Dr. Rangan Chatterjee On The Four Pillars Of Health, Breaking Habits, & Building A Better 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast Episode: Dr. Rangan Chatterjee On The Four Pillars Of Health, Breaking Habits, & Building A Better 2025
Release Date: December 30, 2024
Hosts: Lauryn Bosstick & Michael Bosstick
Guest: Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast, hosts Lauryn Bosstick and Michael Bosstick welcome renowned medical doctor Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. With over two decades of medical experience and as the author of five internationally bestselling books, Dr. Chatterjee shares his insights on achieving optimal health through foundational lifestyle changes.

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Dr. Rangan Chatterjee's Background and Mission

Dr. Chatterjee introduces himself as a medical professional passionate about transforming healthcare by focusing on holistic well-being rather than merely treating symptoms. With a mission to help 100 million people globally live better lives, he emphasizes the importance of simplifying health to make it accessible and manageable for everyone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee [03:15]: "Health really isn't as difficult or as complicated as you think it is. Everything I try and do is to help people simplify it."

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The Four Pillars of Health

Dr. Chatterjee outlines what he terms the Four Pillars of Health: Food, Movement, Sleep, and Relaxation. These pillars serve as a framework to help individuals identify areas in their lifestyle that require improvement.

• Food: Emphasizing the importance of nutrition and its direct impact on overall health.
• Movement: Highlighting regular physical activity as essential for both physical and mental well-being.
• Sleep: Underlining the critical role of quality sleep in maintaining health and preventing chronic conditions.
• Relaxation: Addressing the need for stress management and relaxation techniques to enhance quality of life.

Michael Bostick [05:47]: "The four pillars of health. Food, movement, sleep and relaxation. Now those are the four pillars which I believe have the most impact on our short term health and our long term health."
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee [07:16]: "I want to know what you think about yours. Which one?"

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Breaking Habits with the Three Fs Exercise

Dr. Chatterjee introduces the Three Fs Exercise—Feel, Feed, and Find—as a practical tool to understand and modify habitual behaviors, especially those related to unhealthy eating or substance use.

1. Feel: Identify the underlying emotion driving the behavior.

   Michael Bostick [11:08]: "What am I really feeling? Am I physically hungry or am I emotionally hungry?"

2. Feed: Recognize how the behavior temporarily alleviates the emotion.

   Michael Bostick [12:53]: "How does ice cream or sugar or alcohol feed the feeling?"

3. Find: Discover alternative behaviors that can address the emotion without the unhealthy habit.

   Michael Bostick [13:15]: "Can I find an alternative behavior to feed that feeling?"

This method fosters self-awareness and empowers individuals to make conscious choices that align with their long-term health goals.

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The Importance of Community and Social Connections

Dr. Chatterjee underscores the profound impact of social connections on mental and physical health. He shares a compelling story of a patient who overcame feelings of depression not through medication, but by re-establishing friendships and community ties.

Michael Bostick [20:09]: "He had a friendship deficiency. And once that friendship deficiency was corrected, everything in his life came back online."

This narrative illustrates how meaningful relationships can serve as a cornerstone for overall well-being, emphasizing that health extends beyond individual habits to encompass social environments.

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Critique of Modern Medicine's Approach

Dr. Chatterjee and Michael critically examine the current medical paradigm, which often prioritizes pharmaceutical interventions over lifestyle modifications. They argue that this approach can lead to a cycle of medication dependency, where side effects from drugs necessitate further prescriptions, compounding health issues.

Michael Bostick [22:06]: "We have literally gone to an extreme now where we are medicating everything... But the root cause."

This discussion champions a shift towards preventative care, where lifestyle changes are the first line of defense against chronic diseases, reducing the reliance on medications with potential adverse effects.

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Trusting Yourself Over External Expert Opinions

Given the plethora of conflicting health advice available today, Michael emphasizes the importance of trusting one's intuition and personal experiences over external expert opinions. He suggests that individuals should experiment with different health practices and observe what works best for them personally.

