The Rich Roll Podcast - Health is About the Little Things: Rangan Chatterjee, M.D. on How to Feel Better in Five Minutes

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

As 2020 continues to unfurl in a fashion beyond surreal, more and more are descending into the anguished abyss of distress. Awakening to acrid tangerine skies that have transformed sunny California into a Blade Runner dystopia, I myself vacillate between melancholia and a commitment to forge a better world. When the darkness descends, I find sanity in focusing only on those things I can control: my actions and reactions. Nonetheless, waves of anxiety -- and sometimes even despair -- continue to break on the shores of my consciousness. It is in these moments that I resort to a battery of simple but generally quite effective contrary actions. I spend time in nature. Double down on meditation and human connection. I eat better and move more. And I extend myself in service to others. To further explore the many practical and unexacting things we can all undertake during this stressful time to course-correct our emotional disposition, reframe our reality and sustainably serve our well-being, I'm joined by my friend Rangan Chatterjee, M.D. -- who today returns for a third spin on the RRP flywheel. One of the most influential doctors in the U.K., Rangan is a pioneer in the field of progressive, functional medicine. He is double board-certified in internal medicine and family medicine, holds an honors degree in immunology, and has appeared on seemingly every prominent media outlet from the BBC to The New York Times.  In addition, Rangan prevails over the wildly popular Feel Better, Live More podcast. His TEDx talk, How To Make Diseases Disappear, has been viewed almost 3 million times. And he is the author of three #1 Sunday Times bestselling books. The focus of today's conversation is his latest well-being tome, Feel Better In 5. A close cousin to my podcast with Atomic Habits author James Clear (RRP #401), today's exchange is all about habit change and habit formation. It's about the power of bite-sized actions. And how, when undertaken regularly, short and simple practices can rapidly and completely change your health and life. We discuss the difference between breaking bad habits versus crowding them out with new, better habits. We explore the realities of food addiction. Our epidemic of emotional eating. And Rangan's personal theory on cause and solution. We talk generally about holistic health and lifestyle medicine, and why progressive wellness should be accessible to all -- now more than ever. Interspersed throughout, Rangan shares how he has helped patients relieve stress, find fulfillment, and engender peace in these chaotic times. But most importantly, we explore his very simple, almost effortless, methods for building a new and sustainable lifestyle to serve our long-term health. The visually inclined can watch it all go down on YouTube (courtesy of Zoom). And as always, the conversation streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I always enjoy time spent with Rangan, even when it's remote. My hope is that you do as well -- and put his advice into action. Peace + Plants, Rich

there's a lot of what to do out there, whether it's on podcasts or books, there's a lot of, oh, you should do this. This is what you can do. In fact, we've never lived in a better time. You know, there's so many options, but potentially with that choice comes paralysis. And you see a lot of people not actually doing anything. And again, I'm very much informed by my almost two decades now of seeing patients, not everyone with the information actually goes and does anything. And I thought, well, why is that? And I've always been fascinated as to which patients can make change and which patients can't. And is there a common factor? Now, I figured out early on that actually there was a couple of tricks you can use to help people

make change and transform their lives but I figured out that you've got to start small with most people. Now not with everyone and we can get to that but with most people you've got to start small and you know the actions you take determine your identity. Often we have a certain identity based upon the way our life is, but until we take action, consumption is not always leading to action. And you know, you've always said mood follows action, right? This book is actually in many ways trying to prove your point. Take the action and everything else follows. That's Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is episode 545 of The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

Hey, everybody. What's going on? Welcome to the podcast. It is I, Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. What's going on? Welcome to the podcast. It is I, Rich Roll, coming to you from the acrid tangerine skies of what was formerly sunny California, now turned some kind of Blade Runner dystopia, our state ablaze in the largest wildfire season in recorded history. Indeed, as 2020 continues to unfurl, the earth, humanity seems to remain intent

on sending all of us deeper into the anguished abyss of distress. And I myself find that I'm vacillating between this kind of periodic melancholy and a sense of powerlessness on the one hand, and on the other hand, gratitude and hope. And at times when these darker moments do descend upon me, really the only thing that keeps me sane is trying to

maintain some adherence to this idea of normalcy, continuing to do the podcast, letting go of the many things over which I have no control, trying to focus on the things that I can control, like my actions, my reactions, looking for the hidden opportunities, spending time in nature, spending time with my family, moving my body, eating right, sleeping right, meditating, and extending myself in service to others. That's all I know how to do. And yet, like most people, I suspect, waves of anxiety and sometimes even despair flow over me. And it is in those moments that I've really come to rely on a battery of simple but generally quite effective contrary actions to jumpstart me out of the funk and get me moving, feeling, acting, behaving, reacting in a healthier and

more productive and happier manner. And this is really the briefest way in which I can introduce today's conversation, which really centers on the theme of practical steps that we can all undertake to not only course correct those mood swings, but actually and ultimately reframe our reality and serve the long-term interests in a sustainable way of our general mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Our anchor for said exploration is one of the most influential doctors in the UK, a pioneer in the field of progressive functional medicine, as well as a good friend.

a good friend. His name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and he's here today returning for his third cast, his third spin on the RRP flywheel. A podcast host himself, Rangan prevails over the wildly popular Feel Better Live More podcast. He has appeared on seemingly every prominent media outlet from the BBC to the New York Times. His TED Talk, How to Make Diseases Disappear, has been viewed almost 3 million times. And he is the author of three number one Sunday Times bestselling books, the most recent of which, and the focus of today's exchange, is entitled Feel Better in Five. Today, you're going to hear a lot about the many different ways to take better care of yourself. At the core are your daily habits around food. And I can assure you that Dr. Chatterjee would agree that amping up your plant intake is key. How to do this, how to do it right, and most importantly, how to sustain it is a question that I get a lot. So we created the Plant Power

Meal Planner, an end-to-end, state-of-the-art digital platform solution to get you there and keep you there. It's super dope, providing you unlimited access to thousands of constantly updated, nutritious, delicious, and easy-to-prepare recipes, all tailored to your peculiar preferences. Selected meals auto-generate grocery lists to make shopping simple and integrated grocery delivery in most urban areas makes it even easier. We also have cooking instructional videos and our team of nutrition coaches are always available to guide you every step of the way. The kicker here is affordability. Just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year, which is basically nothing for what you get in return. It's just amazing. So to learn more and get rolling, visit meals.richroll.com. That's meals.richroll.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time.

It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care

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I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the

many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Thank you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have

treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Rangan. So bottom line, fundamentally, this is a conversation about habit change and habit formation.

If you enjoyed my podcast with James Clear, I think this one will really resonate with you because it's all about the power of bite-sized actions, what James Clear calls atomic habits to change your health and change your life. It's about the difference between breaking bad habits versus crowding them out with new ones. It's about food addiction and emotional eating with Dr. Chatterjee's progressive personal theory on the root cause. We talk generally about holistic health and lifestyle medicine and why new age wellness

really should be accessible to all, especially now more than ever. And Rangan shares his experience helping patients relieve stress, find fulfillment and hone peace in these chaotic times. But most importantly, more than anything, we you can also watch if you would like, if that's your preference, at youtube.com forward slash Rich Roll.

Enjoy. Rangan, my friend, good to see you. Back for your third turn on the podcast. My only regret being we're not in the same room, but be it as it may, this is the world that we live in right now. So I'll take any opportunity I can to connect with you, my friend. Good to have you today. Yeah, thanks, Rich. Yeah, me too, man. I would have loved to have been with you in person, but this is as good as it gets. But I'm sure we're still going to have

a great conversation nonetheless. Yeah. So I want to get into the new book, of course, congrats on it just being released in the United States. But before we do that, like, how's it going in the UK? I talked to a friend of mine who lives in London two days ago, and he said, by what he related to me, it sounded like things were a little bit more normal there than they are here in Los Angeles? What's the day-to-day? Yeah, look, I think the way we're reacting to this is so individual, isn't it? That you can talk to 10 different people about their perception,

how they're feeling about the world, and you may get 10 different answers. Certainly, you'll get five or six different answers. And so what's going on here? Well, you know, people are still worried. People are still wearing masks out and about. There's a big divide as to what people actually think is really going on, which is really interesting to observe. On an individual level, my children went back to school today, you know, summer, which I don't know what's going on with you guys, but you know, my two kids who are 10 and seven, we dropped them off at school for the pretty much one of the first times in five months. So it was, yeah, it was interesting just getting back to what

used to be normal for many parents around the country. Um'll tell you what was different today. It was quite odd actually after having had the kids around for so long, I really miss them. I really miss them in the day when I knew they weren't here. So yeah, that's kind of a little snapshot as to what's going on.

That's nice. Our kids are doing exactly what we're doing right now. They're on Zoom all day for their school. And it's really taken a toll. Like the mental drain of them having to, you know, receive their education through a screen entirely is, you know, as you know, not the healthiest thing in the world. And it's been tricky as a parent to help them navigate that. The emotional, you know, mental turmoil that it causes to have them separated from their friends and to have their childhood in certain respects stripped away from them has been really trying. It's encouraging to hear that your kids are back in school. I wish that was the case here, but it's not. Yeah. And you, I mean, you, I think certainly from what we read about what's going on in the US, things seem to be quite different there

from what I can tell. And, you know, what do you really know, right? A little bit, a little bit. And it's, I don't know, it's really tricky, Rich, because, you know, in terms of how people see this, I think it really depends on who you are and what's your situation. So for some people, the pandemic honestly has provided a wonderful opportunity for people to re-evaluate their lives, reset what's important, spend more time with people who they're close to, whether it's their partner or their family. But for other people, they've had the complete opposite experience of worry, financial hardship, potentially losing their job, potentially losing a family member or a close friend to illness,

you know, maybe having a funeral that you couldn't go to because of the regulation. So I really feel that this has been one of those times where our reaction is so individual, you know, and I think it depends on what media you consume. You know, are you intentionally consuming lots of mainstream media? And I think if you are, potentially you may struggle with anxiety or stress with the state of the world. And then if you shut yourself off, you can sometimes feel really good in yourself, but potentially starts to become detached with what's actually going on out there. So I think it's quite a challenging, it's been a challenging time for people to navigate. And, you know, before our conversation today, I was thinking back to when the pandemic started. I was in LA as this

was about to, I was meant to come to your house just to meet, not for a podcast, you know, as part of what I'm trying to do these days is really trying to prioritize connecting with people who I enjoy connecting with. And it was one of those where it's like, oh, maybe me and Rich could get together and not do a podcast and just hang out. Our entire relationship is oriented around podcast conversations. But I saw the text message about an hour ago and it literally, it was on a Thursday. You said, yeah, we'll touch base tomorrow morning. And I thought I'm coming to your place.

And then literally on that Friday, everything changed. Yeah, it's weird, it's strange. Certainly anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, loneliness, all of these things are peaking right now, certainly in America and across the world. So what are you seeing with your patients? How are they navigating it? What's showing up in your office these days? Yeah, exactly what you said. I think the mental health consequence of this pandemic is not only huge at the moment, I think we're yet to see the impacts of it. And I really think there

is a, you know, so how can I put this? You've got the situation where, you know, the authorities are making decisions based on what they think is going to save immediate acute lives, right? And they're measuring that with daily, you know, daily death rates, things that are easily measurable from day to day, right? But on the other hand, you've got the chronic consequences of this lack of human contacts, this lack of face-to-face connection, the fact that people aren't congregating anymore, that people are feeling isolated. Resentment is starting to build up in people. Relationships are under pressure, under strain. And a lot of those things are more chronic. They're not quite as easy to measure. And yes, anxiety is going up.

