The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Behaviour Change Scientist: How I Lost 120lbs With Kindness: Shahroo Izadi

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

If your friend tells you about a new goal they want to achieve, would you tell them that there is no way they can do it, or that it wasn’t for people like them? Of course you wouldn’t! But why is it that so many of us speak to ourselves in this way? If you really want to change your habits for good, behaviour change specialist Shahroo Izadi believes that this self-talk is what is holding you back from the real change you want to achieve. Instead, Shahroo believes we have to treat ourselves with kindness to create lasting difference. In this necessary conversation Shahroo breaks down her kindness method and how her own life influenced it, from her work as an addiction therapist to the struggles in her personal life. If you want to change any habit in your life for good, this episode is essential for you! Shahroo Izadi: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3IpPG0C Twitter: https://bit.ly/3IpQbI2 Website: http://bit.ly/3I7ExjA Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to the show. Let's continue. Imposter syndrome. How does one move past it? Oh, sit back. Sheru Izadi. She is an expert in breaking bad habits and beating addiction. Women's Health magazine has called her Britain's answer to Brené Brown. And she's also an author, including the number one bestseller, The Kindness Method. I am determined to have binge eating and powerlessness and lack of trust that people have as a direct result of weight loss diets to die with my generation. Why?

I started dieting from a really, really young age. And I was using food as a drug. When I got to my heaviest, I was like, that's it, I'm done. How heavy? 126 kilos. And it eventually culminated in secretly getting a gastric band fitted. I started working in addiction treatment. And I started realizing that I was going about this the wrong way. I wasn't meant to be making my body smaller. I was meant to understand why I didn't like myself

enough to take the same advice I'd give someone else. When someone you love is struggling to get back on track you don't pretend that what they're trying to do is simple and you don't tell them to throw in the towel and that's where people feel super disempowered because they're not taking the advice they'd give another person. I think people feel patronized because what they needed was understanding why if I have all this information and I want to do this, I'm not doing it. What I always tell them is... If you were to try and identify why some people are unsuccessful in their change, what are like the overarching themes?

One of them is... Shuru, can you tell me what your sort of academic professional bio might say? Yeah, I did an undergrad in psychosocial sciences in Norwich and then a postgrad in psychology. And then I went on to work for the NHS. I did a one-year placement as an assistant psychologist in substance misuse in North West London. And then during that time, I was trained in all sorts of different evidence-based approaches

that are used to help people to change really ingrained behaviors mainly around opiate and alcohol addiction now what about your um your personal context so take me below the age of you know i'm a big believer on this show that that origin story and our childhoods really shape who we become um tell me about that well um, I was born here. I was born in North London. And my parents are from Iran. And they came after the revolution or during the revolution. And my first language is Farsi. So I learned how to speak English.

And then I moved to the States for my dad's work for a little bit and ended up coming back. And during that time, I started to struggle I started to struggle with um trauma responses to things and I started stammering to the extent that I found it really hard to speak at all at school and then we came back to the UK and I started going to school here and I didn't have a great time. I was really overweight. Kids weren't super nice to me about it. And I started dieting from a really, really young age because, of course, it was like that's what doctors were recommending at the time.

And I started to have a really mean relationship with myself. Everything from the way I spoke to myself to what I thought I deserved to how unboundaried I was to, behaviors of just like low really really low self-esteem to the extent where I had a lot of really shameful behaviors a lot of codependency a lot of anxiety controlling stuff I just didn't have the best time at school to be honest and I didn't like myself at all like really didn't and now that I work with people who don't like themselves, I can say with confidence that sadly I was on the more extreme end of things. And I developed what I now realize was a binge eating disorder

where I was eating myself, I was using food as a drug essentially. I didn't know that at the time. And I was just eating and eating loads and then it eventually culminated in me kind of secretly getting a gastric band fitted, which gave me all sorts of other issues, lying to people, lying to my friends about it, feeling ashamed like it was an easy way out, and then I had to have it removed by emergency surgery,

and it was terrifying. And when I think now about the lengths that I went to, and weirdly the fact that I never thought to change my relationship with food, I always just thought if I was smaller, the world was telling me if you're smaller, everything will sort itself out. So that was the angle I was going in for. Plus, I seemed to think that getting smaller would teach me how to change behaviors, which kind of does a disservice to the whole science of behavioral change anyway. And then I went to work in

addiction treatment. Long story short, when I, you know, I did my, went to uni, made the same friends I have now. And I started, I started working in addiction treatment. And I started realizing that I was going about this the wrong way. I was going about this completely the wrong way. I wasn't meant to be making my body smaller. I was meant to understand why I didn't like myself enough to take the same advice I'd give someone else. Or I didn't like myself enough to think I was worthy of liking food.

I didn't trust myself. I felt powerless. These were the fundamental things I should have been dealing with um so I went to therapy and I started getting on board with the fact that I didn't need fixing and then my habits started changing really really quickly and I was like wow you said a second ago you had to figure out why you didn't like yourself why didn't you like yourself did you ever figure you like yourself? Did you ever figure that out? Yeah, yeah. Well, using the tools that I hand over to people now, you know, it isn't a plug.

