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Keep up the great work and the discipline!

I encourage the effort every time I can.

I had a cousin who was very sensitive about her weight, so during a visit when I thought she'd lost a lot of weight, I didn't say anything.

Seems I was the one person she WANTED to get feedback from.

She quit trying, soon after, and I've always felt guilty, even if it seems crazy or egotistical to think I could have made a difference.

We lost her in her 50's.

“She quit trying, soon after, and I’ve always felt guilty, even if it seems crazy or egotistical to think I could have made a difference.”

FWIW, I don’t think that you should feel guilty. She had plainly lost weight if you noticed it, and undoubtedly knew it from the scale and how her clothes fit her. Maybe it was a simple missed complement, maybe it was one of 100 other reasons, no one will ever know. But one thing that I am pretty certain of is that if it was your failure to comment then that was just an excuse...she’d have stopped her efforts ANYWAY, for some other reason, and probably not long afterwards.

Something that I always tell my kids (and others beating themselves up over something) is that you cannot change history, you can only learn from it. You are not at fault for what your cousin - an adult of normal intelligence - did or did not do. That you feel guilty is simply a reflection of your essential decency - that you feel responsible to and for others.