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powerful question is not which expert should i trust it's why do i no longer trust myself uk -based physician over a million people listen to his podcast every week dr rug and chatter jade you say that when you went to medical school 50 of what you were learning was going to be wrong at some point we
just don't know which 50 what would you say is the number one advice for someone who says i want to break a bad habit it just can't happen the number one health and wellness podcast jay chetty jay chetty hey everyone welcome back to on purpose i'm so grateful that you come back every week to become
happier healthier and more healed today's guest is one of your favorites dr rungan chatty gee a uk -based physician an author wellness expert and podcast host known for empowering people to take control of their health through simple lifestyle changes to rethink it his sixth and latest book make change
that lasts offers a personalized approach to simple nine strategies for lasting change in daily life to unlock long -lasting health and happiness this i truly believe is runga's best book yet and that's saying a lot he's had some incredible books out the last few years go and grab your copy right now
you won't regret it and make these nine strategies a part of your daily life welcome to on purpose dr rungan chatty rangan it's great to have you back jay i love coming on your show you're such a wonderful host and uh i'm looking forward to our conversation no it's so great to have you here always rungan like
i i really enjoy our conversations i enjoy our interactions offline as much as i do online and i remember when you were talking about this book with me when you were first i think putting it together and there was this excitement that you had and this look in your eye where it was like this was the first
time it was like a medical doctor was writing somewhat of a philosophical spiritual book yeah but with a scientific lens and i think it's come together brilliantly so congrats on trying to mesh those things together yeah thanks it's the book that my heart wanted to write i would say more than anything
i've ever done before this has come out to me it had to come out of me and i'm in that funny position jay where i feel that i've already had the success through writing the book yes i hope it lands with people but even if it doesn't like i've won by writing it and it's been a really authentic process
and frankly it's about something i'm super passionate about which is helping people make change that last i think the title says it all we can all make change but often it's only for a few weeks or a few months how many people can make change that truly lasts how many people can truly transform their
lives for good it's not as many as we would like and this book is my attempt to help people solve that problem yeah it's brilliant i mean talking about change i want to go back to something you say in the book so you say that when you went to medical school 50 of what you were learning was going to
be wrong at some point you just didn't know which 50 percent and so i wanted to ask you what's something that you learned at medical school that today you believe to be untrue and you've discovered new truths about well we were actually taught that it was a professor at edinburgh medical school who said
to us i can remember being in the anatomy lecture theater and he said guys 50 of what you learn is going to turn out to be wrong we just don't know which 50 percent and i think that has huge relevance for all of us actually and i'll come to that shortly but in terms of one thing that i learned that i
now believe not to be true i'd almost flip it the other way in the sense that i was never taught how much our lifestyle can impact our health i was taught that actually people come in to see you and they have a set of problems we need to hear what those problems are collect them give them a label and then
give them a pharmacy's good treatment whereas the more i practice medicine and i've been a doctor for 23 years now i realize wow that only helps us for a small fraction of people and if you flip it it's like no our lifestyles the way we eat the way we move the way we sleep but also the way that we think
and the way we approach adversity those things all combine together to create our health and jay i think you'll resonate with this one of the things i've realized over the past couple of years of really reflecting on the way we're trained in western medicine and this is not me saying i'm anti -western
medicine i think western medicine is exceptionally good at many things but unfortunately for most of the things we now see the chronic lifestyle driven illness it's just not as helpful right and fundamentally western medicine teaches us that things go wrong in the body right we get taught to diagnose
disease and treat disease we don't get taught how to create health how do you create vitality what are the factors in someone's life that allows them to live their best life and you know with our culture with our backgrounds are you feeding medicine for many years has been talking about this traditional
chinese medicine has been talking about this so for me it's not a battle of eastern medicine versus western medicine it's what is the best of western what is the best of east and how do we blend them together and i'd like to think that i've done that throughout my career and hopefully in this book give
people a real practical tool kit yeah and that and that definitely resonates and i wanted the one thing that caught my eye when i was reading the book i wanted to ask you why have you never told a patient to quit smoking to just quit smoking why have you never said that i've never told a patient that they
must give up smoking because i don't think that's my role and i think this is where we go wrong in medicine and frankly in any relationship because what is the the relationship i have in my patients it's a doctor patient relationship but this principle kind of works parent child husband wife boyfriend
girlfriend these are just human relationships nobody wants to be told what to do by somebody else at some point if you're going to make transformative change it's got to come from within so one of the things i've always rebelled against in my career as a doctor is this rather paternalistic approach
that we get taught in medical school that doctor knows best patient comes in you tell me what the issue is then i'll tell you what's wrong with you and what you need to do some people may be able to make that approach work i couldn't and i'll tell you why i couldn't if a patient comes in and asks for my
opinion that's very important one thing i've tried to change in my life over the past two years is never to give unsolicited advice right so if the patient's in in front of me and says dr chats to you listen i'm not feeling good what impact is smoking having on my health i feel that my role as a fellow
human being is to explain to them what impact i think smoking is having on their health now if at the end of that conversation if i'm confident that they've understood me and that they've retained the information and they say hey dots chats gee i understand what you're saying but i get so much enjoyment
out of smoking that i'm prepared to put it with the consequences i don't feel that's my job to change their minds i feel it's a deep respect that i have for my patients if they understand it and they want to do it i'm okay with that and i'll tell you jay what i've learned over the years is that by taking
that approach i feel i've had really good compliance with my patients like really good compliance like a lot of doctors will say i have this course called prescribing lysine medicine that i created with the royal college of gps with a friend of mine with a colleague and we have trained thousands of healthcare professionals
