In situations like this, I tend to internalize the language without allowing room for them to say anything else and avoid going back and forth on explanations and rationale.
For example, something I told a family member recently was: “I’m doing this for my own health. I’ve not been happy about my health, my fitness and my overall relationship with food for a long time; and it has nothing to do with anyone or anything outside of my own entity. I’m not asking anything from anyone at this point in my journey.”
My theory is that people are often challenged by your change, especially those closer to you, because they are projecting their own failure to make a change. I’ve seen (on this sub, multiple posts) and experienced this before and I always wondered why is it always the unhealthiest ones running judgement on our health journey.
This sort of talk comes from a place of jealousy and a desire to believe that their own body issues are beyond their control, like “fat genes.” If one of their own succeeds, it ruins this delusion for all the unhealthy people in her family.
Please let her know this. This comes from a place of jealousy and fear, not real concern. I have some of the same issues with my family. All but one of my siblings is very overweight, some have type 2 diabetes, one had to get gastric bypass, etc. But I’m not in their issues as badly,and when my weight crept up, I started using IF to stop it. After a year of trying cleaner eating and “small meals often” and calorie restriction, I lost 5 pounds. Since December 28, I’ve lost 22 using IF (OMAD primarily) 30 minutes of daily walking on incline, and fewer calories by maybe 500?
I’ve just told them straight up: I’m capable of making my own choices and I’ve carefully read up on and learned about what I am doing. You can continue to do what you want, and I thank you for the concern, but it isn’t requested or needed.”
Your wife doesn’t answer to them and their frankly dumb ideas. She answers to herself.
Hey there glad to hear your story. I’m 33 days doing IF and am starting to hear comments like that from half of my parents and extended family. “Are you still starving yourself?”
It can get annoying but the thing to realize is that it’s something that only you can do for yourself and it’s the destiny that you are creating for you.
Keep the eyes on the goal and stay laser focused.
Let success be your noise, then they’ll come around and they’ll ask you, hey how’d you get there?
Tell me about it. My sister thought I had cancer when she saw my weight loss (mind you, this is also because I hadn’t seen her for a few months due to the covid lockdowns). Now I get the usual nonsense, you are too skinny, you are too thin etc etc. I just say I’m in the best shape of my life and I have never felt better. What helped me stop such nonsense was to tell people about all the benefits of IF. One family friend saw it and tried it and she is now my biggest supporter.