Stress-related problems are going up. Suicides are going up. I've, you know, in the last few weeks heard some really horrible stories, not just from my patients, but really tragic ones in my friend network and my family network as well, in terms of nothing to do with actually, you know, coronavirus per se, but actually to do with how we're now living. You know, schools, I think, certainly here in the UK, they're open, but what is the impact going to be on these children in three, four, five years time of having at a very formative part of their life, they're sort of almost being told whether consciously or not, they're subconsciously getting the message that, whether consciously or not, they're subconsciously getting the message that,

oh, I must be wary of the other. I can't get too close. That is one of my big concerns about this is the consequence of this. I've spoken to, I think last time I was on your show, we spoke about touch and a lot of Professor Francis McGlone's research on human touch and just how important it is for our emotional brain and the signals we get when we are touched by another human. And that is something that many people have missed out on. And I tell you which, my mother, she's going to be 80 in a week's time. She lives about five minutes away from me. going to be 80 in a week's time. She lives about five minutes away from me. And right at the start of lockdown, she had a fall. And I remember it really well because it was probably in the first week or two when nobody quite knew what was going on. Like it was like, what's happening to the world? And I went around and I didn't want her to be admitted. I thought, I don't want her going in

a hospital right now. So I ended up staying with her for a few nights on the floor next to her bed, just to make sure she was okay, just to make sure everything was all right and she didn't need to go in. And, you know, so she was quite frail and quite, just quite affected by it by a few weeks. But it was really interesting. A few weeks later, she has someone who comes around maybe for, you know, an hour a day to help with some cooking and a few things at home. And I remember she phoned me one day and she said, you know what, I'm over this. I can't live like this. I would rather, and I'm not at all suggesting that anyone else should feel like this. I'm just talking about an individual story. This is my mum. She said, you know what? I'd rather take my chances. I'd rather get this virus. And if I don't make it, I don't make it, but I can't live like this. Not seeing anyone, not seeing my family,

not seeing my friends. And it really struck me early on, Rich, that there's two sides to this. There's the acute side and the chronic side. And actually that's a theme we've spoken about before, right? Whether it's health problems, the acute problem, like the pneumonia, which Western medicine does beautifully well at versus the chronic consequences of the lifestyles that we lead. And you can actually draw the same analogy in the pandemic. There is an acute consequence potentially. And there's a chronic one. And the chronic one is the one I don't think is getting factored into decision-making because, you know, we can kick the can down the road. It's like, oh, we can't quite see that. Although I think we are

starting to see it, but we can't quite see it and measure it in the same way. So I'm, I'm concerned. I'm really concerned about children, really. You know, I think, you know, humans are social beings. We're designed to be together and to thrive in community. And I really, I worry about the impact on kids in the future, if I'm honest. Yeah, it's very real. I can see it in my 13-year-old daughter. When we do venture out into the world, which isn't often, she's very trepidatious about it. And she's more diligent about mask wearing when she's outside the house than probably anybody else in our house. And it's left me reflecting on what the long-term implications of that relationship with how you interact with the

world are going to be. Like, what is the half-life of that fear response when you're in the presence of another individual, as opposed to embracing the world and looking forward to those social interactions, entering each one of those with that kind of sense of potential doom? What does that set in motion for that person's life five years down the line, 10 years down the line if they can't get over it? I think there's going to be a post-traumatic stress response to this that we're going to see amongst mostly young people. And what that's going to look like, I think only time will tell, but I think it's a very real concern. And I think on top of that,

this is something that you're well-versed in, the health of our immune system is related to the extent to which we interface with not just the natural world, but the social world. Like our immune systems become more robust the more that we're in contact with other human beings. That's part of what it's about in terms of maintaining our immune systems.

And now we're being sequestered, we're prevented from that interface. What does that mean? You know, it's all very confusing and disorienting and that's all exacerbated by this variation in the kind of information that we're receiving, these different narratives about what we should and should not be doing that are causing vitriol

and strife and really dividing us in a profound way. Yeah, it is. And I can hear it in your voice. It's weighing, you know, and it's interesting, you mentioned your 13 year old daughter. My son's 10. And I would guess that the jump from 10 to 13 is significant. My son is still in primary school. I still feel that he is relatively sheltered from the wider world. I suspect that when one goes to, I don't know what you call it in the States here, secondary school or high school, you know, basically from

11 plus, I suspect things are very different. And I can't imagine what it's like for a 13 year old, because at that age, you know, you're all about your friends and hanging and sort of almost pushing back against your family and actually really trying to get your own tribe. What does that do? What will that mean for relationships in five, 10 years time? I've, you know, I know, I think you had Charles Eisenstein on early on, didn't you? Yeah. I mean, I remember, I still remember reading his essay, you know. The Coronation Essay.

Yeah. Which is just a brilliant read when I read it at the time. I've not actually, I've not revisited it. I may do, but I remember that the thing which really struck me at the preservation of life above everything else, then certain measures make sense. If you value the quality of life, then perhaps we need to have a slightly different conversation. And, you know, I appreciate that this is super emotive for people. So I'm not, I'm just trying to, as a philosophical point, I really, I haven't been able to get that out of my head since I read it. What is the society?

What does society look like? How do we want to live? Because, you know, there is an element of risk to being alive, right? The way to be completely safe from anything is to, well, you stay at home, don't interact with anyone. Never get in a car, never do anything. Yeah. Don't go running on a trail, right? You know, don't do any of those things where you could potentially run into problems. But then the flip side is what, if we think about the fun things in life, if I think about my own, you know, the last couple of years, you know, getting into ocean swimming,

swim running, you know, before that skiing, you know, it's the element of danger, but it's almost in so many ways actually basically tells you how much of a buzz you're going to get afterwards. You know, of course you can have fun without an element of danger, but it almost reminds you in that moment, wow, I am alive. What an amazing feeling. I am alive. And I just feel that the thing that frustrates me, Rich, if I'm honest, is I don't feel there's been enough of a public conversation around the long-term consequences. I think we, and I get that, you know, I get that there's, there's this thing, which we never seen before. We've never seen these sort of lockdowns and there's a short-term focus, but I really think the time is just,

we really need to start thinking about the long-term consequences, but we're also not seeing with a mainstream narrative, we're not seeing a focus on what the immune system is and how we can start supporting it. You know, and I find it bizarre that we've not had more of it in terms of, I know you spoke to Dr. B recently and, you know and he was talking about the immune system. And there are so many things that we can do that will support our immune system. Getting seven and a half hours sleep a night compared to five hours, for example, has been shown to change the amount of natural killer cells in your body by 50, 60%. What are natural killer cells? They are the part of natural killer cells in your body by 50, 60%, right? What are natural killer cells? They are the part of your innate immune system that fight viruses, right? So of course, it's a novel virus to many people, right? That's what we're being told.

But you've got to say, well, why don't we help people boost up, support their immune system so that even if they get exposed, they're more resilient. The diet, the quality of the food people are eating, the amount of different colored plants, these things help to educate your immune system. And that's a key word, Rich, you mentioned before, the education of our immune system. The immune system, you know, when we're born, we're not completely sterile, actually. We do have a few bugs inside us. But, you know, we get our gut microbiome, which is a big part of our immune system. It's very much interlinked with the immune system from our mothers. But then what happens? Well, living, being in life, being exposed to new foods, being exposed

to things in the environment that helps give your immune system signals and your immune system is very clever. It responds, it goes, ah, okay. It tries to figure out when I should respond and when I should actually stay calm and stay quiet. And it is very frustrating that we've not been able to have that conversation. And people who do speak up about that, what is then happening is that people are jumping on them, which is reflective of the way of the world at the moment and saying, you're devaluing the social distancing measures. And it's like, well, hold on a minute. It's not either or. You don't have to choose. Either you follow the guidelines or you ignore them and look after your immune system,

well, why not do both? Why not say, hey guys, we would recommend this societally, but individually, we know that if you can do these three or four things, sleep better, stress less, move your body, eat better, you're actually going to support your immune system. Why is that conversation not happening? Yeah, because it doesn't feed the mainstream media fear narrative, you know? And it's particularly concerning when what we are coming to understand about this novel virus and the impact, the disproportionate negative impact

that it has on people with comorbidity factors. Like the more unhealthy you are, it appears the more, you know, at risk you are in terms of the severity of what you're going to endure should you come in contact with the virus. It's been very strange in Los Angeles in the early stages of the quarantine, they closed all the, they closed the beaches like everybody knows, but they also closed like all the trails. And I can understand closing certain trails that are heavily trafficked, but they were closing all these tiny little trails that I felt like I only knew about where I would go out running and I'd be the only person out there and there'd be yellow police tape around it all of a sudden. And I was thinking,

this is perhaps one of the healthiest things that I could do right now. I'm socially distant, I'm not gonna see anybody, and yet I'm being prevented from doing this thing that I think is in the best interest of making sure that I'm in a good, healthy position should I encounter the virus. Yeah, and there's a wider point as well, which many people have been thinking about,

and I have as well, because we live in a society where there are certain rules these there's there's rules of engagement to allow society to function in a certain way you know it's not the wild west where anything goes but many people i know myself included if i'm honest a little bit we're very much like oh i can't go in the countryside now. I can't go into nature. And then you start to think philosophically, well, who owns nature? Like, is it possible to legislate that a human can't go into nature? And look, I understand, I'm not saying there aren't reasons for it. I'm just saying that if you extend these arguments to their sort of, to their extreme, it is, it was, I thought, well, hold on a minute.

I feel very frustrated that I, I can't go here and actually go for a run here or, um, but, but I understand also the flip side, right? So I'm, I'm not sort of saying, oh, you know, poor Rangan, he couldn't do what he wanted to do. No, I get it that there's a societal issue at play, but these, like many people, mate, a lot of these thoughts have been going round and round my head. And you go one, you know, one week, you're feeling really good and you're feeling totally okay with things. And then another week, you're just sort of feeling a little bit tensed up and down. And I think maybe four or five months in, there was this general feeling in the UK that people would just think, God, I've had enough now. I've had enough

now. I just need to get out and express myself in whatever way. So I, you know, you mentioned the news narrative as well. And it was interesting because at the start of this, you know, narrative as well. And it was interesting because at the start of this, you know, the day I was meant to see you, I flew back from LA that evening. And I think, so I got back to the UK on Saturday. I think I was on BBC News on the Monday talking about what was going on. I really felt a public service obligation at the start. I thought a lot of people, certainly in the UK, trust me and want to see what I have to say about it. So I really felt responsibilities go on. But then after a few weeks, I thought these were all quite negative stories. And I won't mention which station it was, but I did suggest,

should we do a positive piece around this? And there just wasn't that much interest. And I really started to see, oh, okay, kind of, so there's a certain story and a narrative that certainly people are either wanting or media companies are wanting to put out. And I, I went for a period of two months and I didn't go, actually. I just thought, you know what? I feel that every time I go on, you know, and they're taking questions from the audience and the guidance at the time was literally changing every single day. And a lot of the guidance didn't make sense and it was in conflict to the previous guidance. And I just thought, you know what? My kids are at home. My wife probably was quite anxious at

the start. So we have a very different view to this. I've been pretty relaxed throughout most of this. My wife, on the other hand, has got quite anxious from time to time. And I've learned that it's not fair of me to expect her to look at the situation like me. It's about to try to understand, no, this is real in her head. This is how she feels. And I need to sit there and try and listen to that and be there and support. And I was finding that I was getting really stressed out about going on the media to talk about a negative story. That's why I just stopped doing it. And you know what? I found myself happier, calmer, having more fun with the children, getting more work done. And it's been such an intense period that I think we've experienced so many emotions, but they've

been supercharged, like the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I don't know, would you say that's the same for you, Rich? Yeah, everybody's on a hair trigger. It's being fueled by the fear narrative and the anxiety and the stress and the economic insecurity. Like all of these things are very real. And just to be very clear myself, like I'm conducting myself like a good citizen. I'm wearing a mask when I go out and, you know, go inside to any kind of retail establishment. I mean, all I do is go to the grocery store essentially, unless I'm home or doing the podcast, but I'm respecting the protocols that, you know, that are being advised in terms of social distancing, et cetera. Meanwhile, I'm also taking care of myself and trying to put myself in

the best position to manage all of this. And I've been also on that sine wave of feeling fine and then having moments of depression and despair that kind of come in waves as a result of the isolation and the inability to kind of plan for the future and have things to look forward to. Like I'm trying to not discount that because I think that those things are very real. discount that because I think that those things are very real. And in what you just related, my mind returns to another theme from Eisenstein's essay, which is this forced moment of repose being an opportunity for us to reevaluate, reassess the systems that are broken right now, the systems that led to a novel virus appearing to the extent that it did in the first place, why we're in a society where there are so many comorbidity factors among too many people, what is going on with how we structured our society that has created so many ills that require our redress at the moment. And I'm not seeing a lot of discussion about that either.