around the world in the principles that i talk about in this book and my previous books and one of the things people would say to me doctors would say hey dots actually listen i get all this but patients don't listen to what we tell them and even the way that they phrase that is really interesting to
me i don't tell my patients what to do it's not my role i want to connect with my patients i want to then educate and empower them but i always want to connect first so going back to your initial question why do i why have i never told a patient that they must give up smoking it's not my role to do
that and here's what happens when you treat people like an equal you don't look down at them you don't think that you know better than them what will often happen they may say i i want to smoke right i understand but i enjoy this they'll come back two months later it'll be like hey dots chas you know
i said i wanted to keep smoking because i enjoy it so much actually i've been thinking can you help me start to change that but often if you say you must give up smoking it's going to give you cancer it's going to increase your risk of heart attacks i just don't think that works in the long term you
make short term change but as for the title of this book you don't make change that lasts and that principle frankly as i say applies far beyond the doctor patient relationship yeah i mean i i love hearing that because i think there's such a humanity to it and also a big part of making change that lasts
is someone making change for themselves exactly they really believe that this change will help them be a better parent a better professional a better person a better a functioning human and if i feel pressured into making change or if i feel pushed into making change then chances are i'm going to fall
right back into that habit so if someone does come up to you and say dr chatterjee how do i break a bad habit what would you say is the number one advice for someone who says i want to break a bad habit it just can't happen it's just never happened there's many ways of tackling bad habits but if you're
asking me for the number one tip it would be related to our environment right so we don't realize how much our environment influences our behavior i feel that being here in la i've been here for a week now the people i've been hanging out with over the past week are really into health and wellness right
so everyone around me who i'm writing with wants to eat well they want to go to bed early they want to look after themselves so even though i'm away from home when i'm in this exciting city i naturally respond right so it's been really telling for me and it really gave me an insight as to if you live
in an environment where your family where your friends where the things you have in your house are encouraging unhelpful behaviors you're going to be struggling right you're going to be constantly fighting your environment so what does that mean for an individual who's trying to say to me i want to
eat less sugar for example which is very common right especially at new year i have said to my patients for years if you don't want to eat it don't bring it into your house don't exercise willpower in your house because you have to exercise it as soon as you walk out the front door now that's been very
very helpful for so many of my patients and it's kind of what i do in my own life even though i really understand my internal triggers these days which i think is really important i just don't make life more difficult for myself than i need is that i won't bring into my house the potato chips the chocolates
the biscuits whatever it might be because i know i'm human just like everyone else at some point i'll come back stressed and tired and i want to open the cupboard and see what's there nothing wrong with that if people are doing that i don't want them to feel feel guilt or shame but i think they need
to understand that if you have it there it's going to be harder for you now related to that example i have a i have a an exercise jay that i'd love to share with you audience if that's okay please i love it as a doctor many people will say dr chas you i know the excess sugar is not helping me but i
can't stop right i'm really good in the day but at nine p .m um do you do you recognize this jay i used to i worked really hard at this but yes i i'm surprised it's really common right that's why people have been you know in adverse circumstances good during the day but at night their kids are in bed
or they're sitting on the sofa there's a box set on i really feel like i scream so i have this exercise that i created for my patients that has been so helpful that i've used with myself called the three f's okay the three f's are feel feed and find okay so if someone's listening jay and they have this issue
which i suspect will be quite a lot of people i would say okay you're sitting on your sofa you're craving the ice cream okay just take a pause just for a second take a pause and ask yourself the first f feel what am i feeling is it physical hunger or is it emotional hunger okay well you know i'm actually
not physically hungry i had a huge meal one hour ago oh i feel a bit stressed i feel a bit lonely whatever it might be then go ahead and have it okay i just want you to start building in some self -awareness which is the missing piece in behavior change of people if you ask me the the big thing that we're
missing the next time you're on the sofa and you're you can do this all in one go if you want but you know some people find it difficult so the next time you're on the sofa i would say do the first f again what am i feeling then go to the second f which is feed how does food feed that feeling ah oh
i was feeling stressed when i have ice cream at least in the short term i feel less stressed okay cool now you're developing a bit of an understanding as to why i'm engaging with this behavior okay great if you want to eat it go ahead and eat it with no guilt and no shame go and enjoy it and then the next
time go through those f's what am i feeling how does food feed the feeling which is the second f and then the third f is find now that i know what the feeling is now that i know how food feeds that feeling can i find an alternative behavior to feed that feeling so it could be oh i feel stressed that's
why i go to sugar what else could i do instead of sugar oh i really like yoga maybe i'll go on youtube and do a 10 minute yoga sequence maybe you feel lonely you've been on zoom calls all day you haven't seen your friends or your partner and it's a bit of a treat to yourself in the evening that's very
common you know people aren't hungry but they just it's a little treat to themselves okay how else could you nourish yourself oh well maybe i could run myself a bath i'd have a 10 50 minute bath to myself maybe i'm feeling lonely i could phone a friend or a parent whatever it might be every single behavior we
engage with serves a role in our life you'll only change the behavior in the long term if you understand the role it's playing so that is it's a very simple exercise i've described it through the lens of sugar but the truth is you can apply that to anything you can apply that to alcohol three hours
doom scrolling on instagram online pornography online shopping whatever you want it's a simple exercise which are my favorite kinds of exercises that can be very very powerful once you start engaging with it creating really great retail experiences is tough especially with multiple stores teams of staff
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to eligibility apple card and savings by goldman sachs bank usa salt lake city branch member fdic terms and more at applecard .com yeah i think it's put on i think if you think about it we're constantly chasing a feeling an emotional fix and we usually turn to physical tangible things that we think are going
to make us feel that way right as you said like really what i'm trying to do is lower stress and i've just created the mechanism to think if i want to lower stress i need to indulge in ice cream and that's the connection we've made whereas like you're saying there's so many other ways and actually could be
