Change Your Body & Your Life in 1 Month: 4 Small Habits That Actually Work

Mel Robbins (00:01:00):

That is something that everybody needs to hear.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:01:04):

If you don't change now, when will you?

 

Mel Robbins (00:01:16):

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're listening to this episode. I mean, first of all, it's always an honor to be able to spend time with you and be together. And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I am so glad that you're here, and because you made the time to listen to this particular episode, here's what I know. I know you're the type of person who truly values your health, and you value the health and happiness of the people that you care about. And if you're listening because somebody shared this with you, how awesome is that? I mean, that means that you have people around you who care about you. And so that's so cool. They want you to feel more energized, happy and healthy in your life, and that means you're in the right place.

 

(00:02:02):

So good job. Hit and play on this episode because today you have an appointment with Europe's number one doctor, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Dr. Chatterjee is a British physician. He's a bestselling author, a medical expert for the BBC and host of Europe's number one Health and Wellness podcast. And he's also the author of the brand new bestselling book, make Change That Lasts. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can see that I have tabbed this book because it is full of gems. We are going to be unpacking today. He is taking 20 years of clinical experience and distilling it into the four steps you need to take to feel better, to live better, and to take back control of your health. So please help me welcome the amazing Dr. Chatterjee to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited for this conversation, Dr. Chatterjee. I cannot thank you enough for traveling 3000 miles to sit down and be here with me and the person that is with us right now.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:03:04):

It's my pleasure, Mel. I'm a huge fan of what you do, the way you're impacting people all over the world. So I can't wait for this conversation.

 

Mel Robbins (00:03:12):

Well, you know what I love about you as a doctor, as a bestselling author, you have this obsession with making things that feel overwhelming, as simple as it can be, and I'm so excited for you to really share this gift that you have of taking the overwhelming topic of living a healthier and a happier life and truly simplifying it for me and for the person that is listening and that's going to share this with somebody.

Mel Robbins (00:04:39):

Well, I can't wait to learn from you today, and I would love to start by having you talk directly to the person that's listening and explain what could they experience if they really take to heart everything you're about to pour into us, the research, your experience as a physician, everything that you've learned in researching and writing six books, what could change about your life?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:05:02):

I think people are going to find that they have more energy, more focus, more motivation, better physical health, better mental health, happiness in a calm, better relationships. Because actually the key principles, the key ingredients to all of these things, they're really not as complicated as people think. Really? Yeah, in my view,

 

Mel Robbins (00:05:31):

Because already the list, Dr. Chatterjee, I'm like, oh my God, that's a lot. I don't even know if I can remember all this. So it's really not that complicated?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:05:38):

Well, through this conversation, hopefully people will learn, yes, I'm not saying change is easy,

 

(00:05:45):

But it can be simple, right? If you understand the key ingredients to change and you start applying them into your daily life, and I'm a busy guy. Look, I'm a dad. I've got two children. I help care for my elderly mother who lives five minutes away from me. I have a busy job. I know what it's like to feel busy and feel as if you don't have time to do the things that you want to do, but there is always a way to make time. I've done it for years with my patients, and I hope to show your audience smell on this program today that they can also do it

 

Mel Robbins (00:06:21):

Well, I'm excited because here's what I know, the person that is listening right now, whether they've taken you and me on a walk with them, or we're sitting in the car with them or at their house or at work, or the person that received this conversation from a friend, they actually found the time because they care about their health. And I'm sure as you're listening, you probably feel the same way I do, which is I'm so, even though I sit down with world-renowned experts, you, I'm like, wait a minute, should I do keto? Am I supposed to fast? Am I exercising? Am I weight training? Am I sleeping? Am I meditating? Do I get my morning light in? And it becomes so overwhelming that I think it's easy to start and then feel discouraged. And so maybe where we should start is, as a doctor, what are just the most common health struggles that you hear over and over from your patients and from your global audience?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:07:11):

I think these days people are struggling with fatigue. They don't have energy. They're struggling with motivation. They can't sleep. They're feeling chronically stressed. This is affecting their physical health, their weight, the way that they feel about themselves. It's also impacting their mental wellbeing, how they see themselves, how they see the world around them. But what a lot of people don't realize, Mel, is that the health landscape in the United States, in the uk, and frankly most countries around the world has dramatically changed over the past 20 or 30 years. We used to see what I call acute problems. Okay? So 30, 40 years ago, the medical system was really well set up for the problems that people came in with. So you'd come in and say, Hey, doctor, I've got a cough. I've got a fever. I'm bringing up a lot of sputum. When the doctor would see you for 10 or 15 minutes, examine you, give you a diagnosis, give you a pill, and say, take this three times a day for seven days, and hey, presto, seven days later, your problem's gone away.

 

Mel Robbins (00:08:18):

I call that a Z-Pak, right? I'm like, I need an antibiotic stock.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:08:23):

And it worked beautifully well for those kinds of problems. But today, Mel, 80 to 90% of what we as medical doctors see is in some way related to why we're collecting modern lifestyles. Okay? Now, let me be really clear. I am not putting blame on anyone. The person who's listening right now, I am not putting blame on you, okay? I understand that life is tough, that people feel stressed, they don't have the energy. I do understand all those things. At the same time, we have to understand that these modern lives and the way in which we're leading them is resulting in us being sick. And so I was very much trained the model where you try and diagnose a patient when they come in and give them a treatment, which is usually a pharmaceutical treatments. Now that can have value, but what a lot of people still don't realize is that if you make changes in four key areas of your life, you can have a profound impact on so many different aspects of your health. And those four things are what I call the four pillars, food, movements, sleep, and relaxation.

 

Mel Robbins (00:09:36):

So let me just make sure the person got exactly what you said. So you are saying that the landscape of health and medicine has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, and that you used to 20 years ago have a situation where people would come in with an acute illness or problem or health challenge. You address it, we're good, we're back on track. What you're seeing now is the impact of how we are living and the stress that we are feeling and the foods that we're consuming, and that as a medical doctor and in the current health system, we're not actually addressing the root cause or potentially addressing for more simple things that are within our control that would have a positive impact on you and your life no matter what you're facing. So if the person listening has a cancer diagnosis, if the person listening is dealing with a metabolic disorder or early onset of diabetes, these four pillars that you're talking about are still things that as a medical doctor, you're like, let's just start here. In addition to everything else,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:10:52):

Mel, I've been a medical doctor for over 23 years. I've seen tens of thousands of patients, and I just cannot emphasize this enough. Ask yourself, which of these four pillars do I need the most work in food movements, sleep or relaxation?

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:09):

And no matter what it is that you're dealing with right now, you're going to ask us, let's just talk about food, movement, sleep, and relaxation.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:11:19):

Yeah. Now, Mel, there's a key point here. Okay? So when we talk about our lifestyle, we often talk about it through the lens of prevention. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. It's important to pay attention to our lifestyle. We want to prevent getting sick in the future. Now, I agree with that, but what people forget or they miss or they don't understand, is that lifestyle can be part of the treatment as well.

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:44):

Hold on. I got to make sure that we highlight that. So your lifestyle and some of the changes you can make starting today can be part of the treatment for any health issue, and it's part of the roadmap for you feeling better, lowering your stress and being healthier.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:12:02):

Yeah. You mentioned a few different conditions there. You even mentioned cancer, right?