And I feel like that's a missed opportunity. And if we can identify a gift in all of this, and that was really at the core of what Eisenstein was trying to say, it's this opportunity to make some fundamental changes. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And like, I think it depends, you know, on who you are, how you've experienced this lockdown, this pandemic. But I honestly would say, and I have worked for much of my career in sort of quite deprived areas with people of sort of so-called low socioeconomic status. And you know what? There is very much this

narrative that, oh, it's okay for some, right? It's all right for some of us. But I think we've got to be very careful with that line of thought. So let me just expand it out for a second and then I'll bring it back in. When we talk about, let's say, lifestyle medicine, how we can use lifestyle to help not only prevent getting sick, but also potentially help treat certain conditions, certainly try and improve them. There's this big sort of thing in the UK recently where it's like, oh, this is, you know, this is classist. It's all right for some, you know, we should be, we shouldn't waste our time with this obsession with lifestyle. We should be focusing on the real causes, which is poverty. And actually, you know,

the sort of the problems in society with rich and poor and their disparities in income levels. And again, it's very much like this. It's either or. You've got to choose. And it's just not really reflective. Sometimes I think people like saying these things when they actually haven't dealt with these communities. When you've been in these communities, When you've been in these communities, like I have, and of course, my experience is very much influenced by my patient population. Now, it could be completely different in a different area. I accept that. But even people who I've seen who are struggling, they're on benefits, they really don't have much disposable income, there's all kinds of pressures on them. They really don't have much disposable income. You know, there's all kinds of pressures on them. Just saying, oh, the environment around you needs to change. There's nothing you can do.

It's very disempowering. I have found that when you speak with respect to these people, when you actually communicate with them, when you actually listen, so they know you've heard them and you speak to them, they're open listen so they know you've heard them and you speak to them, they're open to change. They're open to rethinking about their situation in a different way. I've done that recently with some people and really helped them reframe the pandemic, even though they're under financial pressures, because there is a gift, there is an opportunity. There's always an opportunity to learn from anything in life. They're for all of us, no matter how bad.

And I really feel strongly about that. It's something I'll be thinking a lot about over the summer when this big lifestyle medicine thing blew up in the UK. And I thought it's just reflective of everything that's divisive in the world at the moment. It's either or, it's black and white. It's like, well, you can have both. You can try and improve the social situation for certain communities, but you can also empower them. And I really feel, you know, once you lose agency, once you feel you have no agency over what happens to you, it doesn't matter what your income level is. It's downhill. You have to. And I've been thinking about the word empower literally in the last couple of days. I was chatting to my video guy, Gareth, and we were just talking about empower. And I thought, oh, to give power to. Like, I know it's so obvious, but the penny dropped for me. Ah,

to give power. Of course, that's why I love to empower people no matter who they are, because you're giving someone power, no matter how small you're giving them an opportunity to know that, Hey, I can make a change. And so I said, I'd, I'd go wider than bring it back in. I don't know where I went, but essentially I really feel that for all of us, there is something that we can take from this, you know? And I think really we should all be looking for that. And I've been encouraging people from the start on my Instagram stories and on my platforms to say, guys, do a bit of journaling. You know, you won't remember how you felt now when things return, you know, in inverted commas, you know, whatever normal or normality or, you know, whatever, whatever that ends up

being and looking like. So maybe do some journaling and write down how you feel. So when you are back and you're busy, you kind of remember some of those insights that you had when you could hear the birds singing and you could hear birds on a way you've never heard before. And the way you could cycle with your children down a busy streets. And actually there was no one on the roads and you weren't worried about safety and anything. So I think if people have journal, they will have some very interesting reflections to look back on.

Well, that's a perfect segue into the new book, Feel Better in Five, which is all about empowerment. And it's in the vein of your other books. But I think that what you've done with this book and what I love about it is that it's so action-driven. And what I love about it is that it's so action-driven. to diet and health and fitness and stress reduction and recovery and sleep by drilling down to very basic doable common sense tasks and to do it with like a bit of aplomb and charisma so that people can digest it and receive it and most importantly, implement it into their lives. And I think you've accomplished that with this book, which is really about fundamentally habit change. Yeah. I mean, thanks, Rich. This is, you know, it's my third book and I remember when I sat down to write it,

I was like, well, what are you writing another book for? What's the purpose here? What are you going to contribute that's different from the first two? And what I feel, although I feel the first two were very actionable, what I really felt strongly about is that there's a lot of what to do out there, whether it's on podcasts or books, there's a lot of, oh, you should do this. This is what you can do. In fact, we've never lived in a better time for learning what to do. There's just, you know, there's so many options, but potentially with that choice comes paralysis. And you see a lot of people not actually doing anything. And again, I'm very much informed by my almost two decades now of seeing patients, not everyone with the information actually goes and does anything. And I thought, well, why is that? And I've always been fascinated as to which patients can make change and which

patients can't. And is there a common factor? Now, I figured out early on that actually there was a couple of tricks you can use to help people make change and transform their lives. But I figured out that you've got to start small with most people. Now, not with everyone, and we can get to that, but with most people, you've got to start small. And, you know, I think the best example to illustrate it was this patient who, a 42-year-old chap that I saw in my surgery, he had a lot of problems that actually many people listening to this right now are probably also facing. He was a little bit overweight, he was struggling with his mood, and he was low in energy. Yeah, very, very common problems. And Rich, I remember sitting down with him and it was quite clear to me that there were various aspects in his lifestyle that were

probably at play. We discussed a number of options. And the option he really liked was strength training. And he was like, yeah, doc, I love it. Strength training, I get it. It's going to help me with my mood. It's going to help me feel better. It's going to help me lose weight. I'm in, I've not done it since I was a teenager. Brilliant. And he goes, what do you want me to do? 40 minutes, three times a week. I said, Hey, look, that'd be amazing if you can do that. And he goes off, right? So this is the key. He's got the motivation at that point. He's ready to go. He's like, got a smile. I'm going to do this. One month later, when he comes back in for follow-up, right, he walks in like a different person. So he's, you know, his shoulders have rolled around a little

bit. He's a bit sheepish. And I said, hey, look, how are you getting on? How was the gym? You know, what's been going on? And he said, doc, look, you know what? I've not really been. Work's been super busy, super stressful. The gym's not really that close to me. I've just not ended up going. And Rich, why that is such an influential consultation for me, it's because I remember sitting there thinking, I didn't think as many people expect me to have thought, why has he not done what I've asked him to do? I just thought, Rangan, you've clearly not given him advice that he feels is relevant for him in the context of his life. And so I took off my jacket and I said, right, I'm going to teach you a workout right now. So I taught him this five body weight exercises,

modified them for his ability. And I said, can you do them? He goes, yeah, no problem. I said, can you do this? I want you to do this five minutes twice a week. And he looked at me and he said, what, 10 minutes a week? I said, yeah, can you manage that? He goes, yeah, of course I can, I can, I can manage that. I was like, okay, I'll see you in four weeks. He goes off four weeks later, he comes back rich and he walked in, big smile on his face, chest puffed out. I said, how are you doing? And he said, doc, I feel amazing. Like you said, do five minutes twice a week. I found it so easy. I do that workout for 10 minutes every evening before I had my evening meal. And he, that was 70 minutes of strength training a week, right? He couldn't do 40 minutes three times a week.

By making it super easy, he feels good. He increases it, not because I asked him to, but because he wanted to. And then he was doing that for a good five years, right? 70 minutes of strength training for five years. And that led to what I've written about that I call the ripple effects. From there, he was eating better, sleeping better. And now he gets up each morning and does a breathwork practice. This stuff was not on his radar six, seven years ago, right? It just wasn't. But by making it small, by making it achievable, not only can he do it, his identity changes along the way. And I think that's why I think this book has proved so successful and popular with certainly people here in the UK is because it works. It's based on 20 years

clinical experience that I've got. But also when I, when I, I think last time I saw you, actually, I'd maybe just come back from seeing BJ Fogg in, um, up in Santa Rosa on his bootcamp. And BJ, who's arguably one of the world's leading experts in human behavior. Um, certainly I, I feel that he is. He said it was, it was such a beautiful meeting because he looked at the book and a, he, he said some really nice things about it. He said, it's one of the best habit change programs he's ever come across deceptively simple, but remarkably effective, which was so humbling to get that from someone like that. But what was really interesting, I've come to see patients and habit change from clinical experience. So I've come to it, not from research. I'm not a researcher. I've come to it from what I have seen work with real

people, with busy people, with busy lives. BJ's come to it from scientific research. And then this beautiful meeting, which is why we hit it off so much. He's like, oh, your clinical experience is replicating exactly what my scientific research is saying. And it was, it was lovely to sort of see that. And I'm really passionate that I'm not a researcher. I keep abreast of the research, but as we've spoken about before, Rich, I'm about results. I'm about helping the person in front of me. If I'm not able to help them,

I'm like, well, you've got to do better, Rangan. You've got to find another way of connecting and you've got to find another way of making them feel that they want to do this. I had forgotten that you did the bootcamp with BJ and we were gonna talk about that when you were on your way over. And I've since been going back and forth with BJ

trying to get him on the podcast. I think his work is incredible and it's impossible to read your book and not think about the work of BJ Fogg, the work of Charles Duhigg, the work of James Clear, like these people who have really pushed the boundaries in terms of helping us understand how we form habits, how we break them, how we create new ones. And if there's an overarching kind of theme in all

of their work, it's that you have to distill these things down into very tiny, actionable changes that fit within the construct of your life. And the way you kind of articulate it in your book is by using this idea of bending, like don't bend life around the demands of your program, create it such that it bends around the way that your life is constructed. And when you shared that example of the guy who wanted to start a strength training program, I'm sure when he said, oh, I'm gonna go to the gym a couple times a week, it doesn't sound daunting.