Michael Bostick [34:27]: "I don't think we should ask ourselves which expert should I trust? I think we need to ask ourselves, why do I no longer trust myself?"

This philosophy encourages personal accountability and self-awareness, advocating for a personalized approach to health rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

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Implementing Effective Morning Routines: The Three Ms

Michael introduces his Three Ms framework for a productive morning routine:

1. Mindfulness: Practices like meditation or mindful coffee drinking to start the day with presence.

   Michael Bostick [40:39]: "The first M is mindfulness. It can be any practice of mindfulness."

2. Movement: Incorporating physical activity, even if just for five minutes, to energize the body.

   Michael Bostick [46:02]: "The second M is movement. I'll do a five-minute workout."

3. Mindset: Setting positive intentions through reading uplifting material or answering reflective questions.

   Michael Bostick [46:57]: "The third M is mindset, which involves setting positive intentions for the day."

This structured approach helps in establishing habits that enhance mental clarity, physical health, and emotional resilience.

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Daily Reflection with Three Key Questions

Michael shares three transformative questions he asks himself each morning to guide his day:

1. What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life?

   • Cultivates gratitude and shifts focus to positive aspects.

2. What is the most important thing I have to do today?

   • Prioritizes tasks to prevent overwhelm and procrastination.

3. What quality would I like to showcase to the world today?

   • Encourages intentional behavior and personal growth.

Michael Bostick [63:35]:

1. "What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life?"
2. "What is the most important thing I have to do today?"
3. "Which quality do I want to showcase to the world?"

These questions promote mindfulness, intention, and purposeful action, fostering a proactive and positive mindset.

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Overcoming Perfectionism and Regret

In the latter part of the discussion, Michael delves into the detrimental effects of perfectionism and regret. He defines regret as a form of perfectionism, where individuals berate themselves for past actions under the illusion of having the capacity to have acted differently.

Michael Bostick [61:46]: "Regret is a form of perfectionism. Underlying this idea that, oh, I regret that, is this idea that I could have done better, but I don't think I could have done better."

Dr. Chatterjee adds that forgiving oneself and embracing imperfections are vital for mental health, reducing anxiety, and preventing a cycle of self-criticism.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee [72:14]: "It's pointless to beat yourself up because, like, it is what it is and you didn't have the tools at that time to act in a different way."

This segment emphasizes self-compassion as a crucial component of sustained personal growth and well-being.

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Conclusion

The episode culminates with actionable advice, encouraging listeners to adopt personalized health practices, establish mindful routines, and foster self-compassion. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee's insights, combined with Michael and Lauryn's practical frameworks, offer a comprehensive guide to building a healthier, more fulfilling life as we approach 2025.

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Notable Quotes:

• Michael Bostick [05:47]: "Food, movement, sleep and relaxation. Now those are the four pillars which I believe have the most impact on our short term health and our long term health."

• Dr. Rangan Chatterjee [03:15]: "Health really isn't as difficult or as complicated as you think it is."

• Michael Bostick [11:08]: "What am I really feeling? Am I physically hungry or am I emotionally hungry?"

• Michael Bostick [22:06]: "We have literally gone to an extreme now where we are medicating everything... But the root cause."

• Michael Bostick [34:27]: "Why do I no longer trust myself?"

• Michael Bostick [46:57]: "The third M is mindset, which involves setting positive intentions for the day."

• Michael Bostick [61:46]: "Regret is a form of perfectionism."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the core discussions and actionable insights from the podcast episode, providing a valuable resource for listeners and those interested in enhancing their health and well-being.

Transcript

[Lauren Everts]

The following podcast is a Dear Media Production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.

[Michael Bostick]

Fantastic.

[Lauren Everts]

And he's a serial entrepreneur, a very smart cookie. And now, Lauren Everts and Michael Bostick.

[Michael Bostick]

Are bringing you along for the ride.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Get ready for some major realness.

[Lauren Everts]

Welcome to the Skinny Confidential him and her.

