I still remember when I received my first “hate” mail.

After I wrote a guest post on how to take charge of your unhealthy eating habits at PickTheBrain, the first comment on the article — by someone called LAR — was very negative (the comment has somehow disappeared though):

“I usually like this website but this article is rubbish. Are you promoting for a weight loss company? Dieting, which, don’t kid yourself, that’s what you’re promoting here, is not in any way helpful to actual health. In fact, studies show the biggest indicator of weight GAIN is a diet within the last six months.

Food is just food. There is no good food or bad food except for what you believe and seriously, tying foods, any sort of foods, as acceptable or unacceptable is unhelpful. Further, suggesting that thinking ‘do you want to lose body fat?’ isn’t helpful. Why don’t you just come straight out and say ‘nothing tastes as good as thin feels.’

It’s insensitive, badly researched rubbish.”

I almost couldn’t believe that I could upset someone so much by writing an article on healthy eating!

At the time, my older brother Jonathan was already an experienced writer. He was used to getting plenty of hateful comments from readers. I half-jokingly said that I now understood how he feels.

His response: “Haha. Man up, Daniel. Deal with it.”

In my family, that’s the unique way we sometimes handle our frustrations and disappointments. No pity, no sympathy, no compassion.

How to not care about what other people think? That’s what this article is about.