The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Dr. Rangan Chatterjee On The Four Pillars Of Health, Breaking Habits, & Building A Better 2025

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

#791: Join us as we sit down with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee – one of the UK’s most renowned medical doctors, boasting over 20 years of experience, & author of 5 internationally best-selling books. Dive into insights from, Dr. Chatterjee’s latest book, Make Change That Lasts, where he reveals the 9 simple ways to break free from the habits that hold you back. In this episode, Dr. Chatterjee discusses the power of connection & community, the impact of setting morning intentions, the four pillars of health & their profound influence on your lifestyle, & daily mindset practices that can transform your life!   To connect with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697)   This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential   Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   This episode is sponsored by Nutrafol   For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code SKINNYHAIR.   This episode is sponsored by TravisMathew   Consider TravisMathew your holiday headquarters, and discover the perfect gift for everyone on your list. Visit travismathew.com and receive 20% off your order with code SKINNY.   This episode is sponsored by YNAB   TSC Him & Her Show listeners can claim an exclusive three-month free trial, with no credit card required at YNAB.com/skinny.   This episode is sponsored by Noom   Start your GLP-1 journey today at Noom.com.   This episode is sponsored by Cymbiotika   Go to Cymbiotika.com/TSC or use code TSC for 20% off your subscription order + free shipping today. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

Aha! The first chapter in this book is called trust yourself. Why did I write a whole chapter on trusting yourself? Because one thing I think that's happened today, going back to what I said before Lauren about this idea where we've been bombarded with more knowledge, but it's not translating to more health outcomes. So what people will do on Instagram, they'd say, hey, Dr. Chastity, I'm really confused now. Both of those experts sounded trustworthy. I don't know which expert to trust. I think this is a big problem. And I'll tell you what I think the problem is.

I don't think they're asking themselves the right question. I don't think we should ask ourselves, which expert should I trust? I think we need to ask ourselves, why do I no longer trust myself? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. Today, we have Dr. Rangan Chatterjee on the show. And this one is coming out with a bang, getting ready to start the new year on the strongest foot that you can. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is one of the most influential medical doctors in the UK and has over 20 years of experience in the medical profession. His mission is to help 100 million people around the globe live

better lives. He is the author of five internationally bestselling books, which have sold over 1 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 15 different languages. Today, we're talking all about the four pillars of health. We're talking all about how in just five minutes you can change your life and your morning routine, how to develop healthy routines that stick with you to ultimately propel you to more success in your life, why you're stuck in bad habits and how to transform your life in 2025, and things that have transformed Dr. Chatterjee's life that he's also implemented with his patients to help change theirs. This episode is for anyone who wants to feel better, start with more energy, get rid of bad habits, implement new good habits, have more confidence, really just feel good in

general, and start the year in the strongest way possible. With that, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, welcome to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. Well, to start, because I know I have to do this i have to thank gabby reese because she connected us and she's one of those people when i get a message from gabby reese i like popular i'm not i'm terrible on text but like that one i get right back to yeah gabby's amazing i've had the privilege of spending a bit of time with her over the last couple of weeks gabby and lairds and they are two fantastic people didaird put you through the cold plunge ritual

sauna pool situation? I did hang out. I did it. Not with Laird. Me and Laird had some great out of the pool conversations. And next time I'm in LA, I hope to do some stuff with him for sure. I don't know what they're feeding those people over there. They're like, those are like two modern day. They're like real superheroes. They're like two. It's insane. Anyways, welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you made the trip out here that we get to do this. For our audience that's unaware of you, and I'm sure many of them are aware of you, give us a brief introduction, background, and then we'll dive in. So I've been a medical doctor since 2001, so 23 years. I've seen tens of thousands of patients

over my career. And I think what makes my approach a little bit different is that I believe from what I've seen and from the research that 80 to 90% of what people are struggling with today is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles, right? I want to be clear. I'm not blaming anyone. I understand that life is tough and people are feeling stressed, they've got too many things to do, they find it hard to eat in the way that they want to, maybe to move as much as they want to. I get all that. But nonetheless, I've seen over the course of my career that actually when you pay attention to a few key things in our lifestyle, you can have a huge outsize impact on our health.

So I've seen that firsthand with my patients. And maybe 10 years ago, in fact, we've just passed the 10 year anniversary, I was given my own primetime BBC One show in the UK called Doctor in the House. And basically, that is still one the things that I'm proudest of in my entire career. It's still there on YouTube, a few of the episodes and basically people and families who were sick and were under doctors and specialists and couldn't get them better. I went and lived alongside them for four to six weeks. Sometimes I stayed the night in their house, right? But essentially all of them, I either help them fully reverse their conditions or get significantly better. So I helped someone reverse their type two diabetes in 30 days. I helped a young lady with panic attacks,

reduce them by 70 to 80% in just six weeks. A lady with hormonal symptoms, menopausal symptoms, really severe, almost non-existent after six weeks. But I did it all without pharmaceuticals. It was all with nutrition, lifestyle, and mindset. So I'm really passionate about helping each and every single person who interacts with me, either on this podcast, on my podcast, in my books, on television, I want people to understand that health really isn't as difficult or as complicated as you think it is. And everything I try and do is to help people simplify it. What were the common denominators that you noticed that people were doing that could be easily tweaked? I think that the simple way to look at it is what I call the four pillars of health. Food, movement, sleep, and relaxation.

Those are the four pillars which I believe have the most impact on our short-term health and our long-term health. And importantly, we have got a fair degree of control over. Because I could say that air pollution and what's going on with pollution and its impact on us is an issue, and it is, but there's not a huge amount that people can do about that. So everything I do is about trying to make things practical. And I say, as a piece of practical advice for all of your listeners, if they're struggling to make changes in their life, or they're trying to make changes to improve their health, their

happiness, their relationships, I would say, ask yourself, which one of those four pillars do I need the most help in? Because what I've found over the years is that people have their favorite pillar. I'm really into food. So when I want to make a change, let's say at new year, I'll go to more changes in my food pillar. Meanwhile, I'm neglecting the fact that I'm only sleeping five hours a night or I'm chronically stressed. And so I think a really helpful framework for people is to ask themselves, which one of these four pillars do I need the most help in? I want to know what you think about yours.

Which one? Because I know which one it is. And I'll do mine too. Probably relax. Yeah. Relax. Yeah. And if five years ago, if you'd asked me, I would have said it's relax.

