By Krystle Higgins
August 17 2020, 12.25
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A behavioural change expert and author wants to discuss changing behaviour patterns with public health officials to address what she feels the government obesity strategy is missing.
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted that obese people are disproportionately affected by the deadly disease, and last month Boris Johnson announced the UK government’s latest obesity strategy whose mantra could easily be summed up as: ‘calories in, calories out’.
Shahroo Izadi, author of The Last Diet said that through her research she found the most effective changes in habits don’t come from meticulous planning but from working on self-esteem and belief.
“I broke a cycle of gaining and losing as much as 8 stone at a time by changing my habits.” – Shahroo Izadi
She said: “My book and my research works off the presumption that people know what to do in order to lose weight – I think a lot of people have felt very patronised by this strategy.
“The problem with strategies such as this is to go right for a solution without taking a compassionate or broader look at the causes behind obesity.
“A lot of this should start in school. Habit changing needs to be taught in schools in order to tackle obesity. We don’t fully understand our relationship with food and wine and we get caught in a cycle.”
Izadi went onto explain that she had lost 8 stone around five years ago by addressing and understanding her own habits.
“I want people to unlearn all of the diet and food myths we were taught growing up and understand the importance of understanding as well as establishing new habits,” she said.
Featured image by Free-Photos from Pixabay.
