Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #225 INTRODUCING | Ask Me Anything | My Morning Routine

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Today’s episode is an introduction to my first Ask Me Anything (AMA) episode. This is available in full on the members option of my podcast where you can find ad-free episodes as well as AMA episodes where I answer questions posed by members.  In this clip, you can hear about why I now offer a membership option and I answer a question from members all about my morning routine. I talk about what I try to do every morning, how it has developed over the years and what I get out of my routine. I also share other options for a positive start to the day that I hope will be helpful to you. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check out the membership offer at drchatterjee.com/membership. Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee   Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee   Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, how are you doing? Normally on a Friday, of course, I release a short bite-sized episode of the podcast, which is basically a 10-minute inspirational clip from a previous episode. Now, this week, I thought I'd do something different. I wanted to share with you a short clip from my very first Ask Me Anything episode. Now, some of you will be aware that a couple of months ago, I launched a Feel Better Live More membership option where members can get access to adverts and sponsor-free episodes, as well as an exclusive monthly Ask Me Anything episode. I started this option for two main reasons. Number one, many of you have been asking for a version of the podcast

without adverts and sponsors. The second reason I started it was to help support the podcast. We have around eight people involved with the recording and publication of each episode. And of course, each member of the team needs to be paid. So I have now recorded the very first Ask Me Anything episodes. I have answered several questions posted by the membership community. And I wanted to share with you for this week's Bite Size, a little taster. So here it is. You can now hear me answer the question posed to me by many people, which is, what do I do first thing in the morning? What is my morning routine and how has it developed over the years? And to find out more

about the membership offer, go to drchatterjee.com forward slash membership. Hello, welcome. You are listening to my very first Ask Me Anything. So question number one, or my very first Ask Me Anything, is what is my morning routine? Now, there's many ways to answer this. So I want to start off by saying that morning routines, if any health routine, should be unique and personal to us. We should use, in my view, other people maybe as inspiration. We can get ideas from our friends, from people we follow online. But ultimately, we need to empower ourselves as to what elements of that do we want to do? And, you know, what can we do in the context of our life?

And I think this is the missing piece and a lot of health advice out there. It's very didactic that you must do this and you must do that, like this and like that. But the truth is we're all different. We've all got different paces of life, different responsibilities. Some of us have got busy family lives, some of us don't, some of us might be carers. Some of us will have different cultural or ethical beliefs, and that's completely fine. So what I always try and do in my books and my podcast is share information, share ideas. But I want you to become the architects of your own health. And I don't want that to be onerous for you. I don't want that pressure. It's not about that.

It's about that. That's the key turning point in health is when you stop following other people's advice and it becomes your own. There's nothing wrong. You know, obviously I give lots of advice out there, but what I really want people to do is to experiment, try things, really tap into what makes a difference for them, and then feel empowered to keep going with that because they want to, not because I suggested it or someone else told them to, but because they want to. So in terms of a morning routine, I want you to keep those things in mind because I've got some patients who do a morning routine and I've convinced them, not convinced, I've helped them to understand why it could be so important for them.

And they end up doing it in five minutes, which has been very, very powerful. But other patients of mine who've got the time to do this, it's an hour. And I've been doing morning routines for quite a few years now. And I'd probably say with regularity, you know, I'm not a robot. So, you know, I've got young kids. I help to care for my elderly mother. So there's always things that come up. But generally speaking, my morning routine will be at least 30 minutes these days, but it has taken me years to build up to this. So what is it? The framework for my morning routine is what I call the three M's. Now, for those of you who have my second book, The Stress Solution, I wrote about the three M's in that book. And for me, again, this is not a prescription that says you have to do this.

It's just a useful way about thinking about a morning routine so the first m is mindfulness the second m is movement and the third m is mindset so mindfulness right the first m so i want for myself or for my patients or for you guys to think about, is there a practice that you can do that helps bring you into the present moment, that helps you to be mindful? It could be, you know, some form of breath work, like my three, four, five breath or the box breath, where you breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four and hold for four and just do that in a cycle. It could be meditation, either with an app like Calm, for example, or just by yourself. Or it could be, if you heard the episode I did recently with Amishi Jha on how we can train our attention, the flashlight exercise or the spotlight exercise, when we just

for a few minutes, just start to train ourselves to focus on our breath. And if our mind wanders, we notice it and bring it back. It's just the process of noticing and bringing it back. So for me personally, what do I do? Okay, so my mindfulness practice, as things stand, and I'm always evolving things, is breathwork and meditation. I really have, I feel, gone through to the next level over the past 18 months or so. I feel I can now hit a much deeper state than I could. I've tried to meditate for years and, you know, I probably struggled for a few years. You know, I kept doing it because I knew the research and the benefits, but I think I had the wrong mindset going into it. You know, I was trying to control my mind.