a natural source of sugar it could be a low sugar product if that's what you're after it could be as you said uh a yoga session breath work whatever it may be now what i find though is that when you first try and make that change it literally feels like you're fighting against yourself right it almost
feels like there's this internal battle and i'm i'm at the point now having worked on some of these things for a while i'm at a point now where i believe my taste buds have actually changed exactly the feeling and the desire has evolved and i'm able to deal with it in a healthier way but there's that middle
part where you feel like you're just like come on i've got to give in i've got to give in yeah you said two key words there for me and these are the two missing words i think in behavior change internal struggle this is really what i'm trying to get across to people every single behavior is downstream
usually from something inside you and we're living in a world where we want to consume more and more information get more and more knowledge which is helpful up to a point now i'll come back to that point so i think it's a really important one i just want to address what you said about it feeling difficult
out of those three f's the most important f is the why because it suddenly just breaks you out of your repetitive cycle i feel stressed i want some ice cream i get to the freezer and before i know it i've had half the tub that is very very common you think that's who you are it's not who you are it's
who you've become and you can unbecome it if you start to do that first f it is simply the knowledge that i can take a pause there is a gap between the stimulus and the response when you are repeating your behaviors day to day when they become habits whether good habits or unhealthy habits there's no gap
there's a feeling there's a stimulus and there's a response usually an unhealthy response in this current climate right for many people so that first f creates a gap now people will often say yes actually but you know and then now that i'm aware so what what can i do i'm like wait a minute 90 % of change
in my experience is that first f is understanding oh this is why i'm going to it short it may take a few weeks it may take a few months to really work on that relationship and start to tweak it because how long did it take you to develop this relationship maybe you've been using sugar to manage stress
for 20 years you're not going to change that in one week in january just because you wake up thinking i want to make this year the best year of my life you're not going to it is a process of change but what people miss jay for me is that that process where you learn what this behavior is doing for you
you struggle you sometimes can't make the change that you want other times you can that process is where the gold is that's when you're learning about yourself that's when you get the mastery about yourself oh i always when i have a row with my partner i don't feel good so yeah i want sugar or when i'm
alone or i'm traveling for work and i'm away from my wife and my kids that's when i just want to spend three hours on looking for connection that's where the gold lies and for me jay the most important chapter in this book is chapter one which is called trust yourself and i don't think we're talking
about this enough in the health and wellness space people are getting confused right you must get this on your show like i do on my podcast right this idea that despite our best efforts at trying to navigate the complexity what i often find jay is people will say to me not often but it happens enough
that i know that this is an issue not just you know two months ago you had this credentialed exhibit from harvard's and they said this diet is really good like a ketogenic is really good for mental health and they they sound really trustworthy they've got all the credentials and they've quoted four
or five research studies to back up what they think and i thought okay amazing and then last week you spoke to another doctor also well credentialed who said no a vegan diet or a whole food plant based diet is best for mental health and presented five studies to support what they have to say now people
would contact me and say i'm really confused right both of those experts they sound great um they've all got research to back up what they're saying i don't know which expert to trust and jay what i've realized is that's the wrong question the more helpful question the more powerful question is not which expert
should i trust it's why do i no longer trust myself yeah that is the magic to behavior change you have to start tuning into the signals your body is giving you so using that example i would say to someone hey i'll tell you what why do you have to choose which one's right maybe they're both right for certain people
but they're not right for anyone right so i would say okay try this expert's diet for four weeks and whilst you're trying it pay attention pay attention to what's going on what's your energy like what's your vitality how are your relationships how's your sleep how's your focus how's your concentration pay
attention i've got okay i tried that for four weeks now let me try this other person's diet for four weeks and again pay attention i promise if you start paying attention you'll very quickly find out what is the right diets for you at that moment in your life and i feel that we're not talking about this enough
we're still we've we've got to a point jay where we've outsourced our own inner expertise to external experts i'm not saying ignore external experts right you have some great experts on your show each week i have some great experts on my podcast each week but you should listen to their advice and put
it through your own filter and then you figure out what works for you and honestly if you would say what is the key thing you've learned in 23 years of seeing patients i've seen tens of thousands of patients i've learned many things but i would say no one approach works for everyone it just doesn't
and when we try and make it work for everyone it's a problem because people feel like failures yeah right people feel oh i'm following the experts advice i'm doing what they said to do it's not working there must be something wrong with me they start to feel guilty they start to feel like they're a loser
they start to have shame those things never lead to long -term behavior change and you know the other thing uh jay i've learned and i love your view on this because i probably resonates with the way you see the world i think we focus too much on the behavior for me it's the energy behind the behavior that's
the most important thing you need to go what's behind the behavior and i've realized that in life all behaviors either come from the energy of love or the energy of fear if it's coming from the energy of fear so guilt shame i'm not good enough those changes will not last in the long term i've been doing
this a long time i have seen it it lasts for january it lasts for a few months it doesn't lead to long -term transformation because your behaviors are in conflicts with the way that you see yourself if it's coming from an energy of love that i like who i am i want to improve my life that i'm going to
be compassionate to myself those changes it can be the same behaviors working out eating well going to bed on time getting eight hours sleep whatever it might be it can be the same behavior but if the energy behind it is from the energy of love that's when the changes start to become long -term and i
really get i don't get frustrated nothing frustrates me anymore really if i'm completely honest because i've been doing the inner work for many years i just i can stay quite detached from things i just see them for what they are but as a doctor i guess i believe we made behavior change so difficult