That was the whole thing. The reason I personally didn't learn to like myself, and this will be different for each person, but my value was wrapped up in how I looked big time and my size. So if the scales weren't making me happy, then I wasn't having a good day. And as a result, I wasn't treating myself well in ways that may seem unrelated to other people. But I got into my head that unless you look like this, you don't deserve, it's almost silly for you to do the things that people who like themselves do. Acts of self-care. Even taking pride in my appearance. All kindness was conditional

on me looking a certain way. Why? Like where had that come from? Well, all sorts. We can start with the fact that I was, you know, if your kid in the 90s, if your kid's being bullied for being fat, and you go to the GP, they were going to put you on a diet. They were going to put the kid on a diet. So with the best of intentions, that was happening. Second of all, I think the generation,

particularly of women before me, I think weight loss dieting's got a lot to answer for. In that sense, the, you know, this is your goal weight, and this is how you you'll look and then reward yourself with a new wardrobe because then you'll deserve it. Women who carry water bottles are slim and like all that shit. So it was a time, you know, that's what was going on. It isn't just that it was my own stuff and I should have done more to, not that you're saying that, but I think sometimes people will say like,

what was it deeper than that? And I just think women, especially at that time, like that's all you got. That's all you were shown anyway. Successful women, women who made money, women who got, you know, who were in relationships with people of value or whatever else it was, they were shown to you as a particular type of woman.

And I never looked like that. So I just never saw that. I just never thought people like me did stuff like that. And then the worst bit was some of it would have been really useful to me, frankly. You know, like I'm not going to exercise until I'm thin. I'm not going to drink water. I'm not going to take care of myself. I'm not going to engage in the habits that would actually make it easier for me. So I speak to people now who are the same, who are like, they've sort of learned to put kindness towards themselves. They made it conditional on achieving a goal. They're making it harder to get there because the goal will be achieved more quickly if you take your life off hold. And I learned write up I write about this in the first book I went to counseling

and I was really really low this was maybe in 2010 or something like that really low and my north star my whole life had been like one day you'll be slimmer and you'll be someone who does exercise and you'll be someone who you know stands up straight and does their hair and all that stuff and then you can do all the stuff you can start enjoying the stuff because at this point I was so wrapped up and not like myself that I wasn't even listening to like a piece of music that I liked because I'd be like no no hold on wait my day is coming or even if I caught myself having a nice time like on holiday or something I'd look down and think or catch a glimpse of myself and think oh, actually you'd be having a much better time if you'd actually sorted this out. And what I didn't realize is that none of those things had anything to do with how I looked.

I just picked up this idea along the way that I didn't deserve those things because I didn't see people who looked like me taking care of me being allowed to take care of themselves and being allowed to feel sexy and being allowed to feel all this stuff. I just didn't see it. And so then I had a session with my therapist, and she said something that she was like, what if you never change? And I was so angry I can't begin to tell you. And I'm not a particularly angry person, but I was really angry with her.

Because I thought, well, if I don't change, then I never start living. I never start being nice to myself. That's what that day never comes. So I came out and I started thinking about it. Sort of entertained it. Long story short, spent a couple of weeks acting like if I don't change, I'm never going to change.

I just started doing the stuff that I was putting on hold. And then everything changed. What changed? Well, what I needed to address was things like boundaries, things like binge eating, having no impulse control, putting a space between trigger and response. This was what was holding me back from the results I wanted both mentally and physically, right?

So what needed to change is that I needed to do the sorts of things and engage in the sorts of habits that enabled me to put that friction in place, to put a space between trigger and response. And it turns out if you start from a place of feeling like shit and depriving yourself of all the stuff that makes you feel calm and positive, it's considerably harder to impose that space and to calmly decide which version of yourself you want to behave from. So as such, I was depriving myself of a real asset that could have helped me to do things in a row until they get easier, which ultimately is what I see all behavioral change as. You know, I can see great books on behavioral change in the background there. We're all trying to make people do things in a row until they're easier. My way about it is just saying that if you're nicer to yourself

and you have the same conversation with yourself in that space and you do the things that make that space calm and positive and feel mature in the way of self-care and self-soothing and self-compassion and affirmation, then you can take it choice by choice in the direction of it becoming easier until you really do update the fact this this idea that this assumption that you can't do it and this leads on to the kindness method which was the first first book you wrote um very much inspired by your own experience with weight loss and struggles there.

You work with people that want to change, you know, many of them, I'm sure, are successful in that change. Some of them are unsuccessful in that change. If you were to try and identify why some people are unsuccessful in their change, what are like the overarching themes? Oh, sit back. So I've got one of them is focusing on the outcome, thinking that your long term desired outcome is going to be compelling enough on the spot to get you where you want to be. So you start from a place of desperation. This is it. This has got to change. I want this. I want the health. I want the outcome. I want the progression. And then you forget that that isn't going to be enough. Your motivation will waver. Your plans will not go to plan. And you're going to need to have a conversation with yourself when your plans

don't go to plan that talks you into making a decision you'll be proud you made the next day. So I think one, people wildly underestimate how much it's about zooming in and getting involved in and excited about demonstrating your capacity in a row, as opposed to hoping that remedying some negatives long term will be exciting enough to keep you on track long enough to make that habit automatic. The other thing that people do wrong, I think, is focus on what's wrong with them as opposed to their assets. And they don't have that locked and loaded for that moment where they doubt themselves. They want to throw in the towel and think, I can't do this. They need to be ready to have to really debate with that with genuine evidence to the contrary.

