The Mel Robbins PodcastChange Your Body & Your Life in 1 Month: 4 Small Habits That Actually Work
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,003 words- 0:00 – 3:49
Introduction
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
These days, people are struggling with fatigue. They don't have energy. They're struggling with motivation. They can't sleep. They're feeling chronically stressed. This is affecting their physical health, their weight, the way that they feel about themselves. We have to understand that these modern lives and the way in which we're leading them is resulting in us being sick. I don't care how bad you think your life is, I absolutely believe in you because I've seen people in the darkest places change their life time and time again, so I know it's possible for each and every individual. If you make changes in four key areas of your life, you can have a profound impact on so many different aspects of your health. And those four things are what I call the four pillars.
- MRMel Robbins
Yup.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Food, movement, sleep...
- MRMel Robbins
Stop. That is something that everybody needs to hear.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
If you don't change now, when will you?
- MRMel Robbins
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're listening to this episode. I mean, first of all, it's always an honor to be able to spend time with you and be together. And if you're a new listener, I just wanna take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I am so glad that you're here. And because you made the time to listen to this particular episode, here's what I know. I know you're the type of person who truly values your health and you value the health and happiness of the people that you care about. And if you're listening because somebody shared this with you, how awesome is that? I mean, that means that you have people around you who care about you, and so that's so cool. They want you to feel more energized, happy and healthy in your life. And that means you're in the right place, so good job hitting play on this episode, because today, you have an appointment with Europe's number one doctor, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Dr. Chatterjee is a British physician. He's a best-selling author, a medical expert for the BBC, and host of Europe's number one health and wellness podcast. And he's also the author of the brand new best-selling book, Make Change That Lasts. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can see that I have tabbed this book, because it is full of gems we are gonna be unpacking today. He is taking 20 years of clinical experience and distilling it into the four steps you need to take to feel better, to live better, and to take back control of your health. So please help me welcome the amazing Dr. Chatterjee to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited for this conversation. Dr. Chatterjee, I cannot thank you enough for traveling 3,000 miles to sit down and be here with me and the person that is with us right now.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's my pleasure, Mel. I'm a huge fan of what you do, the way you're impacting people all over the world, so I can't wait for this conversation.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, you know what I love about you as a doctor, as a best-selling author? You have this obsession with making things that feel overwhelming as simple as it can be, and I'm so excited for you to really share this gift that you have of taking the overwhelming topic of living a healthier and a happier life and truly simplifying it for me and for the person that is listening and that's gonna share this with somebody.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's not as hard as
- 3:49 – 14:54
Dr. Chatterjee’s Four Pillars of Health
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
we think it is, Mel. You know, when we think about improving our lives, our health, our happiness, our relationships, those things aren't quite as separate as we often think. I think those three things are all absolutely interlinked. And my entire career, yes, with my patients, but over the past 10 years, with my public platform, whether it's with my books or my podcast, I'm always trying to think about simplification.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
How can you translate this idea for a busy person who doesn't feel as though they've got time, who feels that health is too confusing, and who feels it's too complicated, how can I get through to that individual? That's what I've really enjoyed doing my entire career as a doctor, but I also enjoy doing it through media platforms like this one.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, I can't wait to learn from you today. And I would love to start by having you talk directly to the person that's listening and explain what could they experience if they really take to heart everything you're about to pour into us, the research, your experience as a physician, everything that you've learned in researching and writing six books? What could change about your life?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I think people are going to find that they have more energy...
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... more focus, more motivation, better physical health, better mental health, happiness, inner calm, better relationships. Because actually, the key principles, the key ingredients to all of these things, they're really not as complicated as people think. They-
- MRMel Robbins
Really?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, they... Uh, in my view...
- MRMel Robbins
'Cause already, the list, Dr. Chatterjee, I'm like, "Oh my God, that's a lot. I don't even know if I can remember all this." So like, it's really not that complicated?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Well- well, through this conversation, hopefully people will learn it's... Yes, I'm not saying change is easy.