jay i don't even say it's hard anymore i'll tell you why i don't say that i used to say you know i know it can feel hard i know it's hard as a way of trying to empathize with people but if we say if we constantly say oh it's difficult or it's going to be hard we're pre -judging the experience for people
sure it may feel challenging but it doesn't always have to and i've experienced that myself so five years ago jay i would have a very hard very harsh inner voice so on january the first i would be very much i'm gonna meditate this year like 20 minutes a day and i do it for 14 days and i'm i feel like
i'm rocking yeah this is i've i've got meditation down this year that i miss a day that the self -taught would start man you couldn't do it you couldn't do it wrong and could you you know you'll lose or whatever i used to have a really harsh negative voice not that long ago but i have completely changed
it through all the things that i share in this book right i've completely changed it back then behavior change felt difficult because it was in conflict with how i saw myself now that i liked myself dare i say talking to a fellow Brit that i love myself right can you imagine in the uk saying that you
know i do though not in a narcissistic way but i like who i am i think i'm a nice guy i'm kind i'm compassionate i help people i'm no longer competitive as i've talked to you about in a previous episode on on your show like i just want to raise people up when you feel like that and everyone can feel
like that if they know which levers to turn behavior change becomes so much easier because you're not trying to fight yourself does that all make sense it makes a lot of sense i mean two things came to mind as you were speaking the first was you can't change something you hate you can only change something
you love and that includes yourself because if you hate something how much energy will you give it how much focus will you give it how much direction will you give it whereas when you love something you'll be present with it you'll be right there with it and i feel we're trying to hate ourselves interchange
yeah and you're so right i remember years ago as well like having a very very harsh negative in a voice and it did all the things you said i would shame myself i would guilt myself i would judge myself and none of that helped me change if anything it took longer for me to get back to where i wanted
to get to because when you fall off after 14 days of meditation now when you're judging and guilting and shaming yourself you feel like you can't do the thing unless you can be perfect yeah and then you go to more unhelpful behaviors and in some ways i've realized you you would have been better off
never doing those 14 days in the first place because you feel like a failure and you know it's interesting someone wants asked me about what are your non -negotiables wronging i don't realize jay i no longer have any because a non -negotiable to me feels like a harsh rule so let's use that through the lens
of this meditation practice where i tried for 14 days i miss one day i beat myself up now yeah i meditate most mornings but not every morning and if i miss i'm like okay yeah sure i didn't do it today i'm a better person i'm a bit calmer when i do meditate yeah i must make sure i do that tomorrow it's
a very different relationship the energy behind the behavior is completely different so i was like jay why don't i get practical for people so i have these three questions i ask myself every morning but one of those questions i think really applies here so you teach your audience jay on a consistent
basis about living an intentional life a purposeful life right and i think a lot of people don't realize how powerful the mornings are we all have a morning routine whether we think we do or not the question is are we intentional about it how we thought about the consequences of how we start each day
because some of you say oh they're not for me you know it's a bit cliche this idea of a morning routine whatever it might be and i'm like no no you've got a routine you just made it a thought about it so what i've learned jay of the years is that so many of our thoughts our feelings our behaviors are downstream
from the content we consume so if you wake up and the first thing you do is going onto your phone and go on the news and see the negativity that the news is telling us from all over the world you go onto your work emails and see the backlog that you didn't complete or whatever it might be you go into
social media and get caught up in an argument whatever it might be does it really surprise you that half an hour later you may be a little reactive with your kids or your partner or you may feel a little negative about the state of the world when you look at it like that i think it's quite obvious if that's
what you're inputting into your brain think about it as software that's what you're inputting in of course the outputs straight after that for many people is going to be negative as well if you have a more intentional start to your day with a bit more positivity i don't i'm not talking about toxic positivity
or fake positivity just intentionally going whether it's gratitude i mean one of the questions that i ask is a gratitude question what is one thing i deeply appreciate about my life it helps shift your mindset and where you're going to place your attention but where i finish my morning routine is with this what i
consider to be a very powerful question what quality would i like to showcase to the world today it's a simple question but it's very very powerful because it forces you yeah let me rephrase that i don't even like using the word force anymore it feels a bit of an aggressive word right it doesn't it
feels like it's coming from the energy of fear rather than the energy of love i have the opportunity each morning with that question to set the intention of how i wish to show up so often it will be i wish to showcase the quality of patience today or compassion and you write it down i write it down
in my journal and i think about it what would it look like today to show the quality of patience or compassion ah you know if i get caught up in a in a in a traffic i'm not going to stop berating people i'm just going to smile and be kind if i get an email i maybe don't like i'm going to just take a breath
and actually not respond in the moment if my wife says this to me or whatever about the dishes or whatever i'm just going to go hey it's cool you know maybe she's having a bad day and i'm just going to smile and be compassionate it sounds too simple to work this is transformative it really works now
just by setting the intention it doesn't mean that you're going to be perfect so i have a couple of questions i ask myself in the evening which helps balance this what went well today and what can i do differently tomorrow so what went well today could be again it's a form of gratitude it could be that you
know what i had a really busy day i didn't take a lunch break i got home late but i still found 20 minutes to make my family a home -cooked meal instead of ordering takeout or whatever it might be okay you're just going because we have a negativity bias instead of focusing on all the things that you
didn't get done and the stress in your day and what you know how you behaved or whatever you're putting your attention on what you did do which i think is very powerful but then the second part of that question jay is really interesting what can i do differently tomorrow so it could be that you say
you know what this morning i said i was going to be show the world the quality of compassion but at lunch time or at 4 pm i was really tired i didn't like the email that my colleague sent me and i quickly sent an annoyed email back okay no worries again we're looking for love not fear so you can say