He's not conscious of the fact that his environment and the constraints of his job are not as conducive to making that happen as reality ends up dictating, right? So the only way to get him to form the new habit is to break it down into a bite-sized chunk that's so preposterously small that it doesn't feel like it moves the needle at all, but it creates this, a starting point and then an emotional attachment to the behavior. And then ultimately momentum, which almost has like this ethereal spiritual energy. Like once you have momentum,

these habits become self-perpetuating. And I don't know what that's about precisely, but I've seen it in my own life. Like it's so hard to begin something, but once you kind of begin that process and become more and more invested in it, it becomes easy. So why is it easy when you have momentum and so hard to begin? That's a great question, Rich. You know, the sort of the magic of momentum, what is going on there? Um, look, I think it's how we're wired as humans, right? It's, it's, as BJ talks about, and as I've seen, it's not the repetition that wisens the behavior. It's the emotion, right? We're, we're human beings. Basically what we were talking about right at the start. We are social beings. We've got feelings. We like to connect with others. And when we feel good, right, we want to feel that again,

which is why a big part is how do you help yourself feel good after you've done something? It's a really important part of behavior change. And actually, you talk about momentum, even if you talk about something like the Calm Meditation app and lots of behavior change. And actually you talk about momentum, like even if you talk about something like the calm meditation app and lots of wellness apps, they've got streaks, you know, they know that we thrive with momentum. And I remember when I was using calm religiously last year for a period of time, when I got to like 40 days or 41 days, I was like, oh man, I don't want to break my streak. Like I don't want to start at zero again. I'm going to have to keep going. my streak. I don't want to start at zero again. I'm going to have to keep going. We know that that's how we're wired as humans. So I think momentum is very, very important. But I think also on that theme, Rich, I'd say that it's also the way we look at these good habits,

right? We don't look at them in the same way as bad habits. So a bad habit, an inverted commas bad, right? I'm sort of moving away from calling things good or bad. You know, all these behaviors serve a purpose in some way, right? Let's say you've got something, let's say for five minutes a day consecutively, I asked you to get a full fat soft drink of your choice, like, you know, let's say it's a cola brand. And for five consecutive minutes, I asked you to drink that. Right. You know, it wouldn't surprise you, would it? If after a few days, your teeth start to feel a little bit, a little bit sore, you know, you don't sleep as well, you're a bit moody. Or if I actually smoke a cigarette for five continuous minutes every day, it wouldn't

surprise you that after a few days, you'd be coughing a little bit, your mouth wouldn't feel great. So we know with bad habits, we see how quickly they can add up to causing problems. But when we flip it and we look at, you know, so-called good habits or the habits that we're trying to bring in, well, we look at it a completely different way. We think it's got to be really hard. It's got to be punishing. I've got to deprive myself. I've got to really push it and hit it hard in the gym or it doesn't count. And we completely bias the way we look at it. But, you know, toothbrushing is a great example. You know, we brush our teeth for two minutes in the morning, two minutes at night,

four minutes a day. We know that's going to look after our dental health by and large for life. And we don't do the hour and a half brush on the weekend. Exactly. You know, that's why I often say, I say, you don't not brush in the week and go, Hey, you know what? I'm going all in on Sunday. I'm having the one hour deep clean today. You know, we don't do that. We know a little bit regular makes the difference. And you know, what's really interesting is if we, you can look at other industries outside health and see how they've got this down. So business, Amazon, right? Amazon, you know, I think certainly now must be one of the world's biggest companies, right? Estimates say about five years ago, Rich, when they moved to one-click ordering, reports say their profits went up by

$300 million a year. I would have thought it would have been even higher than that. Maybe it was. Yeah, the more seamless you make it. Yeah, I understand the point. Exactly. They get it. They understand if you make something easy, if you don't have four or five steps to make a decision, where each step is a reason to back out of making that decision, you make it easy, people buy more. Netflix, YouTube, they all do the same thing. They roll one video into the next, so it's easy. So before you have a chance to think, oh, I need to stop, I need to go to sleep, you're into the next episode, right? I'm not criticizing those companies. I get it.

They've got an understanding of behavior science and they use it for their industry. And I'm saying when it's health, we don't apply the same rules. We think when it comes to our health, we've got to make it hard. But our environments are not always optimally conducive to making the healthy choice. If you're walking past soda machine after soda machine, and when you're driving your car, you're constantly passing fast food restaurants, there's a temptation in that inherent environment that is leading people towards the easy, unhealthy choice. And in terms of creating the healthy environment, I'm thinking about what Dan Buettner does with

his Blue Zones project, going to these cities and getting them to create bike lanes and getting rid of the vending machines and changing the environment so the environment is conducive to the healthy behaviors and the healthy choices. Because his whole thesis, which is not dissimilar from your own, is that unless the environment is conducive to that kind of productive, positive change, human beings, because of their psychological malfunctioning or whatever it is, the way that we're wired, we're going to repeat the unhealthy behavior. We have to make it so that it's easier and more accessible. Just like the example of the guy you just used, like the gym was out of the way on, it's not on the way to or from work. So his environment was not conducive to him

going there. So you have to craft a new solution, put it in the home. So it's easier. It's at hand's reach. Hey, I agree. You know, I love Dan's work and I agree, right? If our environments made the healthy choice, the easy choice, we wouldn't need this conversation, right? People would generally be, as they have done in the blue zones for many years, they would by default be making healthy choices because that's what, you know, the environment supports around them. So I support that work. And I think, yes, or, you know, governments, councils, schools, workplaces should all be seeking to change the environments to support healthy choices, which would actually make people much more productive as well. You know, in workplaces, for example, yes, they would actually be much more productive.

So I think there's a business case as well as a health case to do that but again going back to one of the themes early on we've got to also deal with the environment the way it currently is right now and the ideal of changing these environments i think we should be advocating for i think what dan's doing going into schools changing them creating these new blue zones. I am all for that. But I don't think it also means we don't need to empower individuals as well. Because frankly, much of the world is living in a challenging environment, particularly now. And actually, here's the thing. I would say to people, control the environment you can control. Okay. So you can't control the environment outside your front door. You can make, you can

take a few steps to try and limit or reduce the likelihood is that you're going to get tempted, but you can't control that. You can control your home environment. You can control what you do in your home. You can control whether you do some of these five minute health snacks a day. And I have seen that if you do those things, because of the change in identity that they cause, you then are much more likely to make better choices outside, even when faced with the temptation. And I think that comes down to momentum as well. It's kind of, you're doing these three, five minute health snacks a day, and you're feeling calmer. You've got more energy, you're sleeping better, you feel better about yourself, which I think is really important, that I think that starts to translate into the choices you make outside when the environment

is challenging. And so, as I say, you can do short term, you can do long term, or you can do both. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like how you phrase it as health snacks. Basically, the book is broken up into these three sections, mind, body, and heart, and within each section, you kind of break down a variety of different practices that all can be applied in five-minute intervals three times a day, but you call them snacks, right? So they're almost like treats, treats to yourself. Yeah. And, you know, it's a bit of a play on words, of course,

there. You know, only one of the health snacks is actually a real snack. Everything else is not food-related. But, you know, interesting, Rich, even though food isn't a big part of this, this book has helped so many people lose weight, right? The amount of messages I've got from people saying this program, and you've read it, you might be thinking, how is this helping people lose weight? But the reason is, and I think why it's so effective, and this is not for weight loss, this is for anything, basically. This is for any one of us to help us thrive in our lives. The whole conversation around weight is often about food choices. And of course, food choices are important, but what are we seeing in this pandemic? We're seeing a huge

amount of weight gain, right? Huge amounts of weight gain. Now, if you look into the research, right? Huge amounts of weight gain. Now, if you look into the research, it is very clear. You know, there was a US study which showed that 79%, so nearly 80% of people, change their eating behavior in response to stress. About 45% will eat more, about 35% will eat less. So what's just gone on for the last four or five months? Probably one of the most stressful times in your lifetime and in my lifetime. So many people are facing unprecedented levels of stress. So of course, a certain section of that, those 45% are going to be eating more of probably unhelpful foods to help them cope with the stress. So therefore it stands to reason if you help people cope with their emotional health, with their mental health, which is what my program helps people do, well, of course it's going to lead to a lot less stress eating. And I feel strongly that

in the weight loss conversation, the book after this that I'm writing at the moment is on weight loss, because I feel the whole thing that we're missing in the weight loss conversation, there's lots of what we eat, what we eat, what diet should we eat, what we should be eating. It's like, okay, okay, fine. There's some principles about what we should be eating that, you know, there can be debates about, but I think 85, 90% of the principles are pretty well established in terms of what people should be doing. well-established in terms of what people should be doing, but why are we still struggling with weight gain? Well, we're not addressing why we're eating. We're not addressing the fact that we used to use food to address a hole in our stomach, but now we're using food to address a hole in our hearts. You know, when we're stressed, we eat. When we're lonely, we eat.

When we're bored, we eat. When we have discomfort that we don't want to pay attention to, we eat. And again, I get it. I understand why people would do that. I will, if I'm feeling low sometimes or feeling a bit stressed, I may go to something sweet. That's not because I'm weak. That's because I'm a human being who uses food as a way of coping. So I found it so interesting. I knew this program would because I've seen it with patients, but it's interesting to see the public response that, oh, this is helping me lose weight and it's not addressing my diet. Yeah. I mean, there's food addiction and that's a certain category of people who have an extremely unhealthy relationship with what they're putting in their mouth. But most people, perhaps all people, use food to regulate their emotional state.

And I think most of us are completely unaware of the extent to which that's true, whether it's a chocolate bar or ice cream or what have you, there's the examples of feeling depressed and trying to self-medicate. But I think that we do it much more rampantly than we're aware. And a lot of these tools, these snacks that you relate in the book are really related to bringing you more into the present,

being more mindful, paying attention to not just your environment, but yourself, your body, your emotional state. And I feel like, I don't just feel like, I know that the more present that you can be in your life, the more self-aware that you are, then you become like these unconscious urges that you're doing compulsively without even being aware. You're suddenly aware of them. And the more awareness you bring to that, the more you realize that it's an unhealthy habit that's worthy of redress.

Yeah, and many people are too busy for that awareness. They're rushing around, they're getting up, they're on the emails, they're on the social, They're sort of rushing around, taking their kids somewhere. You know, there's never any solitude. There's never any silence. They're consuming the news and then they're worrying about what's going to happen in the world. And you mentioned environment, but it's really interesting is when you do these health snacks, once you start paying attention, once you start to understand how you're feeling and you just tap in, you just get a little window as to what it can feel like. That then translates your more, it's,

you know, it's that mindfulness actually permeates into your life so that when you're out and about later and you are tempted, you're like, ah, oh, I'm, of course, you know, I'm feeling stressed. I've not really had, I've not been for my morning walk today. That's why I'm craving that chocolate bar. And again, it's about, then you can make a choice with the awareness. One patient who, slightly unrelated, but just to show you when you get that awareness. I had this, sort of, I can't remember how old she was, probably sort of late forties. She was married. She had three children. She had these awful migraines and she'd been having them for years and she didn't really like taking migraine tablets that she'd been prescribed

before, bad side effects. It didn't really work very well. And I remember the first few consultations, I really felt there's a huge stress component here. You know, I think she was a lawyer, actually, Rich, and sort of- Shocking. Shocking, exactly. And she was rushing around. And I was trying to sort of suggest, hey, look, let's look at some ways to manage this. And she goes, oh, you're going to tell me about yoga, right? You've tried yoga. I'm not interested.