- MRMel Robbins
Yup.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But it can be simple, right? If you understand the key ingredients to change and you start applying them into your daily life... And I'm a busy guy. Look, I'm a dad. I've got two children. I help care for my elderly mother who lives five minutes away from me. I have a busy job. I know what it's like to feel busy and feel as if you don't have time to do the things that you want to do.But there is always a way to make time. I've done it for years with my patients, and I hope to show your audience, Mel, on this program today that they can also do it.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, I'm excited because here's what I know, the person that is listening right now, whether they've taken you and me on a walk with them, or we're sitting in the car with them, or at their house, or at work, or the person that received this conversation from a friend, they actually found the time because they care about their health. And I'm sure as you're listening, you probably feel the same way I do, which is I'm so... Even though I sit down with, you know, world-renowned experts like you, I'm like, "Wait a minute, should I do keto? Am I supposed to fast? Like, am I exercising? Am I weight training? Am I sleeping? Am I meditating? Do I get my morning light in?" And it becomes so overwhelming that I think it's easy to start and then feel discouraged. And so maybe where we should start is, as a doctor, what are just the most common health struggles-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
...that you hear over and over from your patients and from your global audience?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I think these days people are struggling with fatigue. They don't have energy. They're struggling with motivation. They can't sleep. They're feeling chronically stressed. This is affecting their physical health, their weight, the way that they feel about themselves. It's also impacting their mental well-being, how they see themselves, how they see the world around them. But what a lot of people don't realize, Mel, is that the health landscape in the United States, in the UK, and frankly most countries around the world has dramatically changed over the past 20 or 30 years. Okay. We used to see what I call acute problems. Okay. So 30, 40 years ago, the medical system was really well set up for the problems that people came in with. So you'd come in and say, "Hey, doctor, uh, I've got a cough. Um, I've got a fever. I'm bringing up a lot of sputum." And the doctor would see you for 10 or 15 minutes, examine you, give you a diagnosis, give you a pill, and say, "Take this three times a day for seven days. And hey, presto, seven days later, your problem's gone away."
- MRMel Robbins
Right. I call that a Z-Pak. Right? You know, the-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, exactly.
- MRMel Robbins
Like, I'm like, "I need antibiotics, doc."
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And it worked beautifully well for those kinds of problems.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But today, Mel, 80 to 90% of what we as medical doctors see is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. Okay. Now let me be really clear. I am not putting blame on anyone. The person who's listening right now-
- MRMel Robbins
Yep.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
...I am not putting blame on you, okay. I understand that life is tough, that people feel stressed, they don't have the energy. I do understand all those things. At the same time, we have to understand that these modern lives and the way in which we're leading them is resulting in us being sick. Okay. And so I was very much trained in the model where you try and diagnose a patient when they come in and give them a treatment which is usually a pharmaceutical treatment.
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Now that can have value, but what a lot of people still don't realize is that if you make changes in four key areas of your life, you can have a profound impact on so many different aspects of your health. And those four things are what I call the four pillars.
- MRMel Robbins
Yep.
- 14:54 – 42:09
The First Pillar: Food
- MRMel Robbins
go through each one of the four pillars. What do you mean by food? How do we turn it into health? How do we turn it into medicine? How do we use it to help us be healthier, even as you're saying, like actually reverse some of the symptoms or health things that we're challenged with?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, so one of the things I've got to make really clear is that there's no one right diet for every single person.
- MRMel Robbins
I don't want to hear that. I want you to make this very simple, Dr. Chatterjee. (laughs) I hate...
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I will make it simple.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
At the same time, Mel, I think when we believe there is one true diet...
- MRMel Robbins
True.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... that all of us should be eating, I don't think it simplifies it for us. I think it complicates it, and the reason it complicates it, and one of the biggest problems in health and wellness today, is the confusion that exists.
- MRMel Robbins
I feel it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right?
- MRMel Robbins
I especially feel it around what exactly to eat. You know what I mean? Like as a, like as a woman versus a man, now that I'm in my 50s versus my 30s, I need certain amount of protein. What kind of protein? Like should I be fasting? Should I not be fasting? Should I have electrolytes in it?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay.
- MRMel Robbins
Like you see what I'm saying? Like ah...