ah what i can do differently tomorrow is i can try harder tomorrow if that same situation arrives i'm going to respond differently and i tell you sure doing this for one day may not do much you do that for seven days or dare i say even 30 days the way you experience the world will be completely different
you will have made this small like one degree shift each day that in the moment doesn't feel like anything 30 days later you will be like a different person i've been doing this subjay for maybe five years now and like i was sharing with you before the mics were rolling i've never felt this good like
i have this deep sense of peace these days and in a calm and i've worked at it some of the things i've shared already many things i haven't shared that i put in this book this is available to everyone jay like i'm i absolutely believe that i have seen throughout my career people in the darkest of places
suicidal patients who through these kind of practices have managed to completely turn their lives around it is possible to everyone but i think we're going about change a lot of the time in the wrong places right we talk about creating healthy habits it's important and i've written a book about that in the past
and i know the rules of healthy habit formation you know make it easy stick on the new behavior onto an existing habit those things are very very helpful but they still don't get to the root and my attempt with this book is to help people go no no there are things that you don't know that are driving
you in your life a lot of people don't realize jay that their behaviors are driven by their beliefs so if you believe that somebody out there knows what is best for you more than you that is going to dictate your behaviors your belief is that someone else knows better so you're going to be every few
months looking for a new expert to follow every january you're going to buy a new health book to say oh you need to go on a 30 day sugar detox you need to cut out alcohol you need to cut out ultra processed foods these things are all well and good but i submit to you jay that many people dare i say
most people who are listening to shows like yours or mine kind of already know that excess sugar is not helping them or excess alcohol is not helping them i don't think they need more external knowledge of oh alcohol will do this to your liver or sugar will do this to your teeth people know that they
need more internal knowledge they need insight intuition and in my view the way you develop that is with some intentional time each day these questions meditation journaling if you're constantly in your life you never step out of it to reflect on it it's not about the behavior it's about the energy
behind the behavior yeah it resonates very strongly with me and to kind of encapsulate what you're saying what i'm hearing and what i've found to be true is that if you really want to make a change it comes down to your most repeated thought your most repeated words and your most repeated actions and what you
find is you already have a most repeated thought i'm not good enough i can't do it that life's not for me and this goes back to your point that's what your beliefs are your beliefs are just your most repeated thoughts and now it feels like that's who you are and then naturally those become your words
so when someone says to you like oh how's that new habit going or you know how's the workout going or whatever you go oh you know i can't i can't keep up exactly and now you keep repeating then everyone you meet you go oh yeah i gave up after seven days and now that's your language and then that naturally
leads on to your actions and so what you're talking about which i really appreciate because it is harder to talk about which is what is the root but for all of us anyone who's had a lasting change it's been a root issue that's been solved always and and this is why i'm so passionate jay about this idea you
know i've been in this health and wellness space publicly for 10 years now and for all the benefits of this increase in information and of course there are many like people are better educated now than ever before about health and wellness and what we can do but we have to confront a very uncomfortable
truth which is despite all of this increasing information people are getting physically and mentally more sick so i was trying to solve this problem i was trying to go i don't want to just write another book with more information on what you should do i want to help people understand why they are doing
it and again talking to root causes and maybe feeding back to what you've just said this i think is the most under -taught aspect this is the most under -appreciated aspects of health for me let me make it really practical for people many of us are trying to change our behaviors and i know i've used sugar
and alcohol a few times just because i think they're quite common and quite relatable for people people don't understand that the way they interact with other people directly affects that behavior so for example you're driving to work in the morning and there's a bit of traffic and someone cuts in front
of you okay we've all seen it maybe we've experienced it where we start to create all this mental noise oh my god stupid driver they shouldn't have done that they need their eyes checked whatever it might be and we think that we're entitled to do that and we are right i'm not here to change anyone right
you've got to change yourself like you're entitled to react like that just know that there's a consequence one of the themes that underpins every chapter in this book is that emotional stress is not neutral so we think about physical stress but we don't think about emotional stress so a driver cuts
in front of you there are many ways to react to that situation if you take a disempowering narrative and create all of this anger and stress and noise in your head you've generated emotional stress you will need to neutralize that emotional stress in some way or another now you could do it in a healthy
way by going for a walk or going to the gym usually what people do when they get to the office is they need an extra coffee they need to go to the vending machine and get some sugar they need an extra drink after work and then they think oh i'm drinking too much in the evening or i'm eating too much
sugar i need to change that but they don't realize that actually the way they dealt with that driver on the road that day because it's not just that that's the pattern they they use for everything in their life i say this with an open heart we almost make ourselves a victim to life we think that the way
we feel is down to the way other people treat us and i understand that we like other people to treat us well but you can cultivate the skill of not having your inner state as dependent on the world around you so you can develop the skill and i share how to in this book with practice you can basically
go wow what other story could i create here oh maybe that mother has had a sick child up all night with earache and they're just rushing maybe she's on her last warning with her boss and actually if she's late one more time she's going to lose her job and that's how she feeds her family right the truth
doesn't matter for your inner well -being it really doesn't and you can choose to start looking at the world this way and what you will find yes it might feel challenging at first so you have to consciously think about it maybe not in the moment maybe in the evening and i'll share a practice that can help
people with that but over time it becomes your default whereas now you know i've been in la traffic this week i've heard you guys talk about it all the time oh i've experienced it i'm running late for some interviews i'm just i'm totally chilled i'm like i can't do anything about this nothing i can do
you can train that response and i think last time i came on your podcast jay i think i shared the story of edith eager the 93 year old lady who was in al schwitz when she was 16 and i shared the powerful narrative she would use in her mind to reframe her existence there and i won't tell that story again but i'll