In the spirit of wanting to update it more generally, not just in the context of that habit, taking life off hold. So all those things I said now, everything you're going to reward yourself with, really look at it and ask yourself, if I started doing it now, would it put me in a better position to do difficult things, which is ultimately what behavioral change is, simple but not easy. The other thing people do is they, what else? Oh yeah, of course. I mean, you've had Garbo Mate on here. They focus on what's wrong with the behavior that they're engaging in as opposed to how it's serving them. They look at it as a problem as opposed to a solution. And not only does that take away the component of compassion and understanding that's required when they're stuck thinking, why am I finding this so hard? I have no willpower. I must only does that take away the component of compassion and understanding that's required

when they're stuck thinking why am i finding this so hard i have no willpower i must be stupid or whatever it is is it also deprives you of understanding whether there's a problem that still needs solving when you take that away and with compassion and sometimes people find themselves filling that gap with another solution um as opposed to doing it in a way that says, do you know what, this behavior is doing a job for me, so if I'm not changing, something's going on, and that needs some curious, compassionate inquiry. That definitely.

I think the other thing is that this whole tough love, the way you speak to yourself thing, people think that tough love when you're speaking to yourself often isn't very smart love. So if, let's say, for example, you came to me and you're like, Shrew, I'm trying to stay on track with this plan and I've just fallen off track. And my task was to get you back on track,

believing in yourself as quickly as possible and equipping you to carry on, ultimately making myself redundant to you. I wouldn't say to you, come on, you shouldn't be finding this so hard. This should be easier. This is just like your teacher told you when you were little. You're just the sort of person who starts things and doesn't finish them.

And then you should start on Monday. You know, that's smart. It's not smart. And that's where people feel super disempowered because they're not taking the advice they'd give another person. That's the important bit here. That's the self-esteem bit. We don't have a problem in knowing how to change habits. And people don't have a problem in knowing what habits they want to change and how they would

benefit them. And now, thanks to many of the books behind you, we don't have a problem understanding exactly how habit change works. I think people feel patronized because what they needed was understanding why, if I have all this information and I'm smart and I want to do this, I'm not doing it. And instead of beating themselves up about it, to delve into the story. How did I come to be this way? With compassion. How cool is it that this isn't my fault, but I've decided to make it my responsibility? How can I use behavioral change as a Trojan horse and the discomfort I have to sit in that's unavoidable, short term, urges, cravings, to listen in on the way that I speak

to myself and work out whether these predictable alerts from my body are turning into commands that I'm obeying. I just think these are check-ins we should do. And I wanted to give people something so that they didn't feel like they had to wait till things got really bad. And also, so it was a private process. That's what the kindness method became. It was basically everything useful I wish I'd had, everything useful I saw in addiction. And then when I went on to train addiction staff, which was my next job after that and work in criminal justice just everything useful I saw with the most challenging resistant client myself included bear in mind I start using this stuff and like iterating using it on myself using it in different ways and I put it in the book step by step just in case there were people like me who wanted to change habits on their own terms

kind of checking with the program that they're running. Where did it come from? Who's it from? Do I want to switch it up? Do I want to update it? Some of it fake news. I think habit change is a great Trojan horse for listening in on the way you speak to yourself and debating with it until it's updated. And I'm really surprised that we don't do that in life. If I've got a really stubborn story that I tell myself, really stubborn, you know, something traumatic that happened to me under the age of, I don't know, 10, and it's created a story, a narrative in my mind that is just, you know,

has control of the wheel, is driving my life, my decisions, and is driving the self-talk in my head, that's utterly negative. You must encounter people who have that, that just can't shake it. Is that possible that there are some things that we just can't, that just have too much power over us? They've changed the circuitry in our brain to an extent that, you know, we can't change. I don't think people like me should say yes or no to things when they don't know who they're talking to with the size of the platform that you have, to be honest with you.

Of course, there are traumas that I can't speak to. Of course, I mean, I've worked in addiction, with young people in addiction. I wouldn't have the audacity to sit here and say, yeah, just... And that's actually what really pisses me off about Instagram sometimes. I'll see something and I'll be like, oh, just replace a negative thought with a positive one. And it's like, oh wow, are you a wizard? You should be on the news.

And, but I think one thing I will say is I have been really pleasantly surprised by what happens when you appeal to people's need for evidence. Dis it the stuff we tell ourselves a lot of the time it's not true or it hasn't been true for a long time that's compelling people think they can disprove it by looking in the mirror and saying that's not true you're what i love you and you're amazing and you're fantastic you're gonna be so successful does that work helps does it some people yeah affirmations help yeah of course i think with all this stuff it's got to be a combination of things i think people just have to have to have to be given the permission to not be judged to strip this harmless stuff down you know and do

it in a combination of ways that makes them feel good you want to do a couple of affirmations for a while fine when you go off it you want to do something else whatever fine i just feel like we have to hold it lightly and stop calling it remedial you're just checking in with yourself um but no I think listen I was I was a pretty extreme case and for me it was a case of saying right which when you write down it's one of the exercises in the first in both books actually when you start writing down like what are the things I say to myself when I fall off track a lot of people realize that they don't even use that vocabulary in their day-to-day life that's not theirs and that makes it compelling to change it too what is it that people tend to say when they fall off what did you say when you fell off

me oh all of it like of course I'm not going to be able to do it I'm weak-willed some people can do it that was just that was a fluke anyway that I had a bit of a streak uh people like me don't get things like that um mainly I'm weak I'm stupid I must hate myself because bear in mind all these people are giving you these like legit reasons why you should do other stuff and you're going the other way and telling you that you're harming yourself. And you know that you are. You know, I'm powerless. I'm weak.