Because I thought my food was pretty good. My movement was pretty good. I focus on my sleep. But I probably took on too much. I was a little bit stressed. Always felt as if I couldn't switch off. But I think I've changed those things now. But I think for many people, maybe for for your audience that stress piece is huge did you

see what was there one of the pillars that if somebody kind of like for example you mentioned when you came in that you saw the episode of matthew walker like if somebody gets their sleep under control does that make a bunch of the others way easier to manage or is there like do you do them in order is it what no there's what i've learned and this comes from real life clinical experience right there's no one right approach for everyone so we all have our bias so if you change your health and life by changing your diet what happens is that you then become really vocal about the importance of diet and then you might share that with your followers on instagram and there's nothing wrong with that. But we've all got to understand that not everyone enters at the same place. So for example, if you improve your

sleep, let's assume you're not sleeping as well as you could sleep and you improve your sleep. Well, there's all kinds of knock-on effects that are going to happen. You're actually going to be more emotionally regulated. You'll have more energy. You're better able to resist temptation. So you start to eat better. You actually eat less. We know, for example, that if you're sleep deprived, let's say five hours compared to eight hours, you eat on average 22% more the following day. So loads of people are trying to reduce how much they eat but they're sleep deprived so sometimes and this is why i like that question which of these pillars do you need the most help in sometimes the best way to improve your diet and even lose weight

sometimes is not to focus on foods but to focus on sleep but you can apply that in other ways let's say stress, for example. And this is really the subject of my new book, Make Change at Last. It's what is the real reason why you can't make the changes? And so let me explain what I mean by that. Okay. A lot of people, and I imagine your audience are trying to reduce their sugar intake. Would you say that's quite common? I should say that to everybody, right? Yeah. And so I think too often we try and change the behavior without understanding the role that behavior plays in our life. Now, it took me a few years, maybe a decade as a doctor to really understand this. I thought just giving my patients knowledge was enough, but it's not.

At least external knowledge is not enough. what we need is more internal knowledge so let me let me explain that through the lens of sugar right if on january the first or whatever point in the year you decide i want to cut out sugar or alcohol right whichever one you're trying to do you can white knuckle it with willpower for two or three weeks. Everyone can. They really can. They can do two or three weeks. But look at it this way. If your alcohol consumption is there and your way of managing stress, there's only two ways you'll actually change it in the long term. Either you have to reduce the stress in your life which some people find difficult because if not you'll go straight back to the alcohol or you have to find an alternative

method of managing stress does that make sense you could replace the stress with weight lifting yeah so i have this exercise that i've been using with patients for years and i'm sharing it in the hope that it's useful for your audience okay it's It's called the three Fs, feel, feed and find. Okay. Right, so let's imagine that someone, I don't know if you guys have ever been in this position where you've made healthy choices all day and then you're on the sofa in the evening

with the television on and you feel like having some ice cream. Do you recognize that? Oh, what's that ice cream I love? Van Winkles. Van Winkles, oh yeah. Right, so this is Oh, what's that ice cream I love? Van Winkle's. Van Winkle's. Oh, yeah. Right. So this is a very, very common scenario that I've experienced before my patients have.

Right. So let's understand what's going on there. So the three Fs is just, I think, a beautifully simple framework to help people identify what's really driving their behavior. Okay. So next time you're on the sofa and you're craving the ice cream, I just want you to take a quick pause just for maybe a minute before you go to the freezer and get it and ask yourself the first F, what am I really feeling? Oh, am I physically hungry or am I emotionally hungry? Okay. Is it really hunger? Like you could be actually, you know what? I ate a full meal an hour ago. I'm actually not hungry. I've just had a row with my partner. I'm feeling a bit lonely. I'm feeling stressed because I didn't take a break at lunch. Whatever it might be, then go ahead and eat it, right? Because we don't want guilt or shame. That never helps change our behavior in the long term. But what that first step does is help you develop an awareness of why you're engaging. Okay, you go and eat it if you want to.

Then the next time you do the first F and the second F. What am I feeling? I'm feeling stress. Oh, the second F is feed. How does ice cream or sugar or alcohol feed the feeling? Oh, when I'm stressed, sugar helps me feel less stress, at least in the short term. Okay. At least now you're understanding why you keep going back to that behavior. Go ahead and eat it if you want to. So is it just about understanding why you're wiring to a certain

behavior at this? It is at first. I would say the most important step that we all need to take if we want to make change that lasts. That's the key. We can all make short-term change, but I know from my patients over the years that people don't want a change for two or three weeks. They want a change that lasts for good, or at least in the long term. So those first two Fs are really, really powerful because as soon as you develop an awareness of why you engage in a certain behavior, you change your relationship with that behavior. So let's just go to the third F for a minute. So now that you know the feeling, stress, now that you know how food feeds the feeling, sugar makes me feel less stressed, then you go

to the final F, which is find. Now can I find an alternative behavior to feed that feeling? So as you said, right, if you're feeling stressed, yeah, you could go to sugar or let's say you love yoga. You could actually go on YouTube and do a 10 minute yoga sequence. If you're feeling lonely, instead of going to sugar, you could phone a friend, you could phone your mother or whatever it might be. If the reason you're going to sugar is because you feel isolated, you've been on Zoom calls all day, you've not seen another human being and you want some time to yourself, you could run yourself a bath. So do one that is universal that I've seen a lot that I don't know that a lot of people maybe have asked you, phone addiction.

Yeah. Do what you just did with phone addiction. Same thing. Okay. So let's be clear here. If you have like an extreme addiction with alcohol or phones for that matter, you may need some more help. That's for sure. Okay.

Just to acknowledge that. But a lot of us have these kind of low-grade addictions where they're really affecting the quality of our life. We have a dependency on this behavior, and we keep consuming more information, thinking that more information is what we need. Oh, phone addiction is bad. Sugar is going to hurt my teeth, and it's going to do this. But the problem is, what I've've realized and really why I wrote this book is to try and solve this problem, which is why, despite increasing knowledge, we've got more health podcasts, more books, more online blogs than ever before, right?

Yet, despite all this information, people are getting sicker. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense. More knowledge is not equating to more change and this book is my attempt to solve that problem go these are the if if you don't go to the hidden drivers of your behaviors you'll never change them in the long term so it answers your question Lauren in terms of let's say someone's scrolling Instagram for three hours every evening and they want to stop. Maybe it's impacting their relationship with their boyfriend or their partner, or they're not able to focus on things that they really need to focus on because they can't stop looking, right? This is very, very common.

Again, let's say you've just had dinner and you're on the sofa and you pull out the phone to start scrolling. You could apply those three Fs. Okay, take a pause. What am I feeling? Yeah, maybe you want to consume information or maybe you're actually looking for connection. Maybe you're actually lonely. And the reason you're spending two hours is because you're actually alone. One of the things I found since COVID with my patients and since all the lockdowns is that people got used to doing things at home. So let's say yoga, for example. Let's say pre-COVID, people who like yoga would usually,

they might practice at home, but they'd often go once a week to a class and there's a community and they meet other people. Like-minded people, since COVID where it all went online, I think an inertia has set in into society. And I include myself in this, and we've not broken out of that yet. So people are still doing everything in front of their computers online. And so many people are lonely, men and women. We know this is a big issue and feeling lonely has devastating health outcomes in and of themselves, but feeling lonely also drives us to other behaviors.

