December 13
We can train people’s expectations…in a good way. Training the people at work, our friends, or in our favorite restaurants can really work to our advantage…sometimes even when we don’t want it to.
Case in point: One of my clients who has lost over 100 lbs. and still eats out all the time (that is just his lifestyle and he has learned how to manage within it) had deliberately re-programmed his favorite Italian restaurant as a healthy place, choosing vegetable or soup appetizers, fish main courses and no bread baskets or free bruschetta. When he started to “fray around the edges” a bit after the excitement his initial weight loss, he went there intending to order the “old way” at that same restaurant. He was pre-empted by his regular waiter who assumed he wanted “the usual”. He was brought up short and saved from himself by the new history he had created.
Another case in point: At HMR (the weight management program that used to be at Pascack Valley Hospital) all the Health Educators pre-selected the special birthday cake they wanted to be surprise with on their birthday. A colleague who had requested either carrot cake or cheesecake was genuinely disappointed when she was presented instead with a sugar free, fat free strawberry frozen yogurt pie on her birthday. Apparently, it had been noted that she absolutely never partook of anyone’s real cake and they wanted to get her something she would actually eat. Be careful what we show people, right? It speaks louder than what we say.
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