Tough love is still love. Semi-related: My old man was an Army PT instructor. When I was a kid he made me terrified of being a fat with nothing but a few carefully chosen words and phrases. He made obesity sound like something monstrous; a private, personal monstrosity that ate you alive, that made you so weak and pathetic that eventually you choked on your own blubber. Blob-Tetsuo in the "Akira" anime; thanks to him, that's what obesity was (and is) to me. I never thought to thank that prince of shitlords until it was too late.