You're doing it. You're actually out there - boots on the path, lungs working, legs carrying you up a trail you almost talked yourself out of attempting. And then someone coming the other way, someone visibly lean and fast and easy in their body, catches your eye and says something bright and breezy. "You've got this!" Or maybe "Keep going, you're doing amazing!"
And something in you tightens instead of opens.
You smile back because that's the polite thing to do. But inside? Something that gets under your skin. Something that feels almost condescending - like they looked at you and immediately assumed you needed saving. Like you don't look athletically right to be a hiker. Like your presence on the trail was surprising to them, and they wanted you to know they approved anyway.
You spend the next ten minutes arguing with yourself. Am I the only one that feels this way? Are they just being nice? Why does this bother me so much?
You're not broken. You're not sensitive. And you're definitely not alone.
The Comment Was Kind. So Why Did It Feel Like the Opposite?
Here's the thing about unsolicited encouragement during exercise - it carries a hidden assumption inside it. The assumption is that you needed it. That someone looked at you and thought: that person might not know they can do this.
It's not the words. It's the translation.
When a visibly fit stranger singles you out on a hiking trail to offer encouragement they didn't offer anyone else, the message underneath - even if completely unintended - is: I noticed something about your body, and I want you to know I'm rooting for you anyway. That's the sting. Not the words themselves, but the invisible asterisk attached to them.
"I feel like when it comes from clearly thin people, it feels almost condescending. It's supposed to be motivating but it doesn't feel that way."
That's a real person describing this exact feeling. And it lands precisely because it names something most people can't quite articulate in the moment - the gap between what was said and what was felt.
You're Not Imagining the Double Standard
Think about it this way: how often does a stranger on a trail stop to cheer on someone who looks like they're absolutely crushing it? Someone lean, fast, clearly "athletic-looking"? Almost never. The encouragement gets directed at bodies that are read as struggling - or more precisely, at bodies that don't fit the image most people carry in their heads of what "a hiker" looks like.
That's not nothing. That's a form of weight stigma, even when it's wrapped in warmth and good intentions.
The stigma related to being overweight has a high likelihood of constraining or preventing participation in outdoor recreation activities for people who are significantly overweight. The well-meaning comment from a stranger on a trail is one small piece of that larger picture - it communicates, however softly, that your presence in that space is somehow conditional, something to be applauded rather than simply expected.
And here's what makes it especially complicated: unsolicited advice - or in this case, unsolicited encouragement - is condescending by nature, since it is compelled by the certainty that the speaker knows better to such a degree that it must be spoken. The person offering it almost certainly doesn't think of it that way. But intent and impact are two different things.
A Sunday Morning on the South Downs
Imagine this: it's early on a Sunday in late autumn, that particular grey-bright kind of morning you get in the English countryside - the South Downs quiet and wide and smelling like wet chalk. You've been building up to this walk for weeks. You printed a route, packed a proper lunch, told yourself this was yours.
About an hour in, on a steep uphill stretch, two runners pass you going the opposite way - both of them the kind of effortlessly fit that makes everything look like nothing. One of them slows just a beat and calls out, cheerfully: "Brilliant effort, keep it up!"
You wave. You smile. You say nothing.
But inside you feel like they look at you like you're still too big. Like the trail was their territory and they were being generous about letting you occupy it. The walk you were proud of - the one you'd been building toward - suddenly feels smaller. Not because you got tired, or because the hill was too steep, but because a stranger decided to make your body the subject of a conversation you never asked to have.
You finish the walk. Of course you do. But something shifts in the way you feel about going back out next weekend.
That shift matters. It's not weakness. It's a completely understandable human response to a very specific kind of social friction - and it's worth understanding, not dismissing.
What's Actually Happening in That Moment
There's a framework in exercise psychology called Self-Determination Theory, and it helps explain why this kind of moment stings the way it does. At its core, the theory says that lasting motivation to exercise comes from three internal needs: feeling autonomous (like you chose this), feeling competent (like you can do this), and feeling connected (like you belong here).
For overweight and obese individuals, feelings of choice and volition about what types of activity are engaged in, as well as perceptions of competence that they can effectively perform the chosen activities, are important to the development of self-determined motivation towards exercise.
When a stranger singles you out with surprise-tinged praise, all three of those needs take a quiet hit at once. Your sense of autonomy shrinks - this was your decision, your trail, and suddenly it's become something someone else is weighing in on. Your sense of competence gets undermined - the very fact that they're cheering for you implies they weren't sure you'd manage. And your sense of belonging takes the biggest blow of all: people who belong here don't get cheered at like they're doing something unexpected.
You haven't failed at taking the comment graciously. You've just felt something real.
None of this is the stranger's conscious intent. Most of them would be mortified to know the impact. But good intentions don't neutralize the effect - and recognizing that is the first step to not letting those moments unravel everything you've built.
The Difference Between Encouragement and Projection
Real encouragement, the kind that lifts without diminishing, doesn't require your body to be the reference point. It doesn't assume struggle. It doesn't insert itself where it wasn't invited.
With the right mindset and a few powerful phrases, you can protect your peace, your body, and your progress. The truth is - unsolicited comments about your food or body usually say more about the person speaking than about you.
That's a hard thing to feel in the moment when you're breathing hard up a hill and someone just made your body a talking point. But it's true. What they're projecting is often their own discomfort with bodies that don't fit a narrow athletic image - and the encouragement is, in a way, their attempt to resolve that discomfort, not yours.
This doesn't make them bad people. It makes them human, shaped by the same culture that told all of us that some bodies belong on trails and others are working toward belonging. Compliments about someone's weight loss or thinner body perpetuate society's deep-seated diet culture and the idea that thinness is inherently good. The trail version of this is the same dynamic playing out in a different setting.