I can't trust myself. All of it. And then thinking up like extreme ways to sort it out. They do that because they love you though, right? Like that's the paradox is they're doing that to try and help you. They're saying you're doing something wrong. You know, you're. Well, no, actually, if you think about it, like when you you tell someone you when someone you love is struggling to get back on track you don't pretend that what

they're trying to do is simple and you don't tell them to throw in the towel you remind them of their capacity to do something difficult you remind them of the times they've done difficult things in the past and you support them. Plus, you give them perspective. This is what I mean about the smart thinking, too. You don't go, oh, well, that one blip, you've got to just spiral. This is a terrible catastrophe. You say, well, just get back on track.

And, you know, back in the day, like the first thousand times I had this conversation about self-talk, I used to always use the example in groups and stuff like, think of someone you love. Write down what you'd say to someone you love. Write their name in the middle of the page. If they'd fallen off track and you were tasked with getting them back on track. And through the discomfort involved in achieving their most meaningful long-term goals. So their behaviors and their values are aligning. And people would write like, you can do this. You're amazing. What can I do for you? It's just a blip. You can learn from it. Think of all the other amazing things you've done. And then I would get them to cross that person's

name out and write their own name in, in the spirit of starting to say, look, this is by your own admission. These are the things that you would tell someone you love. Then over time, I realized if I gave someone a hundred grand to motivate someone who's fallen off track, they're not going to say, oh, it's because you're weak and you're rubbish, just like your teachers told you. There's no point starting until Monday. You might as well, you know, destruct this whole thing for now. You might as well throw the whole plan out just because of one tiny blip because you weren't perfect it's not just kind it's just not good advice um yeah i'm just not

here for the tough love there's this word we use a lot in society at the moment which is imposter syndrome it's a really interesting concept i mean the word itself the phrase itself is kind of loaded with a series of assumptions that I don't think are necessarily helpful. But you must, in your practice, deal with a lot of people that are showing signs of what we know as imposter syndrome. What's your take on it? And really, like one how does one move past it well this is a very new this is a hot take because it's through an observation the way that I come up with things is I spend as many hours as I can speaking to people human beings one after the other as many human beings as I can in different contexts and seeing how they are using these tools and what's working for them and what isn't. And for imposter syndrome, essentially not being able to internalize your accomplishments, feeling like a fraud, which I've had. Managing my binge eating and my anxiety differently

helped me change my imposter syndrome for the better. And I'm seeing why that is now. I've just started, well, now that I'm so passionate about binge eating as a result of weight loss diets being a thing that goes with my generation. What I've noticed is that when people give themselves permission to find whatever they find difficult, difficult, whatever it is, even if it's subjectively far more simple than all the things they're managing to do every day, something extraordinary happens. And that tends to have a really extraordinary impact because usually with the people I work with, because I work with, because I'm talking about like booze and other drugs and food and stuff,

there's a lot of shame and guilt associated with it. So that extra bit, we all find it difficult to acknowledge. A lot of us find it difficult to say, I was great at this, and that's the end of the sentence without any caveats and it could have been da-da-da. When it comes to acknowledging our, say say our professional accomplishments or academic accomplishments the people i work with a lot of the time feel so ashamed and guilty about this thing that that still eludes them that's that's the bit they'll be like yeah i got a pay rise but

i still haven't sorted this out people don't know how i behave when no one's watching like that bit that's what drags people down. It doesn't let them really, really internalize and process their capacity. Because, well, for example, I've written two books. That's cool. They've done well. Writing books was not hard for me. Doing this, this is way, this is, you know,

being able to not stammer while I speak to you because I had the confidence to sit and breathe before I came in here rather than look at notes or only binge eaters will understand this, but being able to start a binge and then bring it back as opposed to just starve myself for weeks or whatever I was doing before is a power and a trust in myself and an ability to close the gap between what I would tell other people to do and what I do.

And a sense of integrity when no one's watching, that seeps into every area of my life. But the trick was to allow myself to find something incredibly difficult that other people thought was a no brainer. And not think that that meant I was stupid or weak. But just that's the way things have gone for me. I remember sitting with Marissa Peer. And she said that she's never had a patient, whether they were a sports star or a you know successful millionaire whatever that believed they were enough in terms of her patience so the people that had come to her struggling with something at the root of it is that they they didn't believe they were enough in some capacity do you agree with that i think uh yeah i think self-worth

self-worth is something that comes up a lot. And if I come to you and, you know, it's clear that I have my self-worth is in the proverbial bin. I just think I'm a fucking, you know, useless, worthless, don't deserve anything. What's the start of that process to get me to a better place? Like, what do you do with me? So if you came to me, it wouldn't be just, the problem wouldn't be I have low self-worth. It would be I want to change this behavior. Yeah, and I want to change it.

I've been, you know, drinking too much alcohol, smoking too much of that, sniffing too much of this. Where would you start with me? Well, we would get an honest baseline of where you're at now. So that's why in the book we do like a snapshot letter without judgment, totally private. To just say like, I think a lot of the time we create plans for who we want to be as opposed to who we are.