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, so, so when I talk about simplification, if you overly simplify, you end up confusing people.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I want to simplify as, as far as I possibly can, but then I also want to give the listener a bit of responsibility.
- MRMel Robbins
Got it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
The, the most important principle when it comes to food is as much as you possibly can, have minimally-processed foods as close to its natural form as possible, okay?
- MRMel Robbins
And so what does that mean? Like if you were to explain that to an eight-year-old, what does that mean?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I'd say, "Listen, let's think about one-ingredient foods, okay? So foods that don't have a barcode because they naturally are one ingredient." So an avocado doesn't have an ingredient list.
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs) That's true.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's one ingredient, right?
- MRMel Robbins
That's true.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
A piece of fruit doesn't have an ingredient list, right? And so for a lot of my patients for years, Mel, I've been asking them to look at food labels, okay?
- MRMel Robbins
Uh-huh.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And people are shocked at what happens when they look at food labels. That's the starting point...
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... I think for everyone is, is as much as you can, because when you start eating more and more minimally-processed food, your hunger signals will naturally start to take care of themselves. So if you're having lots of highly-processed food and potato chips and the, you know, the modern food environment basically, people are hungry all the time. Right?
- MRMel Robbins
Why are we hungry all the time? If we're like eating mac and cheese and, you know, fish and chips or like chicken nuggets or we're just kind of doing dinner out of a box or we're ordering it to go, why does that make us hungry?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Because, because it plays havoc with our hormones. It plays havoc with our blood sugar. So a lot of the things we're eating these days will spike our blood sugar very quickly, which also means it's gonna come down very quickly. So let's say, for example, you start the day with a bowl of sugary cereal...
- 42:09 – 56:53
The Second Pillar: Movement
- MRMel Robbins
I cannot wait to jump into how you're gonna simplify movement as the second pillar for our health. One of the things that I've seen is that you have a five-minute strength training program that you do every day, and I hugged you when you came in, and I'll tell you, you're pretty jacked compared to when I saw you last time. So what is this five-minute strength training thing that you do, Dr. Chatterjee?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
This is one of the most important things I do each day, and not only for my health. I would say it's also one of the most important things I do for my happiness and my relationships. Remember, at the start, Mel, I said that health, happiness, and relationships are not as separate as people might think, okay? So what do I do? And I think it's a useful way of helping people understand the key principles of habit formation. So for over five years now, I've been doing several things each morning, but one thing that I rarely miss on is a five-minute strength workout. Okay, so what does this look like? Okay. I, I go to bed early and I wake up early, that's just what works for me, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Yep.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But I wake up around five o'clock. Again, I'm not saying anyone else has to.
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs)
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's what works for me.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
My wife doesn't wanna get out of bed till 7:00 or 7:30, right? So-
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... we have found what works for us, okay?
- MRMel Robbins
Great.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I come downstairs and I, I do happen to meditate. That's the first thing I tend to do, but that's not relevant for this part of our conversation. I go into my kitchen and one thing I do is I love to make coffee, okay? So I weigh out my coffee, I, and I pour the water in, into the French press, and I put a timer on for five minutes. In those five minutes, Mel, I don't go on email, I don't go on Instagram, I don't go on the news. What I do in those five minutes is I have a strength workout in my kitchen, in my pajamas.
- MRMel Robbins
What do you do?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Well, I do a variety of things. It started off being body weight. I'd do some press-ups, some calf raises, some squats. I just do a little circuit in my kitchen, and then I get the gorgeous reward of a hot cup of coffee just the way I like it.
- MRMel Robbins
Wait, so you literally do squats, you do pushups, you do calf raises, so you're going up on your tippy toes.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. There's a, there's a video on YouTube that I've, I've worked off my five-minute kitchen workouts. These days, I do a couple of other things. I have a kettlebell and a dumbbell in my kitchen, so sometimes I'll do some kettlebell swings, sometimes I'll do some bicep curls, whatever I feel like. But the point is, I do that five-minute strength workout every day. I even did it this morning in my hotel room here in Boston, Mel, okay? And I'll explain why it's so important. It's what I would call my keystone habit.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's a habit that, when I do it, it makes it infinitely more likely I'm gonna do other healthy choices in my day.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? Every single day, Mel, we're all asking ourselves two questions: Can I trust myself? Can I rely on myself? What my five-minute kitchen workout does for me every single morning is it shows me that no matter how busy my work is, no matter what my wife needs from me, what my children need from me, what my elderly mother needs from me, I still found five minutes for myself. It shows me that I can trust myself, I can rely on myself. Now, people might go, "You know, strength workout every day, do you not vary it up?" No, I don't vary it up, right? Especially when I started, no. Do we vary up tooth brushing?
