Begin Again with Davina McCall
I Broke My Worst Habit With Kindness! Behavioural Change Expert
15 Jan 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We're all a number of steps away from doing something we regret. You are an award-winning psychologist, also best-selling author, How Diets Make Us Fat, and that title spoke to me.
Chapter 2: What childhood experiences shaped Shahroo Izadi's relationship with food?
I'm just decoupling diet culture from weight loss in order to enable people to lose weight. I never thought about that. So I just thought it was normal to be judging other people's bodies, comparing my body to theirs. And I was gaining weight like wildfire, thinking, what's going wrong? I know a lot now that I wouldn't have known then. Put on a diet.
You're asking someone to care about an aesthetic in the future when they have a need, physical, like fundamental.
Chapter 3: How do dieting and restriction cycles affect our health?
existential you've got to eat oh god that's so interesting it was infused into us be thin be thin be thin be thin don't eat so much and then body positivity came but our own learning was too deep diet culture left me scared of food and that's when i had started to treat my weight problem as a food problem not as a size problem and i was losing weight at speed wow
There are millions of people out there who would be able to manage their weight and their relationship with food had they never tried to lose weight in the first place. Yes. What's really important is that everyone's got something they want to change, something they feel powerless over.
Chapter 4: What is the psychology behind addiction and overeating?
I want to lose weight. I want to stop doing this. I want to not look at my phone in the morning. All day, we're engaging in habits. If you didn't choose them, they chose you. Yes.
If you could give people the first steps to making this positive change, what would they be? I have three juicy ones. So first of all... So today I am interviewing the amazing Sheru Izzardi. We've had a little exchange this morning on Insta already. We love each other. She is an absolutely incredible woman, an award-winning psychologist, also best-selling author and speaker.
You've tipped the attitudes towards addiction and treating addiction on its head. You help so many people. And we are here at the 15th of January. A lot of people are already punishing themselves because they may have fallen off the wagon.
Chapter 5: How does the 'Kindness Method' help in breaking unhealthy habits?
So I think this is a time when people really need to hear you. And we're going to be talking about your new book. This is so exciting. I loved on your Instagram page, you had all the different copies of the book from all the different countries.
Of The Kindness Method.
Of The Kindness Method. Yeah, that's amazing. And this is going to be the same. How diets make us fat. And that...
title spoke to me in such a massive blow and we're going to talk about that a bit later but first of all I'd like to go back because really this whole method came from personal experience so when was the first time that you became aware that other people were aware of your body shape what was it
I can't tell you that there was a specific moment, but I can tell you that round about eight years old, I became aware that I was comparatively much bigger than the other kids. So they would let you know at school, of course, every time you went to the GP. So we're talking like 1992, 1993. Every time you go to the GP, they would be bringing to my mother's attention, like, your kid is too large.
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Chapter 6: What role does self-compassion play in behavioral change?
And that was commonplace. I'm sure it's still commonplace to some degree because no one's recommending obesity, you know. Yeah. And so more and more I was noticing, and also you hear people say things like lovely and slim or, oh, she's got such a pretty face. And I think we're more conscious of what kids are listening to now. But I think it was teachers, you know, people's mums.
It wasn't evil people going around to upset me. But the reality of it was that I think the concern was based on real things, which was that the world was harder for a kid that was overweight.
Chapter 7: How can one start making positive changes in their life?
I was brought up by my grandmother who couldn't give her kids anything. Sugar, because it was post-war. And so she gave me all the sugar that she couldn't give her own kids as an act of love, which made me fall in love with sugar. I mean, I had golden syrup and sugar sandwiches for tea.
Me too.
Chapter 8: What common mistakes do people make when trying to change their habits?
Did you? For snacks. Did you? For snacks. Butter and just like layer after layer until it was like a big doughy ball in my mouth. I know. I know. I still have that palate. I really do. It's bad.
So that's actually quite a tough beginning because it sets you up with a taste for something. And what was your mum like? when she gave you these treats, like was it kind of an act of love for you?
My mum was already very weight conscious herself. And much like myself and a number of now thousands of people that I've spoken to and heard from, I'm sure that my mom would tell you that she wishes she was the size she was when she started calling herself fat. Yes.
When she started dieting, everyone, everyone says that to me that I wish I was barely even overweight, you know, um, I looked so great. And they're also able on reflection to see how young I looked, how vibrant I looked, how this, you know, um, My mom didn't come to associate because she didn't grow up in a time where diet culture was so pervasive. Right.
It didn't seem strange to say, well, just eat a little bit less because that happens to do this to you. It didn't feel like it was attached to and therefore you will be able to be successful and people will like you and all of that stuff. It was more of a health thing. And then culturally, I'm Iranian and I feel like, again, it was held lightly. Don't get me wrong.
It's damaged a lot of us girls, but it was held lightly culturally. What do you mean by that? It was seen more broadly as an act of self-care to also care about how much one ate and looked and things like that. They had higher levels of like, you should also blow dry your hair every day. And I was like, that's high maintenance beyond belief. But it was an extension of that. Yes. That said...
The way it was held lightly meant that living in this society was harder because, of course, that came really early. And so I just thought it was normal to be judging other people's bodies, comparing my body to theirs. I'd sit on the tube and I'd look like, okay, well, my leg is this big and someone else's leg is this big. Because I heard the grown-ups would be talking about it.
Plus there was like Jane Fonda videos all the time. And she's cool. She's a legend. So I don't feel like the blame game about that is wrong in any sense, other than for the diet industry. I have beef with them. But when it comes to... People talk about their mums and diet culture and stuff. We didn't know any better.
And we only know what we know now because those people went through what they went through. And these are unprecedented times. We didn't have ultra-processed food. Stress levels weren't so high. We didn't have all these different interventions that are making us really confused. And I think at the time, my mum was much like everyone else's mum.
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