And we use this stuff to find ourselves. And I think first of all, you meet yourself and you get on board with who you meet. And then I would help you to understand why you've come to be this way. So in that first step, getting to understand who I am and getting on board with who I meet,

that's through a snapshot letter. Yeah. So it's essentially saying, here we are today. This is where I'm at. This is where I've got to. This is where I'm starting. Usually it's quite a fed up letter,

like something's got to change. Here we go. But what it does is it sort of anchors the process and says, right, this is where we begin. And then when we start moving on to is the fact that you already know what to do. I believe that the people who buy my books already know what to do. And I believe that a lot of people feel really patronized when they're told what to do they know what to do and if they don't they can google it they don't know why they're not doing it despite wanting to do it so then we start thinking about closing the gap between the advice you'd give another person so I just say to people what would you like to be doing I don't give them an a or a b

I would like to be running a marathon every you know every couple of months I would like to be running a marathon every, you know, every couple of months. I'd like to be fit. I'd like to be skinny. I'd like to be a good partner. I want to be perfect. Okay. Why are you here? Why are we having this conversation? Because I'm not. I'm drinking so much alcohol, sniffing so many things, and doing all the naughty things I shouldn't be doing and I can't stop myself but I know you're right I do know what I should be doing I just can't do it okay yeah and in the past when you've created plans to change yeah what have they looked like um I've basically thrown all of the alcohol out my house and everything that I could possibly sniff.

And I have emptied the fridge and put only vegetables in. And I have written it down on a piece of paper. And then a week later, I'm back to all of the naughty habits. So what you've done is you've punished yourself. You've put things in place to say this has got bad. I need to create this environment and control and isolate yeah so that i don't do the bad thing yeah did you establish why what what you're afraid you might have to experience if you change did you identify if you get there what if it's not as good as you think if you get there will you have to do all the things that you've told people you're going to do when you get there is the process of getting there one that you're familiar with? No. All of that. What do you think you're going to have to get through? What are you going to

have to prove? What triggers are you going to have to respond to differently? These are the things people don't talk about. What self-doubt are you going to have to push against and disprove and update along the way? It's not about thinking you're going to be able to focus on what's bad. And also you should anticipate that in a week's time you're going to want to use. You should put things in place. What can I put in place to, you know, I found this really compelling in your book

because it's something I think about a lot. You know, we think of motivation as being this like constant. People ask stupid questions like, how do you stay motivated all the time? Which is, again, an assumption that people that are successful in whatever facet of their life are able to always feel a sense of motivation but um how does one prepare for that that dip that speed bump that you know the regression the relapse it's uh i think the best bet you have is the conversation you have with yourself when your plans don't go to plan and the i think first of all you prepare by yeah you can have the best plans in the world but you should assume that your plans will not go to plan and even with the best

tools in the world you should assume that you're not able to preempt every single trigger every single challenge the way that you do it is you start to reframe challenge as an opportunity to voluntarily demonstrate your capacity. You're like, here we go. I'm off grid right now. And all I've got is the advice I'd give another person and the conversation I have with myself that's going to turn into what I do with my hands. Well, don't do.

And I think that if you really focus on making that conversation one that holds firmness and compassion together, then that's the best thing you've got. Because what you're chasing there is to feel smart and calm and proud of yourself. And you already know what you tell someone else. So the more you do that and the more you take that advice and you see the results obviously and it actually works the more you start doing it in other areas of your life and my my job is to

make myself redundant to people as quickly as possible i think we should have been taught this at school we have to change habits our whole lives like why is life dragging us along and making us change them when we're all depleted and desperate um so yeah i would say it's the conversation you have with yourself's the conversation you have with yourself. And the conversation you have with yourself, very often people say to me like, how can I hold kindness and firmness at the same time, right? So how can I change habits, which involves sitting in discomfort and craving and urges, and still be kind to myself? Because being kind to myself means doing whatever I want, whenever I want to do it. And what I always tell them is it's kind of like if you, let's say you have a kid and you read

an article somewhere and realize that this treat you've been giving your kid at 11 a.m. every day for the last year is actually not very, it's really unhealthy. So as of tomorrow, you're not going to give the kid the treat. You know you're not going to give the kid the treat. The kid doesn't know yet. Kid wakes up tomorrow. It's 11 o'clock. You're not going to give the kid the treat. You know you're not going to give the kid the treat. The kid doesn't know yet. Kid wakes up tomorrow. It's 11 o'clock. You're not going to give them the treat. What's the kid going to do?

Want the treat. And what else? Cry. Kick off, yeah? Yeah. Would you blame the kid for crying? No. You'd expect the kid to cry.

Yeah. It's used to something. You wouldn't make its life miserable. You'd make the kid to cry. Yeah. It's used to something. You wouldn't make its life miserable. You'd make it as comfortable as possible. And you just repeat that in a row until it realizes that it's come out unscathed. Compassion. I know why you feel this way. Of course you feel this way.

You deserve to feel this way. You scream all you want, babe. That doesn't mean I'm going to do what you want. That's the conversation you have with your body over and over again where you hold compassion and firmness together until you've done it in a row until it's easy that's my angle and if i it does it does it help to remove the you know the kid wants the candy or whatever yeah whatever the thing the kid was expecting in the morning does it help to remove it from the environment so if i if it's you know i've struggled sometimes with like i had this like sweetie drawer in my house at one point and i i knew i didn't want to eat the sweets but when

something would happen maybe it'd be late at night i feel a bit hungry maybe you know a bit stressed i'd end up in a drawer and so i always always wondered to myself would it just help to just remove the drawer just like pour it in the bin i ultimately did um but i'm just wondering if those cues those triggers removing them completely is the answer i have this question all the time about abstinence and sobriety and whether you know again there are some people for whom it's easier. My approach is very much more for the general population. And so a lot of the time it's more, you know, we all sit in the middle and I want you to feel like you can have chocolate in your house and consume it and enjoy it and not feel powerless over it. So at the core of my message is you decide what you do with your hands and any