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs) No.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right. I, I hope, Mel, every single person listening right now brushes their teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, you know what's interesting about brushing your teeth? And I'm glad you just brought it up, is I just saw somebody else talking about it, I can't remember who it is, and it's a fabulous example, that if you go and don't brush your teeth today, you'll have bad breath, you'll notice, but most people around you won't notice. But if you go day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year for five years and you never brush your teeth, like some of them are gonna fall out.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
You're gonna have like snaggle tooth mouth. Like, you're gonna be horrible. Like it's... And it's an illustration of something we know intellectually, that the compounding nature of doing something every day actually builds in the negative or the positive dramatically. And your five-minute workout in the kitchen that I think is just genius. First of all, you already taught us that the brain is an associative machine.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Meaning it associates certain places and times of day with certain things, and so you're using that to your advantage. You also have set yourself up for success because you now have a kettlebell right there in the kitchen. You have also set yourself up with a stacking of this so that you start the coffee maker, which is something you're gonna do regardless of how you feel. Doesn't matter how tired you are-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Exactly.
- MRMel Robbins
... whether or not you don't want to-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Exactly.
- 56:53 – 1:05:55
The Third Pillar: Sleep
- MRMel Robbins
I can't wait until you teach us how to make the third pillar, which is sleep-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay.
- MRMel Robbins
... something that's easy using these principles, because as a medical doctor, and literally being Europe's doctor, and the tens of thousands of patients that you've treated, it is really sad and troubling how many people are not getting enough sleep-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... how they're having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, not dropping into deep sleep. And so can you share with us how you say a good night's sleep starts in the morning and what we need to do to make this easy?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
When people think about sleep, the first thing they go to is what are they doing before they go to bed?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Now, whilst that is important, what we don't realize is that a good night's sleep starts first thing in the morning, how you start your morning off. Now, if you're able to get natural light first thing in the morning, it's fantastic for your overall well-being. It helps set your circadian rhythm. This is your biological clock. Every single cell in your body has a clock, okay? And one of the key drivers of that clock is exposure to light, okay? So if you expose yourself to bright natural light, ideally, but I appreciate also that, you know, depending on where you live in the world, certainly in the UK at the moment, you're not getting bright natural light in the morning. So yes, you know, put all the lights on at home, get them as bright as you possibly can, that actually helps you sleep better in the evening. There's some studies which show us that if you meditate or practice mindfulness first thing in the morning, that can also help you sleep better at night, okay? So there's many ways that I want people to think about sleep, but what you do first thing in the morning can absolutely impact, uh, your sleep in the evening. Now, why should people care about sleep?
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay? It's not just about energy. Yes, energy is, of course, something that we all want, right? We want the energy to do the things that we wanna do in life. But here's what happens when you're sleep-deprived. Your mood goes down. You're less empathetic. You're less compassionate. You find it harder to resist temptation. If you sleep five and a half hours each night compared to seven and a half hours each night, one study showed on average you're eating 22% more the following day in terms of calories. Okay? So think about that. Five days of extreme sleep deprivation will lead to a whole extra one day's worth of calories going through your mouth, okay? So I've helped now some patients lose weight in a sustainable way, not by focusing on their diet, by focusing on their sleep.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
This goes back, Mel, to what I said right at the start. Think about these four pillars and ask yourself, "Which one of these four pillars do I need the most work in?" Right? Too often we focus on our favorite pillar.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
If your diet is 85% good, moving it from 85% to 90% whilst you're only sleeping five hours a night ain't gonna move the needle. If you can bring up your sleep from five hours to even five and a half hours, again, it's not about perfection, it's not about either eight hours or nothing, if you can actually get 20 minutes more, 30 minutes more, there will be a physiological difference in your body, Mel, the following day. And so it's important for your physical health, your mental well-being. Life feels different when you've had a good night's sleep, okay? So in terms of what people can do-
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... I mentioned first thing in the morning, okay?