remind people of the final thing that edith eager told me when she came on my podcast she said to me dr chas g i have lived in al schwitz and i can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own minds and the penny dropped for me jay in that conversation literally
i thought that's it that's what we're all doing we're interacting with the world with other people we're creating these disempowering narratives we're making ourselves a victim to the world around us without realizing that we have the power to shape the narrative on every single situation most situations
in life you could even say all but that gets a bit triggering for people so i say most situations in life are neutral it's the perspective we take on that situation that determines its impact you want to change your behaviors if you're someone who has been trying to make changes in january for the last
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Yeah and i and i really appreciate the direction of getting people to trust themselves i mean i've seen that time and time again i remember a couple of months ago i was trying a really high protein diet the amount that's recommended and i just it didn't work for me it just didn't work for me like trying
to eat my body weight in protein was far too much for me personally and i didn't feel good i was feeling more tired i was feeling actually more bloated i was it just didn't work and and it was like well this is all the studies say this all the research says even within those studies that are done right
yeah we think the studies show this when you look into most scientific studies right but let me try make it super simple to understand for people let's say there was a study done where a hundred people were put on one diet and a hundred people put on another diet which one is better and then on balance
we'll say oh this one this one statistically was better but it doesn't mean that 100 of the people were better on that one there would have been some people who were better on the other one but overall we say that one word what we're saying is that that one works for the most people in that study it
doesn't mean it will for you and this is where i think the differences between researchers and clinicians you know i i feel one thing i'm really good at and again i don't say this with any arrogance i feel i'm really good at connecting with my patients and i'm i've managed to help them make transformative
change many of them throughout their careers and i've as you know i even showcase what i do on BBC one and back in 2015 and 2017 where families who were sick were under gps were under specialists with type 2 diabetes panic attacks fibromyalgia menopausal symptoms irritable bowel syndrome i either helped
everyone fully reverse their conditions or get them significantly better like 80 better in just six weeks using nutrition lifestyle and mindset that's not blaming people it's showing people educating them that oh the way you do things matters how you live each day the choices you make the way you talk
to each other right these things really play a role and jay i i often think you know i was thinking about this on the plane over to la this time wrong and why do you have such a i don't know if i can call it unique perspective on health but it's not the normal perspective i would say that most medical
doctors would you agree with that yeah most yeah compared to most absolutely and i think one of the reasons why and there's many reasons including my cultural upbringing probably similar to yours where we grow with this more holistic approach these ideas that food is medicine all those kind of ideas
but i think my filming that bbc documentary series over two or three years i think it gave me an insight that very few doctors ever get even if you're a disenchanted doctor and you think 10 minutes is not enough which it isn't and you figure out a way to spend one hour with your patients what i learned
on filming that series when i would live alongside families for four to six weeks sometimes i'd stay overnight in their house okay i got to see stuff that people rarely get to see i got to see oh wow they've got these symptoms but i'm noticing how the husband and wife are talking to each other in the evening
oh i wonder how that relationship is impacting their fiscal health and i would do this with all kinds of families in all different areas of the uk so it gave me a rather unique insight where this idea is that literally 99 of what happens to your health i know this sounds really obvious it's it's outside
the doctor's surgery it's how you live your life it's how you approach adversity and so i think it's it's kind of given me this rather unique view i think my my 23 years of clinical practice has also taught me that there's no one right approach so you as you say you can hear all the experts online you
want telling you about the high protein that you need and you could keep trying it or you go wait well you know what i don't think that's the right approach for me at this point in my life and that's that secondary bit is another key piece yeah it might be later but right now for the state of your life
and your health it's not working for you and we need to learn to trust ourselves more yeah absolutely i like that addition as well what's your take we've talked a lot about self -awareness and the importance of it obviously right now everyone's getting really excited about fitness trackers what's your
take there's a section on this actually in the book because i think it's a really important thing to think about so i currently have one on i've been slow to adopt fitness trackers and i'll tell you why a key theme in this book is about reliance and that we're overly reliant on things outside of ourselves
on people treating us well on all kinds of things expert knowledge whatever it might be and we need to become what i say in the book is minimally reliant not zero reliance but less reliance i think trackers health trackers fitness trackers can be good and they can also be bad it depends on who you are so we've
got all these you know new fitness trackers but let's talk about another kind of tracker that's been around for a while a blood pressure monitor right they've been around for 30 40 years something like that that's a form of health tracker maybe it's not as high tech as some of these new ones but it's
a form of health tracking what i would notice jay in my practice for years is that many people would say doctor actually should i buy one from the pharmacy and use it at home and initially i would say yeah great idea then you can check what your blood pressure is doing and then what i noticed is that oh
wow maybe 50 percent of people this is a rough guess it's not a scientific study half of my patients would use regular blood pressure checks at home to empower them right so they'd be like oh wow okay it's going a bit high now what's going on and they'd use it in a very helpful way to get to know themselves
better and make positive changes the other half i think it was harmful for them they would get stressed out they would check it four times a day they would get health anxiety and that would paralyze them so i thought wow it's not the tracker itself that's the that's the issue it's our relationship to
the tracker that's the theme throughout this conversation it's our relationship to it so if you're someone who can look at that tracker whether it's an apple watch or a whoop band or an orangue or whatever what you know whatever you've got a garment you know if you're able to use it to help you get
to know yourself better and it helps you make positive changes i think they can be very very helpful in fact i'm on a two month experiment at the moment with with this one that i've got on and it's really helping me understand myself better oh this is what my heart rate variability is like when i eat a bit