negotiation you have internally about it is a jumping off point and doesn't actually make you do anything. And is an insight into how what you're telling yourself about the sugar and what it means and how you'll feel if you don't have it. If you were trying to build up a streak and get some time under your belt, yeah, maybe. But ultimately, what I would recommend under those circumstances, impose some friction. Give yourself some speed bumps to start thinking about whether you actually want to do it so for example if i want to if i'm working into the night uh writing which i love doing invariably at like 1am i start thinking about delivery and about 3am i regret it strongly same so with that in mind i don't just delete delivery

car details are out addresses out it's not, I don't just delete Deliveroo. Car details are out, addresses out. It's not because I don't trust myself. It's because I want to put in moments where I think, remember you didn't want to do this? Do you remember why you didn't want to do this? Make it harder for myself to do the thing that I don't want to be doing and easier for myself to do the thing that I do. Like back in the day when I used to hate exercise,

I used to go to sleep in my gym kit. So it was just one less thing to do the thing that i do like back in the day when i used to hate exercise i used to go to sleep in my gym kit so it's just one less thing to do um so that's like removing friction versus adding it exactly so i would if i were you i'd impose friction first like put that draw somewhere else and and then when you go looking in another place start thinking to yourself god why is that draw it disrupts the autopilot that's what something i've struggled with i i do a lot of like late night eating and then i always regret it in the morning because you wake up feeling bad and especially if you've eaten just before you fall asleep the body hasn't really had a chance to digest it sometimes you get like some i don't know reflux whatever they call it and i've always wondered how to stop myself doing that when i have when i have the urge how do i break that habit i guess what's the friction that i can add don't be hungry at that time true that's do you know what sometimes

i get really deep in the weeds about binge eating and policy around it and obesity and how we've got to take down all the diets and everything and And sometimes I forget to say stuff like, don't be hungry, that helps. There's so many deep psychological stuff and we all have our own complex relationship with food and stuff. And that's what's really difficult about talking about food is because it is all the good things too.

It really is. And much like with alcohol and other drugs, when people who struggle and feel powerless around it feel really misunderstood because they hate it by that point. It's the bane of their life. It's all they think about all day. Have I been good? Have I been bad?

What am I going to have? Was that okay? Conflicting nutritional advice. Like, it's quite out of hand. You wrote a book about that topic, called The Last Diet. Why did you call it The Last Diet? Because I will never go on a diet again. I don't want anyone to go on a diet again.

They didn't work. They just didn't work. Like whenever anybody says to me like, yeah, but so-and-so is overweight and it's unhealthy or whatever, they have to go on a diet. I'm like, well, no, actually quite the contrary. I'm now working with people who have not only been left not with the physical results that they wanted, but have been left with a much more serious issue,

which is an eating disorder, a binge eating disorder, which is wildly damaging their mental health and their self-esteem and their ability to enjoy their lives. Most of the people who come to me now couldn't give a shit about losing weight anymore they're like remove this lack of trust remove this powerlessness like make this end how did this come about and that was because of weight loss diets in my opinion on the back of this book it says this is the last diet you'll ever go on yeah what is that diet it's the diet of learning to stop of trusting yourself and taking common sense advice. Now, obviously we can, we can go into like whose body, what, and blood types and dah, dah, dah, dah. But ultimately the people I speak to are doing so much. So many of their behaviors

are causing them to gain weight, a lot of weight because of the guilt and the shame and the all or nothing and the scarcity mindset and the feast or famine that has come with weight loss diets with the best of intentions. And so once they have managed that and built the self-efficacy that they so deserve from managing to break the all or nothing thinking, trust themselves around food, learn to enjoy food again, sit in the discomfort of realizing that they're going to be okay without it, get on board with the fact that they find it hard when other people don't and build their self-esteem that way and use the unhelpful behaviors as a vehicle to remembering how capable they are, then they can just take the same advice they would give to another person because they're not scared of food anymore and they're not scared of themselves anymore and they like themselves so they're

more inclined to make to make judgments that feel smart you know I got to a stage where I was doing diets where someone would show me a banana and a canister of cream and I'd be like well the canister of cream is obviously better for me that's how messed up diet and you know what I know you think it's weird I assure you I've spoken to and do you know what? I know you think it's weird. I assure you I've spoken to enough people now who are going, I know exactly what she's talking about. That's the extent to which intelligent people start moving away from intelligent decisions because diets needed us to come back. They needed you to be powerless. They need you to need guidelines or else you need to pay more and pay someone else and go find another guru or get another diet as opposed to teach you how to take the same advice you'd give another person.

There is no way that if someone was trying to manage their weight and they ate something bad, you would say, oh, well, you've blown it now. You should have 15 more. You said earlier you secretly had a gastric band fitted. Well, secretly, Close friends knew, but a lot of my close friends didn't know. I was just done. When I got to my heaviest, I was like, that's it, I'm done.

How heavy? 126 kilos. And then you had it removed in like an emergency operation. Yeah, I'm always careful about talking about it because again, I'm afraid that people are going to be actually you know what i'm not promoting it by any means sorry i i know that there are people for whom it's been really helpful but it did not teach me to eat differently and the reason i had an emergency operation is because my relationship with food was so profoundly important to me i didn't understand at the time that i um I've never talked to anyone about this, but the band moved because I overate.