So it's pretty common that people are feeling a little bit isolated and lonely, and that is the cause of spending two to three hours online because they're looking for some kind of connection. But the 3F exercise completely works with that setting as well. You know, it's funny because you're in this office and we have a flexible schedule because of COVID. But one of the reasons that I'm a proponent of getting people in is actually not for work productivity and all that. It's actually for what you're describing, to get people in an environment where they're interacting and having friends and like all this stuff that we kind of came up with that. I think a lot of, unfortunately, like younger people have lost because they come

up in an environment where we just went through this period of time. But I think it's hard to like, I guess, antiquate the benefit of just being in a group setting and interacting with people on a regular basis, not only just from a social skill perspective, but just from a pure happiness and fulfillment perspective. It's huge. Look, I saw a patient a few years ago. This is actually pre-COVID, right? I saw this young man. He was, from recollection, about 34 years old, okay?

And from the outside, it looked as if he was crushing life. So he's earning good money, drives a nice car, runs his own business. He's working when he wants. He's working at evenings, working at weekends. But he came in to see me in my consultation room. I said, Doc, I kind of lost my mojo. Sometimes I'm in the morning. I just lie there. I've got no motivation. I don't want to get up. Sometimes I just look out the window. I feel low. Something's missing, right? And there's more to this story than just that, but that in essence is what he came in with. So I did a series of tests on him. They all came back normal.

I spent a bit of time with him trying to get to understand what was going on in his life and talk to him. And I said, sure, you have symptoms that are consistent with a diagnosis of depression, but I as a doctor, I've never liked to label people. I've always been driven by what is really going on here? Why is this seemingly successful guy struggling so much? And it became really clear when I spoke to him that he didn't spend any time with anyone else. I said, do you have any friends? He goes, I've got friends, but I never got time to see them. He was quite lucky. He was working in the town where he grew up. So a lot of his community was there, which a lot of us don't have. We moved away for work or whatever. So he had that,

but he never saw them. So I said to him, I said, okay, for the next six weeks, I want you to meet up with your friends once a week. And when you're with them, put your phones away. So you're fully present for the interaction. Now I appreciate that's not the normal prescription you might get from your doctor, right? But I was like, I think there's something going on here. I think he has a deficiency of connection and community in his life. I think this could be playing a role. But to pause you for one second, don't you think that as you're saying that, that makes total sense? Don't you think that maybe more doctors should diagnose

that kind of thing? 100%. And that's why in, you know, this is my sixth book. There's a chapter on community in this book. There was one in my last book on happiness. There was one in my book on behavior change. Community is central, right? We feel that we don't need it, that we can do everything on our smartphones and online and on our laptops, so we could be remote workers. I love that stuff as well, but everything needs balance, right? And so literally with him, he came back six weeks later, like a different person. He came in, I remember him knocking on the door. He had a big smile on his face. I said, how are you doing? He says, I'm doing great. Things just feel better. I've got my mojo back. And I said, what have you

done? He said, well, listen, every Sunday morning, my friends would meet up in the local cafe and we'd just get a coffee and catch up for an hour. And then after three weeks, they decided, hey, why don't we on a Wednesday evening after work, play football together or soccer, right? That is all he did. I'm cultured. I know what you were talking about. I'm just trying to be respectful to your audience, right? But the point I'm trying to make is he did not have an antidepressant deficiency. He had a friendship deficiency. And once that friendship deficiency was corrected, everything in his life came back online. And I see this everywhere, you know, men and women alike. And I'm sure some of your audience may resonate with

that either themselves, or maybe they might see it in their partner. Don't you think too that there's so many things that are murky with this topic? Meaning so many people are prescribed to like Xanax, let's take. And then because they're prescribed to Xanax, the Xanax ends up making them feel depressed. And then they get prescribed to antidepressants to fix the depression, which is actually from the Xanax. Do you see stuff like that all the time? Yeah. Or take Adderall. Doctor, I'm so anxious. I'm on Adderall seven days a week. I'm so anxious, I can't sleep.

I can't sleep at all. I'm only sleeping five hours a night and it's because of the Adderall, which makes them anxious. Yeah. I mean, you're speaking to my heart here. This is literally why i do what i do i have seen this in medicine since i qualified i've been in medical doctors for 23 years

and this is what i fight against because what people don't understand is when we go to medical school and it's the same in the uk as it is here in the united states i was going to ask you if there was differentiators it's the same in the UK as it is here in the United States. I was going to ask you if there was differentiators. I've got loads of good friends who are medical doctors in the US and it's the same thing. We don't get taught about the creation of health. What we get taught about is how to identify symptoms, put a label on them and diagnose them.

And once we made the diagnosis, we can breathe a sigh of relief and start the treatment, which is usually medication. Now, listen, sometimes that has value, but we have literally gone to an extreme now where we are medicating everything. And this is one of the reasons why I couldn't keep practicing in the way in which I was practicing because a lot of these medications have side effects, right? And so the side effects, then we have to medicate them. We have to medicate, as you say, the side effects. And we don't think about, well, what would happen if we got to the root cause? And the root cause, you've got to be careful when you say lifestyle because people often will take it as that you're blaming them. Oh, I'm doing it to myself.

No, no, no. We're not doing it. No one's doing it to themselves. But we simply do not see these conditions that are overwhelming the US healthcare system. We do not see them in traditional societies. I don't mean to brag, but my hair has never been this long and this thick in my life. I don't think it's ever been this shiny either. And I attribute that to a medley of things. I've been working on my hair for a while now, and this is what has worked. A lot of scalp manipulation. So I'm doing

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and I would say, I can't sleep. I'm sleeping four hours a night and I'm super anxious, which goes against the two pillars that you talked about, which is sleep and relaxation. So a lot of these pills, it seems like are taking the two pillars that you talked about, which is sleep and relaxation. So a lot of these pills, it seems like are taking the four pillars that you talked about. They take away, they end up taking away the pillars. It's like side effects. We get more side effects. It's like, it's like, it's like stacking the side effects on top of the side

effects. That's probably frustrating. I'd like to talk a little bit about the differences in the U.S. and the U.K. And I'll, I'll preface by just telling, you know, just sharing something like Lauren and I, fortunately at this stage in our life, you know, we're able to travel often and we go to Europe pretty regularly, not regularly, but like at least once a year have been. And we go over there, we let it loose. So, you know, like we're eating the pizza and the pasta and we're having drinks and wine and we're eating gelato and all these things. And we actually come back and are sometimes losing weight or feeling better. We come here and it's a real struggle. Like we're militant about what we eat and we're disciplined. And like, do you, do you notice a difference when you travel here compared to European countries? Yeah, a%. So when I get off the plane in America, there's two things. There's many things I notice, but there's two key things. Okay. So depending on which airport you

