Obesity and compliments

Even though normal weighted people can be very nice and supportive, a lot of the time it just takes an obese or formerly obese person to really understand you. I almost find it funny that some people need to be fat-shaming others... they probably don't know that most of us who are obese fat-shame ourselves on a regular basis. We've already got that job covered, bro. So how about you just leave it? You never know the full story about someone's obesity, and very rarely is it just a product of being lazy and only wanting to eat junk food. Most of us don't want to eat only junk food. And most of us have some sort of mental health issue linked to our obesity, which means we eat for comfort, for stress, for ... yeah. Many reasons. I'm a comfort eater myself. 

Something that always bothered me, is how people think that they are doing something nice when they are complementing you about your weight. A very typical scenario:

Oh you look great!! Have you lost weight?

It feels like a super heavy burden to get such a compliment. For many, many reasons, even if it was well-meant. Because really what I hear is - oh wow, you still look fat as hell - or - the only way you could look nice is if you lost weight-. That's just the reality of it. If you HAVE lost weight, it still doesn't mean that you feel good about a compliment like that. Then you start thinking about how much the people are observing your body to start with, and you just feel extremely exposed. May as well just have shown up to the party nekkid. And if you HAVEN'T, then oh boy... then you just feel like your friend is being fake and awful, the world is awful, only skinny people count.... And who wants fake friends. Should have just stayed at home. There really isn't any way that a person can win with such a compliment.

I'm often missing the genuine stuff. Whatever happened to - that outfit looks great on you/you look great in that outfit-, or, - I love that colour on you! your eyes are beaming! your style is banging! There are so incredibly many good options to mentioning weight, that it shouldn't be necessary at all. Just please... give us the good gace to stay out of our mine field. Peace.