But I kept having it tightened because I didn't want to be allowed to overeat because I thought if I've done this to myself, and honestly, Steve, like the pain. It was horrible. It was horrible. I felt so ashamed. And then I lost a bunch of weight

because it actually can, I won't go into details, but it can cause a different eating disorder. I lost a bunch of weight because it actually can, I won't go into details, but it can cause a different eating disorder. I lost a bunch of weight. People start being really nice. Like, you know, they reflect back to you, your worst fears when you lose weight. They'll be like, oh, wow. We were so worried about you. Finally, now you can live your life. And you're like're like shit I thought that was just me um and then I felt ashamed because I thought like I'd copped out and now I realize on reflection it's extraordinary that I thought I'd copped out and you know what the first version of the kindness method doesn't have that in it I wasn't ready I wasn't I hadn't forgiven myself for being so mean to myself I hadn't forgiven myself for feeling so shameful. And I hadn't told some of my closest friends who were there at the time. And I'm sure knew that had the grace and the kindness not to embarrass me. But it was horrible. And the

day I came out of surgery, I remember with the the emergency surgery they told me they were going to try and keep it in and I remember I came out and the woman went um I'm really sorry we had to take it out and I burst into tears of joy I hated it I hated the whole thing I hated the lying I hate the shame I hated the guilt my body didn't feel good because even when I lost weight it wasn't because I was taking care of myself it's because I was living on so little it just felt like another version of punishment you know um it did not do good things for me how do you how do you feel about that person that you were that that young woman who made the decision to fit that band and went through all of that pain?

How do you feel about her? I can't believe how quick she was to think that people would be upset with her or ashamed of, or that she should be ashamed. I can't believe there wasn't that extra layer that said, gosh, this is tough. This isn't nice. Look what you're having to put yourself through

or you think you have to put yourself through. There wasn't even a bit of that. It was as though I was born with the knowledge. It's as though I had told myself that I was born with the knowledge to make the best decisions for myself ever. And if I wasn't, then it was a failing on my part and I was faulty. And I, you know, I don't feel that anymore. Thank goodness. You know, I think it's also important to remember that I was all the great

things I am now then. That was the point. I was allowed to enjoy my life then so there's also part of me that's just like wow it's a real shame it's a real shame that you didn't kind of lean into the other stuff because I was always fun I was always funny I was always kind um I wish I had known at that age that you're allowed to think that you're good things too that you know that's okay what were there any sort of specific moments or catalysts or dominoes that fell that created the change you've seen in your life from the person you were then to now was there you know if someone's can relate strongly to that situation where you're having that gastric band removed in an emergency op and they're looking at the person you are now what's what's the piece in

between the actionable piece in between that they can or even the first step in that um journey is it going and seeing a therapist is it the first actionable step is practicing listening listening into the way you speak to yourself. I think it'll, I think ultimately it comes down to that. I think listen in. And the great news is if you try to change a habit, however small, it's an incredibly effective way to turn up the volume. Listen in on what's going on. Inquire compassionately, curiously. What am I telling myself? What are my assumptions about myself in this situation?

What are my assumptions about what I deserve? Curiously, write them down. Think about whether you'd say that to someone else. And then start thinking about where it came from. Start seeing whether it's true. Just start curiously inquiring because i think that's the best thing you've got and it's free where are you where are you now in terms of your own self-talk and your own process and your own perception of self i am really good i am

this is the best i've ever been because everything's not great. There's a lot going on and I'm fine. That's why. That's how I know. I know how I would have responded to things that are happening right now two, three, five years ago. This, you know, I slept really well last night, I mind telling you. I kind of felt like this would go well.

Like this was my time to tell people what I'm passionate about and speak to the people who feel like some people don't get them. So right now I feel great because it's kind of, it feels like my nervous system's kind of got the message. You're safe, you're harmless. You're just trying to be nice and no one's coming for you like and so far um the more I'm myself the more it seems to go all right which for me personally is of course considering what I've told you is an extraordinary thing and other than when I have to say my name on the spot, which I know a lot of stammerers have,

I don't seem to be stammering, and I know that it was a trauma response now, and I think that a lot of the self-compassion work that I've done has helped me to calm down. Like a lot of this stuff, I've realised that if I stammered all the way through this, I'd still be someone who was worth listening to. That nervous system, the anxiety you talked about,

what sort of methods have you put in place to help you calm down? Writing for sure. So when I'm panicking about something, most of the time, you know, there's that confirmation component of just like, yep, and it did happen. You only remember the times it did happen, right? So I started collecting all the things I thought were going to happen that I was worrying about and like just writing them down or just saying them into my phone and then every now and then I'd reflect and be like wow good to know that

like I need evidence you know I need stuff so I was like all right well the last hundred times you worried about this it did not happen and so that helped me calm down. That made it compelling for me. Breath work, talking about anxiety, understanding anxiety and what it is and what the brain's trying to do and the more old school stuff, it was essentially a separation between what I'm thinking right now and what's actually going on and a curious, compassionate look into why my thoughts are going the way they are. And also it's an understanding, it's a preemption. So for example, I should, well, I probably won't now that I've said it, which is another thing, like get it out put it in the put it in the light loads of us are suffering with anxiety um to a different degree of course

but pre-empting it made it a lot more predictable and a lot less personal so for example the last big uh podcast I went on I anticipated I actually wrote myself a letter before and I was like after you leave, even if you think you smashed it, you're going to start second guessing everything you said. You're going to sketch out and not want to talk to anyone about it because they're going to ask you questions and you're going to think you forgot something. So I just preempted it. I just, as we say in addiction, I played the tape forward and then it started making it more like, oh yeah, this is what my brain does to keep me safe. Take me back to my place where I'm used to. But actually the last hundred times it tried to do that, I had nothing

to be worried about. So I kind of just realized that I wasn't by myself anymore. I was with myself and we were working out what was going on and it got a lot more predictable and that made it a lot less personal, which made me a lot more calm. And in terms of food? Yes. What's your relationship like with food these days? Calm and wonderful. I never thought this day would come.