 

Mel Robbins (00:12:07):

Yes.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:12:07):

So let's be really clear on this. I'm not saying that it's only lifestyle. You may be under an oncologist and be undergoing treatments, but even if you are paying attention to your lifestyle is going to help you manage the process of going undergoing that treatment.

 

Mel Robbins (00:12:27):

Okay? I love this because you're basically saying that food movement, sleep and rest are medicine

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:12:35):

100%. They're 100% medicine. The problem is we're not taught to look at medicine in that way. But I've been using those four pillars as medicine for many, many years. And Mel, I had a great fortune to do this on a big scale back in 2015. Okay? So back in 2015, I got my own BBC one primetime series called Doctor in the House, and I basically lived alongside families for four to six weeks who were sick. They were already sick, they already had a diagnosis, they were already under doctors and on medication. And in every single case, I either helped them reverse their condition or significantly improve it using lifestyle. And I'll tell you what happened. There was a lady with type two diabetes. I helped her put that into remission in just 30 days.

 

Mel Robbins (00:13:31):

What? Using food movement, sleep and rest

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:13:34):

Using these four pillars, okay? I helped a lady with panic attacks, reduce them by 80% in just six weeks. I had a lady with menopausal symptoms who didn't want to take hormones, and we vastly reduced them in just six weeks using these four pillars, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome. I did all of that on primetime television to show people that actually it's not about blame. This is the key thing here. When you mention lifestyle, some people will get defensive and go, what are you saying? I did this to myself? No, no, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that your health is a combination of a number of factors. Yes, your genetics for sure, that plays a role, but also the way you are living your life. And often you haven't been intentional about the way you're living your life. So you end up at some point with a set of symptoms. But it doesn't mean that the only solution for those symptoms is a pharmaceutical drug. It may be part of the solution, but a lot of the time you can actually reverse these problems if you change your lifestyle. And for me, the simplest way I managed to help my patients with that is through the lens of these four pillars.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:15:10):

So one of the things I've got to make really clear is that there's no one right diet for every single person.

 

Mel Robbins (00:15:18):

I don't want to hear that. I want you to make this very simple, Dr.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:15:22):

I will make it simple at the same time, Mel, I think when we believe there is one true diet that all of us should be eating, I don't think it simplifies it for us. I think it complicates it. And the reason it complicates it, and one of the biggest problems in health and wellness today is the confusion that exists.

 

Mel Robbins (00:15:41):

I feel it. I especially feel it around what exactly to eat. You know what I mean? As a woman versus a man, now that I'm in my fifties versus my thirties, I need certain amount of protein. What kind of protein? Should I be fasting? Should I not be fasting? Should I have electrolytes? You see what I'm saying?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:15:58):

So when I talk about simplification, if you overly simplify, you end up confusing people.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:04):

So

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:16:05):

I want to simplify as far as I possibly can, but then I also want to give the listener a bit of responsibility.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:12):

Got it.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:16:12):

The most important principle when it comes to food is as much as you possibly can have minimally processed foods as close to its natural form as possible.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:23):

And so what does that mean? If you were explaining that to an 8-year-old, what does that mean?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:16:28):

I say, listen, let's think about one ingredient foods, so foods that don't have a barcode, because they naturally are one ingredient. So avocado doesn't have an ingredient list. It's one ingredient, right? That's true. A piece of fruit doesn't have an ingredient list. And so for a lot of my patients, for years, Mel, I've been asking them to look at food labels, and people are shocked at what happens when they look at food labels. That's the starting point, I think, for everyone is as much as you can, because when you start eating more and more minimally processed food, your hunger signals will naturally start to take care of themselves. So if you're having lots of highly processed food and potato chips and the modern food environment, basically people are hungry all the time,

 

Mel Robbins (00:17:15):

Why are we hungry all the time? If we're eating mac and cheese and fish and chips or chicken nuggets, or we're just kind of doing dinner out of a box, or we're ordering it to go, why does that make

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:17:27):

Us hungry? It plays havoc with our hormones. It plays havoc with our blood sugar. So a lot of the things we're eating these days will spike our blood sugar very quickly, which also means it's going to come down very quickly. So let's say for example, you start the day with a bowl of sugary cereal, which is really, really common. Okay? Now, depending on which one you eat, but most of them pretty much fall into this category, you're eating it and you feel full afterwards, and your blood sugar has started to go up pretty rapidly. Maybe after about two hours it hits its peak, then it starts to crash, and then when it starts to crash, it's not just a hunger issue, it's a stress issue, okay?

 

Mel Robbins (00:18:10):

What do you mean by that?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:18:11):

What I mean by that is let's say you have your bowl of sugary cereal at seven o'clock in the morning, and you think, yeah, that's going to last me till lunchtime. And then at nine 30 or 10 o'clock whilst you're at the office, you're like, why am I so hungry? I've already eaten.

 

Mel Robbins (00:18:28):

Yes, I'm cruising through the kitchen at work.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:18:30):

But there's a desperation. It's not like just a bit of hunger that you can deal with it somehow. I need to eat something. People go for an extra coffee, the vending machine, whatever it might be. It's often because their blood sugar has started to drop rapidly. Now, when your blood sugar drops rapidly, think about it through an evolutionary lens. That was a threat to survival a few hundred thousand years ago, right? If your blood sugar is dropping rapidly, you don't just feel hungry. It elevates stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. So it really is a stressor on the body.

 

Mel Robbins (00:19:01):

That makes sense.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:19:02):

So instead of that, for example, you had some eggs and some avocado, these kind of one ingredient foods, you'll find that it's less likely to happen. Yeah, sometimes your blood sugar will still go up, but it's a bit more gentle.

 

Mel Robbins (00:19:16):

Well, what's interesting about everything that you're saying is you say sugary cereal, and I think the mistake that I used to make for years is I would think about the actual Captain Crunch or the stuff that is marketed typically to kids that even in the marketing, it is sugary. But when I started to do, as you're saying, flip it over and there's 32 grams of sugar in a bowl of cereal, and you're like, what? And so it's kind of hidden in there. And I think that's also part of the thing that I didn't realize, and a lot of us don't realize, and I love that you're not blaming us because we fall for the marketing, and then we don't look at the actual ingredient list.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:19:57):

I had a patient once, he was in his early forties, and he came in to see me, and he had a bit of weight around his belly. He was struggling in the day with his mood, and he said, doc, I always feel like eating. And there was all kinds of things going on, but in essence, he was starting his day with sugary cereal,

 

(00:20:20):

And I could track his day and his mood and his energy and his fatigue and his focus, and I thought, I'm pretty certain that the way he starts his day is impacting the rest of his day, and he doesn't realize this. We did an experiment. I said, okay, you've been starting your days for years with this sugary bowl of cereal. You've read the marketing, you think it's healthy. Would you be interested in doing something that I call eat dinner for breakfast? And he said, what do you mean? I said, what do you have for dinner? He goes, well, I like a good dinner. So he was pescatarian, Mel, and he would eat salmon and roasted vegetables in the evenings. I said, okay, could you make extra in the evening and then have the leftovers for breakfast? He goes, well, yeah, I could do that. I haven't done that before. I said, this is just an experiment, and this is a big principle of my entire approach, Mel. I offer them to my patients as experiments, not as prescriptions. What I want to do is inspire that patient to go, Hey, listen. You know what it feels like to start your day like this?

