Begin Again with Davina McCall I Broke My Worst Habit With Kindness! Behavioural Change Expert
Jan 15, 2026
Shahroo Izadi, an award-winning psychologist and bestselling author, shares her personal journey of overcoming food addiction through her innovative Kindness Method. She emphasizes the importance of self-compassion over shame in achieving lasting behavior change. Shahroo discusses how her early experiences with dieting led to cycles of restriction and unhealthy habits. She also offers practical tools for managing cravings and urges, advocating for compassionate approaches to break free from old patterns while finding balance in life.
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Habits Choose Us Unless We Rewire Them
- Shahroo: if you didn't choose your habits, they chose you; change requires identifying and rewiring those habits.
- Habit change is skill building: repeat new behaviours until they become automatic.
Childhood Food Shame Shaped Habits
- Shahroo Izadi describes being aware of her larger size from about eight years old and how school and doctors reinforced it.
- Early restriction made sugar feel forbidden and intensified her later bingeing and shame-driven cycles.
Kindness Beats Shame For Lasting Change
- Self-compassion, not self-punishment, consistently predicted lasting change in Shahroo's work with addiction.
- Shame undermines mastery because it makes failures personal and blocks repetition needed for skill-building.