I don't have time for yoga. I was like, okay, okay. Let's see. Not just a lawyer, a very British lawyer. Exactly. And it was so interesting that actually what we agreed on ultimately um is that we tried a few things they wouldn't work she kept coming back saying i told you nothing's going to work you know this is just the way my life is and then it turned out that she really

liked adult coloring books um which are a huge rage here in the UK because it's default mindfulness, right? And she goes, we had a long conversation. She agreed. She said, okay, that, that sounds interesting. She goes, when are we going to have time? And again, I started to apply with her some of the rules of habit change, behavior change that I sort of summarize and outline in the book. And I said to her, I said, look, okay, tell me about your morning. She says, okay, look, I wake up about 6.30. There's mayhem. The children are running around. I need to get them ready for school. This was obviously pre-pandemic. And, you know, but I'll go down and make myself a cup of

tea. And, you know, of course we're in England. She would make herself a cup of tea. And I said, okay, that sounds perfect. What do you do then? She goes, well, I just sort of posture around. I sort of try and get the kids ready. I said, look, do you need motivation to make yourself a cup of tea? She's like, no, I'm going to do that. I said, okay, so this is one of those rules. Let's stick on this new behavior onto a behavior that you're already doing without thinking about it. So onto an existing habit, basically. So she said, okay. So I said, okay, what you've got to do, we want to leave the coloring pad and we want to leave the pens next to the kettle in the kitchen. And we can dissect

why these things are so important, but it sounds really basic, but it's so, so important. So in a nutshell, she would come down, she would make her cup of tea, and for five minutes while she was drinking her cup of tea, she would do adult coloring in. And she started to tap into what it felt like when the noise just shut down in her mind. She wasn't accessing that at all, Rich. And within about four or five days, her migraines had gone down by sort of 40, 50% or so. And a couple of months later, she was hardly getting them anymore. Now I'm not saying that happens with every migraine sufferer, but the point is it was stress that was driving a huge part of her migraines. she needed a way to access a state where she could switch off her stress

state and activate her sort of thrive and relaxation states. And for her, it was coloring books, right? For someone else, it might be something different, but for her, it was that. And by applying some simple rules of habit change, number one, the most important one, you got to make it easy. Number two, stick it onto a behavior that you are already doing. People ignore this stuff, right? They hear it and they go, yeah, but I don't need to follow those rules. You know, I can fit it in at other times. No, no. If people are listening to this now and they think back to behaviors they've tried to incorporate into their lives in the past and ask themselves, did they follow both of those rules? And I bet

for most people, if they hadn't managed to make it stick, one of those things wasn't at play. And so for her, it was transformative. And again, in terms of making it easy, you've got to leave the coloring book there. You've got to leave the crayons there. Because if you come down in the morning and put the kettle on and that's not there, it's like, you know what? I don't have time today anyway. Forget it. I'll do it tomorrow. And again, you talked about momentum. This is momentum the other way. Before you know it, it's three, four, five days before you've done it. And it's something you used to do rather than something you're still doing. And again, I'm just sharing that to show you just how versatile this approach is and how it literally works for everyone. And again,

what was important there, Rich, she chose what she wants to do. I didn't shove meditation and yoga down her face, right? That wasn't for her at that time. And that's what I've done in the book. I've given people 40 or 50 five minute health snack options. And I say, all you got to do is choose three. That's it. You just choose three and do them. And it's, I think it, you know, Rich, this was the hardest book for me to write. Like, and I don't know if you can tell that from reading it because the challenge I set myself, which when writing this was, Rangan, how do you reach more people? How do you get people who didn't pick up your first two books

to access this more rounded, holistic approach to health that is clearly working for so many people? And I thought you've got to make it simpler. And it was hard because I thought, I don't know what he made it simple. I thought after I finished my first book, his second book, I thought, yeah, you've super simplified it. And I thought, no. So the challenge was if in the first and second book, I'd work up an idea over 10 to 12 pages and this book, my challenge was, well, Rangan, can you put all of that in one page? Can you distill the absolute essence of what a person at home needs to know in order to do that behavior? And simplicity is the hardest thing. Of course, we know that. Trying to keep things simple. I found the other books easier to write. You get lost in your own thoughts,

go down on a bit of a, go on a little sidewalk with it. if i'm honest on a personal level rich it's a bit of it's a bit of addressing your own ego about trying to say look wrong and the book is about action the book is about helping people what do they need to know the book is not about you showing off how much you know it's not about you shoving study after study after study down people's throat. I'm not against that. I like writing books like that. I like reading books like that. But the purpose of this is, this is not a what you should do book. This is a how you should do it.

I'm still trying to get over the fact that there are adult coloring books. You should try it. That was a joke. I mean, it's not for me, right? I don't know if it's a female thing. The reason I'm saying that is because my wife loves doing it. One of her friends loves doing it. I never even heard of that. I never even heard of that. That's cool. I'll check it out.

But yeah, I mean, we, listen, we, the last time you were on the show, we talked about this. Like I told you, I was like, you know, I know you're a smart guy. I know you know the science and you spend a lot of time immersed in the studies and the research and the book very much reflects this intentionality around simplifying everything. And I wasn't sure that you could simplify these concepts any further than you already had in, like, the stress solution. But you managed to definitely do it in this book. I mean, it's very, you know, it's extremely practical. Like, you've stripped out any of, you know, kind of the scientific mumbo jumbo that you would typically find in a book like that. And it is a healthy exercise in ego reduction and in humility because it would be

very easy to hide behind a bunch of studies and, you know, establish your kind of social proof and bona fides by saying, oh, there's this study and I read that study. But how helpful is that to the end user, to the reader who's just like, tell me what to do? Yeah, I think in this conversation, we've stumbled on the essence of one of the big problems I see out there, the kind of inertia to do things. The time in which we're living is wonderful. We get so much information, right? We can listen to podcasts. We can read blogs. We can read books. We can listen to audio books. You know, we don't have to sit with our own thoughts anymore. We can constantly be consuming. And I know this is

something you have spoken about before, but consumption is not always leading to action. And, you know, you've always said mood follows action, right? This book is actually in many ways trying to prove your point that actually take the action and everything else follows. You know, I became a doctor rich to help people, right? I know that's the most cliched thing to say. A doctor, you know, wants to help people, but it's the truth. And I couldn't have written a book like this five years ago, not because I didn't know it, but because I don't, I don't think I felt comfortable enough in who I was. You know, I probably felt a need to, oh, I need to, I need to prove my point. I need to show all these studies. I've done that. Like I, I don't feel I need to do that. You know, 20 years in

with the experience of seeing tens of thousands of patients, I know what works. I've seen it time and time again. I've seen human beings with busy lives make change and not make change. And I've seen a certain level of consistency with what those things are. And so the goal has been write a book that helps people take action. And I've been blown away by the impact, Rich, because this book now, not only is it being the most successful of all my books, but it's getting into all different walks of life. So, you know, like I've done lots of wellbeing talks online over lockdown to big companies like Facebook in Europe and all kinds of things who are using this program with their employees. But I've got schools, so many schools

have approached me since the book came out in January. They're implementing this in schools, which is so gratifying for me to see as a parent of two young children. And what are the obstacles? What are most obstacles for most wellbeing programs? Or for most schools, what would they say the two biggest obstacles are to make change? Number one, time. We don't have time. We don't have time in the curriculum. Number two, money. Well, I've taken them all off the table, Rich, because everything takes five minutes and pretty much everything in the book is free, right? And again, that's something I'm super passionate about. We want to talk about wellness being accessible to everybody, not just

the affluent. Well, actually, I challenge anyone to say that this is a classist book. I've used these same principles when I was in an inner city practice in Oldham, when people were on benefits, with huge immigrant population with loads of pressures, and they work. I've used those five minute workouts with them. I've used those five minute breathing exercises with them. I've used those five minute yoga flows with them. They work. Those people will do them, even though they don't have much money. But I've got busy CEOs running know, CEOs running companies who, who are also using it. It is, it is universal because there are so many options there. But when, if you really keep in your head as an author, really in that book, Rich, in Field Brush and Fire, every time I was writing,

I was like, does that need to go in? Is, are you indulging yourself a little bit here? And I was being harsh only as a discipline to go, I want this book to feel different. I want it to be, oh, wow, I can do this. And I didn't realize when I wrote it, actually, Rich, as a doctor, you would think this is a health book, but it's only in the last few weeks as I've been reflecting, because I had three weeks off social media during August, actually, where I had a lot of insights and a lot of, I sort of went inward a bit and really started to think about all kinds of things. And I thought, this is actually an identity change book. Because the actions you take determine your identity. Often we have a certain identity based upon the way our life is, but until we take action, you know, that patient I mentioned at the start of this conversation,

right? He initially comes in one month later, having been unable to go to the gym. He's a failure in his own mind. He's like, his whole identity is one of someone, I can't follow health plans. Nothing ever works for me. You know, I've tried this book. I've tried that plan. Nothing works. Hold on. I flip it, make it easy for him, make it achievable and actionable. Next time he comes in, he's like a few foot taller. He's bouncing. He's got a smile on his face. Now he's not only done what I've asked him to do, he's superseded it. Now he's taken on the identity

of someone who's successful, someone who can make behavior change. And I think that's the power when you take action. Willingness also plays an important part in this, of course. I mean, if he was not willing to do anything different, then nothing is going to change, right? Like, somebody has to have an impulse or a desire to improve their life and to get out of their comfort zone a little bit, even if it's only just slightly. And the book is really oriented around, you know, emphasizes the slight nature of all of these practices to

make them inherently doable and accessible and replicable no matter who you are. And I like that about it. I mean, I think, you know, I got flamed on social media recently because I put out a little video or there was a little discourse that I had in a recent podcast around self-help books. And I chose a admittedly inflammatory title saying, you know, you should stop reading self-help books. Not because I don't think self-help books don't have value, but really my point was the information is not the problem. There's a bazillion books out there, everything you need to know about how to change your life, how to improve your mindset, your body,

your health, your fitness, it's been written. And we can refine that and there's always new ideas and that's all grand, but ultimately it's useless unless you can implement those changes into your life to translate what the words on the page into action. And I think what you've done in this book is create that accessibility, which is fundamental. I mean, that's the key. If you can't make that translation, then it's of no value. Yeah, it's about taking action. It's about, you know, it's about doing something. It's,

it's about people listening to this conversation at the end of it, not hopefully enjoying it, hopefully feeling inspired in some way, hopefully getting some new bits of information or a reminder of certain bits of information. But then it's, what are you going to do? What are you going to do on the back of this? You're going to keep walking, keep, you know, keep driving. Are you going to go, just go back to your life? Are we going to go? That's interesting. Is there one thing that I can take from that and apply? Because that's really, that's really where the change comes. Um, it's, I mean, I'm so, I'm really passionate about this, Rich, because I don't think these things are as hard as we think they are. And actually,

there is a lot of information out there, but that's the what, right? What to do, not how to do it. And look, I love BJ's work. I love James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. It's fantastic, right? Really, really great stuff. Where I think mine is different, clearly mine is a very different book. It's very practical. It's very much like, let me distill it down into the essence, the six rules of behavior change, but actually show you what you can do. And I really think that toothbrushing analogy is really important for people, right? Because I've split health into mind, which is mental health, body, physical health, and heart, which is what I call connection and emotional health. And if you look at it another way,

every person listening to this is giving their dental health four minutes of their time a day. every person listening to this is giving their dental health four minutes of their time a day. But how much time are you giving your mental health each day, your physical health and your emotional health? Are they not also worth four minutes? You know, are they not worth the same level in care? Toothbrushing wasn't a habit. The ultra endurance athlete inside of me

is offended by that. Well, I will get to that. Because I'm like, it has to be a big grand gesture. You know, it's like, that's what gets me excited. Like I'm going to change every, and I don't always succeed, but I have more of the mindset that it needs to be difficult because that's what gets me emotionally engaged. I'm just wired that way. I know most people aren't, but it's a little bit different.