 

(00:21:34):

What does it feel like for you when you start your day with something else? So then for the next week, he literally did this, and it would be often in the morning, he'd have salmon and roasted vegetables, like sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts, whatever. He just

 

Mel Robbins (00:21:47):

One ingredient,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:21:48):

One ingredient foods,

 

(00:21:50):

The salmon protein, which is satiating, okay? Can keep you full for longer. And he came in to see me a weeks. He goes, docs, I feel like a completely different person. I am better at work now. I have more concentration, more focus. I'm not actually hungry till 2:00 PM. And this is the thing people don't realize about hunger. People think they're not eating enough. The sun is you eating the wrong thing, which is making you hungry. So literally, that one change for him taught him how important it was to start his day with these one ingredient foods. And then what's so important about that, Mel, is that he is paying attention to how he feels. So then what happens later is that he wants to continue doing that, not because I asked him to, because something else has happened. He has felt the difference, and that's always been my approach. You can take alcohol, right? Or caffeine, the sort of things people are always struggling with.

 

(00:22:52):

My job with a patient has never ever been to tell them, you must give up alcohol or you must give up smoking, or whatever it might be. My job has always been to show that person what impact it's having. And so I think one of the reasons I've always had really good compliance with my patients is I don't talk down to them. I see them as equal partners, and I say, Hey, listen, I think this is what's going on. Why don't you experiment this way and see how that feels? Does that all make sense, Mel?

 

Mel Robbins (00:23:21):

Oh my. Not only does it make sense, you've actually handed the power back to us, and you have also activated this internal drive to want to feel better. And I would love for you to share your framework around cravings because you have this three F framework when it comes to craving.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:23:48):

One of the reasons that people struggle, Mel, to make changes that last is because too often they try and change the behavior without understanding the role that behavior plays in their life. So let's talk about that through the lens of sugar. But you could just as easily apply that around alcohol or three hours, doom, scrolling Instagram in the evening, whatever it might be. Okay, so let's take a typical scenario that I've seen thousands of times in my practice, and maybe you've experienced before. Mal, I've not been to your house where, I dunno if you've experienced this, but a lot of people when they're trying to reset their relationship with sugar, find that they can be really good in the day.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:29):

Yes, yes.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:24:30):

But somehow at 9:00 PM on the sofa, my God, yes. With Netflix on, they're like, I really feel like I scream.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:37):

That's where I just screw it all up. Dr. Chatterjee, I can be so good all day, and then I'm like, why didn't I go to bed earlier? If I had just gone to bed at eight 30 and started reading, I wouldn't have eaten half a bag of this salty, buttery popcorn.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:24:54):

Yeah, it's so important, and there's a couple of things to say that first of all, the brain is an associative organ. So we associate certain behaviors in certain locations. So if you've got a habit for 10 years of having ice cream on the sofa whilst watching tv, yeah, you're right. Had you gone to bed or moved to a different location in your house? If you have the room, you'll probably find that the behavior naturally starts to change because it often is associated with that particular location. I dunno if you've experienced that before,

 

Mel Robbins (00:25:27):

Of course, but

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:25:28):

Many people have. But the three F framework does something really powerful for people. It helps 'em understand why do I keep on doing this? So let me go through those three F's. Okay? The three F's are, feel, feed, and find.

 

Mel Robbins (00:25:45):

Okay? Feel, feed and find.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:25:47):

Yeah, walk people through it. Okay? So for the person listening right now who thinks that this applies to 'em, I want them to imagine that they're on their sofa in the evening and they feel the urge for ice cream. Okay? I want you to take a pause just for a few seconds before you go and open the fridge and that spoons in your mouth. Take a pause.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:07):

We're standing in front of the fridge with the thing at the spoon. The

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:26:11):

Thing is, I've been there before myself, so I'm not doing this from a point of lecturing or judging. I've been there and I know that you can change your life. You can absolutely change your behaviors if you know why the behavior is there. You take a pause and before you eat it, you say, what am I feeling? That's the first step. Is this physical hunger or is this emotional hunger? Oh, yeah, you know what? I had a full meal one hour ago. I'm actually not hungry.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:42):

How do you know the difference though? I am a good talker, so I can be like, I think I'm actually hungry. I think I need a little,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:26:46):

Well, the difference by practicing, you don't know the difference by suddenly doing it once and going, oh, no, no, I really am hungry. No, it's all these things. We need to develop the skill by turning inwards. So we have to ask ourselves regularly. It's not as hard as you think. I've done this with thousands of patients. The most important thing is when you create that pause. So you are literally creating a little gap between the stimulus, the desire for ice cream, and the response as you said, 1:00 AM my feeling. You might go, yeah, well, you know what? I shouldn't really be hungry. I had a huge meal. I'm a little stressed. I had a row with my partner. The children's bedtime took too long. I've been on Zoom calls all day, and I feel a bit yucky. This is a bit of time for me. Okay, no problem. You now have done the most important thing, Mel, which is your starting to develop this self-awareness of why you're going to that baby. Then go and eat it. I don't have a problem with someone eating it as long as I've done the first F. Okay, now, the next time you're on the sofa at 9:00 PM I want you to go to the second F. So you go through the first F again, what am I feeling?

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:53):

What am I feeling? Yep.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:27:54):

The second F is feeds. How does food feed that feeling? Oh, okay. I feel stressed when I have ice cream. In the short term, at least I feel less stressed. Oh, that's why I'm going to ice cream. I'm not actually hungry. Okay, so you start to build up that awareness. Oh, I've been on zoom calls all day. I feel a bit lonely. I've not had any connection with another human being. Today. I feel a bit less lonely when I have some ice cream. And you start to build up that self-awareness. And if you want to go and have it, sure, go ahead and have it. The next time you come, you go through the first two Fs. So first F feels second F feed. Then he goes to the third F finds. Now that I know the feeling, now that I know how sugar feeds the feeling, can I now find an alternative behavior to feed that same feeling? Okay, so what does that look like? Oh, I feel stressed. Sugar helps me feel less stressed. Well, what else could I do to make me feel less stressed? Oh, I love yoga. Okay, well, I like yoga. Maybe I can put YouTube on and do a 10 minute yoga sequence from YouTube. Maybe you are feeling lonely, you've been on zoom calls all day, or maybe your family are away, or you are in a hotel room, right?

 

(00:29:12):

Okay, well, instead of going to sugar to feed the loneliness, maybe you can phone a friend. Maybe you can phone one of your parents if you're lucky enough to have one of them still alive if you have not had any time to yourself all day and sugar's your little treat to yourself.

