Behaviour Change Scientist: How I Lost 120lbs With Kindness: Shahroo Izadi | E222

Shahroo Izadi shares how a childhood of bullying and early dieting led to a binge eating disorder, a secretly fitted gastric band, and a profound dislike of herself. Working in addiction treatment, she realized she needed to understand why she didn't like herself rather than just shrinking her body. She built the Kindness Method: treating yourself with the same compassion and smart advice you'd give a loved one, while holding firmness through discomfort. The conversation covers why diets fail and create eating disorders, how to prepare for relapse, imposter syndrome, anxiety management, and her mission to end diet-driven binge eating with her generation.

• Izadi developed a binge eating disorder, using food as a drug without realizing it at the time.
  00:03:36
• She secretly got a gastric band fitted, then had to have it removed by emergency surgery.
  00:04:07
• Her therapist asked 'what if you never change?', which triggered her breakthrough to stop putting life on hold.
  00:09:21
• She kept having the band tightened on purpose because she didn't want to be allowed to overeat, viewing it as self-punishment.
  00:42:22
• When told the band had to be removed, she burst into tears of joy because she hated the lying, shame and guilt.
  00:43:56
• Her mission is for diet-driven binge eating, powerlessness and lack of trust to 'die with my generation'.
  00:55:24
• Her stammer was a trauma response from childhood, and self-compassion work has largely calmed it.
  00:48:39

• She did an undergrad in psychosocial sciences in Norwich, a postgrad in psychology, then worked for the NHS in substance misuse in Northwest London.
  00:01:33
• Born in North London to Iranian parents who came during the revolution; her first language is Farsi.
  00:02:36
• In the 1990s, GPs would put bullied overweight children on diets as standard practice.
  00:06:42
• A key reason people fail at change is fixating on the long-term outcome instead of the in-the-moment conversation with themselves.
  00:12:25
• She uses the analogy of denying a child a daily treat: expect the crying, hold compassion and firmness, repeat until it's easy.
  00:33:06
• To resist late-night Deliveroo orders she deletes the app and removes saved card and address details to add friction.
  00:35:42
• She used to sleep in her gym kit to remove friction from exercising.
  00:36:13
• She writes down anxious predictions and reviews them later as evidence that feared outcomes rarely happen.
  00:48:39
• Before big podcasts she writes herself a letter preempting the post-event second-guessing, 'playing the tape forward' as in addiction work.
  00:50:11
• During lockdown she gained weight without judgment and saw it as a valuable lesson that body fluctuation didn't matter.
  00:51:43

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