Rich, so I think you're interesting for a couple of reasons. So firstly, I would say that for some people, as I said at the start, I said some people don't need to start sport. Now those people I've observed in my practice, and I would imagine you to be an example of this, where something so big and so significant has happened, whether it's chest pain going upstairs at a certain age, whether it's a bereavement, losing a job, losing a house, some significant life event that suddenly causes you to reframe everything. Sure, they can turn around and change their lives overnight. And you can harness that. There's a potential energy in that that can be harnessed for some dramatic change. And I get that. And I accept that. So if you are currently in that situation,

fine. But for most people who are not at that extreme where they haven't yet got to the point where I've got to do this. Actually, I'm at rock bottom. Unless I change, things are going to be really bad. Um, I think starting small is really, really valuable and really important. Now, the other thing I would say now, I think I heard on a recent podcast of yours that you have started strength training. Is that right? You've started going to the gym. And that was an example. I wrote it down, I was going to share with you that I have started very slowly in tiny little chunks. And I'm now in week three, I've got a little bit of momentum and I'm able to show up for it in a pretty fluid way. And I'm starting to increase my bandwidth, like the amount that I'm doing, but I did have to start very small to begin that habit shift.

And I think it depends on, it depends on what aspects of your life you're talking about. So someone could look at you from the outside and go, oh man, you're a super fit guy. You're a plant powered wellness advocate. You run ultra marathons. You've been called one of the fittest people in the world.

Yeah, they could look from the outside and go, he's got everything licked. What does he need to worry about his health and wellness for? But then you could also go, well, is which covering all his bases? Is he looking after his emotional health? Is he looking after his mental health? Is he looking after the muscle, the muscles on his body, which are even more important as, as he, and as, as all of us age, because then you could go, well, hold on a minute, maybe Rich is, and again, I don't mean to make this personal. I'm just using it. You don't mind, do you? No, no, no. Go. Go, go, go. You could, you could say, okay, Rich is eating, you know, plant-based food, lots of whole foods.

He's running and going on his bike, but is he neglecting his muscles? Could this program for you four years ago, if you did like, I strength train every day, but not at the gym. I don't think I missed a day for three years. I do a five minute workout every day. Now, sometimes I do more, right? But often I'll just do those five minutes and it's part of my morning routine. I make coffee. I put my timer on. Before I plunge the cafeteria, it goes on for four or five minutes. And in that time, I will do body weight exercises or kettlebell swings or something because it's all there in my kitchen set up. I do it in my pajamas. I don't

need to get changed. There's no friction between me and doing that behavior. I come into my kitchen set up. I do it in my pajamas. I don't need to get changed. There's no friction between me and doing that behavior. I come into my kitchen. I don't need a reminder to make my coffee. I don't need my PA to call me and say, hey, you've got to make coffee in the morning. No, I'm going to do that. So that's part of my life. Now, some days if I've got time, yeah, I'll go and rock out a 40 minute workout. I might go for a run. I might go for a swim, but it's my toothbrushing for my strength. It's that five minutes every day, little often consistency. And I would argue potentially that had you, for example, implemented something like that four years ago, maybe there would be less of a need now to go, right, I've got to go and sort out strength and go to the gym. Now, I'm being

presumptuous because I know every aspect of your life. But the point I'm trying to make is we've all got our strengths, the things we like doing. And often all of us, myself included, neglect the weak spots. And one of the things that's been really included, neglect the weak spots. Yeah. And one of the things that's been really gratifying since the book came out, a lot of people have contacted me and said, you know what? In fact, the lady who helped me design the book, she said to me, I've always thought I was really fit and well. You know, I do Pilates regularly. I walk every day.

But that section on heart, I do nothing. Like I literally do nothing. And since, since working on the book, she started to phone a friend every evening and she can't get them. She sends them a really personal, uh, message on text or WhatsApp. And she has said to me, wrong, it's transformed the way I feel. My other behaviors that I engage in that I'm trying to stop are almost just falling by the wayside because I'm addressing my heart's health, my human connection side of health. And so she was fit in inverted commas because, you know, weight's good. She's done Pilates. She's doing all the things that we think are an associate with wellness, but there's a little, there's a, there's a blind spot there.

And I, I really, what the thing I really think is, is really, um, really effective. What I'm really proud of about this, this plan. It is, it's like BJ says, it's deceptively simple, but it's very, very effective because you're covering each day, mental health, physical health, and heart health. Now, if you want to do more, if you want to do a half hour meditation, go for your life. If you want to have a long workout or a long run or a long bike ride, as I will often do, great, but I still do that five minute strength workout. It's not a substitute. So it's like toothbrushing for everything else in my life. Yeah, I think that's solid guidance.

I think the key is even when you have the impulse to do more, at least initially in the early phases, to resist that temptation. Because if you establish a pattern of, let's say, oh, well, when I go to the gym, I do an hour, then you feel like the next day or a week later, if gym, I do an hour. Then you feel like the next day or a week later, if you don't do an hour that you're falling short, I think it's better to start with 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then create momentum around that. And then if you want to step

it up, you're in a more sustainable situation to perpetuate it. And to your point earlier, yes, had I done your five-minute thing over the last four years, I might not be experiencing some of the back pain that I'm experiencing right now. But because I have this kind of addictive alcoholic personality, this all or nothing disposition, I would look at strength training and say, well, if I can't do two hours, I'm not doing it. And I really want to go trail running right now. So that's going to have to wait as opposed to if I just did five or 10 minutes a day, I would be in a much better situation, but I swing like this grand pendulum. So now I'm doing all strength training and like barely, you know, it's like,

I can't get, I, you know, balance is, you know, the fickle lover that I just, I can't quite court, you know, and that's my constant refrain. And when you say, you know, nobody, the example of the woman in the Pilates, it's like whack-a-mole. Nobody's got all of these bases covered. understanding that that's part of what it means to be human rather than judging yourself against a standard of like, well, if I don't have my mind, body, and heart, if I can't check all of those boxes every single day that I'm falling short of some example that I've set for myself, then you're going to be operating at your peril. Yeah, I completely agree. And I would say it's not about making people feel bad that they're not reaching these things. It's like I hope most of the things I do, I hope it comes from compassion. It's very much not about talking down to people. It's about very

much saying, hey, look, have you thought about this? You may not have looked at it like this. A lot of people will say, Rich, oh, I've always thought I've got to do 30, 40 minutes or it doesn't count. You know, like, oh, if I'm going to do meditation, I've got to do 20, 25 minutes a day. What I've had with patients I've started them off on one minute a day. That's before I knew any behavioral change science. I said, okay, well, what can you agree to and commit to? I remember one lady who was suffering with menopausal symptoms and, um, you know, we, we really together felt meditation would really help her, but she just couldn't get it going. And I said, well, what can you commit to? Do you think I said, what about 10 minutes? She goes, no, five minutes. No.

And I said, okay, what about one minute? Yeah, I could do one minute. I said, all right, I'll make your deal. You start doing one minute. I'll give you an appointment for two weeks, but you're committing to one minute a day. I'll see you in two weeks. And she comes back in two weeks and she's like, okay, cool. Actually, I started off doing that. Sometimes it's two or three minutes now. And then literally over two, three months, she built up to a 15 minute practice a day. The reason starting small is so important is that if I had said, start off with 20 minutes, you know, you do it for two, three days, you're feeling really good. Yeah, I've got this meditation thing licked. I feel great. And then the next day it's like, ah, you know, I've got a few emails today. I'll do it later.

And I'm sort of talking from personal experience as well. And then later never comes. And before, you know, it's something you used to do. And I've, I've just found it to be very effective. Start small, keep the bar super low, meet that bar. And if occasionally you want to go more great, but the bar is all you have to meet. And this is very much like one of my favorite health snacks in the heart section is the tea ritual, which I do myself with my wife. And when we do it, our relationship is different. And when we don't do it, we're just a bit more distance. And it's super simple. It's just this five minute dedication we have to each other that each day at some point, and for us, we've locked in because

you can't just say at some point, if you say at some point, you're not following rule number two, which is stick onto an existing behavior. And, you know, every, every human, every behavior we do needs a trigger of some sorts. You know, that trigger can be your memory. It can be a reminder, but you know, BJ's research has shown that the very best trigger is when you stick it onto an existing behavior. So it becomes associated with that existing habit that you have. So when our kids are in bed, which is around 8 PM in the UK, we will come down to the kitchen, do the washing up. And before we go on our computers or screens, we make a pot of mint tea. And the requirement is for five minutes, we're going to sit there and catch up. Now, Rich,

you know, the truth is there's no timer, right? At the end of five minutes, I don't sort of go, hey, babe, I'm done. We've done our connection. Instagram's waiting for me. Yeah. Right. No. Some days it's, we're still chatting in half an hour, but some days, Rich, it'll be like me or her. We'll go, look, I've got a ton of work to do. Uh, let's do it, but I can't stay too long, but, and that's fine. And sometimes it's three, four minutes. It's just, that's how you create the habit. That's how you create the streak. That's how you build the momentum. If one day it's an hour, brilliant, but it doesn't mean the next day has to be an hour. And the other thing I'd say, Rich, because some of your traits that you mentioned there, I kind of relate to, maybe not in the same extreme, or I don't perceive

them into the same extreme, but I have, you know, certainly in my life been pretty back and forth with certain things. You know, a lot of my friends would say over and over again, you have got such an addictive personality. I'm either all in or I'm all out. And, you know, they often say authors write the books that they need to write for themselves. So maybe there's an element of that in this as well. But I have found in my own life, this has really helped me when I've kept it small, when I've kept it consistent. It's the bedrock upon which everything else sits. So it's not like I don't like going all in and making a big challenge, like, you know, doing a big swim run that I've never done before. I love that as much as the next person. But at the same time, I have learned for me

that having those three health snacks a day, just as that it's the bedrock, it's like my toothbrushing. It's like, these are the consistencies. These are part of my day. Like it's just as much, it's not a negotiable. It was a negotiable at first, but when it's built in and it's a new habit, that's when things start to change because I don't have to think about them. And look, if you go in my kitchen right now, there are four charts on the wall. So I've got my charts because every time I do them, I tick them because that's a key part to celebrate your success, some way of wiring in that behavior. So at the start of the year, I chose my three health snacks.

My wife chose her. My two kids chose theirs. Now they're all a bit different because, you know, it's about choosing the ones that resonate with you. But this has been very, very effective with my children, right? So they are meditating every day. Now only for two minutes, right? And I'm not saying that because I'm suddenly super dad, not at all. I have been, for me, it's obviously, if I'm writing a book on this stuff, why would I not want the nearest and dearest to me

to understand this stuff and experience it? So, but they've got it and they tick off each day. They've got these beads that my, that their grandparents gave to them, which these Indian sort of beads. Mala beads. Mala beads, yeah. Like you, I've seen you,

I don't know if you've got them on your wrist at the moment. I had them on yesterday. I don't know if I took them off. Exactly, but they've got that. They just do a few cycles of those each morning. I can't remember what the kids have got, but you know, the heart snack is the gratitude one that we do around the dinner table, but they take them off and they like taking it. So it's not the benefit that daddy has told them about that they'll get from it. They like getting

their ticks, right? And that's how they're great. Look again, like every parent, I'm trying to do the best I can. I don't know if this will lead to them doing this when they're adults. I hope it does. But I'm hoping, I'm really trying to instill in them. I remember actually at the end of bootcamp with BJ, he asked everyone in the group, okay, so what are you gonna go and do with this stuff?

Like, and everyone went round. There was only, I think, eight or 10 of us there. And I said, I'm gonna teach them the the fog behavior model as soon as I get home. I'm like, what better skill could that be than to teach my children how human behavior works? You know, what are the three components that every human behavior needs? You know, and I don't mean to keep going on about this, Rich, but the point is, is that a lot of people will hear this and they won't apply it, right? I say people forget the book, right? Just listen to what we've said, right? Think about what is a habit you want to bring into your life, right? Let's say it's meditation, right? Fine. What can you commit to? Can you commit to five minutes a

day? If you can't't go down to two minutes right make it super easy where it doesn't feel intimidating think about where in your day it's going to go you may need to experiment is it first thing when you get up is it with your morning coffee is it at the end of the day is it just after you do the washing up and you put the last dish on the dryer do you do it then before you go onto Netflix? When is that moment in your day? Is it journaling? Is it first thing in the morning?