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:27):

Yes, I think that's a big one for a lot of us, especially if you're constantly stressed, you're caring for other people.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:29:33):

Yeah. What else can you do? Well, you could run yourself a bath and nourish yourself in a different way. So this three F framework can be applied to sugar, to alcohol, to social media, to online pornography, frankly, to anything, Mel, because it does something very powerful. It creates a gap between the stimulus and the response. And then you do the most important thing, which is you start to understand yourself better. Mel, this is why we're so confused in the world at the moment with health information. We keep thinking that there's an expert out there who knows what's right for me, the person who's eating too much sugar in the evening. Let's say you are trying to stop ice cream in the evening on your sofa, Mel, you don't need another book on sugar,

 

Mel Robbins (00:30:22):

Right? I'm probably going to put it down anyway and go get the popcorn and ice

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:30:26):

Cream. But most people are trying to cut back on sugar alcohol. They don't need another book telling them, oh, sugar's going to affect your teeth. It's going to put on weights. You're going to have low energy. It's going to increase your risk of diabetes. No, I would say in the world today, we have so many health podcasts, so many health books, so many online articles, we've got more information than ever before. Yet, despite that our fiscal health is getting worse. Our mental health is getting worse. So the case I'm making this new book, Mel, is that we don't need more external knowledge necessarily. We need more internal knowledge, more self-awareness, more insights. That's how you change your life for goods, right? You listen to experts like you, Mel, or me, but then you put it through your own filter and go, does this work for me? Is this the right approach for me? And that's what I found to be the most useful thing throughout my entire career, Mel, the patients who've changed their life for goods, somewhere along the line, it stopped being my plan and it became their plan.

 

Mel Robbins (00:31:31):

Oh, I love that.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:31:32):

It's such a key point, Mel. People will often ask me, well, each of those three F's as important as the other, no, they're not the most important. F is the first F feel. What am I feeling? I would say that's 80 to 90% of it. When you break the loop of this patterning of sofa, I want some ice cream open the freezer spoon in my mouth, right? We've all been there, Mel, right? With that first

 

Mel Robbins (00:32:02):

Step. I literally, since I've been in your house and I've met your wife and your kids, I can see you standing in your kitchen and imagine your wife coming in and being, what are you doing?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:32:14):

On another note, we don't have that stuff in the house because one of my principles that I've been sharing with patients for years is try not to use up your willpower in the house.

 

(00:32:26):

You have to use up your willpower as soon as you step out the front door these days. So in the UK, if you want to buy a coffee, you have to walk past the pastries, the panchos, the biscuits, whatever it might. I have a rule that if I don't want to eat it, I don't bring it into the house. That makes it much easier. And I think that's a great rule for many peoples to think about. But that first F Mel where you just start to understand yourself, I've seen it with patients that starts to change everything. You may not change it straight away, but I tell you within a week, you're coming there, you're on the sore thinking, wait a minute, I don't need this. I know what's going on here. And you feel the sense of control. I've read your new book recently, the Let Them Theory and I love it. And in that book, you write a lot about control. Okay? This base human need that we want to feel in control why the three Fs works so well and why listening to lots of external advice and not owning the advice for yourself becomes problematic, is you feel out of control.

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:33):

Yes.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:33:34):

When you can't decide between a low carb diet, a plant-based diet, a keita diets, a paleo diets, when you try them and you feel it doesn't work for you, but it worked for your best friends

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:45):

Or the people that are telling you to do it online.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:33:48):

Yeah. You never think, well, you rarely think that the diet was the failure. You think you are the failure

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:56):

Stop. That is something that everybody needs to hear.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:34:03):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:04):

You don't think the diet was the failure. You think you are the failure.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:34:08):

And that leads to guilt, shame, regrets that leads and reinforces these feelings that I'm not good enough. I can't get the right plan for me. And sometimes I would argue that some people are better off having not started that diet than having started it failed, and then feeling even worse than before they'd even started.

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:31):

I'm having this huge epiphany, Dr. Chatterjee, that I can't tell you how many times I've started keto or I've tried to manage more protein, or I've tried pescatarian or I've, I've just been chasing one fad and one diet and one thing that I hear on the outside, and it's not to say that those changes don't work, but I'm realizing for the very first time listening to you right now, that the key ingredient in all of those situations where I tried something and I felt like it failed for me, or I couldn't stick to it, I don't have the willpower. This is too complicated, is that I didn't have the most important ingredient that you're talking about right now, which is part of the first pillar of food, which is feel. I wasn't saying to myself, how is this making me feel? And I can tell you that I recently did this kind of five day protocol that I was just looking for some sort of reset to do.

 

(00:35:44):

And it was this five day intermittent you're eating while you're doing it, fasting protocol, they send you a kit. And it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But the interesting thing that was different is that I was very much paying attention to how would I feel every day as I was doing it. And as I started to notice that my mood got better, I wasn't as hungry, I felt sharper in focus. It has made a change stick because of what you are talking about, which is when you start focusing on this first pillar of your health, really trying this as an experiment and then going, how does this feel for me? That's the piece that actually will make it work.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:36:33):

It's the biggest piece, right? It's not just doing it, it's doing it and then going, oh, yeah, I'm noticing now that I'm feeling different. So let's say someone listens to your podcast smell or mine, and one week they hear an expert talking about the benefits of a plant-based diet, and the next week they hear another well-credentialed experts talk about the benefits of a ketogenic diets. And the problem is people get confused, right? Like,

 

(00:37:00):

I'm only going to listen to experts. But here's the problem with that. You can have well-credentialed experts from really good institutions, same two different things. So how do you navigate that conflict and that confusion, the way you navigate it is by starting to trust yourself. And so I say to people, when that's happened on my show before, I said, okay, both of them have got credentials. Both of them have got research to back at what they're saying and case studies. They could both be right for different people. So why don't you try one diet for four weeks? And as you are trying it, pay attention. What's your energy? What's your sleep? What's your focus? What's your guts? What are your bowels? What is your bloating like? And you pay attention. Then for another four weeks, you try the other one's diet, and you pay attention to those same things. You will very quickly realize, actually, you know what I think at this stage in my life, the other thing, things can change throughout your life. At this stage in my life, I think this is probably the right approach for me and with people because it gives them the power. Like you write in your book, Mel, it's about control, right?

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:13):

Yes. Well, you know what I

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:38:14):

Gives you a sense of control.

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:15):

Totally. And what I love about this, and I'll just add this from my own experience, is I've always felt this pull to want to be vegetarian or plant-based. And when I have tried it, I have felt so low energy and it has been a chore to get in the protein that I'm realizing as you're talking. That's why I've never done it. It's because I realize that I actually feel better on a different type of eating program and getting more lean protein from sources other than plant-based foods. And I have a question though, before we move on to the second pillar of movement. How long do I need to try something in the food pillar or a change in my diet and really paying attention to how am I feeling? Because I would imagine you change anything, whether it's your reading labels, one ingredient, less sugar that you will go through a withdrawal period. It will feel worse before it feels better. So what's your recommendation in the food pillar for how long you would recommend us trying this thing going? How do I feel?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:39:31):

I would say a minimum of three weeks.

 

Mel Robbins (00:39:33):

Three weeks?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:39:33):

Okay. I would say three to four weeks. Generally speaking is the kind of time you want to be trying something for. It's enough time for your taste buds to start adapting to the new flavors. It's what people don't realize. If you are used to having a lot of sugary foods for a few days, you're going to really miss them. You're going to go through withdrawal. You have to go through that and come out the other side. A key point, Mel, I want to make is that I'm not saying ignore external experts. I'm not saying that

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:01):

You didn't say that.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:40:02):

I'm saying that something's happened in society now with all this information where we put all of our faith in external experts at the expense of ourself. Okay? And I'm saying we need to bring up our own inner expertise as well. Yes, listen to the external experts, but also know that, hey, you know what? My life is unique. I've got unique pressures, unique stresses. What works for someone else may not work for me. So again, I don't mean to confuse the issue.

