July 7
When I go someplace new or try a new restaurant for the first time, I am aware that I am programming a future history of associations with that place. I don’t even have to be trying, but it is going on in my brian; the generation of little neural pathways that connect that place with my gratifying experiences associated with it.
Case in point: A client of mine started traveling to Florida often with the intention of eventually moving there. She had all her friends who already lived there give her restaurant recommendations and she started her relationship with this new, potentially permanent, food environment (where she would likely be eating out all the time when she eventually moved there) by trying all the richest foods that these restaurants could provide. It didn’t really cause her that much of a problem initially, when she still lived here and only traveled there once or twice a month. She could balance off the rich eating once she was home. However (and I know you can see the train coming), once she moved there, she gained a ton of weight eating in these exact same restaurants in which she had always allowed herself to sample the very rich foods. Now they were her regular haunts, and if she wanted to keep her weight in check, she either had to abandon them and find altogether new restaurants, or retrain herself to make different choices there. Harder still was that, by taking all her guests there and turning them on to these exact same rich alternatives, she had “trained” all her friends to be looking forward to having these foods every time they came to visit.
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