I’ve also had women ask me what my “secret” was. They don’t like hearing how I went on a steep deficit, ate a ton of vegetables and lean meat and worked out hard. I had other women who’d bring up my weight loss just so they could say “men have it so easy, it’s much harder for women like me to lose weight”. The conservation would always change once we got into the work involved and not actually sharing a secret.

I don’t want to sound like I’m singling women out. Men just act differently from my experience. They’d either congratulate me and move on or get real quiet and awkward, some will make a petty jab because they hate the positive attention I’m getting. At least women don’t do that part.