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:32):

You're not actually, you're simplifying it. You're doing exactly what you said, and it is very clear to me. Food is medicine. Food is part of your plan and a required part of the pillar for you to feel less stressed, to have more energy, to be happier, to be healthier, and you're the expert. And so take the things that you feel called to try that you know are true or you trust and do it for three weeks and see how you feel.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:41:00):

It's like fasting. Mel fasting becomes this really controversial topic. Should I fast I not fast? Is fasting better for men? Is it not so good for women? People are getting confused. But even the fundamental premise, is fasting good or bad? It's the wrong question.

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:16):

What's the right question?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:41:18):

The right question is for who and in which context. The two most important questions we can ask ourselves whenever we're hearing advice. For some people, fasting is a game changer. If you have been carrying excess weight for a while, if you have type two diabetes, if you've been ingesting excess calories for 10 plus years, a form of fasting that suits you and your life may be game changing.

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:47):

Yes.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:41:47):

If on the other hand, you are underweight, you have an eating disorder which you are suffering from or recovering from, well, fasting might not be the best solution for you. But these days online, we want to say, is it good or bad? It's like, well, it's neither. It can be amazing, but it's an option that you may want to play around with.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:42:34):

This is one of the most important things I do each day, and not only for my health, I would say it's also one of the most important things I do for my happiness and my relationships. Remember at the start, Mel, I said that health, happiness and relationships are not as separate as people might think. Okay, so what do I do? And I think it's a useful way of helping people understand the key principles of habit formation. So for over five years now, I've been doing several things each morning, but one thing that I rarely miss on is a five minute strength workout. Okay? So what does this look like? Okay, I go to bed early and I wake up early. That's just what works for me. But I wake up around five o'clock. Again, I'm not saying anyone else has to. It's what works for me. My wife doesn't want to get out of bed till seven or half seven. So

 

(00:43:28):

We have found what works for us. Great. So I come downstairs and I do happen to meditate. That's the first thing I tend to do, but that's not relevant for this part of our conversation. I go into my kitchen and one thing I do is I love to make coffee. So I weigh out my coffee and I pour the water in into the French press, and I put a timer on for five minutes. In those five minutes, Mel, I don't go on email. I don't go on Instagram. I don't go on the news. What I do in those five minutes is I have a strength workout in my kitchen, in my pajamas.

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:03):

What do you do?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:44:05):

Well, I do a variety of things. It started off being body weights. I do some press-ups, some calf raises, some squats. I just do a little circuit in my kitchen, and then I get the gorgeous reward of a hot cup of coffee, just the way I like it.

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:17):

Wait, so you literally do squats, you do pushups, you do calf raises, you're going up on your tippy toes.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:44:25):

Yeah. There's a video on YouTube that I've worked off my five minute kitchen workouts these days. I do a couple of other things. I have a kettlebell and a dumbbell in my kitchen, so sometimes I'll do some kettlebell swings. Sometimes I'll do some bicep curls, whatever I feel like. But the point is I do that five minute strength workout every day. I even did it this morning in my hotel room here in Boston now. Okay, and I'll explain why it's so important. It's what I would call my keystone habits. It's a habit that when I do it, it makes it infinitely more likely. I'm going to do other healthy choices in my day,

 

(00:45:03):

Right? Every single day, Mel, we're all asking ourselves two questions. Can I trust myself? Can I rely on myself? What my five minute kitchen workout does for me every single morning is it shows me that no matter how busy my work is, no matter what my wife needs from me, what my children need from me, what my elderly mother needs from me, I still found five minutes for myself. It shows me I can trust myself. I can rely on myself. Now, people might go strength work out every day. Do you not vary it up? No, I don't vary it up, right? Especially when I started. No. Do we vary up toothbrushing?

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:46):

No.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:45:46):

Right? I hope Mel, every single person listening right now brushes their teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening.

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:55):

Well, what's interesting about brushing your teeth, and I'm glad you just brought it up, is I just saw somebody else talking about it. I can't remember who it is, and it's a fabulous example that if you go and don't brush your teeth today, you'll have bad breath. You'll notice. But most people around you won't notice. But if you go day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year for five years, and you never brush your teeth, some of 'em are going to fall out. You're going to have snaggle tooth mouth. You're going to be horrible. And it's an illustration of something we know intellectually, that the compounding nature of doing something every day actually builds in the negative or the positive dramatically. And your five minute workout in the kitchen that I think is just genius. First of all, you already taught us that the brain is an associative machine, meaning it associates certain places and times of day with certain things, and so you're using that to your advantage. You also have set yourself up for success because you now have a kettleball right there in the kitchen. You have also set yourself up with a stacking of this so that you start the coffee maker, which is something you're going to do regardless of how you feel. It doesn't matter how tired you are, whether or not whether you don't want to, you're going to do it. Exactly.

 

(00:47:25):

And while the coffee's brewing, you don't care that you're not the latest workout clothes. You don't need a fancy gym. There you are at 5 0 5 in the morning in your pajamas doing pushups on your kitchen floor while your coffee's brewing, and it's an illustration of the daily toothbrushing,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:47:44):

A hundred percent. And with toothbrushing, the key point I want to make is that we don't apply those principles when it comes to changing our health. We make it so difficult and complicated. That's a theme throughout this conversation. Mel, how do we keep it simple? If your audience, Mel, if the person listening to this episode right now, if you take nothing else from this conversation, but this idea that you are going to find one five minute action, and you are going to do it at the same time every day, try it for the next seven days, I guarantee, I literally guarantee, because I've seen this tens of thousands of times. Not only will you feel better, you will change the way you experience life. You will change the way you view yourself because you build up this momentum, you build up self-esteem. You become someone who can do what they say they're going to do, right? I had a patient, again, I'm going to bring, make this really real. I imagine there'll be people listening, Mel, who think I'm busy. I'm a nurse, I'm a teacher. I don't have time. No, no, you do have time. I had a patient 48-year-old guy says maybe 10 years ago, Mel, and he came in to see me with three common complaints. He's a little bit overweight,

 

(00:49:06):

And he was pointing to his tummy as he came in. He had a bit of low mood and he had low energy.

 

Mel Robbins (00:49:12):

Okay,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:49:12):

Okay. There's many things that can cause these things.

 

Mel Robbins (00:49:14):

I think the person listening is like, I know six people like that right now, so please send them this conversation because you haven't been able to get them to take this seriously, Dr. Chatter, you can.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:49:25):

So I spent a bit of time talking to him now trying to understand his life and his lifestyle, and there was quite a few things there, and I said to him, Hey, listen, there's a few things in your lifestyle that I've identified that I think could be responsible for all three of these things. Are you interested and be helping you change some of them? So I always have permission with my patients. I don't just give them advice and say, are you interested? He said, yeah, that'd be great. So I went through all kinds of options. He wasn't biting any of them. He's like, nah, I don't think that's for me. I don't think that's for me. When I said strength training, his eyes lit up, Mel, okay? So I'm meeting him where he is at. He's like, yeah, doc, I used to do that at school as a teenager. I haven't done it in years. I've got busy with adult life, basically.

