ZOE Science & Nutrition - Recap: How to maintain new habits in the New Year | Tara Swart & Sarah Berry

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Today we’re talking about habits. Every January, millions of us set ambitious goals for the year ahead. Maybe you want to eat better, move more, stress less. But by February, millions of those well-intended resolutions are already in the bin.  So why is changing your habits so hard? Neuroscientist Dr Tara Swart joins me and Sarah Berry to explain how to implement small, consistent improvements that will set you up your success. 🌱 Try our new plant based wholefood supplement - Daily30+ *Naturally high in copper which contributes to normal energy yielding metabolism and the normal function of the immune system 📚Books by our ZOE Scientists The Food For Life Cookbook Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Ferment by Prof. Tim Spector Free resources from ZOE How to eat in 2026 - Discover ZOE’s 8 nutrition principles for long-term health Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition Gut Guide - For a Healthier Microbiome in Weeks  Better Breakfast Guide Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know hereListen to the full episode here

Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today, we're talking about habits. Every January, millions of us set ambitious goals for the year ahead. Maybe you want to eat better, move more, stress less. But by February, millions of those well-intended resolutions are already in the bin. So why is changing your habits so hard? Neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swore joins me. and Sarah Berry, explain how to implement small consistent improvements that will set you up for success.

Tara, is there anything in the science that talks about how long something takes to be a habit? Because just as, you know, anecdote for myself, I could totally overindulge on Christmas day or, you know, if I'm in the States and I'm invited around for Thanksgiving. And like, one day doesn't really change my habits very much. So if I have that one day, then actually I find it quite easy to return to whatever my normal pattern is about food where I'm generally quite thoughtful. I definitely find that if I go for a whole week with something that is really off, then actually I feel like somehow I've almost got into that pattern and it's hard to return backward. Is that just me? Am I making all of that?

Is there anything sort of real in the differences between those? Yeah, so there's actually two questions there. And I'm going to come back to the how long does it take to change your habit. but I'll pick up on your example because it's so real for people. So you're absolutely right that over-indulging for one day isn't going to change, you know, the thoughtful behaviours that you have, you know, set up already. I kind of mentioned this already, but one of the pitfalls is that let's say you did over-indulge for a week and you have noticed that you've put on weight. The normal default for the brain is to say, well, you've messed this up now, so basically

you've failed. By the way, I do that totally full of like guilt and self-loathing as soon as I've done something I feel I shouldn't have done. But then that also kind of, in a way, unfortunately, allows you to keep doing it because you think, well, I failed at that, so I might as well not bother. But it's so important to not beat yourself up and start again. That's a really big learning that I've had over the last, you know, decade or so. It's really interesting because I have a three-year-old as well as a 14-year-old.

And I see the three-year-old do this. Like if somehow she's told she's done something wrong, she literally throws her toys, you know, out of the prim, as it were, incredibly upset. And then when you look at the three-year-old, it's sort of obviously like, you know what, don't give up, everything's fine, you should just go and do it again. So in a way, it's so obvious with a three-year-old. And then what I'm hearing you say is it's sort of the same for me, but maybe I'm not so good at saying, don't give up and, you know, throw your toys out of the prime. It's all right. Just go back and do it again. And that's as relevant for me as an adult as it is when you're

trying to bring up a small child. Exactly. We're much, obviously, much kinder to our children and our pets than we are to ourselves. We don't give ourselves that same break that we might give to our children. And so the thing with three-year-olds is that it's very physical. So when something goes wrong, they will literally throw their toys. It will throw themselves to the ground. So you can see what's going on. Inside your brain, have you seen that movie Inside Out? No. Oh, you must watch it. It's a Disney film. It's about a child who you can see the little characters in their brain that are their emotions. And so basically your three-year-old's behavior is going on inside your head, but you're not demonstrating that to the world because you've learned to regulate your emotions.

I try not to throw myself on the floor and hammer my feet, however much I may occasionally feel like doing it, yes. Before we forget, let's get back to the, how long does it take to create or change a habit? There are so many, you know, things out there like it takes two weeks or 42 days or 66 days or whatever. But, you know, none of those are true because basically it depends what it is. If it is going from eating a bar of chocolate to one square of chocolate every night, you could do that in probably two weeks. You could create that habit in two weeks. If it's something like improving your emotional intelligence or your intuition, that's going to take at least nine months. I mean, I actually talk about the neuroplasticity process for a

profound change as literally like the gestation period of a baby. So the amount of time it takes from fertilisation for a baby to be born because you are literally becoming a new person. If you change something that fundamental about yourself, it's like going through the birth process. And then, you know, let's use the analogy of language because it's a very tangible one. Jonathan, if you and I both decided to learn Spanish and I used the Deolingo app and kind of just did it myself in my spare time, but you went for Spanish lessons once a week and you had an exam at the end of six months and then you had a trip planned to Mexico, you would be much better at Spanish than me. So it's also the intensity of the effort that you put into learning something new or changing a habit. And those are

the same things. Changing a habit is basically learning something new for your brain. So I often wonder, Tara, whether also the time of year is really putting, setting us up to fail as well. You know, January, it's a bit dreary. Christmas is over, new years over, particularly for women who might be in the summer thinking about getting into that bikini, dare I say it, that in January, what is their motivation? Picking up on the point that you just said, people don't have necessarily an immediate target. And I think that there is quite good evidence to show if you've got a goal, if you've got a target that you've got to meet, then you're more likely to be able to follow any of these resolutions.

