WEIGHT LOSS – 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.

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.

The Ordeals she Face

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.

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Now she has an ego

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.

She Lost Friends

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.

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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.

Why do friends get jealous when you lose weight?

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.