Protecting Your "Why" From Other People's Assumptions
So what do you actually do with the sting?
First: name it, don't swallow it. The annoyance, the low-grade offense, the feeling of being patronized - those are legitimate. You don't have to perform gratitude for a comment that made you feel smaller. You don't have to reframe it as a compliment if it didn't feel like one. Letting yourself feel what you felt, without guilt, is the beginning of not letting it derail you.
Second: come back to your original reason for being on that trail. Before the comment, before the stranger, before any of it - why did you show up? What were you proving to yourself, or reclaiming, or simply enjoying? That reason belongs to you. It was true before someone else's voice entered the picture, and it stays true after.
Third: notice the pattern over time. If these moments happen repeatedly and you find yourself dreading the trail or the gym because of how people might react to you - that's information worth paying attention to. Not because there's anything wrong with you, but because the emotional residue of these encounters can quietly reshape your relationship with movement in ways that are worth tracking.
This is exactly where CraveLog.ai can help. When you log the feelings that come up around food and exercise - including the moments that drive you away from both - CraveLog.ai helps you start to see the patterns that are usually invisible in the moment. The frustration after a trail run that sends you home deflated. The offhand remark that makes a binge feel more likely that evening. These connections are real, and naming them is how you stop being ambushed by them.
You Were Already Doing the Thing
This is the part worth sitting with.
You were already on the trail. You already made the decision to go. You already put one foot in front of the other on a path that took effort to choose, effort to begin, and effort to continue. None of that required anyone's approval - not a stranger's cheering, not their surprise, not their well-intentioned good-job energy.
The trail doesn't care what your body looks like. It just asks that you show up. And you did.
The sting of being cheered at like an underdog when you were just trying to be a person on a walk - that's real. Feeling like they look at you like you're still too big - that's a wound worth acknowledging, not minimizing. But it doesn't have to be the story you carry home.
Because the version of you who laced up the boots and went anyway? That version doesn't need validation from a passing stranger. That version is already doing it.
A multinational study reported that 50% to 60% of people with obesity have experienced weight discrimination in their lifetime, and experiencing weight stigma is associated with several adverse mental and physical health outcomes. The trail comment might feel small in isolation, but it exists inside a much larger experience that millions of people navigate every time they try to move their bodies in public. That context deserves acknowledgment - not to make you feel like a victim, but to make you feel less alone.
When the Emotional Weight Outlasts the Walk
Sometimes a comment like this does more than sting in the moment. Sometimes it becomes a reason. A reason to eat something when you get home because you're frustrated and don't know where else to put it. A reason to skip the hike next Saturday, and the one after. A reason to quietly decide that maybe you're not ready for trails yet - not because your body said so, but because your feelings did.
That's the sneaky way external judgments become internalized ones.
This kind of pressure can be mentally exhausting. It can lead to unhealthy behaviors, obsessive thinking, and even fear around food or exercise. If you notice that uncomfortable encounters during exercise are feeding a loop - shame leading to avoidance, avoidance leading to eating in ways that don't serve you, eating leading to more shame - that loop is worth examining with some gentleness and curiosity, not blame.
Tracking what you feel - not just what you eat, but what happens emotionally before and after - is one of the most quietly powerful things you can do for yourself. CraveLog.ai was built for exactly this: the space between what happens out in the world and what happens inside you as a result.
A Note to Anyone Who Has Ever Said "Keep It Up"
If you're the person who called out encouragement to a stranger on a trail and you're now wondering if you did something wrong - here's the honest answer: probably not intentionally. But it's worth asking yourself whether you'd have said the same thing to someone who didn't look like they were working as hard. Or to someone who looked the way you imagine "a hiker" should look.
If the answer is no - if the encouragement was specifically pointed at a body type - then it was the body being noticed, not just the effort. And the kindest thing going forward isn't to stop being warm. It's to be warm in a way that doesn't require someone's body as the entry point.
A smile. A nod. The unspoken acknowledgment that you're both just people on a trail. That's the version that doesn't sting.
CraveLog.ai is an AI-powered emotional eating tracker that helps people on a weight loss journey understand how encounters with judgment - even well-meaning ones - can quietly shape their relationship with both movement and food. Start tracking free at cravelog.ai.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does unsolicited encouragement feel condescending when I'm exercising?
When a stranger singles you out for encouragement during exercise, it often signals that they noticed your body and assumed you needed support others didn't. Even when well-meaning, this implies your presence was surprising - which can feel patronizing rather than uplifting, especially during a weight loss journey.
Is it normal to feel offended when someone says "keep it up" on a hike?
Yes, completely normal. The discomfort usually comes from an implied assumption that your body type makes the activity harder or less expected. It's not about being ungrateful - it's a reasonable reaction to being made into a spectacle rather than just a person walking a trail.
How do I stop other people's comments from affecting my motivation to exercise?
Reconnect with your personal reason for exercising before external voices enter the picture. Naming the frustration honestly - rather than suppressing it - helps prevent it from becoming a reason to avoid movement altogether. Tracking your emotional patterns around exercise can also help you spot and interrupt these loops early.
Can comments from strangers during exercise affect emotional eating later?
Yes. Uncomfortable social encounters during exercise can create shame or frustration that gets redirected toward food later in the day. This connection between emotional discomfort and eating is well-documented, and understanding it is the first step to breaking the pattern rather than repeating it unknowingly.
What's the difference between genuine encouragement and performative encouragement?
Genuine encouragement doesn't require your body to be the reference point. Performative encouragement singles out certain bodies - usually ones that don't match a narrow athletic ideal - and offers praise in a way that centers appearance rather than effort. The difference is subtle but consistently felt by the people on the receiving end.