self confidence if you have someone telling you you're fat all the time!
Healthy or not - you're an adult and you can choose to treat your body any way you want. No one should treat you any differently because of your weight.
If your husband left you (also) because of your weight, he was not a quality person and it's better this way. Maybe someday you'd get sick or injured and he'd leave you because of that. It's too stressfull to have someone you can't depend on in good times AND bad for your partner.

I think: 'you'd be a knockout if you lost some weight' is (to some extent) complimenting who you are now, because it says - you're a hottie (now), and you'd be even 'hotter' if...

Whereas the other comments e.g. 'you really need to lose weight' don't have any kind of compliment attached - they're just negative, as others have pointed out.

So I think it's understandable that you feel motivated by the first comment.

To be successful at losing weight, I think it really has to come from you and f*ck what everyone else says. If you're already starting to think positively about yourself (i.e. I am beautiful and confident and strong and I want to lose weight to be the healthiest and strongest version of myself) then I think you can take a comment like that well, but if you're feeling down/depressed/self-depreciating then comments from others are really not going to help!

At the moment I'm in a good place and focused on losing weight - so I wasn't really offended today when someone was shocked that I was an overweight vegan. If I hadn't been in this positive mindset (i.e. a few weeks ago) I'd probably be crying now!

Just decide if you want to do it for yourself - if you do, no-one else's comments even matter.

Of course its motivating! Don't feel bad about being motivated about things for the wrong reasons. Negative reinforcement esp. when it is uncalled for is still reinforcement. Most of my motivation is negative - often my family would tell me that I am a waste of a pretty face etc. It is horrible the way that you are being reinforced and I don't want anyone to feel motivated by that but many people are - when you get a negative reaction to whatever you currently are, you may feel an urge to change that. Its natural.