land in, you notice a stark difference in the size of people. And I say that with an open heart. I'm not judging or blaming, but you really do notice it the work I shouldn't say the worst the most stark contrast was when I landed once in Philadelphia airports that's so weird that you say that I showed that to Michael the other day really yeah yeah I I literally couldn't believe it when I landed. And I thought, wow, the level of obesity that I'm seeing, you know, I got on a plane in the UK, I got off a plane in Philadelphia, and I felt like I was stepping into a different world. I have such compassion for people. I don't believe people are doing it themselves. And I think this relates to the second point. The second big thing i notice the food environment in the in the us

is so different from in europe like you know i can taste it in the food it doesn't taste as natural a the portion sizes are humongous right so i've learned that often i you know if i'm here with my family or my wife ever we just need one to share one right so it's the volume but it tastes to me at least because i'm used to you know mostly having whole foods because that's how i've trained myself and i've changed over the last few years you can taste it you can taste the chemicals and then you add on you add on the plastic that it's on and it's hot and then you can taste the plastic well that's what the reason i shared that story is not to brag that I get to go to Europe once a time. It's that I go there and I have some gluttonous, like not, you know, I'm not overeating, but

I'm eating things that I would never eat here in the United States the way that the United States prepares. That's a really interesting point there, isn't there? Where many of us feel health is really difficult. We have to overly restrict and is health meant to be this hard? Well, unfortunately, I would say in this American food environment, unfortunately, it is difficult. Many people, depending on how you're wide and your genetics, some people feel better when they actually do restrict, when let's say they don't consume gluten. Look, gluten gets really controversial. People say, should people stop it? Should they not? It depends for who and in what context.

The first chapter in this book is called Trust Yourself. Why did I write a whole chapter on trusting yourself? Because one thing I think that's happened today is that, going back to what I said before, Lauren, about this idea where we're being bombarded with more knowledge, but it's not translating to more health outcomes. One of the reasons for that is because we've outsourced our inner expertise to experts, right? To outside experts. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I've had my own podcast, Feel Better, Live More, for seven years now, okay? And what I would find is if I spoke to one expert, well credentialed, Harvard Medical School, and they will come on and they would say, listen, I have found that for patients with severe mental health problems, a ketogenic diet can be transformative. And they'll

present evidence to support what they're saying. And they'll show you studies and they'll give you clinical case studies of their patients. Sounds really two months later you'll have a different expert right from a different medical school very well credentialed and they might say a whole food plant-based diet is really good for mental health and and again give you research and give you case studies so what people will do on instagram they'd say hey, hey, Dr. Chastity, I'm really confused now. Both of those experts sounded trustworthy. I don't know which expert to trust.

I think this is a big problem. And I'll tell you what I think the problem is. I don't think they're asking themselves the right question. I don't think we should ask ourselves, which expert should I trust? I think we need to ask ourselves, why do I no longer trust myself

i completely agree with you there's there's a lack of intuition happening and i think i think to be honest to even ask the podcast host i think you're right you should be asking yourself of of how you actually feel intuitively how you feel. We're too inundated with too much content all the time. Even good content is confusing. It's oversaturation. I'll give you a stupid example. I'm an individual that I can wake up, not eat any breakfast,

have two cups of coffee and a shot of espresso, go to the gym, crush it, and then eat later and feel great. But I would not prescribe that to everybody. Like if she did that, you would be bouncing off the walls. I can do what you do, you would be bouncing off the walls. I can do what you do,

but my wife couldn't. Exactly. And so I think people hear these- My theory is that you guys wake up with more testosterone than us. Yeah. I mean, there's many factors that play into that, including our past experiences and the state of our gut microbiome,

which is going to depend on the inputs we've had in our life. But it's this black and white thinking that I think is causing us problems with our health. But frankly, across society, everything becomes black or white. Is fasting good or bad, doctor? Well, hold on a minute. It depends for who and in what context. If you are severely overweight and let's say you have type 2 diabetes, fasting, if done in the correct way, might be a very helpful tool for you. If you're a teenage girl and you're anorexic and you're struggling putting on weight,

fasting may not be the right tool for you. But we want to know, is it good or bad? It depends. And in that example about differing diets, which is confusing people, I say, just like you, Lauren, I say, listen, if you like that expert, for four weeks, try their diet. And whilst you're trying it, pay attention. Energy, vitality, sleep. What's your focus like? What's your gut like? Are you less bloated? Are you less constipated? Whatever it might be. And then try the other person's diet for four weeks. And again, ask yourself the same things and you will know at the end of that trial ah you know what i like them both and here's the truth they can both be right for different people we need to figure out what works for us don't you

think though that sometimes when someone's like i don't know i'm confused so i don't have to take accountability there's a there's a little bit of like, there's too many opinions. Should I be vegan? Should I eat meat so I don't have to take accountability? I think you're right. It's actually taking the matter into your own hands and experimenting on yourself and being your own human guinea pig. And like you said in your book, trusting your own gut, your own instinct. I think it's the only way we navigate the world of more and more information, more and more noise around us, good noise, bad noise, helpful noise, unhelpful noise. The only way you get through that is by starting to trust yourself. And so I believe after 23 years in medicine, whilst I acknowledge every single person is different i believe in

this modern age the most important thing that each and any one of us can do each day is have a daily practice of solitude i literally was just gonna say don't you think the problem is that people don't want to sit in quiet 100 100 i thinkitude, for some people, it's a scary word. Think of it as time for yourself, right? If you're constantly consuming information from the outside, even good information like on your show or on my show, you're not giving yourself a chance to listen. hear what you think. I personally love solitude. It's my favorite thing ever. And if I don't get it, I'm not, I'm, I am exponentially a more unhappy person if I don't have solitude because I can't hear myself think it's too much noise. Yeah. On that note, I heard, I think, I believe I heard you say on a podcast that humans for every nine bits of negative information they hear, they only take in one bit of positive information. Funny, I was thinking about this as I thought about asking you this question. As an entrepreneur, you deal with so much bad information that you almost have

to be delusional away and only look for the good. You almost have to ignore a lot of the bad because it's so hard to do anything. So you almost train away. But for somebody who's taking in all bad and all they can see is the bad that's coming to life and everything's doom and gloom. And I think a lot of people that watch the news or they scroll Twitter, how do you train people to look at that one piece of good information and focus on that instead of the other stuff? Yeah. I mean, the first thing you have to acknowledge is that humans, so that includes us three and everyone listening, have a negativity bias. It's okay. It's hardwired into us. That is what has allowed us to survive. So we have to be aware of that, first of all, that we had to know 50,000 years ago if that noise in the bush,

if it was the wind or a wild predator wanting to attack us and we were rewarded by living if we overreacted that sounds like i would have done well in the world i call him i call him he's looking for the saber-toothed tiger yeah but it's true it's true right because if you have this positive advice oh i think it's the, everything's going to be fine, and you were wrong, you're dead. I'd be dead. Yeah, well, exactly. But if you go the other way, and that's why we take in nine bits of negative information for every one bit, because we're trained, that's what's going to keep us alive. Unfortunately today, not unfortunately, fortunately, many of us are living in a much safer world today. Not everyone, but many of us. And so that negativity bias is now working against us and it's leading to anxiety, depression, low mood, procrastination, lack of motivation, right? So you have to do something each day to work against that that is why we keep hearing about gratitude it's almost a cliche now we hear about it so much but it works because gratitude a daily practice of gratitude trains you to look for the positive that is already there so i i do i have my own morning routine let's hear it okay

she's gonna make you this is the podcast for it. So the first thing I want to say on routines is that every single person has a morning routine, whether they think they do or not. Totally agree with you. Love that. No one's ever said that. It's not for me, this morning routine stuff, this 5 a.m. club. I'm not doing it. I'm like, oh, wait a minute. You've got a routine.

