I recently blathered on an on about my diet and weight loss to an acquaintance (husband’s friend’s wife, who I love socializing with on occasion) and I feel terrible and stupid for doing it. Would it be best for me to apologize or just not let it happen again?

she: “You’re looking good, have you lost weight?”
me: “I’m not sure. I think I might have gained a few pounds.”
she: ” “

Beginner’s guide to answering nosey questions: say “I don’t know”. For the advanced version, smile while doing so.

I’ve found the first is priceless advice. If someone is complimenting you sincerely, a sincere thank you will work quite well as a response. It shows you’ve heard them, that you’re acknowledging what they’ve said, and that you appreciate what they’ve said to you. It doesn’t comment on the sincerity or otherwise of the compliment – I’ve always figured it’s politer to take all compliments as being sincere anyway. If it wasn’t, just accepting it without other comment leaves the faux-complimenter with nowhere to go.

It also means you’re not immediately counterbalancing the compliment with a negative statement about yourself (in an effort to prevent yourself from getting a swelled head or whatever).

The second is the best answer (and in many ways the most size-positive answer) to questions about how much weight you’ve lost, whether you’ve noticed weight loss, or what you’ve been doing to lose the weight. Everything else sounds as though you’re either making excuses or bragging about things.

Maybe, but I think the phrase “socially retarded” gets its impact more from the association with “retards” than from the etymological accuracy. It still makes me flinch.

more on-topic (a bit), I have the reverse problem a lot of the time; I have difficulty letting things slide and not confronting people about them.

Bald Soprano – get the headaches checked out. Just be ready to either confront or ignore the doctor who might very well say something about maybe Topamax will help you lose weight. My doc said that years ago when she put me on it. I went with ignore. Apparently a lot of women will ask docs for Topamax when they don’t need it for other conditions because of its potential weight loss side effect. What they don’t tell you is that a high percentage of people who take it don’t just lose weight, but develop anorexia. Even if the general population knew that, it still wouldn’t surprise me if people asked for it, since I work with someone who has watched me struggle with ED-NOS for close to a year now and still makes comments about wishing she were anorexic so she could lose weight because she can’t seem to stay on Weight Watchers. (“Maybe you should start accepting your body the way it is” sounds kind of hypocritical from someone with ED-NOS, so after I told her why wishing for anorexia was not desirable, I started ignoring her too.)

I think it was one of the Shapelings who came up with the brilliant all-purpose response to intrusive remarks: “Wow, that was really rude. You must be so embarrassed.”

Now I’d really like to see Joy Nash roleplaying all these situations and comebacks. That could be a fantastic educational tool.

For me, being polite is not (necessarily) about having been taught not to rock the boat, it’s more (sometimes) about wanting to be a better person than the rude dolt who’s just invaded my personal space. It seems to me that since a Certain World Leader was voted into office, his practice of just blurting out whatever stupid thing is on his mind is serving as a model to his countrymen & women, and I find the culture at large to be much the worse for it. All humans deserve to be treated with kindness and respect, even the clueless ones, and I, personally, have made it a practice not to engage with other humans who can’t be civil. I simply don’t respond to them (in my bad-ass imaginary state, anyway — it’s a work in progress). If we’re gonna share the planet, we need to be mindful of how we interact with the other humans.

Yes, shit like what we’re talking about here can make even the most even-keeled person want to insert a red-hot verbal poker directly into the idiot’s laughably small brain, and y’know, if I give in to that, I’m fine with it. However, if the person is truly clueless, I try to remember that in my response. They have feelings just like mine, and are much more likely to continue their clueless behavior — and indeed, use my response as a justification — if I jump them.

For me, feminism is about being who I am, and respecting who others are, too. Being kind doesn’t always mean that I’m backing down or not expressing my opinion.

Minerva