Why do women hate it when their ‘fat friend’ loses weight? Sarah-Jane Clark went from 22 stone to nine stone – then her slim friends started making catty remarks and one even ditched her completely when they reached the same dress size

Toned arms, nipped-in waist and a flat stomach. When I look in the mirror, I still can’t believe the woman looking back is really me.

Finally, at the age of 52, I am confident enough to buy the figure-hugging, brightly coloured clothes I’ve always dreamed of wearing. As someone who was once a size 28 and weighed 22st, this is a big achievement.

But it hasn’t been a quick fix. It has taken more than 20 years for me to slowly but surely lose 12-and-a-half stone — that’s more than my current weight of 9st 6lb. And having dropped to a size 10, I’ve also endured two operations to remove the resulting loose skin. After all that, you’d think I’d be entitled to enjoy the new me. But it turns out there’s a side-effect to losing so much weight that I hadn’t ­anticipated — the barrage of cutting comments from female friends.

Several have told me: ‘You can’t afford to be too thin at your age!’ Another remarked: ‘Don’t you think that outfit is a bit young for you?’

And suddenly, where previously I was ­considered to be ‘fun’, post-weight loss they made catty digs about how ‘boring’ I am.

An acquaintance at my gym noted: ‘She was a nice girl until she found her ego.’ This came from someone who herself is overweight — a case of sour grapes?

Yes, I was on the receiving end of stares and nasty remarks from strangers when I was at my heaviest, but my friends never breathed a word about my size.

They were always tactful and sensitive — and only too happy to be photographed ­looking comparatively slim next to their larger friend. No one mentioned the very obvious elephant in the room.

Now, however, instead of congratulating me on my hard-won ­transformation, it seems to annoy them. Perhaps the most upsetting example came from a close friend after I’d completed the London Marathon. At our ­running club a couple of days later, instead of praising me for my medal, she looked down at my tummy and gleefully declared that I had the beginnings of a ‘carb belly’.

It really hurt that she would body-shame me at a time like that.

It was in my 40s — when I was finally thinner than the rest of my friendship circle and it was clear I was keeping the weight off for good — that they really started to be catty.

But I’m certainly not the only woman on the receiving end of snide remarks after dramatic weight loss. One friend toned up and lost 2st only to be told by her (now more portly) ­girlfriends that she looked ‘ill’.

Another gym-going acquaintance told me she was flagged down in her car by a ‘concerned’ neighbour who, unprompted, reprimanded her for losing far too much weight.

Meanwhile, another was taken aside by her female boss, who asked if she had a problem with food. Her crime? Showing the girls in the office photos of her on holiday, post-diet, wearing a size 10 bikini.

Can you see a pattern here? A woman works hard to lose weight, begins to enjoy her shapely new figure and that’s when the cattiness starts. Clearly it makes other women feel bad about their own bodies: you can forget the sisterhood when it comes to slimming.

Perhaps the unfortunate truth is that every woman secretly wants at least one friend who is larger, or less attractive, than her as a way of making her feel better about herself. You may not like the way you look, but at least you can tell yourself you’re better than her.

So when said friend revamps their image, causing a potential shift in the pecking order, it causes hackles to be raised. Even those who don’t consider themselves to be at the ‘lower end’ of the spectrum experience some unease when another women within their social or work circle goes through this kind of obvious ‘glow-up’. It poses a risk to the delicate — and unspoken — ­balances of power.

I don’t believe that anyone is fully immune to these sort of feelings, whether you’re a size 6 or a 16. In fact, I’ve known perfectly slim women who felt the need to lose weight when a larger friend started shifting the pounds in order to maintain the ­‘difference’ between them.

For a long time, I was that larger friend. I spent my teens and 20s obese and extremely unhappy. At 11, I was the first among my friends to start my periods and develop boobs, hips and a bit of an hourglass figure.

Suddenly I was a curvy size 12, while they were straight up and down. ­Anxious about the changes to my body, I started to comfort eat — and a vicious circle developed. The more weight I put on, the more I ate.

By 14, I was going to weekly WeightWatchers meetings, but the difficulty of following a restricted-calorie diet triggered yet more binge-eating.

No one else in my family was overweight and Mum cooked everything from scratch. But in secret I was consuming chocolate, biscuits, cakes and sweets.

When I left home to buy a house with my boyfriend at 18, my diet ­worsened. I worked long hours as a hairdresser and breakfast became a ­family-sized bag of chocolate buttons with a full-fat Coke. I’d binge on ­rubbish throughout the day and turn to microwave meals in the evening.

I felt so uncomfortable in my skin that I cloaked myself in baggy clothes from Evans. By 26, I was 5ft 6in and 22st. I went to the GP because my periods had stopped and he bluntly announced my diet was killing me; I wouldn’t live to see 40.

I left in tears, feeling so ashamed.

But it was the push I needed. ­Having failed with extreme diets in the past, I decided to do one thing at a time. First, I started walking for half an hour every evening — and within two weeks I started to feel a bit better.

Next, I switched my sugary drinks to water. After that I swapped chips for jacket potatoes. I didn’t weigh myself, but these gradual lifestyle changes were clearly paying off, because I fell pregnant within a ­couple of months.

After my daughter was born, I walked everywhere with her in her pram. By the time my son was born, a year later, I was down to 15st. Losing weight gave me the confidence to leave my husband, who I’d grown apart from, and we split soon after.