The question is, have you been intentional about it? Are you scrolling Instagram for two hours? Are you beating your meat when you wake up? What are you doing? You're doing something. Yeah, you're doing something. And there's a consequence. Yeah. So what I say and what I've really figured out over the last years is that so many of our thoughts, our behaviors, our actions, our feelings are downstream from the content that we're consuming, right? So if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do, and I'm not judging you or blaming you, if you go on your phone and go straight onto the news and you see the negativity around the world,

you go onto your work email and see the 10 emails you didn't get to, which you have to get onto straight away, and you get into an argument on social media, whatever it might be, does it surprise you that half an hour later, your outlook on the world might be a little bit negative? You might be a bit reactive with your boyfriend or your children or whatever. When you look at it like that, you're like, what kind of, if I put in negativity half an hour later, of course, it's more likely I'm going to be negative. So if you change how you start each morning, right? And put in positivity, not fake positivity, right? But training yourself to look at the positives, you are going to change the trajectory of your day. I've seen that with thousands of patients. I've seen it with myself. So

going back to your question, what do I do? So I have a framework for a morning routine that I've taught my patients for years that I apply that I call the three M's, right? The first M is mindfulness. The second M is movement. And the third M is mindset. Now you can apply this framework in five minutes or one hour. It depends how much time you have. I started a few years ago doing five or 10 minutes. Yes, I now probably do 30 or 40 minutes each day, but I didn't start there. It took me time because I realized very quickly that I'm a better human being in every single way when I do my 3Ms. I'm a better husband, a better father, a better doctor. I'm better at every, a better father, a better doctor. I'm better at every aspect of my life. So the first M is mindfulness. It can be any practice of mindfulness. For me, it's meditation. It could be breath work. It could be having a cup of coffee

and tasting it and not looking at TikTok at the same time. Anything just to force you to be present. Not to force you, to encourage you to be present. Looking at the same time, right? Anything just to force you to be present, not to force you, to encourage you to be present. Looking at the newspaper being like, oh, did you hear what is going on in Provence? Exactly. That's what he does to me. I'm like, I'm like, are you?

Hold on. But I would say, again, going back to what works, I, again, maybe I'm worried. I don't scroll and see a bunch of negative. Like I just don't see the world. I don't see the world as a negative place to begin with. So that's maybe your mindfulness. Yeah. So that's great. So listen, why I always provide frameworks is because I have seen firsthand through my clinical practice that different things work for different people.

Yeah. Right. So you may be completely fine with that. And I would ask. I'll give you like an example. Like when you're, when people tell me like, you can't get on the thing to see the email because then you feel like you're obligated. So I'm like, maybe I'm fucked up, but I don't feel that obligation to those people. No, that's great.

And I would, I would imagine, are you quite calm? In the morning, I'm actually very calm. Yeah. So maybe you don't need that approach, right? So maybe you're fine with your mornings. I think that, but again, I think that I have had to train my mind over a very long time to look at the positive. And when I say I don't see the world as a negative place, I am not acknowledging that there's terrible things that happen in the world. I just have learned to look at the bright side.

I love that. I love that so much, right? Because I feel I can do that now. If you practice these things and you start training yourself to see the positive every day that exists there, before you know it, you no longer have to try consciously. It starts to become your default pattern. But what you guys have just illustrated is really interesting because my wife and I, for example, have got quite a different approach in the morning, right? I love to get up early and do my little morning routine while she and the kids are asleep. And then by the time she wakes up and comes down and says, I'm ready to chat. And I want to talk to her and tell her stuff. And she's like, babe, you've been up for a while haven't you i'm like yeah yeah she goes look

please i've just woken up right please like i've had to learn that oh okay i've done what works for me i need to allow her to do what works for her right i saw your eyes roll i've gotten better i've gotten better is this similar i mean it it's spot on. I think every married couple out there is listening like, yeah. He's hanging like a gargoyle. Do you want a coffee? I'm like, yes, I want a coffee like I've wanted for the last 18 years every morning. Yeah. So the point is, right?

So let's go back to this framework just in the sense that I hope it's useful for people. Yes, please give us the morning routine. M is mindfulness. So this is what I do. I do 10 minutes of meditation, right? That's my mindfulness practice, but you choose the one that you like. Then I go into my kitchen and I'm in my pajamas.

This is really important, right? I like to make coffee. So I weigh out my coffee. I pour in the hot water and I put a timer on for five minutes. In those five minutes, I don't go on email or Instagram. I do a timer on for five minutes. In those five minutes, I don't go on email or Instagram. I do a five minute workout, a strength workout in my pajamas, right? And I'll explain the

science of behavior change for people if they want that later, but it's really important how I set that up because I've rarely missed a day of that five minute workout for five years. And it's got nothing to do with motivation. I use the same principles that we all use to brush our teeth every day. It's a habit stack. It's a habit stack. I made it easy so I can never say I don't have time. And I've stuck it on to an existing habit.

Which is the coffee. Which is the coffee. I'm going to have my coffee and therefore I do it. So basically that's my second M movement. And then I go to the third M, which is mindset. So I've got my hot black coffee made exactly the way that I like it. And then what I'll either do, I do both these days, but what I used to do is I have a few books lying around my kitchen, uplifting books, and I'll just read a few pages just to get me in a

positive mindset. But I also now have three questions I ask myself each day. Okay. Am I okay sharing them? And they're the same questions every day. Same questions every day. Because I think if you ask yourself the same questions every day, you force yourself to go deeper. If you change the questions each day, I find that you can distract yourself. You don't have to go deep. You can just keep at a superficial level. Now, I know people love these questions because I've been telling my Instagram audience for the last 18 months and my patients for many years, people find them really, really effective. The first question, they're so easy. What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life?