Is it a bedside journal? In which case, leave the journal next to your bed with a pencil so that every time you either wake up or you go to bed, you are being visually triggered to do that behavior. It is not difficult if we apply the rules. The problem is, and this is the human condition, we don't think the rules apply to us. We think, ah, no, I'll rely on memory. I'll rely on motivation, even though we know motivation goes up and down. But Amazon don't rely on, you know, they've got it locked so they know what they need to do. They're not like humans.

It's like, no, we're a machine. Make it easy, people do it. Make it hard, they don't. The other thing is the book really doesn't talk about breaking bad habits. It's all around forming new good habits, right? It's almost like, forget about the bad habits. The more you focus on creating new good habits, the more you'll crowd out those

bad habits. So, you know, one thing I'm curious about with you is like, where's, you know, in this whack-a-mole kind of analogy of trying to, you know, cover all your bases, like where's the blind spot for you? Like, where's the weakness? Like what's the hurdle or the challenge that continues to trip you up that you're trying to work on right now? Yeah, honestly, my sugar consumption has gone through the roof over the last two or three months. It's the truth. And I think it's, you know, it's, it's funny. Like I, you talk about breaking bad habits. So one of my rules around that is just as you want to make an easy behavior, behavior you want easy to do, make a behavior you don't want hard to do. And that generally works, right? But something's happened in lockdown for me.

And I sort of, it comes down with some sort of, I think, emotional stuff that I'm processing and sort of trying to go through as well as the stress of the situation, the lack of, you know, travel and interacting with as many people as you would but you know, I love my wife and my kids and it's been great to see them so much, but I really think I've missed seeing other people out with that and bouncing off and actually coming back to their home interactions with a bit more freshness. Yeah, me too. You know, and I've realized that when I go out for walks or a jog, you know, it's almost like my little treats myself. I'll stop somewhere and get some, you know, what you guys would call candy, some sugars. And look, I know this stuff ain't helping me, yet I'm unable to resist in that moment, right? So,

and again, it might sound, oh, you know, poor you with your sugar. No, I'm not, I'm not complaining. I understand what's driving it. I understand that I've got, quite a few things have come up for me during lockdown in terms of, you know, I've been on this sort of personal growth journey for about seven years or so. I do, I do see a therapist with regularity, not because I had, you know, like a, in inverted commas, a problem per se, but more because I'd like to understand myself better. I like to understand what's driving my behaviors. Why do I react to certain things? Why do I not? And I found it the best journey I've ever taken is going on this self-discovery journey. And I think lockdown has supercharged that for me. So I've really been dealing with a

lot of stuff from my early childhood, the way I was brought up, the way I feel love was expressed to me as a child. And I think back to thinking how I dealt with it then. And we had this tin, this big box of sweets at home, and it's all starting to fall in. That I've sort of programmed my response to stress has been to soothe it with sugar. And for some reason, I had a really good few years where I wasn't really getting tempted. I wasn't really finding it, but it's really slipped back. And I'm really trying to uncover what that is. And I'm making good progress. I do a form of therapy called IFS, which is called internal family systems, which I found just fantastically helpful. And I've got to say it has changed in

the last couple of weeks. Now, I don't know if that will be long lasting or not, but honestly the problem at the moment for me is probably sugar. Interesting. I haven't heard of that mode of therapy before. What is that specifically? Yeah, so there's a therapist I've been seeing who I really respect.

So it's called, as I said, IFS, it's called Internal Family Systems. I'm going to say, Rich, this may surprise you, but this is the one area of my life that I've just gone on trust. So I have not researched the hell out of this thing. I've not gone in. I purposefully, God, you know what? I'm going to trust the process. The guy who I see says he thinks it's going to be really good for me. I've purposefully, God, you know what? I'm going to trust the process. The guy who I see says he thinks it's going to be really good for me. I've just gone, okay, cool. I trust you. If you think it's going to help me, I'm doing it. And it's been transformative. So effectively, so I don't know how it is sold. I don't know what the brochure says because I'm purposefully

not looking because my personality, if I start looking, I'll go on a deep dive. I'll spend every day looking at YouTube videos. I'll get the books on it. I will suddenly try and go, oh, is this the right therapy? Is it the wrong one? Defeats the whole purpose. You have to just, yeah, you have to give yourself over. It's the openness that is the portal to the healing. Exactly. So maybe it ain't even the IFS, maybe it's the attitude I'm bringing to it, which is one of acceptance. But essentially, in the sessions that I have done, you basically, you know, you sort of get into this sort of, I wouldn't say this state, you sort of, they talk you through it, you close your eyes, you try and tap in, almost step outside your body.

And so you're actually observing from the outside and then it's almost trusting what's going to come up and then whatever comes up, you start talking about. And so recently a situation came up um from early in childhood and you go back into that you you try and experience what was going on and then what's really interesting and i think where it changes is that you know 42 year old rongan goes back into that scene with, let's say, seven-year-old Rangan and introduces himself and, you know, explains who I am, that I've come here to help, really sits down like a friend, understands what's happened, can observe it, can relate to what's been, you know, how seven-year-old me is feeling, go through that, have a conversation. And there's a mechanism, there's a process of wrapping that up and making peace with that situation, which happens, right?

Which was a real situation. And I'm sure this is a similar theme to the sort of thing people do in other treatment modalities, but this is just the way I've done it. And then you come out of it, you might revisit it yourself for a few days, but you make peace with it. And then you sort of, um, you close it off a certain way that the therapist guides you through. And I have found, I've had some profound, like, I can't believe sometimes I'd be really worried, stressed out. Something was really, really bothering me. You do that. And the next day of the day, you'd wake up like a different person feeling calm, grounded, not getting triggered by things. And I really feel generally speaking until this little sugar thing recently,

which I actually think is a good thing, because if I'm honest, I think, I mean, I always think I'm getting to the core of the problems and then until you've healed that and then you find, oh, there's a few more layers of this I need to go through. Right. But the idea is deflating these triggers, like revisiting the traumatic event, walking through it, trying to understand the origin story behind some of these unhealthy behaviors and stripping them of their power by making peace with it in this kind of Dickensian ghost of Christmas past way. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I've loved it. I've loved it because it's improved not only how I feel about myself,

a lot of my addictive tendencies in the past, they've gone not because I'm trying to avoid them, but because I no longer feel the need to engage in them. So, you know, before they serve the role, but because some of that stuff is getting healed, well, I have no reason to actually engage in that behavior anymore. And I've, it's improved, not only how I feel about myself, it's made me a better father. I'm much more closer and connected with my wife, having sorted out some of this stuff myself. I feel I'm a better, I feel I'm a much better doctor. I feel I'm better able to, you can really see these patterns in patients now so clearly. And I really feel a lot of the time with

patients now, I go to the emotional stuff a lot earlier than I used to, because you can see the roots of what's really going on here. And it's, you know, even you mentioned when you got, what was the word you used? You got flamed on social media recently. I love that, that use of language. You got flamed. I've never, I've never, I've never used, I've never heard it like that, but I don't really, I don't generally get triggered on social anymore in the way that I used to. And I'm convinced that it's a lot to do with healing me and healing my insecurities because, you know, the reality is if I'm fully secure in what I'm doing, fully secure, which I'm not, I'm guessing there, I'm better than I was,

but I wouldn't say I'm completely zen with everything. And I don't need anyone's approval anymore or anything. I'd like to think that's happened and it's much better, but I know there's still work to do. But now I don't really get triggered. I'm able to, you know, as the Viktor Frankl quote goes about, you know, between stimulus and space is a gap. And in that space is awareness. And in that awareness, it's choice, you know, he words it much more beautifully than that. But I really feel I'm able now to take a beat, be outside the situation and go, ah, that, you know, it's already truth in what they've said. Well, not for me. Okay, cool. Fine. Um, oh, they may be having a bad day. They're taking it out

on me. They think they know me because they hear me on my podcast or they see me on TV, but they don't really know me, me like it's their perception of who I am. And I, it's, I just find myself freer. I don't find myself getting as upset, even, you know, relating back to the pandemic, I find myself able to be a much, a much better detached observer than I think had the pandemic hit two or three years ago, I think I would have got caught up in a much bigger roller coaster than now. And actually one thing I will say about this pandemic that is something I spoke to Gabor Mati about at the start. I sort of invited him back onto my show to talk to him about it. And I said to Gabor that, Gabor, I wonder if these emotions that many of us are feeling

are really new emotions. Because to me, it feels like we're being stress tested. We're stress testing ourselves in the sense that this pandemic is now a stress test. Are these emotions that are coming up for us really new? Or are we just being put under so much stress that any weakness is being exposed? Very much like a hamstring strain, right? That if you walk around, you may not feel it, but you may not feel it on a 5k run, but on a 10k run, maybe you start to feel it. It's not as if that just miraculously happened, that the imbalance was probably already there, but your body was never being stressed to the degree where it showed up.

And I find that quite interesting because sometimes I sort of feel, some of this stuff must be new, but other times I think, well, is this just deep insecurity that was already there that now is being properly exposed, which goes back to what you said

about this being an opportunity. Because if you look at it through that lens, you're like, well, isn't this an incredible opportunity then? Right. Shining a light on something that needs redress. And here you are, it's right in your face and now is your moment to heal it. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, I think with the startup is what I'm struggling with. It's sugar consumption, but I think that's going to get, I'm optimistic. The long answer to the question. Exactly. I don't know how we got here, but it was, I kind of lost myself in that, but it was,

it was. That's all right, man. That's your vibe. I've given you the long leash and you're running with it. I knew that that's the way this conversation would go. And that's why I love you, brother. I have one more thing I want to ask you before I let you go, which is how is the swim run stuff going? Have you been able to keep that up? Yeah. So that's, that's interesting. So, um, at the start of the year in January, when I was on the book tour in the UK, uh, I was on the Chris Evans breakfast show and I know Chris came out and spoke to you and Chris challenged me on air to do the London marathon, um, which I had no idea he was going to do. And I accepted. So it was about, I think we had about 12 or 14 weeks to go. Um, and I was

like, Oh my God, how am I going to train for this and do a book tour. Um, so I had started training a little bit. Now I was actually getting a hamstring strain and I was really struggling, uh, to run. And then obviously that got postponed till October and that was actually, it's not happening anymore. But what was really interesting is that in July, um, I got invited to Bantham, which is where I did my very first swim run. And there was a few of us doing this kind of, it was a secret adventure. I didn't know what it was going to be. It was going to be a swim run down the coast,

wild camping overnight, and a swim run back. Right. Anyway, I went. Was that the thing that Ross Edgley went to also? No, Ross actually, unfortunately, Ross was meant to be coming, but he couldn't make that one for the first reason, then unfortunately.

But it was, again, one of my most incredible 24 hours of the year. It was actually, I don't think I've ever traveled that distance. So it was pretty much a 20K swim run down the coast. We wild camps that I'd never done anything like that actually. So I was a bit scared. I didn't sleep at all. Um, and then we did a 20 K back and I found it easy. I like, I really enjoyed it. I had no idea that I could cover, you know,

37 to 40 K swimming and running. I like if you'd gone back a year and a half ago, or even a year ago, a year ago when I did the first swim run, that was 12 months ago when I couldn't even swim 100 meters without having a panic attack. Well, I don't think you'd ever put a wetsuit on until the day of the race, right?

