When they've met, her friends' greetings were: "You gained so much weight!", "You were much slimmer when we saw each other last time!".
Some time ago, Lena reached out to me with a request to help her lose weight. We tackled her eating behaviour by adjusting mealtime to her busy schedule, adding lacking macronutrients to her diet, and replacing junk food and sweet drinks with healthier options. While her eating patterns were changing, she started feeling better physically and mentally. Healthier food choices and dedicated time for meals encouraged her to care more about herself, which she had never done before. It triggered her to switch the goal because losing weight became less important.
Her entire life, she thought it was selfish to follow the desire to live life the way she wanted. She lacked self-esteem and self-acceptance being focused on numbers on the scale and opinions of others about her lifestyle and appearance. Her new goal was to learn to love the most important person in her life - herself unconditionally.
Lena has put a lot of effort into achieving the desired goal. Her journey was full of wins, failures and mixed feelings. But that's the backstage the others can't see. The result she achieved was visible for her and invisible for others. While others expected a physical change, she changed inside.
I wanted to share this story because it's crucial to speak up about such situations. If you are currently experiencing others giving negative comments about your appearance, don't listen! It's your journey, it's your life, and you shouldn't bother yourself to prove they are wrong. The best thing you can do is to say to yourself: "They don't know what I went through; therefore, their opinion doesn't matter."