Simple practice of gratitude. Even if you think your life sucks and you've got too much work to do and your boss is an idiot or whatever it might be, there is something in your life you can be grateful for. The heating that's on, the food that you can afford, a friend that reached out to you, whatever it might be. And if you practice every day writing that down, you will slowly start to change how you see the world. You said you've been working on this for a while, right? So it can change. Question one. Question two, what is the most important thing I have to do today? That is one of my favorite questions because in a world where our to-do lists are never done and we're always thinking about what we didn't get done we forget about

what is truly important and often we say often we only do the truly important things when everything else is done you eat the frog yeah you eat the frog you pick the frog yeah so what was the most important thing that you decided today would be i said this morning was today and and the context of this is i've been traveling i've been in la i'm still a bit jet lagged i you've been doing a lot i've been talking a lot so so i said today i must go for a walk outside at lunchtime and not just stay inside and and be at my computer and the walk perpetuates you to do really well on the podcast and be clear exactly but each day i may ask i may answer differently it's the same question right but each day is different and what it does people initially go well there's more than one

important thing to do each day that's not the point the point is you make a decision right now a lot of people don't know this that when the word priority came into the english language in the 1500s it was a singular word there's no there's no plural ah that's interesting yeah wow and now we've all got these multiple priorities that we can't get done right so this question really helps address that what is the most important thing now if someone's listening to this and they try it and they're initially struggling, I say, okay, maybe do one for work and one for home initially, but over time, make it one. So the week before I came out to America to do this book tour, on the Monday, I remember it was a work thing. I thought I've got to get in an article to my publisher,

Penguin in the UK. That was the most important thing I had to do that day. It doesn't mean that my relationship with my wife wasn't important or my children wasn't important. It was just that that's why I need to put my attention today. On the Tuesday, I put down, I'm going to be away for two weeks. My wife was away at the weekends. Actually, you know what? When the kids are in bed tonight, let me make sure I spend some quality time with her. It doesn't mean my work wasn't important or my responsibilities to my job and my family weren't important, but that was where I wanted to put my focus on that day. On the Wednesday, I remember this really well. I thought, wow, I'm going to go to America on Friday for two weeks. I won't see my kids. When they come home from school at 4pm today, the most important thing

I have to do today is make sure my laptop is shut, my phone is in another room so that I'm fully present with them to listen to them. I'm sharing those to help land the point for people. They were unique to me. I promise you, if you take nothing else from this podcast, but just that last question, and you ask yourself that question for the next seven days each morning, and then you act on it, I promise you, your life will start to feel different. What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? What is the most important thing I have to do today? And the third question is what quality would I like to showcase to the world today? And I'll tell you why I love that so much. That's a good one. So much of what we do is us simply repeating past behaviors. We think that the person who we were yesterday is a person who

we have to be today, but it's simply not true. It's just habit and repetition. You can change who you are anytime you want, but you won't change who you are if you have a reactive start to the day. You're just scrolling, you're looking at emails, and then you wonder why you're repeating the same things that you did the day before. This question, it's about visualization. It's about intention. So for me, it will often be patience or compassion. Like this morning I wrote down, because I take my journal with me and I wrote it down. I want to show the world the quality of patience today. Why is that important? It means that if I'm tempted to not be patient or compassionate for that matter, let's say someone barges in front of me when I'm ordering a coffee here, or someone cuts in front of me in the road, or I don't like an email, instead of reacting to them, I'm more likely to behave in

a kind and compassionate and patient way because I specified it in the morning. It's a simple practice, but if you do it consistently, you will find within a week, within two weeks, you start to show up in a different way. It will make you healthier. It will make you happier and it will start to change your relationship. You have to really quickly tell us the coffee that you drink. If you're a coffee snob, you said you're really into the coffee. What's the coffee that you're drinking in the UK? Okay. It's an organic coffee that's called Union Coffee. It's called Yogurt Chaffee.

It's just, the point is, I just like, I know how I like coffee. So that five-minute strength workout, people say, oh, you're more motivated than me. I'm not more motivated than you. I've just applied the two most important principles. Number one, make it easy. Number two, stick it onto an existing habit. That's why we all brush our teeth every day. If it was 10 minutes each day, we wouldn't do it.

Because it's two minutes, we do it. I have been talking to so many people off and on air about GLP-1s. And it's really interesting. A lot of people are really thinking of it as a tool to lose weight. So some of them are not affordable. We know this. There's been a lot of debate and conversation. But there is a platform called Noom who is making it affordable. So their Noom GLP-1s are starting at $149. Noom GLP-1 is available now and it ships to your door in seven days. So you don't have to go in anywhere. It just comes to your door. It's very discreet. Basically, Noom combines their proven weight loss program with GLP-1 so you can lose weight and keep it off. I think that's what I'm hearing from a lot of my friends or people off

air or on air that you want to make sure you have a plan to keep it off and you want to use the GLP-1 as a tool in your toolbox and not the main tool. And what I like about Noom is their leaders in behavior change weight loss. So yes, they offer a GLP-1, but they also give you a plan. So they have an app and Noom's app comes with a number of features like protein tracking so you can ensure that you're getting the right nutrients. And they also have fitness classes so you can keep the muscle while losing the fat. This is so important. I think if you're exploring a GLP-1, you want to make sure that you're doing the fitness classes, that you're lifting the weights, and that you're making sure that you're prioritizing protein. And again, I've heard this from so many intelligent scientists, doctors, experts on the podcast. And Noom doesn't just give

you access to meds. It helps you build healthy habits so you can lose weight and keep it off. So a lot of platforms will just give you the GLP-1 and they don't sort of give you a plan or habits. That's what I like about Noom. They set you up for success. If someone was ever asking me personally about GLP-1s, I obviously don't know a lot about it, but I do know that you need to have a strategic plan to go with the GLP-1. And with Noom, you won't be going at it alone. You'll get access to a clinician, a coach, and a supportive community all within the app on your phone. This is very avant-garde when it comes to weight loss. You basically can ask your care team anything and you can get support with medication and side effect management. So they

kind of cover everything, which is really awesome. Noom is more than just meds, and it's helped millions of people lose weight. I went on and like read the reviews and people are raving about it. People love it. Noom GLP-1 starts at $149 and is delivered to your door in seven days. Start your GLP-1 journey today at Noom.com. That's N-O-O-M dot com. Noom, a smart way to lose weight. Disclaimer, not all customers will medically qualify for prescription medicines. Compounded medications are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality. Quick break to talk about Symbiotica, one of our favorite supplement brands in the market. We love

them so much that we've had the founders of Symbiotica on this show, I think about four or five times now because there's so much to talk about with them. They have such a wide array of phenomenal products. The one I want to highlight today is their liposomal vitamin C. As we head into 2025 and start the new year, one of the most important things outside of having more collagen to improve your skin and look good is feeling good and making sure that you have the right immune support as we start the year. I just got off with my doctor the other day, shout out Dr. Conover, talking about how I want to feel in the new year. And I want to feel healthy. I don't want

to get sick. I want to start with a bang and start with a ton of enthusiasm and energy. So I'm going to be stacking Symbiotica's liposomal vitamin C. Every single time, fun fact that Lauren and I travel, I bring at least two to three liposomal vitamin Cs on the plane and I never get sick because of this. I just jack up my vitamin C levels. It doesn't only help with the immune system, like I said. It'll help you improve your skin, boost more collagen, and an assortment of different things. What's so cool about Symbiotica is the quality of their products. They're free from seed oils, preservatives, toxins, or artificial additives.