 

Mel Robbins (00:50:12):

Yep.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:50:13):

I said, I think strength training is going to really help you. I think it's going to help you with your weights, your energy, and your moods. He said, right, great. I want to do it. What shall I do? 45 minutes three times a week in the gym? I said, yeah, that'll be fantastic. Great. He goes, right, I'm going to do it. I said, okay. Here's an appointment for four weeks time. You go and do that. Come back in four weeks and we'll figure out how you're doing. Okay. So he goes away and I'm feeling pleased, I think, okay, cool. He's going to go and do that. Four weeks later, Mel, he comes back into my office and he walks in and his body language is a bit off. He's not making eye contact with me. I said, Hey, how was the gym? Has it made a difference? He said, Hey, doc, listen, I've not been yet, okay, work's been really busy. The gym's quite expensive. It's not really on my way to or from work. I've not actually gone yet.

 

Mel Robbins (00:51:09):

Oh, so now he feels terrible.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:51:11):

He feels terrible. And I remember that case so well, Mel, because it was one of the most instrumental moments in my career. I never thought in that moment, he's not done what I've asked him to do. I thought, Ronan, you've clearly not given him advice that he feels is relevant in the context of his life. So in that moment, I took my jacket off and I said, right, can I teach you some body weight exercises right here, right now? He said, sure. So I literally got down on the floor in my office and I was teaching him press-ups, squats, calf raises. I was modifying them for his ability level,

 

(00:51:52):

And I said, what do you think? Can you do that? He goes, yeah, that's okay. I said, okay. What I want you to do is I want you to do this for five minutes twice a week in your kitchen. And he looked at me. He said, what? 10 minutes a week? Is that it? I said, yeah. Can you do that? That's easy. I said, okay, great. You go and do that. I'll see you in four weeks. Okay? So he goes off. Four weeks later, he comes back. He's almost dancing into the room, okay? He comes to see me with a big smile on his face. I said, Hey, how are you doing? He said, doc, you asked me to do five minutes twice a week. It was so easy. I enjoyed it so much that I now do 10 minutes every evening whilst my dinner's getting ready in the kitchen, so I do 10 minutes.

 

(00:52:38):

That changed his life, Mel, because when I asked him or when he felt he had to do 45 minutes three times a week in the gym, he did zero when he felt he only had to do 10 minutes a week. He's now doing 10 minutes a day. That 70 minutes of strength training that then led to what I call the ripple effects. Over the next few weeks, he starts to go for a walk. At lunchtime, he starts to cook a little bit better for himself. He starts to prioritize his bedtime. I saw him a few years ago, Mel, this is maybe five years after we started. He's now meditating each day. If I had brought up meditation to him 10 years ago, he would've left me out of the room, right? Small changes done consistently lead to big outcomes. I've seen time and time again,

 

Mel Robbins (00:53:26):

And what I love about what you're teaching us, and I'm sure I speak for you as you're listening to Dr. Chatterjee too right now, is that first of all, I'm like, okay, how can I get you to be my doctor? I would like a doctor that takes their coat off and then shows me how to do five minute interventions. But it all comes back to this simple principle. There are four pillars. We've unpacked food and the importance of how you feel and experimenting and one ingredient stuff. Now you have simplified movement, and you have made the case that just introducing five minutes of movement, whether it's a walk or something in your kitchen, how that changes the course of your life and how you've seen it happen in your patients.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:54:11):

Honestly, if your audience take literally nothing else from this conversation, I want 'em to take this, find a five minute action, something you've thought about before, something you feel drawn to. I don't care what it is. Journaling, meditation, yoga, pull-ups, star jumps. Doesn't matter if five minutes feels too much. Make it one minute, right? But start somewhere and do it for at least seven days, and if you don't feel differently about your life, sure, ignore everything I have to say.

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:44):

Well, you and I both know, of course you're going to feel different.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:54:46):

I know they are going to feel different,

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:48):

Of course,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:54:49):

But you have to do it. Inspiration without action does not lead to change. This is what I see these days, Mel, people listen to your show. They listen to my show. They see a positive Instagram post and a really inspirational meme, and they heart it. They think they've done something. They haven't done anything, right? They move their thumb about half a millimeter on their phone. That's great. Don't get me wrong. But you need to take the inspiration and figure out, well, how am I going to take action in my life?

 

Mel Robbins (00:55:20):

And you just gave us the actual only way it gets done, because most of us make a mistake in that moment where we hurt this video about health, and we say, okay, I'm going to go to the gym three times a week for 45 minutes. And then you don't, because it's hard to do that. And it's actually more complicated than you think to find the time to get the close, to get into the gym, to figure out what the workout is. And what you're saying is there's a totally different way to go from inspiration to action. Make it as easy as hell. Make it five minutes long. Find a trigger like making coffee that you don't even think about, and set up the environment with one simple thing so that you have the things you need right there, and try it for seven days, and you'll be shocked.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:56:06):

Yeah, you'll be shocked. And what people don't realize, because I've seen it with so many patients, it's the underestimate simplicity.

 

(00:56:16):

I go to the gym. Sometimes I'll lift things at other times, but some weeks I don't. But I miss my five minute morning action. It's a promise I made to myself. And why do I think that helps your health, your happiness and your relationships? Because when you make that commitment to yourself, when you make that promise and you keep it, Mel, you do something so powerful, right? It builds you up inside. You become human being who knows your self-worth, and you take that to your relationships. You take it to your work, you take it to every other aspect of your life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (00:57:37):

When people think about sleep, the first thing they go to is what are they doing before they go to bed?

 

(00:57:42):

Now, whilst that is important, what we don't realize is that a good night's sleep starts first thing in the morning. How you start your morning off. Now, if you are able to get natural lights first thing in the morning, it's fantastic for your overall wellbeing. It helps set your circadian rhythm. This is your biological clock. Every single cell in your body has a clock, and one of the key drivers of that clock is exposure to light. Okay? So if you expose yourself to bright natural lights, ideally, but I appreciate also that depending on where you live in the world, certainly in the UK at the moment, you're not getting bright natural lights in the morning. So yes, put all the lights on at home, get them as bright as you possibly can, that actually helps you sleep better in the evening. There's some studies which show us that if you meditate or practice mindfulness first thing in the morning, that can also help you sleep better at night.

 

(00:58:42):

There's many ways that I want people to think about sleep, but what you do first thing in the morning can absolutely impact your sleep in the evening. Now, why should people care about sleep? Yes. Okay. It's not just about energy. Yes, energy is of course, something that we all want. We want the energy to do the things that we want to do in life. But here's what happens. When you sleep deprived, your mood goes down. You are less empathetic, you are less compassionate. You find it harder to resist temptation. If you sleep five and a half hours each night compared to seven and a half hours each night, one study showed on average you are eating 22% more the following day in terms of calories. Okay? So think about that. Five days of extreme sleep deprivation will lead to a whole extra one day's worth of calories going through your mouth. Okay? So I've helped Mel, some patients lose weight in a sustainable way, not by focusing on their diets, by focusing on their sleep. This goes back, Mel, to what I said right at the start. Think about these four pillars and ask yourself, which one of these four pillars do I need the most work in? Right? Too often we focus on our favorite pillar.