I was trying to actively quieten my mind. Whereas now I make friends with my mind. quiet in my mind. Whereas now I make friends with my mind. Now I make peace with my mind. Some days I hit a beautiful state of calm and peace and other days I feel like I'm going through my to-do list, but that's okay. It's the process of showing up every day, doing the practice that gives me all the benefits. So I do breathwork and meditation. That it goes under my first M. So I'm experimenting with different bits of breathwork at the moment, actually, if I'm honest. For a while, what I was doing is about five minutes of breathing where I was breathing in for about five seconds through my nose, really quietly, not hugely deeply. You know, Patrick McKeown went through this with me on the episode I did with him, maybe just over a year ago now. So if you've

not heard that one, it might be worth revisiting. But that one I really, really like. So for about five minutes, I'm trying to have six breaths per minute. Of course, if you're breathing in and out and it's taking you 10 seconds, that means you're going to have to do six breaths in a minute. And it's a way of just slowing down, intentionally slowing down our breath. It helps you feel calm. It helps you feel present. And it's a much better rate for breathing than most of us do many of us breathe a lot faster than that and we now know that over breathing is linked to all kinds of issues lots of anxiety problems and all kinds of other things so I really like that I've currently been doing a breathwork course with the inventor of MoveNAT M M-O-V-E-N-A-T,

Irwin LaCour. It's a breathwork, sort of breath holding meditation. The course is fantastic. And so I'm experimenting with bits of that in the morning as well as part of my morning routine. But to go back to the original question, I'm sorry, I've gone off on a tangent. I do about five minutes or so of breath work, some sort of intentional practice on my breath. And then I will meditate for about 10 minutes. Now, I do not use an app anymore, typically for my meditation. I used to, I think the app Calm, many of you know, before you joined this membership version, Calm had been one of the sponsors for my podcast for, you know, a year, a year and a half. I think they're great. There's other great apps out there as well, of course. I used it, it helped guide me, it helped give me a framework. But I now feel most of the time, me. It helped give me a framework. But I now feel most of the time, I prefer to meditate without.

I prefer to be with my own thoughts, without another voice, without music. So this is what works for me, which goes back to my initial point, which is what works for you. There's nothing wrong with using an app. For some people, they like using an app. I would say if you are doing it first thing in the morning, though, I'd really encourage you to think about having your phone on airplane mode so that, you know, if you're trying to have this moment of peace and calm and quiet, that you can try and maintain that without, you know, seeing emails, without seeing social media. So if you do put your phone on and have it on airplane mode, you can still use a meditation app. So that's my mindfulness piece. Then I go to movement. So for me personally, after I've done my breath, wick and meditation, I will nip into the kitchen and I'll make some coffee.

nip into the kitchen, and I'll make some coffee. And without repeating what I've said on the podcast many times before, my coffee brews for four to five minutes in the kitchen. And then I will do a workout whilst it's brewing. So typically in the kitchen, I say a workout, that's probably overstating it, if I'm honest. For me, you know, the way I make this a regular thing for me is by making it super easy. So when I started, I had a set routine, right? So when the coffee is brewing in those five minutes, I used to do what I call my five minute kitchen workout, which is a exercise circuit of press-ups, tricep dips, squats, lunges, calf raises. I wrote about this in the four-pillar plan. There is a video on YouTube. If you Google my name and five-minute kitchen workout, you will see what I

used to do. I still think it's great. You don't need any equipment. You don't need to get changed. You don't need to buy anything, right? All super simple things that make it very easy to do. And I would do that. And then I get the gorgeous reward of a hot, fresh cup of coffee. So that's what I used to do. What I currently do is I've just evolved, you know, what I actually do. So it's not always that same workout. Sometimes, you know, you may have heard the podcast I did with Helen Hall, my running coach, a few weeks ago. Helen's given me some particular exercises to work on certain things that we're looking at with my body. I will do those then.

I will always do some form of movement whilst my coffee is brewing. Always. It's very, very rare that I don't. It's just a habit. And I've also got a kettlebell and a dumbbell sitting there in the kitchen. So I'm always being visually triggered to pick them up. And sometimes if I'm on my second cup of coffee, you know, 20 minutes later, let's say, or half an hour later, and I've still got a bit of time, while that's brewing, I'll do some kettlebell swings or something else. So I have found what works for me, but that's kind of what I currently do. Yeah, I'm just trying to think if there's anything else

movement-wise. I think that's all I do at the moment. I try and keep it pretty tight, five minutes, maybe 10 minutes of movement. You know, if there's something going on with my body, I might do some press-ups in the living room. I may do some sort of hip flexibility drills, you know, move my hips from side to side, just to get my body moving a little bit. Sometimes I'll do press-ups. Whatever I'm sort of feeling, I will then do.