You're only getting the good stuff your body craves. And with their advanced liposomal absorption technology, nutrients are delivered safely and efficiently so your body gets exactly what it needs right where it needs it. So check them out. Go on there. See what's right for you. Again, you can't go wrong. High quality, holistic wellness right at your fingertips. Be present and feel your best for life's most memorable moments. Go to symbiotica.com slash TSC or use code TSC for 20% off your subscription order plus free shipping today. Again, go to symbiotica.com slash TSC or use code TSC for 20% off your subscription order plus free shipping today. Enjoy. As I'm hearing you talk, it's funny. I speak to entrepreneurs a lot. And when we talk about quote unquote priorities, I say write all the priorities that you need to do in order to

execute against your plan or build your business or start a brand, whatever it may be. And I write these long lists, like five, 10 things. I'm like, okay, now cross off two through nine and just do the first thing. Like just do the one thing because what I talk about is like it's momentum. Like if you do that one thing, it's going to lead to number two. But when you have this long laundry list of things, you just never get to them.

And then you stack them in the wrong order and you do the easier thing. And I was even thinking as you were talking about, you know, what attributes you want to show. And in your example, you said patience and that's maybe to combat a negative behavior. Exactly. But I was thinking, what if you're out and you're applying for a job, or you're trying to land a date? Maybe you want to say then, I want to show confidence today. Exactly. And then what's really important, I love that you put a list there. What I've

always been fascinated by as a doctor is a patient's in my consultation room, there were 10 things I could tell them possibly to help them in their lifestyle and improve their health. But if I tell them all 10 things, I'll end up doing none of them. Because it's too overwhelming. It's too overwhelming. And I teach doctors, I've created a course called Prescribing. Don't you think it's too much optionality too? I don't think we're good with options.

In one of my chapters, it's called Eliminate Choice. And I'm saying, you are using choice too much, right? I don't give myself a choice with that routine each morning because choices lead to procrastination. If every morning I had to decide, what am I going to do today? Yoga, Pilates, a strength workout, a walk. You know what? That is decision fatigue. You pull out of taking action because you've got too many choices. I don't know if you know this or not. When Amazon moved to one-click ordering about 10 years ago, rumors have it that their profits went up by $300 million a year. That doesn't surprise me.

Yeah, because it's behavior change. Back then, you had to go from one screen to the next, confirm audit, go to the third screen, put in your card details. Again, that's like four steps to take each step. Oh, I don't really want this. If I have Apple Pay on my phone and I can do an e-comm, compared to if I don't, whatever sites implement Apple Pay,

I'm probably done. Yeah, exactly. Listen to the FaceTime. Yeah, so don't give yourself too much choice. Think about those three questions. And I want to make one more point, which I think I really think people are not getting. And this is really the underlying thesis of this book, Make Change at Last, right? Too often, we focus on the behavior.

But what I've come to realize after two decades of seeing patients that it's not the behavior that's the issue. It's the energy behind the behavior. What I mean by that is the reason New Year's resolutions often don't work in my view is because underlying them is a feeling of lack rather than a feeling of love. It's scarcity. It's scarcity. If you don't feel like you're enough and you're consumed with fear, guilt, and shame, and you're trying to overcome that by pushing through on your sugar detox or your spinning class, that will last for a few weeks, maybe a few months, but you will always reset

back to where you were. If the energy behind it is one of love and someone like, I actually like who I am. I want to improve my life. I want to be kind to myself. You will naturally make better behaviors, better choices, right? So those three questions, right? I'm going to put out a challenge to your audience and say, listen, if you can answer those three questions every day for the next seven days and that's 14 days, I bet that other behaviors in your life starts to change without you directly thinking about them. Because if you're feeling stressed all the time and you're feeling negative about the world and you're reacting to all the emails that you're sent, guess what? You are going to consume more sugar and more caffeine and more alcohol, right? Those things are downstream from the way that you're feeling.

That's why I created that 3F exercise. Whereas if you set the intention each morning about how you want to live and you're a bit calmer, a bit kinder, you have a bit of gratitude, you will naturally start to eat less sugar, stay up late longer. You'll naturally start to consume less alcohol. I have seen this time and time again. That's why I'm so passionate about this idea. Yes, let's get more external knowledge about what kind of things we should be doing, but let's also get the internal knowledge and insight that only comes when we spend time with ourselves and focus intentionally on how we want to live each day. So I hate to do this to you, but I'm going to make you do it one more time.

Because like I said earlier, the audience sometimes takes notes. Just quickly summarize and repeat the three questions so that they can have them. What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? What is the most important thing I have to do today? And which quality do I want to showcase to the world? Okay, so Michael's this morning would be my wife. My wife. And the one quality you want to showcase is a good husband.

That would start your morning off. Maybe you're programming Michael for what he's going to put down tomorrow when he does these three questions i'm gonna know what i was going to tell you is i'm gonna do my commitment to you i'm gonna do this exercise now i like this i see i and when i said earlier that like i've worked i mean i get the benefit of meeting people like yourself that have so much knowledge and i always say like selfishly we do this show because we've been learning over the last decade from people that are further than us. And we extract that. We're obviously not perfect,

we're works in progress, but I've taken so many lessons. And what I've realized over the years is, to your point earlier, you have to do what individually works for you. Imagine there's 800 guests that have been on the show. Imagine if I'm trying to take all of that and say, I'm doing everything. You can't. Can't do it. Yeah. And the disclaimer for our listeners is like, my hope is that people listen to this and they're taking the things that work for them and they're testing different things. Well, I think it's genius because you do make it easy and approachable. But the point is, is I've learned a lot and I've gotten to a much

better place than I was a decade ago by having these conversations. It's small changes. It doesn't happen overnight. And I don't want anyone who's listening to this, who hopefully feels a bit inspired to think, oh, maybe I can take a slightly different approach to make changes that actually last, right? I don't want them to say, oh, because this doctor said do them that I have to do them exactly. No, no. Remember what I said about trusting yourself. Listen, right? Try those three questions. Maybe you want to tweak them. Maybe you've got a better one for you. Or maybe you really like one of them and you're going to do one of them each day. That's completely okay. Or maybe you'll take that 3M framework and go, yeah, I quite like those 3Ms. And if someone's listening and they