 

(00:59:58):

If your diet is 85% good, moving it from 85% to 90%, whilst you're only sleeping five hours a night, ain't going to move the needle. If you can bring up your sleep from five hours to even five and a half hours, again, it's not about perfection. It's not about either eight hours or nothing. If you can actually get 20 minutes more, 30 minutes more, there will be a physiological difference in your body, Mel, the following day. And so it's important for your physical health, your mental wellbeing. Life feels different when you've had a good night's sleep. So in terms of what people can do, I mentioned first thing in the morning, get light exposure.

 

Mel Robbins (01:00:40):

And we have so many people around the world that write in when they hear about light exposure in the morning that say, well, I have to leave for work before the sun's even up. So how do you do that if it's raining or you have a job where you're already starting work and the sun hasn't risen,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:01:01):

So it doesn't always have to be the sun to be clear, you still get a lot of natural light on an overcast day or on a cloudy day. But yes, I appreciate we all have different work schedules. So if you can't do that, put the lights on in your house if you want. You can go on Amazon, you can buy these bright luxe lights. They're not that expensive. You can have those on in your house. Do what you can. If you can't do it first thing in the morning, maybe at 10:00 AM when you have a little coffee break at work, can you take your coffee and go to the balcony or go out the front door and be outside and get some of that light into your eyes? Okay? There's many ways, and let's be honest, Mel, some things you may not be able to

 

Mel Robbins (01:01:47):

Correct,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:01:48):

And that's okay.

 

Mel Robbins (01:01:49):

Yes,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:01:49):

Right? Fine. There are other ways to improve your sleep. We can talk about five or 10 different tips. You're probably not going to be able to do them all.

 

Mel Robbins (01:01:57):

Well, let's talk about that. How can someone create an evening routine that leads to better sleep? If they're doing this stuff in the morning, that's easy.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:02:06):

Yeah. The most important thing about an evening routine when it comes to sleep is the fact that you need a routine, right? You have kids, Mel, right? They're older than mine. I have kids.

 

Mel Robbins (01:02:19):

Yep.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:02:19):

I'm guessing, and again, I don't know this, I've not met your children, but I'm guessing when your kids were younger, what you didn't do before bed was put all the lights up as loud as possible, get the music blaring, give them loads of sugar, and then try and get them to sleep.

 

Mel Robbins (01:02:35):

No, we did not do that. We had a whole routine.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:02:39):

We as adults are no different, right? With children, what do we do? We dim the lights, we lower our tone. We might read them a story. We create the environment that is conducive to winding down.

 

(01:02:52):

One of the most toxic things about the modern world is this separation between work life and home. Life has vanished with emails, with social media, with whatever it is. We can still be working in our bedroom in bed and then somehow wonder why we can't fall the seats 10 minutes later when we've just had a stressful work email. I think the most important thing for many people, and certainly it has been for me, is one hour before bed, I make a mental switch in my heads. I'm now on wind down time. So for me, and again, I want to be clear, Mel, everyone's got a unique life. So what works for me may not work for someone else, but what I do one hour before bed, as I make sure my laptop's closed, I will not do a work email in the one hour before bed. Borrowing an exceptional situation, okay? Let's be honest. Sometimes stuff is going on that you want to handle,

 

(01:03:47):

But by and large, I won't do that. I have educated my family over the last few years, and it was hard at first, but everyone understands now that in the evening past one hour before bed, I don't want to talk about finances. I don't want to talk about household items. My mom, my brother who lived nearby, they now know if it's something to do with mom's care, unless it's urgent, I don't want to know about it in the one hour before beds. Okay? So by educating the world around me, I have a wind down for that one hour. What do I do? I'll try to be off my screens. I'm usually pretty good. I'm not perfect for me. If I bring my phone into my bedroom, I'll look at it.

 

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):

So

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:04:33):

I live in a house, so what my wife and I try and do is we make a commitment to each other that we're going to leave our phones in the kitchen to charge.

 

Mel Robbins (01:04:42):

This is just like food. You basically said, if I don't want to eat it, I don't have it in the house. If you don't want to look at your phone in the bedroom, then you don't have it in the bedroom. You're just making it easy. Well, you're following your principles. You make it easy.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:04:55):

Yeah. Just because I write about this stuff and talk about it on my podcast each week doesn't mean I'm any less human than anyone else. I can't resist looking at that

 

Mel Robbins (01:05:03):

Phone. Well, I'll tell you something, because I'm sitting here listening to you, and I'm nodding along and I'm thinking, I have to do this five minute thing. I have to do this five minute thing because I have completely fallen off the entire category of movement because I have been in the middle of this crazy book launch and all this travel, and I've been too tired and things have been so chaotic, and I haven't been able to do my normal thing. And you're reminding me that there is still always five minutes. There is still always something you can do. And you're also reminding me that this very important principle, I'm not failing. The routine that I do in my normal schedule is failing me right now. And that's a liberating way to look at this. 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:06:00):

Subtly different. Relax is speaking to the issue of stress. So we know that 80 to 90% of what comes in to a doctor these days is in some way related to stress.

 

Mel Robbins (01:06:14):

So 80 to 90% of the health issues, the ailments, the symptoms that people are struggling with is related to stress.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:06:25):

And a few years ago, the World Health Organization had on their homepage that stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century.

 

Mel Robbins (01:06:34):

Well, we actually had Dr. Aditi Kar on the show, and she said that in her research that stress is the single consistent cause of illness as well. If you look at the clustering of things a cause it, it's always present and it's the one thing that is in your control in terms of your ability to mitigate against it. So when you say relaxation, you're also talking about the importance of de-stressing and finding times to relax. What do you mean by that?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:07:08):

I do. And also these four pillars, they all feed each other, right? Because a lack of sleep is a stressor on the body.

 

Mel Robbins (01:07:17):

Yes,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:07:18):

Eating lots of junk food that's causing inflammation in your body is a stressor on the body. Not moving at all is a stressor on the body. But what people will find is when you start looking at your life through this framework of these four pillars, you can start wherever you want. It will start to make a difference in the others. They all start to feed each other. Now, when I'm talking about stress, and when I talk to my patients about stress, I help them understand what stress actually is.

 

Mel Robbins (01:07:48):

Dr. Chatterjee, what is stress?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:07:52):

Stress is basically your body's response when it wants to keep you safe, when it thinks you're in danger, in essence. So I always explain this to my patients now, I say, listen, what is this stress response? Imagine it's a hundred thousand years ago and you're in your hunter gatherer community and your tribe doing your thing, and then whilst you're doing your thing, you notice a wild predator approaching the camp in an instant, your stress response kicks into gear. Now, several things happen in your body when that happens. Okay? What happens? Your blood sugar starts to go up so it can deliver more glucose to your brain. Your blood pressure starts to go up, so more oxygen can go around your body and get to your brain, okay? Your blood becomes more prone to clotting. Why? Oh, if that lion or that predator was to cut you instead of bleeding to death, your blood's going to clot, which is going to save your life, your amygdala, right? Your emotional brain goes onto high alerts. Why? Because you want it to be on high alert. You want to be vigilant, you want to hear every pinprick. These are all appropriate responses when you really are in physical danger. The problem today, Mel, is that so many of us are having our stress responses activated not to wild predators

 

Mel Robbins (01:09:18):

By email,

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:09:19):

But to the state of our daily lives. Our email inboxes are to-do lists. The three social media accounts. We're trying to keep up to date with the news headlines in a very similar way, our stress response has been activated. So those four things I mentioned helpful in the short term, problematic in the long term. So blood glucose going up to help you run away, brilliant. If that's happening day in, day out, that will cause weight, gain, fatigue, and type two diabetes.

