I happen to love mentoring new Weight Watcher leaders because I have a passion about “the right way” to help people. Or you could also say that I’m a control freak and it drives me crazy when I see people doing the wrong thing. Depends on your point of view, I guess!

Anyway, as I am currently mentoring a phenomenal young woman, I realize that this also helps me become a lot better at what I’m doing. That’s because I need to pick apart the steps of what I do either at the scale or in the meeting room, identify those bits and pieces, and explain how it works. In doing so, I inevitably realize things that I could improve or mistakes that I’m making.

Today I mentioned to my “mentee” that I’d be observing her at the scale on Saturday to get an idea of how she interacts with members during the weigh-in. This is one of the most intense moments for both members and staff, even though it generally takes only one minute or less. She then asked me if I could give her a few pointers ahead of time.

When I sat down to put my thoughts into an e-mail about “the caring weigh-in” it actually ended up taking almost an hour for me to characterize the most important steps and some of the things she should try and do. I won’t bore you with the details, but essentially I told her that the idea is to connect with the person through eye contact and body language, and to use questions a lot, rather than giving advice.

Having thought it through, I realize that probably the hardest thing to do is to provide the member with the “scale information” in as neutral and non-judgemental a way as possible. Those of us that do a lot of weighing are naturally inclined to jump for joy when members lose and to be frustrated and sad when they gain. But the fact is, as I wrote to my colleague “More often than you would suspect, a member comes to the scale with NO IDEA of how they’ve done. In that case they might be looking for YOUR reaction before they decide whether their weight is a good or a bad thing. You want to avoid at all costs making them feel ashamed or unhappy. Many people are embarrassed that they aren’t losing more. Many are embarrassed if they have gained instead of lost. Sometimes people can even be upset when they lose a LOT!”

I learned this lesson as a newbie when, many years ago, I said to a member excitedly “OHMYGOSH THIS IS GREAT, you lost FOUR POUNDS!” Only to have her burst into tears telling me that her cat died and now she can’t eat because she’s so sad and unhappy. Trust me, the last thing you want to say at that point is “oh well, at least you lost some weight this week.”

Conversely, some members are okay with gaining weight because it was something they expected, and something they might even have planned for. I have had several people get very excited at the scale because they only gained “a few pounds” after a trip to Paris or (unfortunately) a surgical procedure which had them laid up for a few weeks.

In the end, our long-term healthy weight is less about what happened this week than what has happened over the course of a longer period of weeks (or even months). That’s easy for me to say, and I know that a lot of people go through blood, sweet and tears to try and make that number go down.

What I do know is that this week I have gained weight and I’m perfectly fine with that. I have comforted myself with food, and have exercised less, both of which are due to the fact that I’m fighting a cold. And I know that the person weighing me will say and do the right thing.

Because she’s somebody that I trained myself!