- MRMel Robbins
Yep.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Get light exposure.
- MRMel Robbins
And, and, uh, we have so many people around the world that write in when they hear about light exposure in the morning that say, "Well, I have to leave for work before..."... the sun's even up. So how do you do that if it's raining or you have a job where you're already starting work and the sun hasn't risen?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So it doesn't always have to be the sun, to be clear.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You still get a lot of natural light on an overcast day or-
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... on a cloudy day, okay? But yes, I appreciate, we all have different work schedules. So if you can't do that, you know, put the lights on in your house. If you want, you can go on Amazon, you can buy like these-
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... BrightLux Lights, they're not that expensive. You can have those on in your house, right? Do what you can. If you can't do it first thing in the morning, maybe at 10:00 AM when you have a little coffee break at work, can you take your coffee and go to the balcony or go out the front door and be outside and get some of that light into your eyes, okay? There's many ways. And let's be honest, Mel, some days you may not be able to.
- MRMel Robbins
Correct.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And that's okay.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? Fine. There are other ways to improve your sleep. You know, we can talk about five or 10 different tips, you're probably not gonna be able to do them all.
- 1:05:55 – 1:19:16
The Fourth Pillar: Relaxation
- MRMel Robbins
Why do you need the fourth pillar, relax, if we've already got the third pillar of sleep?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Because it's subtly different. Relax is speaking to the issue of stress.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay? So we know that 80 to 90% of what comes into- to a doctor these days is in some way related to stress.
- MRMel Robbins
So 80 to 90% of the health issues, the ailments, the symptoms that people are struggling with is related to stress?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. And a few years ago, the World Health Organization had on their homepage that stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, uh, we actually had Dr. Aditi Nerurkar-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... on the show and she said that sh- in her research that stress is the single consistent cause of illness as well. Like, if you look at the clustering-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
100%.
- MRMel Robbins
... of things that cause it, it's always present. And it's the one thing that-... is in your control, in terms of your ability to mitigate against it. So when you say relaxation, you're also talking about the importance of de-stressing and f- finding times to relax. Like, what do you mean by that?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Y- I do. A- And also, these four pillars, they all feed each other, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know, because a lack of sleep is a stressor on the body.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Eating lots of junk food that's causing inflammation in your body is a stressor on the body. Not moving at all is a stressor on the body. But what you, people will find is when you start looking at your life through this framework of these four pillars, you can start wherever you want. It will start to make a difference in the others. They all start to feed each other. Now when I'm talking about stress, and when I talk to my patients about stress, I help them understand what stress actually is.
- MRMel Robbins
Dr. Chatterjee, what is stress?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Stress is basically your body's response when it wants to keep you safe. Okay? When it thinks you're in danger, in essence. So I always explain this to my patients, Mel. I say, "Listen, what is the stress response? Imagine it's 100,000 years ago, and you're in your hunter-gatherer community in your tribe doing your thing. Okay? And then whilst you're doing your thing, you notice a wild predator approaching the camp. In an instant, your stress response kicks into gear. There are... Several things happen in your body when that happens." Okay, what happens? "Your blood sugar starts to go up, so it can deliver more glucose to your brain. Your blood pressure starts to go up, so more oxygen can go around your body and get to your brain. Okay? Your blood becomes more prone to clotting. Why? Well, if that lion or that predator was to cut you, instead of bleeding to death, your blood's gonna clot, which is gonna save your life. Okay? Your amygdala, right, your emotional brain, goes onto high alert. Why? Because you want it to be on high alert. You wanna be vigilant. You wanna hear every pinprick. These are all appropriate responses when you really are in physical danger. The problem today, Mel, is that so many of us are having our stress responses activated, not to wild predators-"
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs) By email.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
"... but to the state of our daily lives."