I eat what I like. I look forward to eating. I don't feel like I need to justify to anyone what I'm eating or why I'm eating it. And great thing happened, which for me, you know, with writing self-help books and stuff, you know, especially when you're telling people you're going to change for good and I've changed for good. Well, I only wrote it five years ago. What do they know? You know, so sometimes you have to do things privately for your own integrity to be like, oh, thank fuck for that. And lockdown, I put on weight. I didn't eat differently.

I didn't feel bad. I thought I looked great. And I was like, yes, I needed this. And then after lockdown, I got into fitness and I've lost weight, lost a bit more weight. And I honestly, I don't like myself less or more. So during lockdown, what I saw was an example of what it is to just be a human whose body fluctuates without much judgment

or emotion around food. And it was a wonderful, important lesson for me. And I'm really glad now on reflection, even though it wasn't planned, that I did put on weight during that period, because I needed to see that it didn't matter anymore. And it wasn't because I was neglecting myself, because usually I run around town all day, and I wasn't doing that. And it was so lovely to just have that be for regular body reasons and not shame or guilt or sadness or abuse or numbing out or whatever. So yeah, I love food now. Plus, I'm really glad no one talks to me about it anymore because of the book that I think they're scared to.

I think people don't quite know where I sit. Like, because I think it's fine for people to want to lose weight. I think it's really messed up that we go tell for a lifetime, especially women, lose weight, lose weight, lose weight, lose weight. Oh, no, you can't go on a diet and you're not allowed to want to lose weight. You have to love your body exactly how it is. Meantime, a bunch of us tried to do what they said

and came out of the diets bigger and with a eating disorder that makes us feel powerless even to um even to follow common sense nutritional guidelines so yeah i don't have any problem with people wanting to do whatever they want to do it's just that in my case it came as a result i was never before a lockdown when i had done all this work and i had all the methods and all the things I share there was never a time when I was overweight because I liked food or I was enjoying food or it was too much of a good thing that's why I understood addiction if you saw that I was overweight according to whatever you know scales and society and whatever, bigger than I am now. It was always because I, those are the times I hated food the most. The bane of my life. I barely tasted it. I know.

But the same if you speak to someone who feels dependent or powerless over alcohol, they're not going to be like, oh, I love booze. It becomes, when you're powerless, it becomes horrible. And so there was a space for me to like myself a lot more when I was bigger. But because I neglected all these other habits of self-care, I wasn't drinking water. I wasn't like just basic stuff. At times when I was bigger, it meant that I wasn't being good to myself. But that is not the case for everyone, by any means. In fact, for many people, it's quite the opposite. So that's where I think because it's quite a nuanced conversation and one that I've given an enormous amount of thought to, don't get me wrong, I didn't. I didn't, I wasn't naive about coming out to talk about

things like this. I knew I needed to work out where I sat, but I knew I meant well. And I knew I was on the right path, but I had to understand where I sat. So that's where now I think people sometimes they don't ask me about it because they're not sure which side I'm on. And the fact is it's both. What is your mission now? What's your personal mission? What are you trying to do? It's twofold.

One, I want to convince people that kindness gets shit done. Being nice to yourself and taking the same advice you would give the people you love and closing the gap between what you would tell them and what you tell yourself

and what actions you would tell them to take and what actions you take yourself, that's kindness and it gets shit done. One. And two, now that I've seen what's come back from the second book with The Last Diet, I am determined to have binge eating and powerlessness and lack of trust that people have as a direct result of weight loss diets to die with my generation like it's gotta go because people my age they know they don't want to pass this on to their kids no one does um it's going with me we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for

the question that they've left for you is it ever appropriate to hurt someone's feelings yes I think so I've recently hurt someone's feelings and it was very upsetting for me as well. But it was appropriate because it wasn't all mine to carry and it was appropriate to share.

It wasn't nice for me either, but it wasn't all mine so it was okay to say to them this is this is what's upset me about you and i know it will upset you to hear this but i shouldn't be carrying all of this when you're responsible for some of it and that will have upset them yeah sure thank you thank you so much for your time thank you for these wonderful books thank you for all of your work thank you for the wonderful way that you articulate and deliver your opinions it's um it really does cut and that's um that's exactly what makes for a great conversationalist and podcaster and um i love your no bs approach to the way that you communicate and serve and think because it's uh it's really refreshing to be honest and that's very much why i've loved this conversation but also i wanted you to come here because i saw your conversation with mo

ah yes you have a really no bs way of articulating yourself which i think is very much needed um and your your perspective on on kindness as a method to many of these things that we're trying to solve as humans we often default to like the opposite of kindness we're mean to ourselves about and mean to others about i think is i've learned the hard way that is very much the way forward so thank you so much Thank you for having me.