feel that they don't have time for those 3Ms, I just want to really quickly share. I saw this patient a few years ago. I think she was 40, maybe 38. She had two kids. She was a single parent and she was really struggling with her skin, really bad eczema. And she was really, really stressed. Now there's many things that can cause eczema, but I certainly felt that chronic stress was making her eczema worse. And I was chatting to her about morning routines and she was like, Dr. Chastity, you've got to be kidding me. I don't have time for these routines, right? You don't get my life. I'm busy. I've got kids to get ready. I said, okay, do you have 10 minutes in the morning? She goes, no. I said, do you have eight minutes? She said, no. I said,

do you have five minutes? She said, well, yeah, I can give you five minutes. I said, okay, let me help you craft a 3M five-minute morning routine, right? So the first M, well, yeah, I can give you five minutes. I said, okay, let me help you craft a 3M five-minute morning routine, right? So the first M, mindfulness, what did she do? One minute of a breath that I call the 3-4-5 breath. When you breathe in for three, you hold for four, and you breathe out for five. It's very, very calming, right? So one of those breaths takes 12 seconds, five of them take one minute. So she would do one minute of three, four, five breathing. Then she would do two minutes on the second M, which is movement. So she used to like yoga. So she picks her favorite three

yoga moves and she would just for two minutes, just go and do those three moves and then the final m which is mindset she decided again i help my patients personalize things for them it's not what i want it's what they want to do she wants to do affirmations which are short statements in the present tense to give your mind positive information there's some pretty good data on affirmations. I think for some people, they're game changing. And she would just say for two minutes, I'm calm, I'm happy, I'm stress-free. I'm calm, I'm happy, I'm stress-free. Now, I am not kidding you, right? All she did was those five minutes. A week later, her skin was about 20% better. Two weeks later, it was about 50% better. And then what happened is that she had built momentum and what I call the ripple effect kicked in. Because she had felt calm for five minutes and she had a sense of control over her

life in a way that she didn't before, she then started to make other positive changes. She'd go for a 15 minute walk at lunchtime. She'd start to buy a bit more healthier food at the supermarket. It all started with that five minute routine and her skin, I didn't reverse her eczema with that, but it got significantly better. So if anyone's thinking they don't have time, I share that example to go even five minutes, I promise you, will make a massive difference. I love that advice. Before you go, you have to tell us about regret and how it's a form of perfectionism. That's very interesting to me. This is an idea I have been thinking about for a few years and I wrote a large section in this book on

this and it was really, there's many things that fed into me viewing regret like this. So one of the things I've been a bit obsessed with over the past few years are the regrets of the dying. So I had this beautiful conversation on my podcast two years ago with a lady called Bronnie Ware and she wrote the book The Five Regrets of the Dying and she was a palliative care nurse for about seven years and she basically said look at the end of their life people say the same things I wish I'd worked less I wish I spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me. I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy. Things like that, right? On their deathbed when it's all over, they're like, yeah, I wish I'd done it differently.

And I would think about that. So I would use that to help me make changes in my present day life, which I have done loads. But where this idea about regret and perfectionism came in is I've realized for much of my life, I've been driven by external validation. I've been very harsh with myself, very self-critical, but I have changed all that. Whereas now I have a very kind and compassionate voice inside. So you can change it if you know how and if you practice. And of course, this book has loads of tips on how to do that. What I've come to realize, Lauren, is that to me, regret is a form of perfectionism. Underlying this idea that, oh, I regret that, right? And we look at our past

in a negative way, is this idea that I could have done better. But I don't think I could have done better. I think everyone is doing the best they can based upon what they know and their current life experience. That doesn't mean I cannot learn from the past. I can. There's many things in my past that if I come across those situations again, I would choose different choices. I would act differently. But for me, if I look back on my past with regrets, and regret is tinged with disappointment for me, I kind of think it makes me think that I had the possibility to be perfect. Why did I not make the perfect choice? No, I'm a human. I'm an imperfect human. I made mistakes. That's okay. If I go down the road of regret, I start to feel guilt and shame

and that doesn't help me. And I've seen with my patients, it doesn't help them. So I've learned to make peace with my past, right? I go, yes, you know, I did some things that if I was in that situation again, I would do differently, but I don't beat myself up for my past behaviors. Many people do. They regret, this is how I ended that relationship. I did that to my friend or whatever it might be. I personally don't believe that for most people, it's a helpful way of viewing themselves. As Maya Angelou said, I think, you know, when you know better, you do better, right? So that's how I approach it in my life. And it literally has been transformative. It allows you to forgive yourself and not look back with rose tinted

lenses that you could have acted differently. Does that make sense? It's very practical. What you're saying is you think you could have acted differently, but at that time you probably couldn't have. You probably didn't have the tools. Because that's who you were. So it's pointless to beat yourself up because it is what it is and you didn't have the tools at that time to act in a different way. But I'm not saying, because some people say, oh, no regrets, man. And they move forward and go, they're not going to take accountability for the past. They don't want to change. They're like, that's just who I am. But I'm not saying that. This is a very kind way of looking at yourself. It's got compassion at its heart. And perfectionism is a massive issue. I don't know if you guys know this or not. Rates of perfectionism have been going up in America and the UK since 1980. We all think it's due to social media. No, it was happening before 1980 we think we we have these

unattainable ideas of perfect it's toxic and perfectionists we know that the traits of perfectionism is associated with anxiety depression suicide right this is massive and social media is certainly making it worse because of what we call perfectionist presentation you know where this idea that we all present the best parts of our lives i'm not blaming people i don't post on my instagram about my dirty washing or the the place that need you know cleaning in the sink i don't why would i do that but unfortunately we are being presented these semi-perfect lives and our subconscious takes this idea that my life is inferior. There are simple things you can do

to start changing that. And I believe that looking at regret as a form of perfectionism, I think is going to be incredibly helpful for people. And I put a reel out on my Instagram about a month ago for the first time with this as an idea, it blew up. I think it really resonated with people and I'm really glad because it's massively helped me. I cannot tell everyone enough, go buy your book, Make Change That Lasts. I respect so much of what you said where can i find it well that may change at last is available in all the usual places you know amazon your local bookshop it's in a paperback ebook also an audiobook which i narrates if you like that i was going to say if i had your voice in my head in the morning i would be like 10 years ahead because it is a

it is a you is a you know do you know what the amount of people who stop me even in america old voice and say that to me do you know who would disagree with you yes his wife my wife she's like who are all these people say you've got a relaxing voice but a lot of people do say that so it's relaxing it is relaxing i mean look and it goes you guys have got a great show. If people are interested, my podcast is called Feel Better, Live More in all the usual places. And it's this kind of stuff each week. And where can everyone find you on Instagram? It's at Dr. Chatsji, which is D-R-C-H-A-T-T-E-R-J-E-E.

Make change that lasts. Nine simple ways to break free from the habits that hold you back. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys, for having me. I know we made this happen quick notice. Come back on because I've got to talk to you about so much. We could have gone on and on. Yeah.