Pet Peeves

Why is it that everyone who congratulates you on your weight loss has to tell you how great you must feel? I didn't feel "bad" before I lost weight, I was just fat! I was healthy feeling and had no chronic health effects from my weight other than inactivity. So I guess that comment means fat=bad (the opposite of great) which frankly feels a little insulting.
While I'm at it- what is with people who ask loudly in a crowd how many pounds you've lost? I work in a hospital on the top floor so I am often caught in the elevator with someone who does that. There is no easy way to sidestep the bluntness of the question that I have found sucessful. I have tried answering "a lot," but the questioner invariably presses on even more loudly for the exact amount of pounds lost. In the last week, I have been asked that in an elevator full of Family Practice residents and then again in the elevator in front of at least 6 20-something construction workers (at the hospital working on a renovation). I have lost more than 175 pounds, or almost the equivalent of a high school linebacker......... it's really kind of embarrassing to admit in front of a pile of people you don't know that you were once at that level of gluttony. Everyone can relate to needing to lose 10 or 20 pounds, but I imagine there are a lot of folks out there who hear my answer and think "Wow - you must have been huge!". Yes, I was, thank you very much for shining a spotlight on it! There is another co-worker here in the hospital who asks ocasionally at the end of meetings for the update, still embarrassing but I can tell she is trying to be supportive.
I know these people mean well and are trying in their own way to be suppportive, and I try to remember that they probably dont mean to be rude or embarrass me to death as I try to answer the question before I crawl under a rock and try to hide...................