But again, I want to go back to this point. I've been doing this for years now. So when you're starting a morning routine, I actually recommend you do the same thing every day. Maybe it's five minutes of meditation, five-minute kitchen workouts, and then five minutes of mindset. We'll get to mindset in a minute. Until you've locked in that habit, if every day you have to think about what am I going to do now for my mindfulness? Am I going to do breath work or meditation or training my focus? You know, when it's workout time, do you have to think, oh, am I going to do kettlebells or dumbbells or body weight? Or, you know, you start to bring in procrastination and doubt. So I am able now to freestyle a little

bit within the umbrella of my framework because I've been doing it for years. So second M, movement, that's what I do. The third M for me is mindset. So again, this is something in the morning that's there to put me in a positive frame of mind for the day ahead. Let's think about what many people do first thing in the morning. They go onto Twitter or they go into the news or some other social media channel. And the truth is that most of the news in general, but particularly over the last 20 months or so, has been pretty negative and quite anxiety inducing. So I genuinely do not believe that's the best thing for us first thing in the morning. I think it's a part of the day where if we're intentional about it, we can set ourselves up for a really calm and peaceful day.

So I think it's really important first thing in the morning to only feed positive, compassionate, kind messaging into our brains and into our minds. So for me, my mindset practice either involves reading a book. So I've got a few books kicking around in my living room. You know, I probably have to read three to four books a week to prepare for my podcast guest. So I've always got books kicking around that I am flicking through reading. I've got a few favorite books as well. Maybe I can go through that on another Ask Me Anything. Otherwise, if I go into that now, we'll never catch the end of my morning routine. And I will sit there with my hot coffee and I'll sit there with

a little lamp on and I'll just read. And if I don't feel like reading or if my kids are down, I will do some affirmations with them. You may have heard me say this before, sometimes with my children, if they're down, we'll hold hands and we'll just repeat, I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. And we'll do this for about two minutes. And so whether it's reading an uplifting book or whether it is doing affirmations by myself or with my children, you know, it just puts me in a positive frame of mind. And I feel that no matter what happens for the rest of the day, I know I've got something in the bank. I've done something. I've done three separate things to deal with, you know, three very important parts of who I am. I

also love journaling. So sometimes I go through phases with journaling. I don't do it every day, but I go through phases. Sometimes when I sit down with my coffee, before I read, I might just do some journaling and write down things that are on my mind or things that I'm thinking about. Sometimes I'll either be preparing for a podcast guest. And, you know, the truth is, I don't always get as much time as I would like to prepare. So what I try and do, particularly in the morning, which is my crazy time, I'll think about, okay, okay, what are the key things? What are the key things that this guest stands for that you want to be able to connect with when you have your conversation? So I use journaling for many reasons to help me process

worries, stresses, anxieties, to prepare for a podcast, to clarify my own thoughts on something, whatever it is. So I hope that's useful. I think that was a lot longer answer than I had planned to give, if I'm honest. But I'm going for 20 minutes. I thought it was going to be five minutes on my morning routine. But essentially, it's the three M's, mindfulness, movement, mindset. I hope that was useful. If you want more clarification on the members page, let me know. Because I'm very happy to do more and more. I'm just trying to give you that framework. And again, if you are thinking of adopting a morning routine, keep it simple. You don't have to do all 3Ms. I think those 3Ms are great. I may have said this before, I certainly wrote about this in the stress solution,

that one of my patients did a five minute 3M routine. One minute, the first minute was the 3, 4, 5 breath where you breathe in for three, hold for four, breathe out for five. So she'd do one minute of 3, 4, 5 breathing, two minutes of yoga moves, some of her favorite yoga moves she just put together in a sequence, just two minutes, and then two minutes of affirmations, right? So she used that 3M framework to give her a five-minute morning routine. She was a busy mum, and that dramatically helped her with her skin because I strongly felt that stress was a huge contributor to her skin problems. So I hope there's something useful in there for you. I hope you feel as though you've got a better understanding of my morning routine, how I fit it in, what I actually do. And of course, let me know. Like, I would love to hear if that has landed with you. If you have any more questions, of course,

I'll try and answer them in future Ask Me Anythings. Okay, so that was one question, my morning routine. my morning routine. So what did you think? That of course was just a taster later on in that Ask Me Anything episode. I talk about my dream guests for the podcast. I also talk about my top tips for looking after yourself when you are a carer for others. So if you would like to hear the full Ask Me Anything episode as well as future Ask Me Anything episodes, and get access to every single episode of the podcast, without any adverts, without any sponsors, you can now sign up from anywhere in the world at drchastity.com forward slash membership, or just click the link in the show notes section on your podcast app.

It is only £5 per month. I'd like to think that's a pretty good deal for people. And at this time of year, perhaps you know a friend or family member who might also appreciate this membership offer. We do have gift subscriptions of three, six or 12 month packages. They are all there on the membership homepage. I think it's a pretty cool gift for someone. It's also really good for the environment, of course. So to see your details, just go to drchastity.com forward slash membership. As always, I'll be back this Wednesday for the next main episode of the podcast. It is a very special compilation episode.

I really think you're going to enjoy it. I will see you then.