later at night or you know when i've been on a transatlantic flight whatever it might i'm like i'm learning about myself i'm getting a deeper understanding of myself through this now i think it'd be very helpful but some people have got a very unhealthy relationship with them they're obsessed with them
if the battery is not working they start to stress out oh i don't know how to exist and the truth is there are some scientific studies which show us that they can be problematic so there was one study which i write about in the book where in essence a simplified way of describing it is they took these
groups of people and put them in the lab one group were only allowed to sleep for five hours the other group were allowed to sleep for eight hours right but there's no clocks anywhere and then they told the group who slept for five hours that they slept for eight hours and the group that slept for eight
hours that they'd only sat for five hours and that impacts it the energy lovers through the day and it impacted their physiology right so that's a really powerful study and there's many more like that which all that does for me again let's not get let's not use that study to disempower us that's interesting
what does it show it shows that some people can have an unhealthy relationship with these devices some people can have a helpful one and if i think about that through the lens of me and my wife right i love getting data i can be very detached from it it doesn't affect me if i see a low readiness score
in the morning i can be detached from that and go wow i can still perform even with that right i will often not check for days right or once a day once every two days i'll go on and check my data i don't want to become dependent or reliant that's the key so i can't tell you jay are these good or bad
it depends on who you are and what's your relationship to that device yeah and only you will be able to answer that question for yourself yeah it's a great answer it's a great answer and i and i fully agree i think it goes back to what the common theme is as you said it's our interpretation of the event
of the data of the information and i guess then going back to what you said earlier your only non -negotiable has become being kinder to yourself like that is your non -negotiable like the ability to always turn towards not judging not shaming not guilting but giving yourself that space and grace to just
operate and think it through yeah it's funny that words are interesting aren't they i guess the word non -negotiable for me these days maybe because i used to have such a negative voice in my head i kind of feel that everything's negotiable in life right so i don't know let's take an example um violence
right i could say that i'm a calm person and i would never be violent right but hold on there's always a situation in life that might challenge that what if i was on a street with my two beautiful children and someone was trying to attack me or attack them would i turn to violence to protect them yeah
i think i would right i wouldn't intentionally want to do that so i could say that being kind and compassionate and non -violent is a non -negotiable or i could be a i'm going to be kind and compassionate or i'm going to certainly have the intention to be but i can foresee a situation whereby yeah maybe
i would turn to violence do you know what i mean i think it's that complexity and nuance so for me if i say it's a non -negotiable again for someone else they may like the term but for me it's not so program me with this harsh taskmaster i must always do this i can never i can never fall from this so for me
i personally don't use that term but i totally welcome other people like if they want to use that term i think you're completely fine and i think it's all highly highly individual we have to find what works for us i don't i don't believe anymore that anything for me is non -negotiable i think i set an intention about how
i want to live but always knowing that the situation could change now jay i'm here in la right maybe two weeks after the election and it's remarkable for me to see certainly online the division right and i remember maybe six or nine months ago when your current u .s surgeon general vivec mercy was in london he
came on my podcast we had a wonderful conversation and he said to me back then one in six americans are currently not talking to a family member because of their political views and i suspect that's even higher now from what i can tell now i'm not trying to wade into politics here i'm trying to take
a step back and go to me and i'm not american right so i i acknowledge i put that out there to me it seems like madness right there's a chapter in this book called take less offense which is an overreliance on being right on need to be right and i explained in that chapter that nothing in life is inherently
offensive if it was we'd all get offended to the same thing if it was that thing that was offensive all of us would find it offensive if we don't all find something offensive it means that thing isn't offensive there's something inside of us that's been activated or being triggered so that whole chapter
is about helping people understand that you don't need to take offense to everything you can choose not to you can choose to go wow why has that person got a different view to me why does that person see the world so differently from me you know i think i might have shared this last time i was on your
show jay but that one of the phrases that has been transformative for me is if i was that other person i'd be behaving in exactly the same way as them and what i mean by that is if i was that other person with their parents with their childhood with the bullying they experienced with the friends they
had at school with the first boss who bullied them on the workplace whatever it might be if i had their life i would probably see the world in the same way as them and i'd probably act in the same way as them now this doesn't mean i'm saying this excuses poor behavior no i'm not saying that what i'm
saying is instead of jumping to judgment of other people which i think is a toxic behavior i think it's a behavior that won't help you make change you i used to be judgmental and not anymore you can change this we said before how our behaviors are driven by our beliefs none of us came out of our mother's
womb with these beliefs right we didn't we developed them based upon what we experience throughout our life it's a much lighter way of interacting with the world when you go wow why do they think in the way that they do now you don't have to choose that approach to life but if you're someone who's walking
around taking offense to everything okay and i say this i promise you i say this with compassion jay if there's anyone listening who's thinks that they're they're a person who's constantly berating the drivers on the freeway taking offense to everything they see on social media my invitation to that individual
is hey that approach to life may not be serving you you may have an over -reliance on being right and in that chapter i make the case actually thinking that everyone in the world is going to see the world in the same way as us in a world of eight billion people it's actually quite an arrogant way to
think and i'm not judging when i say that i used to think like this jay right so i'm why i share that is because i want people to know i know what that feels like and i know you can change that if you choose to not take offense and interact with compassion why does that person think the way in which they
do you will naturally make better choices because you're not generating that emotional stress you go on instagram or twitter or x and find a comment really irritating or someone's viewpoint really offensive and start to get involved with them of course you can do that that might be why you struggle
to reduce your alcohol intake or your sugar intake because you're getting addicted to that noise that emotional stress and let's relate that back to what i said about edith eager before this lady who survived al schwitz and at 93 is full of compassion and forgiveness and even said that she's forgiven