So, yeah. The learning curve. The learning curve, but yeah, but this goes back to what I am quite an extreme person. You know, I will sometimes do stuff like this and be like, okay, yeah, fine. Let's go. Let's go all in and see what happens. And it was an incredible experience, Rich, because I got everything I got the first time, but it was effortless. I really, it was so different from when I first did it. I enjoyed it. Like there was no, we weren't timing, we weren't racing. It was so different from when I first did it. I enjoyed it. Like there was no,

we weren't timing, we weren't racing. It was like eight people, you know, after these COVID pandemic times, getting together and moving down the coast, the weather was outstanding. It was about as beautiful a British summer day as you could have. It was warm. The sunset, the sunrise was just incredible. And it was just awesome. It was warm, the sunset, the sunrise was just incredible. And it was just awesome. And then when I saw the distance the day after, because I wasn't wearing a GPS or anything, I was just like, I'm just going to trust these guys. I'm just going to go where I'm being taken. I thought, wow, you covered 40K. That's just, I didn't think I could do that. So that was really, really interesting for me. And I have actually been working remotely with this running coach over lockdown. And I've got to say, Rich,

this is a lady called Helen Hall, who I have had access in my life, particularly in the last few years to really good coaches in various different strands in life. This lady is something special. Like really, I've never come across someone with this sort of caliber. She, running coach is actually doing her a disservice. She's a, you know, running's the name on the label, but actually it's everything. It's spiritual. It's emotional. it's how, and working with her and freeing up certain limitations in my body has completely mirrored some of my personal growth. Wow, that sounds interesting.

I'd like to meet her. So she's not just writing a training plan for you, she's like this sensei. Yeah, she's just incredible. Like, and her story, she has, she, she, she doesn't, uh, she doesn't look for any fuss, any PR. She just gets it. She just loves running and she studies the human body and how it moves. And she's got this amazing machine, um, which actually she doesn't really need, but this machine is a three, you have 15 sensors on you and you literally just run. And she can see how every joint in your body moves.

Now, this sounds as though it's going to be super technical, but it's not actually. She just uses that to help you identify where the obstruction is. She's actually not trying to help you run. She's trying to help your body work more efficiently. Right. Because her belief is if your body is more fluid and free, it's going to translate to better running, better walking, better anything. Right. And it like, there was this one session, Rich, which was probably two or three months into lockdown that I was going through in my therapy,

some quite deep stuff from childhood. It was really interesting. A lot of things had moved in the way in my running gates, but I was still getting this hamstring pain. And she, she identified, she, you could see it on the screen. My T10 to 2E12 right in the middle of my back, the vertebrae weren't moving. Everything else was moving around it, but they were locked literally just under my solar plexus. And this is something that I was working on with my therapist in terms of, you know, me showing myself to the world, me not hiding anymore, really being who I am. It was incredible. So I was with Helen, Helen sort of helped me, um, move, uh, we did this two or three minutes of exercise where she helped me move my T10 and T11 vertebrae.

And then you go back on the machine and suddenly my whole running gate's different. My hamstring's not hurting. It would take me quite a while to unpack it all. But what I, it really took me back to the conversation I had like you with Sanjay Rawal about running as transformation, running as a spiritual practice. Yeah. I got, this was not about running to do a marathon. This is not about running to get a PB. This was, oh my God, running is showing me the limitations I've got in my body and mind. And as I become freer mentally, I feel as though I'm becoming freer as a runner. And she's got the biomechanical evidence to show me that. So when these things can seem quite theoretical as concepts, you think, really? Did that really happen? Then you see it.

You're like, wait a minute. That wasn't moving before. Now it is. Rich, next time we're in the UK, I will take you there. Yeah. Will she work with people remotely? Like, I want to do this. You got to connect me.

Yeah, I will connect you. I'm sure she will. Let me connect you. I'll talk to you offline about this. All right. Does she have a website though, if people are listening? Like, oh, you're just going to tell Rich, you're not going to tell everyone else. No, no. I think it's, look, you know what? I think she does. I think it's Helen Hall. If you look at Helen Hall running coach. All right. I'll find it and I'll put it in the show notes. Right. Yeah. But she's phenomenal. Are you still running in the vivos?

Like working on the barefoot? Cause that's another thing that I've been practicing. Like I've used, when I decided to pivot to this strength training, I decided, cause I've always been fascinated by the kind of things that Tony Riddle talks about, like rewilding and trying to learn a running style that is essentially more human by doing the barefoot running. But I'm always training

for something. I don't have time. But with this moment, I thought, here's my opportunity. So I've been wearing the Vivos and I've started really small. I'm doing the feel better in five methodology. I started with like a five minute jog, a 10 minute jog. And I'm up to about an hour now, but it's really forced me to pay attention to my gait. And I'm using some of the techniques and the tools that Tony talks about, but I'm kind of doing it myself.

And I definitely could use a little guidance and instruction, but I'm kind of doing it myself and I definitely could use a little guidance and instruction, but I'm enjoying it. And I've noticed it's changing my posture, it's changing how I land, it's changing my gait and how I carry myself, not just running, but throughout the day. Hey, Manon, it's really exciting to hear that. As you know, I'm a huge barefoot proponent in general. I think running is tricky for people because as you say, you know, you were always training, right? So if you spent a whole lifetime in cushioned shoes, I think it's one thing living in barefoot shoes and walking in them and running errands in them, but it's another thing altogether to run in them for many people.

You got to really start slow. Yeah, but for me, my whole journey into biomechanics, me getting rid of my crippling backache, which I had for 10 years, was through the lens of this chap called Gary Ward, who actually Helen has trained with. So it's all kind of quite unified the philosophy, which is how do you get the body to move optimally? And Gary was the

first person who said, your back problem is not a back problem. Your back problem is a right foot problem. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, your right foot is stuck in pronation and that's going to have an effect up the chain. And he gave me a few simple exercises to get my right foot moving. Instantaneously, my back is like 80% better. This was, I don't know, seven, eight, nine years ago. You know, it's a distant memory. I used to be someone, you ask my friends would say, oh, he can't, he won't be able to do that. He can't lift any furniture because he's got, you know, a bad back. I do not consider myself to have a bad back. I don't even think about my back. I'm a, I, that was a thing off the past. And that's actually not that

Gary advised me to get barefoot shoes. No, for me, it was the fact that once I got into feeding my right foot move and when I would then go and put on cushion shoes, I thought, well, I can't really feel my feet anymore. So I was like, I, I kind of, I want to feel my feet. That's what got me into barefoot shoes. And I have lived exclusively in barefoot shoes for maybe seven years now, like Vivo barefoot shoes. That's all I wear for work, for play, for working out. So for me getting into running, it was just a natural extension for me. I didn't even consider not doing it because that's just how I live. But I do know people, Rich, who live in barefoot shoes for living in, but they won't run in them. They'll run in cushioned shoes. And I get that as well. I totally get that. But Helen definitely works on Zoom. I wonder if she can, because most of what

we've done over lockdown has been over Zoom. But that was on the foundation of me having already been in her studio and being on a machine pre-lockdown. So I wonder, but I'll connect you. And she's such a lovely soul and he just, her dream is to get everyone in the world, I think, to run pain-free. She believes we are born to run. She feels that actually it's, we don't run efficiently, which is why so many people get injured. And her goal is to teach people to do that. Um, and so, so I plan to do the London marathon next year, assuming it goes ahead and I'm, I'm looking forward to it. And you know, which, and to do it in Vivo barefoot shoes, run the marathon. I will do. Yes. If I, I would do, uh, unless something was to happen to change my view on that. But my current plan is to do that. But again, what's really changed me rich. And I think in lockdown in particular, and it's this thing about for me running,

it's going to be, it's going to be about me tapping into who I am. People, I say, oh, what time are you going for? And honestly, I used to be a super competitive person, but I can honestly say hand on heart, I'm not bothered about the time. I'm doing it for the fun of doing it, for the joy of actually being challenged by someone saying yes, but actually I want to do it just so I've done a marathon. So I've experienced it. I actually, maybe it will change nearer the time. Maybe I'll be like, oh, I want to do this. I want to break five hours or I want to get four and a half or whatever. But I'm not really looking at times because my drive to run now, because I've seen the connection with where my body holds tension, which affects my running but I'm not really looking at times because my drive to run now,

because I've seen the connection with where my body holds tension, which affects my running and where my mind holds tension, because of course they're not separate. I want to heal all that and bring it closer together. So I believe if I keep doing the emotional work, I actually believe that I will be running freer and I believe I'll be able to run a marathon

pain-free and enjoy it. That's exciting, man. I'm excited for you. Yeah, definitely. Maybe I'll join you. Definitely for a swim run once the races start up again. Hey, man, let's do it. Let's do it for sure. I think you told me about one podcast meeting. Yeah, you told me about one that's coming up next year or something like that, that you wanted me to check out. I can't remember. Well, this is Vivo Barefoot, who I love as a company. They've helped me get into Swimrun. And in Bantham, which is a very remote part of the UK, it is absolutely beautiful.

That's where I sort of did my first Swimrun. That's where I did the one in July. They're going to be hosting a very, another really special, a lot of people who went to their swim runs have said that the best they've ever been to like the whole experience, the, the kind of the terrain, the way it's put on is just incredible. Um, and I just wanted to let you know what that day is early doors next year and say, hey, look, if you are traveling to Europe, if people are traveling back then, I just wanted to make sure that you had it on your radar because you would absolutely love it.

So if it happens, it happens. I'll put it on the calendar, assuming that we can get back to international travel, which I definitely am missing very much. So, all right, man, I'm gonna let you go. I appreciate you. Congrats on the new book. Feel Better in Five, fantastic.

I hope that we can see each other in person soon. Meanwhile, everybody who's listening can, Rung is really easy to find on the internet, but check out his podcast, Feel Better, Live More, still killing it on the charts everywhere. All your books and you're easy to find on instagram is probably the best place wrong and chatter g there as well yeah yeah anything else no man thank just rich you know it's a pleasure to come on you know i love our conversations i don't know where they'll go frankly sometimes it doesn't matter they'll go where they're meant to go right yeah uh and um

yeah i appreciate everything you do man so i just want to acknowledge everything you do uh you've been a huge inspiration to me you continue to be so so thanks very much for allowing me to come and speak to you on your amazing platform my My pleasure and likewise, my friend. So until we meet again. Take it easy. Peace. Do you feel better? Do you feel better in five?

Do you feel better in two hours after having listened to that? I do. I hope you guys do as well. If you're new to me or Rangan, you can dial up our previous episodes together. That's RRP 376 and 486. Check out the show notes on the episode page

at richroll.com to dig deeper into Rangan's world and his work. Pick up his book, Feel Better in Five. Hit up his podcast, Feel Better, Live More on all the platforms. And give him a ring on the socials. On Instagram. He is drchattergy and on Twitter, he is drchattergyuk. Tag him with a note, let him know how this one

landed for you. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com slash donate. Thank you to everybody who worked hard to put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music.

Blake Curtis for videoing today's show. And also Gareth, Rongan's video guy, for helping out with additional video files to help us compile the best version for YouTube. Jessica Miranda for graphics, Allie Rogers, and Davey Greenberg, who generally do portraits, but not today because this was done remotely.

DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by my boys, Tyler, Trapper, and Harry. Thank you for the love. I appreciate all of you guys. We're coming up with another roll-on. Me and Adam are gonna sit down in a couple of days and bang one out for you. That should be available midweek,

barring any kind of catastrophic 2020 emergency. Nothing is off the table right now, but that at least is the plan as of this moment. Until then, try to feel better in five. Put some of that stuff into motion. Try to create a little momentum around a couple new healthy habits and then hit me up and let me know how it's going.

Until then, peace. Namaste. I'll stay. Thank you.