They Forgot What It Cost Them
on the people who made it to the other side and somehow turned their weight loss journey into a personality.
Respectfully... When Did You Become So Superior?
To the ones who forgot what it felt like.
Not the ones who share what worked for them with genuine care. Not the ones who show up to be helpful because they remember how lost they felt and want to offer something real.
I’m talking about the other ones.
The ones who lost the weight and decided that made them an authority on everyone else’s body, everyone else’s choices, everyone else’s timeline. The ones who show up in comment sections with that particular brand of condescension that’s dressed up as concern. The ones who have seemingly forgotten that not that long ago, they were the ones struggling. And somehow that struggling person became someone they no longer recognize, or more accurately, someone they no longer want to claim.
You forgot what it cost you to get here. And worse, you’re using that forgetting as a weapon.
Let’s Be Clear About Who I’m Talking To
Because there’s a difference and it matters.
There are people who’ve lost weight and show up generously. They share what worked, they hold space for the fact that it might not work for everyone, they remember enough of their own struggle to speak to someone else’s with actual humility. Those people are not the problem. Those people are part of what makes these spaces worth being in.
Then there are the other ones.
The ones who comment like they’re doing you a favor when really they’re just performing. The ones whose advice comes with a side of superiority so thick you can feel it through the screen. The ones who talk to people still in the struggle like they’re slow. Like the reason they haven’t figured it out yet is effort, or knowledge, or willpower, as if those are the only variables that exist in a human body and a human life.
Those are the people I’m talking about. And I think they know exactly who they are.
The Rewriting Happens Slowly
Here’s what I think happens.
The distance between where you are now and where you used to be feels so good that you don’t want to go back there. Not even in your memory. The relief of being on the other side of something that consumed you for years, the freedom of not being in it anymore, that’s real. You get to have that.
But somewhere in that relief, the story starts to change.
You start to remember your journey as cleaner than it was. More linear. More disciplined. More intentional. You start to believe that you got there because you simply did the right things and made the right choices. And then, without even realizing it, you start to look at people who are still struggling and think: so why aren’t they?
And that’s where it goes wrong.
Because you didn’t just decide one day to be healthy and have it be easy. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t linear. There were nights you didn’t make the right choice, months you stopped trying entirely, years before you even started where the idea of changing felt so impossible you barely let yourself think about it.
You just don’t want to remember that part anymore.
What You Actually Forgot
You forgot what food noise feels like from the inside.
Not the concept of it. The actual lived daily experience of it. The way it sits in the back of your brain constantly, this low hum of thinking about food and then thinking about thinking about food and then feeling ashamed that you’re still thinking about food. The way it takes up space in every part of your life. Not just at mealtimes. Not just when you’re hungry. All the time.
You forgot what it felt like to know exactly what you were supposed to do and still not be able to do it. And that’s the part that matters most. Because the people you’re talking down to in comment sections? They know. They have read the same articles. They have heard the same advice. They could probably recite it back to you. Information was never the problem.
But you forgot that too.
You forgot the shame spiral. The all or nothing thinking. The way one bad day could convince you the whole thing was already ruined. You forgot what it felt like to start over again and again and again while people around you acted like the problem was obvious and the solution was simple and you were just somehow not getting it.
You forgot all of it. And then you became one of those people.
The Superiority Is the Problem
Nobody struggling with their weight needs someone who’s been through it to show up with ego instead of empathy.
Nobody needs the version of you that forgot. They need the version of you that remembers.
Because here’s what actually happens when someone who is already exhausted from fighting their own body comes into a space that is supposed to feel safe and encounters your particular brand of advice. They don’t think “oh, that’s helpful.” They think “I’m doing it wrong again.” They think “even here I can’t get it right.” They think “maybe I’m just the problem.”
They are not the problem.
And you, of all people, should know that. Because you used to think the exact same thing about yourself. You used to be the one in the comment section feeling like everyone else had figured something out that you couldn’t. You used to be the one who needed someone to show up with humanity instead of a checklist.
The fact that you made it through doesn’t make you an expert on someone else’s body or someone else’s journey. It makes you someone who got lucky enough to find what worked for you. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
The Invisible Phase Is Real and You Lived It Too
There is a stretch of every weight loss journey where you are doing the work, showing up, making the effort, and there is nothing visible to show for it yet. The scale isn’t moving the way you expected. The results aren’t dramatic. From the outside it looks like nothing is happening.
But everything is happening.
The body is adjusting. The habits are forming slowly. The relationship with food is shifting in ways that won’t show up anywhere for months. This is what I call the invisible phase. It is not failure. It is the actual work. It is the hardest part of the whole thing.
And you lived it too. You just forgot.
So when you see someone in that phase and your instinct is to explain to them what they should be doing differently, I need you to pause and ask yourself something. Is this actually about helping them? Or is this about reminding yourself and everyone watching that you figured it out?
Because those are two very different things.
You Don’t Have to Perform Your Transformation For Us
Your transformation is yours. You earned it. Nobody is trying to take that from you.
But you do not get to use it as a measuring stick for everyone else. You do not get to treat your specific path, your specific body, your specific circumstances, as the template that everyone else is failing to follow. And you do not get to show up in spaces built for people still in the struggle and make them feel stupid for still being there.
The pride and the memory can exist at the same time. In fact the most powerful thing you could do with everything you went through is let it make you softer when you encounter someone still in it. Not perform softness. Actually be it.
That’s the difference between someone who helps and someone who just wants credit for having figured it out.
This Is For Everyone Still In It
You are not behind. You are not doing it wrong. The fact that it is hard does not mean it will always be this hard.
The people who forgot what the struggle cost them do not get to define what your journey is supposed to look like. They do not get to show up with their superiority dressed as advice and make you feel like the problem is your effort, your knowledge, your commitment, your willpower. They got to the other side and lost the memory of what it took to get there. That’s their loss. Do not let it become yours.
You are allowed to be in the invisible phase with nothing to show anyone yet. You are allowed to be figuring it out in real time inside a life that does not stop to accommodate your journey. You are allowed to have bad weeks and slow months and days where you genuinely cannot explain why it’s harder today than it was yesterday.
That is not failure. That is what this actually looks like for most people.
The ones who forgot don’t get to rewrite your story just because they rewrote their own.
You are doing enough.
And if nobody has said that to you lately, I’m saying it now.
xo - Nyk
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I remember.