 

Mel Robbins (01:09:48):

So are you also saying though, that if we're eating a ton of processed foods and a ton of sugar and we're not getting sleep and we're not moving our bodies, that the lack of those things also creates that physiological condition in our body?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:10:07):

Its not just stress is a massive, massive issue that we don't think about enough. And a lot of people don't realize this key point, Mel, that I have only realized in the last few years, which is this idea that we see the world through the state of our nervous system. So if you are chronically stressed, and I would bet Mel that a lot of your audience, even if they're on a walk right now and listening to me and you talk, a lot of 'em would probably identify as being chronically stressed.

 

Mel Robbins (01:10:36):

Some of the recent studies I've seen is that up to 80% of people in the United States are in a medical state of chronic stress.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:10:44):

So think about the point of the stress response, okay? It's when we think there's danger. So what happens? Your focus comes inward. You are not compassionate. You're not looking to cooperate with people. You're looking for threat. You're looking for problems, right? Okay. Another way people can often understand this is this idea that if you've had a weekend off where you've properly rested and you've switched off, and maybe you've gone for a walk in nature, you can read an email on a Monday morning and interpret it a certain way. You could read that same email on a Friday afternoon when you've had a busy work week, and you are interpreting it completely differently. It's the same email, but you are looking at it differently because of the state of your nervous sister.

 

(01:11:34):

I thought about this the last few days, Mel, I dunno how this lands for you, but I was thinking about me, and I'm away from home at the moment. So when you're away, you can often think big picture. I think, what is it you're doing wrong with your podcast, with your books? On the face of it, it seems like what I'm talking about is health. But I've realized that's not my end goal, Mel, right? Why does health matter? Why does happiness matter? I think what I'm trying to do actually at its core is create or contribute to a more compassionate world. If you are healthier, if you can lower your stress response, you're a kinder person, you have more empathy where that's a world I want to be part of creating. I want my children to grow up in a world where there isn't all this division where actually people are nice to each other. That's who we are as humans. I'm sure of it.

 

Mel Robbins (01:12:32):

Me too.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:12:32):

That's what drives me, Mel. This stuff seems like it's about health. I don't think it is. Health is the mechanism to get to compassion for me

 

Mel Robbins (01:12:43):

And connection, and connection and peace.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:12:47):

And peace. When you are well slept, when you understand where stress lives in your life, and you do a few simple things that we can talk about, like a breathing practice or a journaling practice, okay? Simple things that don't cost much money. That's what I'm always talking about in my books and my podcast. Most of the things I write about and talk about are free of charge. People say health and wellness, you need money for it. Then I push back against that, right? Yes, I get it. To buy healthy food in certain parts of the world, yes, your income matters for sure, but there are lots and lots of things that we can do that do not cost any money at all. That will absolutely change our state or lower our stress levels.

 

Mel Robbins (01:13:35):

What are some of your favorite simple things that you do or that you recommend to your patients that do help you reset from this? I'm in an attack mode state to I can breathe.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:13:51):

I think the most important daily practice for anyone in 2025 is a daily practice of solitude. I believe that with all my heart mount.

 

Mel Robbins (01:14:02):

What does that mean? Especially given that people feel lonely already?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:14:05):

Yeah, so solitude is different from loneliness, okay? Solitude is the intentional practice of spending a bit of time with yourself. Because what happens today, Mel, is that so many people, they're waking up. Their smartphone is their alarm. They're picking up their phone, they're reacting to the world around them. They're consuming emails, toxic content, online, social media, news, and what a lot of people don't realize is that their thoughts, their feelings, and their actions are often downstream from the content they're consuming. So what can that solitude be? It could be a walk for 10 minutes where you don't have anything in your ears where you're just allowing your thoughts and feelings to come up. It could be journaling, it could be breathwork, it could be anything you want. I'll give you some of my favorites.

 

Mel Robbins (01:14:56):

Okay? I'll give you one that you've already explained to us. I would say that the act of making your coffee and doing your movement on your own for yourself, by yourself is exactly that.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:15:10):

Exactly. They all link in with each other. The pillars aren't as separate as we might think. They're a used to frame it to look at our life and see where we're going to make change. But once you start in any one of them, you'll realize how they all feed each other, right? Breath work the most powerful way and the quickest way to change your internal state, and therefore your stress levels is through a practice of breath work. Now, one of my favorite practices is what I call the three, four, five breath. I've been using it with my patients for years.

 

Mel Robbins (01:15:41):

Great. Why don't you walk us through

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:15:42):

It and they love it. You breathe in for three.

 

Mel Robbins (01:15:44):

Okay. Let's do it.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:15:45):

Okay. Let's do it. Okay. Okay. So breathe in for three.

 

Mel Robbins (01:15:49):

Okay.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:15:51):

Hold for four. 1, 2, 3. Now breathe out for five. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay, Mel, before we go any further, how do you feel after doing that?

 

Mel Robbins (01:16:08):

My shoulders dropped. I felt myself settle. I almost felt like there's a downshift.

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:16:13):

Yeah, I felt it. I felt it in myself as well. That's just one breath. Okay. The 3, 4, 5 breath, one breath takes 12 seconds. Five of them takes one minute.

 

(01:16:24):

When your out breath is longer than your in breath, you help to switch off the stress part of your nervous system and activates the relaxation part of your nervous system. So the 3, 4, 5 breath is just a very simple method I've created to help my patients. There are so many other amazing breathwork practices out there. I'm not saying you have to do this one, but the principle is that it will really help you calm, lower your stress, be more present. It shows you how interconnected the body is. So I would say something like the 3, 4, 5 breath is a really, really simple tool that you can use preemptively in the morning as part of a routine, a morning routine, or when you're getting stressed out in the day you have a meeting with your boss and let's say a disagreement with your husband. You can actually just take a time out, do 3, 4, 5, breathing for just 30 seconds a minute, and you'll be much better able to engage once you've done it.

 

Mel Robbins (01:17:28):

I believe you. I believe you. I love that your approach to health, Dr. Chatterjee over the years has really evolved to a much more profound connection to living a meaningful life, and I know you, I've read your six books. I listened to your podcast. I follow your work. So I also know that your father's life had a very big impact on you. Could you just share a little bit about how your father's story has informed, influenced your approach and your mission and why this matters so much to you?

 

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (01:18:13):

Yeah. Dad came to the UK in 1962 from India, and dad's not been here now for almost 11 years, and it's almost the classic immigrant story. He came to the UK in search of a better life, a better life for his immediate family in the UK and his family back home in America. But this is what my dad's life was like. My dad was a doctor. He was a consultant at Manst, warm infirmary, but for 30 years, my dad only slept three nights a week. It is actually really hard for me to even imagine that. Now, as a father myself, thinking through to what my dad did and how he lived, I don't really understand how he was able to do it, but I think when you have a strong passion and a mission, it's amazing what you can achieve. So I've really evolved my view on my dad's life, but in essence,