Approaching Healthy Transitions: Shahroo Izadi | OYNB 028

At One Year No Beer, we encourage you to build new habits and find substitutes for alcohol during your 28-day, 90-day, or 365-day challenge. But what happens when you’ve finished that challenge? Some people decide to remain alcohol-free going forward. Others would like to reintegrate alcohol into their lives, but in a different and healthier way than they did before their challenge.

Both choices are reasonable. The question is, if you decide to bring alcohol back into your life after your challenge, how can you do it in a way that works for you and isn’t problematic? Today’s guest knows a lot about helping people manage this and similar issues.

“If someone’s planning to start drinking again, it can be useful to start thinking, ok, what do I want to drink, and under what circumstances?”

Shahroo Izadi is an expert in behavioral change. After studying psychology at the undergraduate and graduate level, she began working in addiction treatment. Eventually, she began using the strategies and tools that she learned in the addiction treatment field to help people make other types of changes in their lives and break back habits that were not related to addiction.

Shahroo has also worked with people who have eating disorders or other problematic eating behaviors. This presents a challenge because no one can simply give up food for 28 or 90 days while they develop new habits. Shahroo has had to find ways to help people manage their eating habits while continuing to eat every day. The strategies that work in these situations may also be helpful for people who are trying to reintegrate alcohol into their lives without allowing it to become problematic.

In our interview, Shahroo talks about the importance of finding the reasons that you want to drink. What is alcohol doing for you? What do you want it to do for you? She also discusses finding the sweet spot when it comes to drinking or eating. Past a certain point, both food and alcohol and drinking can have diminishing returns, so where is the point where you get the most value from it? How can you plan to include alcohol in your life in a positive way? These questions and more can help you reach a point where you can successfully bring alcohol back into your life without it becoming a problem.

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SHAHROO’S RESOURCES

Shahroo’s Website: http://www.shahrooizadi.co.uk/

Shahroo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShahrooIzadi