The Homeless Diet

I've been getting a lot of compliments lately about my weight loss. "You look good! Have you lost weight?" "Are you on a new program?" "Have you been doing any exercises?"

"No," I tell them. "Nothing really." I just haven't been able to eat like I want to.

In her recent interivew with Shape magazine, Rosario Dawson said:

After losing weight to play a drug addict dying of HIV/AIDS in the 2005 film "Rent," she was stunned to hear compliments about her figure. "I remember everyone asking what did you do to get so thin? You looked great," Dawson recalled. "I looked emaciated."

Before my mother passed away due to cancer, she also received compliments from her friends on her weight loss. I remember being so damn angry. She wasn't on any weight-loss program; she had cancer, FFS!

What are you supposed to tell people in a situation like this? It's difficult to just accept the compliment because you know that you would rather not have to be in the situation that made you lose weight in the first place. I would take a few extra pounds and few more inches on my waistline over having to live out my car any day of the week!

Have any of you been in a situation like this? Did any illness or a misfortune force a change on your body that you were complimented on? How did you deal with it?