Flattered or annoyed?

I don´t know what to be, in this case.
One of my coworkers, whom I see quite frequently, approached me yesterday and remarked that she could see that I had lost a lot of weight.
That´s flattering because, well, I have lost a lot of weight.
It´s annoying because I lost that weight last year. 
This year, my weight has pretty much stayed where it was, after all. In other words, I regained everything I had managed to lose this year and am now close to where I was in January. 
So, while the colleague was certainly sincere in wanting to compliment me, she did point me towards the fact that what I do now is obviously not working.
Just maintaining would be good were I below that magic limit of morbid obesity. But I am not.
I started this year with the intention of being back below obesity by the end of the year. Not morbid but any obesity.
I set myself a goal of losing another twenty kilograms by December, and I am by now seven kilos above where I should have been if I had kept losing.
So what happened?
Apart that I stopped exercising regularly and have, in spite of the good intentions, not started again?
And that I have been eating full meals with DH and MIL for some time again?
Perhaps I jinxed myself, too.
The normal-weight-by-December thing is due to the fact that in January there will be a family celebration I cannot avoid, where I will have to meet some relatives that I have avoided for years. I´m not on particularly good terms with them, and that´s mostly because they dislike my being fat and seem to believe that sneering at me and insulting me are the proper ways to make me lose weight. Thus, our relationship has gone to the dumps after my last weight gain.
So, I want to be slim before having to meet them again. To be able to stuff their hurtful remarks back into those sneering faces. Or at least, to watch their jaws hit the table when seeing me slim.
When I calculated, by the beginning of the year, where I could be at the end of the year, and realized that it was theoretically possible for me to reach normal weight by then, I did immediately think of that looming occasion, of how wonderful it would be to go there in an acceptable body that does not give them reason to hurt me.
And that is, paradoxically, part of what is holding me back now.
I have to remind myself that I must lose that weight, not for them, but for myself. And that those vengeful feelings are part of what I have, for way too long, stuffed down with food.
"I´ll show them" isn´t the reason I should be losing even more weight.
Wishing for their acceptance isn´t either. Because if I am only acceptable to them if I conform to their visual standards, that´s not real acceptance at all. (Add to that the fact that one of those offenders has been very fat for quite a long time, too, and lost and regained bigger amounts of weight regularly, and things become patently absurd. Just because right now, he´s not fat, he shouldn´t forget his own past).
What I must do, obviously, is let go of that particular attachment and concentrate on myself.
Only, that´s not easy because for a lifetime, losing weight has been mixed in with wanting approval of others.
As a child, I was a good girl if I had lost weight, and I was a bad girl if I gained.
That that was a way of driving me into an eating disorder, as soon as I was out on my own and didn´t have my food intake dictated to me any more, is probably obvious to everybody except my oh-so-well-meaning relatives.
But those war stories are not helping me now. Instead, I rehash my hurt feelings every time I think of them, and have to fight the impulse to binge and stuff them down.
The best thing for me, therefore, would be to leave them behind.

And stop beating myself up for not being perfect.
Maybe that will allow me to start losing again. And this time, I´ll be satisfied to go below "morbid" by the end of the year. Whether that is enough for my relatives or not.


Julia