hitler right let that land for a minute it doesn't mean that what hitler did was right she's not saying that what she's saying is i'm no longer going to allow what he did to affect me and my life and how i interact there's a big difference people get there's a whole section of forgiveness in the book
people really misunderstand forgiveness they think it means that i'm saying that that was right and it was okay it's not that at all one of the uh daily practices i did after my conversation with edith which is still probably one of the most powerful episodes i've ever had on my podcast is every evening
because as i say you often can't do it in the moment every evening once my kids were in bed when they were a bit younger i sit down and i'd ask myself wrong and where did you get emotionally triggered today when did an email piss you off right when did you react to someone whilst you were driving and instead
of putting the blame on the other person on something outside of myself i asked myself a question what is it within me that's been activated by that external action why did that email bother me oh it reminds me of something my parents said to me when i was a kid oh it reminds me of a boss i had a few
years ago oh it's highlighted in an insecurity like criticism right we both exist in the public domain we we have to you know we get positive comments we also get negative comments right that is just part and parcel of life not everyone is going to like how i put across my messages that's okay they
don't have to some people will say i'm the greatest podcast host on the planet some people say i'm the worst and i talk over my guests and do you know what they're both right for them right do you know what i mean it's really important so i've what i've learned about criticism because criticism generally
doesn't bother me anymore because i've learned to be emotionally detached i've come to the realization jay that criticism only bothers us to the degree we believe it about ourselves i don't know your relationship with criticism but certainly for me i realize oh the reason that bothers me is because it
triggers an internal insecurity now i can get annoyed at the person delivering the criticism or and maybe it's out of order maybe they shouldn't but i'm not sure how much that helps you you can't control whether someone is or is not going to criticize you what i can control and what i can work on is my
internal state oh i'm insecure about that let me write down why let me think about that maybe if you have access to a therapist sure go and see one talk about it that is the secret to long -term change jay it's not looking outside for the answers it's going what is going on inside of me that exercise
like if people take nothing else from this conversation jay i would say that is one of the most powerful things you can do it will take you maybe five minutes every evening and you don't realize people do not realize how quickly their lives will start to change when they take full responsibility for their
reactions you're no longer dependent on everyone around you acting a certain way to feel good you become like a master in yourself like in martial arts we want to be black belts this is your way of becoming a black belt in yourself and i love it and i'm going back to what i said before about the process
of change if you commit to doing this you will learn so much about yourself you will learn why certain things trigger you why you go to sugar why you go to alcohol why you can't stop scrolling instagram for four hours every evening you will learn about yourself and i promise you that is much more powerful
than any expert ever telling you that and i say that as a so -called expert myself make change that lasts rangan uh it's been really a joy talking to you today i mean the thing that's staying with me and resonating with me most deeply about what you just shared is this idea of taking accountability taking
responsibility for ourselves for our feelings for our health i think it's very easy to say i did this because this person told me oh i feel this way because that person did that to me oh that person's diet didn't work and you're so right we've been trying to outsource our health our emotional health
our physical health and i love the ownership and the empowerment that you're offering everyone through this book because that's really what's missing that's really what the struggle is is that we haven't taken ownership of our own life and that's what i feel you're encouraging us to do yeah i really
am because jay not only have i experienced it myself because what i say at the end of the end of the introduction is i say effortless change actually is available to you once you work on this stuff change doesn't become as hard as you think i think the reason we think it's so hard is because we're going
about it in the wrong way and i think i mean certainly we spoke about this beforehand i think i think what i've stumbled across through my career and through my own lived experience are i think some universal human truths right i think for me at least what's exciting about this book for people is that you're
going to learn concepts that you're not used to learning about from a medical doctor there's like elements of philosophy spirituality yes physical health and habit formation it's all there and i think from the bottom of my heart that this is the most important book i've ever written i think it's going
to have the most impact on people you're very kind enough to give a quote for the book but remember one of the first people outside my team to write it was dr gabble mattay and gabble read every single word and he sent me the most wonderful email and he goes wrong and this is just wonderful this is your
most insightful book yet this can help so many people and coming from someone i really respect that i love him yeah he's amazing i was so touched i was so touched and so i think this is the only journey that's worth taking is understand your inner world stop relying on those external experts so much
i'm not saying ignore i'm not saying ignore the science i'm not saying ignore external experts i think we've gone too far it's all about what does the expert say now i'm like no let's just bring it back it's too head focused and not enough heart focus so let's just wind it back let's use our head but let's
also use our hearts i love that everyone the book is called make change that lasts nine simple ways to break free from the habits that hold you back go and grab your copy right now and rungan thank you so much for always coming with so much energy enthusiasm and counterintuitive thinking which i think
is going to benefit a lot of people and start their new year just right so thank you so much my friend it's uh it's great to have you here jay thanks for having me back on your show i appreciate it yeah amazing if you love this episode you'll enjoy my interview with dr daniel aman on how to change your
life by changing your brain if we want a healthy mind it actually starts with a healthy brain you know i've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers and their brains are very damaged there's never been a path to a national championship like
this 12 teams chasing one thing that's never been done every game every play every second matters more than the one before it and when the confetti falls only one team will have done something that no other team in the history of college football has ever done ever the college football playoff national
championship january 20th on the sbn if you do one nice thing for yourself today you'll feel pretty good but imagine how you'd feel if you did 19 000 nice things for yourself 19 000 makes a big difference that's why now supplements performs 19 000 tests every month to ensure you get the highest quality
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