A single mum to two under two, I continued to make positive changes. By then I’d learned to avoid bread — it makes me swell up like a balloon — and had introduced ‘prep Sunday’, meaning I’d batch-cook healthy dishes for the rest of the week.

I joined a gym for the first time and lost a further 3st during my 30s. It was in this decade that I underwent two full-circumference lower body abdominal-plasty procedures to remove excess skin, costing a total of £24,000. The surgeon was surprised when I told him I’d lost more than 13st through sheer grit and determination; I was the only patient he’d treated who hadn’t resorted to ­bariatric surgery.

Once recovered, I ordered my first pencil skirt from Next. Black, tight and extremely figure-hugging, I bought one in a size 16 and one in a 14. Imagine my delight when I slipped easily into the size 14. I twirled around in front of my full-length mirror and did a little victory dance.

Reaction from friends was pretty mixed. There was the occasional, ‘looking good, Sarah-Jane!’ but that was as positive as it got.

One said to me, patronisingly: ‘We’ve never talked about your weight and how big you are, have we?’

One friend who had always been taller and slimmer than me sat me down and bluntly terminated our friendship when I reached the same size as her. She told me we had ­nothing in common any more. The irony was we could now have passed for sisters we looked so alike.

At 40, I was 12st and a size 14 but I didn’t stop there. I joined a ten-week beginners running course. At first I was petrified, but I fell in love with exercising outside — and my weight continued to diminish. In fact, I was now the slimmest in the group.

Yet unlike before, now every time I saw my friends, I came away feeling drained. They’d say, ‘promise me you won’t lose any more weight’, or ‘we’re all very concerned about you, Sarah-Jane’. Underneath the statement there was no concern and certainly no ­compassion. The comments never came from a place of love.

The slimmer I got, the louder and more frequent the comments became. On one occasion, I wore a tasteful body-con dress from River Island for a birthday night out and a friend said: ‘Don’t you think that outfit is a bit young for you?’ I was stunned into silence; it was hardly a skimpy Love Island number.

Another time, I was invited to a girlfriend’s family party in Cornwall and she told me: ‘You won’t be able to dress like you do these days. You’ll have to tone it down a bit.’

I was also referred to as ‘a bit extra’ — meaning over-the-top — just for exploring my new sense of style, enjoying the clothes that for decades I’d never felt comfortable to wear.

There have been times I’ve felt ­triggered to comfort eat due to their negativity. But I have good coping mechanisms in place; most importantly, I don’t have sugary foods in the house. And I try to focus on the fact the problem is with them, not me.

But that’s not to say I haven’t faced huge challenges to my resolve. Tragedy struck in 2020 when my younger sister Ceri died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 40. It would have been easy to turn to food for comfort, but I had a firm word with myself.

Ceri had two sons and everything to live for; I promised myself I would cherish my own life because she couldn’t. It made me focus on my health even more.

I used my regular runs to raise money for pancreatic charities. And I stopped drinking altogether because I noticed alcohol had started to make me feel depressed.

This tweak to my lifestyle didn’t go down well with my friends either and I’d get called ‘boring’.

Equally, when I had the healthy option on a menu, I was accused of pushing ‘lettuce leaves’ around the plate. This felt unfair, as they knew only too well that unhealthy eating could trigger my binge-eating again. I believe their sly digs were their way of getting me to eat more.

In fact, on some occasions when I was trying to lose weight, friends would buy me chocolates. I always put them straight in the bin, but would they give wine to an alcoholic?

I often found myself bursting into tears at home after a night out with them and eventually I confided in one new friend I’d made at my running club.

She said I didn’t have to put up with those comments and I needed to find a different ‘tribe’. It was a real eye-opener. Three years ago, at 49, I started seeing a mindset coach. She helped me get to grips with setting ‘boundaries’ and realising that I’d been a people-pleaser for too long. I decided to cut off those who made me feel bad about myself.

There was no dramatic showdown; I just stopped calling them. I grieved over the loss of some of the women, but they were too toxic for me to take into the next part of my life.

Shortly afterwards, I met my now fiancé Paul, 52, who works for the Ministry of Defence. My children, now 26 and 24, never comment on my size — I’m just ‘Mum’ to them — and my confidence is steadily growing.

It’s taken until now for me to admit that I do look good. I feel great and am finally happy with how I look.

And I no longer suffer fools. If someone says something like, ‘I do hope you’re eating tonight’, I’ll take them to task, asking if they meant to hurt my feelings. They often become defensive.

Today, I run a Facebook group with 1,300 members for those ­battling to lose weight. I aim to be that straight-talking friend I wish I’d had championing me on my weight-loss journey.

After all, I know what works — and that there are no cutting corners. These days, I weigh myself four times a year; I don’t fall into the trap of doing it daily in case a small weight gain ­triggers me to binge-eat.

Instead, I have a pair of tell-tale size 10 non-stretchy jeans to slip into and they are far more revealing than the scales.

Meanwhile, I point out to my members that, sadly, some friends will never do you any favours when you are trying to become the best version of yourself.

Today my social circle only includes those who’ve only ever known the size 10 Sarah-Jane.

I’m sure those former ‘friends’ would prefer the badly dressed, obese, people-pleaser back in their lives — if only to make themselves feel better. But that’s never going to happen.

As told to Samantha Brick.