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
"Our email inboxes, our to-do lists, the three social media accounts we're trying to keep up-to-date with, the news headlines. In a very similar way, our stress response is being activated." So, those four things I mentioned, helpful in the short-term, problematic in the long-term. So blood glucose going up to help you run away, brilliant. If that's happening day in, day out, that will cause weight gain, fatigue, and type 2 diabetes.
- MRMel Robbins
So are you also saying, though, that if we're eating a ton of processed foods and a ton of sugar, that... Or, and we're not getting sleep, and we're not moving our bodies, that the lack of those things also creates that physiological-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... condition in our body?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
It's not just the ema-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's the stressors. St- stress is a massive, massive issue that we don't think about enough. And a lot of people don't realize this key, key point, Mel, that I h- have only realized in the last few years, which is this idea that we see the world through the state of our nervous system.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? So if you're chronically stressed, and I would bet, Mel, that a lot of your audience, even if they're on a walk right now and listening to me and you talk, a lot of them would probably identify as being chronically stressed.
- 1:19:16 – 1:23:09
Managing Stress as a Caregiver
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
when my dad w- became 57, he suddenly became sick with the autoimmune condition, lupus. His kidneys failed and he was chained to a dialysis machine for 15 years, three times a week at the local hospital, until Dad died in 2013. Now, I moved back to where I grew up, which is where I live now, which is, you know, you've been there when you came onto my podcast-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... Mel, a few years ago. Um, I live in the same town that I grew up in, and I moved back to help my mum and my brother look after my dad. When my dad died in 2013, it was like a juggernaut explosion in my life. Like it is for many people, it's the first time I had to really confront death. I had to confront death as a doctor with patients for many years, but it's different. That's my job. When it was with my dad, who I used to care for and see three times a day, I had this big hole in my life. And really, it was only after my dad died that I started to ask myself the big existential questions, Mel, about, well, whose life am I really leading? Is it my life?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Is it someone else's life? So I've been on a real journey since my dad died. I've made changes in how I live my life based on what my dad did. So I'll explain, one of the changes is, you know, I rarely saw my dad growing up 'cause he was working, he was providing, right? And I used to say, Mel, I used to say that I think my dad made a mistake. I used to say that I think my dad mistook success for happiness-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... which is, I think what many people do in the world these days. But I've actually evolved my view, Mel. I think it's unfair of me to make that judgment on my dad.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
If my dad was still alive today, the one question I would have for him, and I've thought about this a lot, I would say to Dad, "Dad, was it worth it?" Because he might say to me, Mel, he might say, you know, we might say, "Oh, he was chronically stressed. He was sleep deprived. That's why he got lupus. He shouldn't have worked so hard." And on, through one angle, I actually believe that, Mel. But the other way I look at life now is, my dad might say, "Hey, son. Yeah, it was worth it. You know, I came to the UK to give you and your brother a great start in life, and I did that. Look at you now. Look how many people's lives you're impacting around the world. Look how many books you've written. Look how many people listen to your podcast each week. Yeah, I'd do that again." And it's a really different way of looking at life, Mel.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Like I've, I've learned over the years that you can reframe anything in life. That stress is not just external, it's internal as well. It's how we look at these neutral events, right? I can look at my dad's death in a very negative way and go, "Oh, um, I can't believe my dad's not here. Poor me. You know, you know, my, I lost my dad a, a young age." And I used to do that, Mel, but, uh, it doesn't help me. I've experienced the grief, but now coming up to 11 years on, you know how I see my dad's death now? I see my dad's death as a gift. It's a gift that he gave me. The things I've learnt through my dad's death, all the things I share in these books, particularly this new one-
- MRMel Robbins
Yes, you write a lot about this.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... uh, I would not have known this stuff had I not gone through the grief of losing my dad, right? So now, and you can call it the spiritual if you want, and I'm okay with that. You know, I know as medical doctors, maybe we're not meant to talk like that. But I would say these days, I, I, I do feel really spiritual. I actually feel that through Dad's death, I have learned some of the most powerful lessons of my entire life. And so now I choose to look at it as a gift that my dad gave to me.
Episode duration: 1:43:45
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