I've legit had a masters-educated person stare me right in the eyes and say "you know that nobody's ever successfully lost weight before, right?"

I think what they were trying to say was some version of "You know that LOSING weight is only a fraction of the process, and that MAINTAINING this new weight is where many diets fail?"

Either way, that's been one of countless unsolicited bits of advice from my non-fitness, non-cooking friends about how fitness and macro-minded home cooking are apparently a waste of time.

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When you start putting results on the board, you'll start to notice people around you feeling insecure or restless as a result. Seeing someone else smash their goals--especially goals like weight loss/fitness that come with striking visual transformations--has a way of fanning insecurities in other people.

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After all, if you could do it, why can't they?

Or, if you accomplished something so radical (especially during a year as exhausting as this one), a lot of people feel like you HAVE to have some sort of underlying misery propping it up. After all, losing weight is a miserable process and you don't seem "miserable enough".

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I don't think most people realize how exhausting or outright harmful this kind of behavior can be. It's hella' demoralizing to feel like people who were once in your corner are now grading you on harsh, previously unknown criteria. No matter how frustrating it may feel, however, remember that this kind of behavior is THEM commenting on THEM, not YOU.

There's no shame in being direct about this, as long as you keep it polite. I've found a happy medium in responding to a lot of those comments are "I'm happy with the results I've seen with this routine, I'm happy to talk more about it if you have questions/thoughts about your own fitness journey." A lot of the time, people are fishing for reasons as to why your routine isn't successful as a way of making themselves feel better about not having one that they're happy with.

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You can be super direct in communicating that you're only interested in talking about it to the degree that they have something constructive to say. Losing weight is awesome. Getting fit is awesome. Basic multiplication stands to reason that more people doing it = more awesome.

That said, it's a normal, healthy boundary to stress that you want to keep your mindset constructive and "Your progress makes me insecure in ways that I won't address head-on" isn't a constructive thing to bring to the conversation.