My dear Great-Aunt Fern (who I have posted about before) has been taking a new course in the past year.
The women in my family struggle with weight, we all tend to gain around the midsection. My mom, aunt, grandma, and cousins all love to sit and talk about their food. They discuss it absolutely to death - during preparation, while eating, afterwards. It's part of the family culture, I guess you could say. I don't care for it, it gets tiresome to me and in my own experience, focusing on every last calorie actually does ME more harm than good. So I mostly stay out of these discussions.
I see Great-Aunt Fern a lot, because she lives near my parents. EVERY TIME I see her, and I do mean absolutely every time for the last 10-12 visits, she tells me I'm losing weight. "You look so good! I can tell you're losing!" and comments in that vein. The thing is, I'm not, or if I am, it's negligible - maybe a 5-8 pound fluctuation. I'm about 25 pounds over my ideal weight but sitting pretty comfortably and I frankly don't spend a lot of time thinking about it (except in the pursuit of a new tattoo, which would look better with the weight off). In February, she exclaimed about how thin I was, and I was actually up around 10lbs (my winter padding, I suppose).
I saw her last week and she emailed me (!) to ask about something unrelated and then added at the end that she can still tell I'm losing weight and good job!
I have no idea how to respond to this. Is it polite to just say "thanks" and ignore/move on when the compliment isn't even true? I really hate comments on my weight or what I eat from anyone in my family, they feel like it's a "family topic" and thus open for discussion without invitation. I guess I'm pointing this out because it's a bigger issue than just Fern's inaccurate compliments, which I'm also suspicious of being a PA dig at my refusal to engage in the master sessions on calorie counting.
Would "kind of you to take an interest" factor in here? Am I being overly sensitive?