The Serotonin-Plus Weight Loss Blog: "I Hate You"
Nataliya was telling me a story the other day about a person who saw her, made a positive comment about her conditioning/shape, and then followed this with a “funny” line: ”I hate you”. This of course, was meant as a joke, but, unfortunately there is some truth to the “human nature” reaction of jealousy. If your neighbor or co-worker won the 250 million dollar lottery, would you REALLY be thrilled for that person? Or would a more likely reaction be : ”Damn it, that should have been me.” Not everyone in your world is “rooting” for your successful weight loss efforts. The people in your life that truly love you want the best of health and happiness for you, and there is no jealousy involved. These are the people that will support and enable your healthy efforts. However, not everyone in your world has this “unconditional” love for you and there will be some people who are rooting for your failure. Why? Because YOUR success highlights THEIR failure to some extent. So when you slim down to that weight that will make you a head turning knockout, there in fact will be some people around you (those that have told you that you are too skinny, a little dessert can’t hurt you, etc) who will, to some extent, “hate you”.
Dr. Posner- I think most readers of your blog would agree that
it is one of the most important feature of your program. My wife and I have been followers for more than a year now and just like you said-
this blog is great support. Today you mention something that we’ve
both experienced. The resentment- and sometimes scorn of friends
can be strong and could easily derail healthy eating and exerise habits.
If you didn’t have this blog one could potentially start to believe- “oh,
maybe I am loosing too much weight”, or “maybe people think I’m sick”.
Thanks for the positive reinforcement you give on this blog every day!
You are most welcome! It is truly a personal mission for me to help our patients keep the weight off. I think any physician’s
program” can help people lose weight but I believe it is the long term =maintenance that makes the difference in programs and we strive very hard to help people keep that weight off. Thanks for reading!