Imposter syndrome, how does one move past it? Ah, sit back. Sheru is the... She is an expert in breaking bad habits and beating addiction.
Women's Health magazine has called her Britain's answer to Brene 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 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 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. So it's 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 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 you're a kid in the 90s, if your kid's being bullied for being fat, then you go to the GP, they're gonna put you on a diet.
They're gonna 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, the weight loss that I think weight loss dieting's got a lot to answer for in that sense. The, you know, the, this is your goal weight and this is how 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 the worst bit was some of it would have been really useful to me, frankly. You know, like I'm not gonna exercise until I'm thin. I'm not gonna drink water.
I'm not gonna take care of myself. I'm not gonna 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 this. 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 in not liking myself that I wasn't even listening to 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 I'd catch a glimpse of myself and think, well, no, 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, being allowed to take care of themselves and being allowed to feel sexy and being allowed to feel all the 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 stop being nice to myself. That's what that day never comes. So I came out. I started thinking about it.
Sort of entertained it. Long story short, I spent a couple of weeks acting like, if I don't change, I'm never gonna change. I just started doing the stuff that I was putting on hold. And then everything changed.
What changed? 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 wanna 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 behavioural change as. I can see great books on behavioural 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 nicest 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 assumption that you can't do it. And this leads on to The Kindness Method, which is the first book you wrote, 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 the overarching themes? 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 wanna 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 gonna be enough. Your motivation will waver.
Your plans will not go to plan. And you're gonna 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 when they doubt themselves and they wanna 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 gonna 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 behavioural change is, simple but not easy if, let's say for example, you came to me in your light shirt room, 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 a 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 why 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 patronised 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 behavioural 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 started using this stuff and I iterated 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 programme 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 at the age of, I don't know, 10, and it's created a story and a narrative in my mind that is just, you know, has control of the wheel, is driving my life and 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 the negative thought with the positive one. 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. Disprove 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. I love you and you're amazing and you're fantastic.
It'll 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.
People just 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. And then 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. But no, I think, listen, 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 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 realise 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 gonna be able to do it. I'm weak-willed. Some people can do it.
That was just a fluke anyway that I had a bit of a streak. People like me don't get things like that. Mainly I'm weak, I'm stupid. I must hate myself.
Just 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. They're doing that to try and help you. They're saying, you're doing something wrong, you know, you're...
No, well, no, actually, if you think about it, like, when 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, you've had that one blip. That's just gotta just spiral. This is a terrible catastrophe. You say, we'll 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 the most meaningful long-term goals, so their behaviours 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 why you're your own admission. These are the things that you would tell someone you love.
And over time, I realised, if I give someone 100 grand to motivate someone who's fallen off track, they're not gonna 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, disrupt 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. Yeah, I'm just not here for the tough love. There's this way 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, how does one move past it? Wow, 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 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 so that I don't do the bad thing. Did you establish why, 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 told people you were gonna 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 gonna have to get through?
What are you gonna have to prove? What triggers are you gonna have to respond to differently? These are the things people don't talk about. What self-doubt are you gonna have to push against and disprove and update along the way?
It's not about thinking you're gonna be able to focus on what's bad. And also, you should anticipate that in a week's time you're gonna 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 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 how does one prepare for that dip, that speed bump, that, you know, the regression, the relapse? It's, I think the best bet you have is the conversation you have with yourself when your plans don't go to plan. And 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, 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 or 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 when 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 job is to make myself redundant with 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?
So yeah, I would say it'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 realized that this treat you've been giving a 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 gonna give the kid the treat. You know you're not gonna give the kid the treat.
The kid doesn't know yet. Kid wakes up tomorrow, it's 11 o'clock. You're not gonna give them the treat. What's the kid gonna do?
Want the treat. And what else? Cry. Kick off, 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 it as comfortable as possible and you'd 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 gonna 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, does it help to remove the, you know, the kid wants the candy or whatever, 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 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 a bit stressed. I'd end up in a drawer.
And so I always wanted to myself, would it just help to just remove the drawer, just like pour it in the bin? I ultimately did. 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 it's an insight into 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 writing, which I love doing, invariably at like 1 a.m., I start thinking about Deliveroo and about 3 a.m., I regret it strongly.
Same. So with that in mind, I don't just delete Deliveroo. Card details are out. Address is out.
It's not because I don't trust myself. It's because I want to put in moments where I think, ah, remember you didn't want to do this? 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's just one less thing to do. So that's like removing friction. Exactly.
So I would, if I were you, I'd impose friction first. Like put that drawer somewhere else. And then when you go looking in another place, start thinking to yourself, God, why is that drawer? It disrupts the autopilot.
That's what something I struggle with. I do a lot of like late night eating and then I always regret it in the morning because you wake up feeling bad, especially if you eat in 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 or 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 sometimes I forget to say stuff like, don't be hungry. That helps. You know, there's so many like deep psychological stuff and we all have our own complex relationship with food and stuff. 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, 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 got out of hand. You wrote a book about that topic, 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 You're good things too. 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 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 will, 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 now in terms of your own self-talk and your own process and your 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. Am I 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, 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, realise 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 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. Breathwork, talking about anxiety, understanding anxiety and what it is and what the brain's trying to do and about keeping you safe and all that stuff. And eventually, much like, you know, whether it's the militant mindfulness that I come at or the more like meditative stuff 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 to a different degree, of course, but preempting it made it a lot more predictable and a lot less personal. So for example, the last big 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 realised 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, because 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. I was like, yes, I needed this. And then after lockdown, I got into fitness and I 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.
I think they're scared too. 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've got to hold 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 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 an eating disorder that makes us feel powerless 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 lockdown when I'd 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 scales and society and whatever bigger than I am now, it was always because I those were 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 gonna be like, oh, I love booze. It becomes, when you're powerless, it becomes horrible. Um, 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 why 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 understood 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, what's your personal mission? What are you trying to do with this?
It's twofold. One, I want to convince people