Yeah, that's absolutely true. So if you have a vacation coming up, then it's definitely much more likely that you will do what you need to do to get into shape than if you don't. But we're talking about New Year's resolution specifically because it's that time of year now. But September is also a time the kind of school year start, you know, that people might think about changing something. You could pick your own birthday as a time to, you know, start something new. Apart from this, like you said, the time of year and that whether there's an actual,

you know, tangible reason at the end of it, it's not so much to do with dates as it is to do with your motivation and your willpower. So for example, before my wedding, what I did to get into shape, I would never, never have the motivation to do now. You know, there was a very, very clear goal. And what I ate and the exercise that I did was non-negotiable that that would be the case for, you know, at least three months. And it was hard work. But in terms of the desire to do it and the motivation. It's actually like really annoying because I sort of realize that there either has to be something really bad like a health scare or something really good like what you're going to look like on your wedding day to make you behave in a way that you obviously can, but it's definitely

harder to do just in normal life. Amazing. So I think we've touched on through the conversation already some actionable advice, but we always like to make sure that listeners have this chance to really understand, okay, what are the things that I could really do to turn this into practice? And I think I'd like to ask both of you if you'd be willing to share, maybe sort of your three top tips, if you're having to sort of condense this down. For anybody who's listening, I understand you're saying, well, I wouldn't necessarily start today. But I guess maybe they could start tomorrow. And therefore it's no longer a new year's resolution, but just part of this steady process, which I do love. I think that that's very powerful.

I guess why shouldn't you start on something today as long as you have it in mind that this is just about what you want to do in your life as opposed to sort of this sort of off and on? break things down into bite-sized chunks. So, you know, small things that you feel confident that you can do. Think about things that you are actively going to do rather than things that you don't want to do. And if you are doing things like going to bed 15 minutes earlier, walking a thousand extra steps a day, eating broccoli instead of a burger, then those things are actually going to help your brain to achieve your larger goals. So all of those things that create the conditions for success in your brain mean that when it does come to a bigger goal or a less tangible goal, you will actually be in a better condition to be able to achieve that.

So thinking about what you're building up to and probably even like having fun and giving yourself a reward once you achieve, you know, the first set of micro goals because we don't want this one to seem like a sort of miserable and insurmountable task. But, you know, small things, get a reward at the end of it. The achievement itself might be the reward. but it could be something else, and know that you're creating the building blocks in your brain to achieve your larger goals. And Jonathan, a motto I often tell people that I live by

and think would be really positive for people to bear a mind is if a food is too healthy to be enjoyed, it's just not healthy for you at all. And I think people should remember that in the new year, that food is to bring us pleasure. I'm still struggling with tofu for exactly this reason, though I recognize that this is my failing and I'm working on it. But yes, no, I understand what you mean.

And sometimes, of course, you can train yourself, right? I was thinking of Tara's thing about this micro step because I used to drink tea with two sugars in it. And I used to have at least six of those a day, probably more. And one of the things I discovered when I did the first Zoe test was my blood sugar control was terrible, possibly because I was basically living on sugar for the previous 20 years. But I hadn't realized because on the outside, I was like, I just started to put on some weight at this point, but I haven't before. And what I found, but it's interesting, I didn't, this was sort of trial and error, was I couldn't go cold turkey. I couldn't give up all the sugar right away.

It was too much. But I was able to reduce it to one sugar immediately. And interestingly, like a couple of months after that, I then went to no sugar. And it was really hard for the first couple of weeks. And then interestingly, now, whenever somebody gives me something that has, you know, for some reason, I had a sugar, I'm like, it's disgusting. I think I've rewired my brain is what you're telling me, Tara, and that this has taken time, and that in a sense I've managed to get that to work. I hadn't read your book at this point.

But effectively, what I was doing is sort of retraining step by step towards this new state, and now this is my normal habit. Is that like a little example of the sort of microchanges you're talking about? Perfect example. I'll end this recap with something I think you'll like, a free gut health guide, created by our team of scientists here at Zoe. many of us aren't sure how to best support our gut, so we developed an easy-to-follow guide, complete with tips, recipes and shopping lists designed to help you look after your gut.

The guide is delivered straight to your inbox, along with ongoing nutrition insights from Zoe, the Science and Nutrition Company on a mission to transform their health of millions. To get your free gut health guide, just visit zoe.com slash gut guide. Thanks for listening.