[Michael Bostick]

The first chapter in this book is called Trust Yourself. Why did I write a whole chapter on trusting yourself? Because one thing I think that's happened today, going back to what I said before Lauren about this idea where we're being bombarded with more knowledge but it's not translating to more health outcomes. So what people will do on Instagram, they'd say, hey, Dr. Chatterjee, I'm really confused now. Both of those experts sounded trustworthy. I don't know which expert to trust. I think this is a big problem. And I'll tell you what I think the problem is. I don't think they're asking themselves the right question. I don't think we should ask ourselves, which expert should I trust? I think we need to ask ourselves, why do I no longer trust myself?

[Lauren Everts]

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential him and her show. Today we have Dr. Rangan Chatterjee on the show and this one is coming out with a bang. Getting ready to start the new year on the strongest foot that you can. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is one of the most influential medical Doctors in the UK and has over 20 years of experience in the medical profession. His mission is to help 100 million people around the globe live better lives. He is the author of five internationally best selling books which have sold over 1 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 15 different languages. Today we're talking all about the four pillars of health. We're talking all about how in just five minutes you can change your life and your morning routine. How to develop healthy routines that stick with you to ultimately propel you to more success in your life, why you're stuck in bad habits and how to transform your life in 2025. And things that have transformed Dr. Chatterjee's life that he's also implemented with his patients to help change theirs. This episode is for anyone who wants to feel better. Start with more energy, get rid bad habits, implement new good habits, have more confidence, really just feel good in general and start the year in the strongest way possible. With that, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential him and Her. Well, to start, because I know I have to do this, I have to thank Gabby Reese because she connected us and she's one of those people. When I get a message from Gabby Reese, I like popular. I'm not. I'm terrible on text. But like that one I get right.

[Michael Bostick]

Back to, yeah, Gabby's amazing. I've had the privilege of spending a bit of time with her over the last couple of weeks. Gabby and Lairds, and they are two fantastic people.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Did Laird put you through the cold plunge ritual sauna pool situation?

[Michael Bostick]

I did hang out. I did it not with Laird. Me and Laird had some great out of the pool conversations. And next time I'm in la, I hope to do some stuff with him for sure.

[Lauren Everts]

I don't know what they're feeding those people over there. They're like, those are like two. Modern day. They're like real superheroes. They're like two. It's insane. Anyways, welcome to the show. I'm so glad that you made the trip out here that we get to do this for our audience that's unaware of you and I'm sure many of them are aware of you. Give us a brief introduction, background, and then we'll dive in.

[Michael Bostick]

So I've been a medical doctor since 2001, so 23 years. I've seen tens of thousands of patients over my career. And I think what makes my approach a little bit different is that I believe from what I've seen and from the research that 80 to 90% of what people are struggling with today is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. Right. I want to be clear. I'm not blaming anyone. Okay. I understand that life is tough and people are feeling stressed, they've got too many things to do, they find it hard to eat in the way that they want to, maybe to move as much as they want to. I get all that, but nonetheless, I've seen over the course of my career that actually when you pay attention to a few key things in our lifestyle, you can have a huge outsized impact on our health. So I've seen that firsthand with my patients. And maybe 10 years ago, in fact, we've just passed the 10 year anniversary, I was given my own primetime BBC One show in the UK called Doctor in the House. And basically that is still one of the things that I'm proudest of in my entire career. It's still there on YouTube, a few of the episodes. And basically people and families who were sick and were under doctors and specialists and couldn't get them better. I went and lived alongside them for four to six weeks. Sometimes I stayed the Night in their house, right. But essentially all of them. I either helped them fully reverse their conditions or get significantly better. So I helped someone reverse their type 2 diabetes in 30 days. I helped a young lady with panic attacks, reduced them by 70 to 80% in just six weeks. A lady with hormonal symptoms, menopausal symptoms, really severe, almost non existent after six weeks. But I did it all without pharmaceuticals. It was all with nutrition, lifestyle and mindset. So I'm really passionate and you know about helping each and every single person who interacts with me either on this podcast, on my podcast, in my books, on television. I want people to understand that health really isn't as difficult or as complicated as you think it is. And everything I try and do is to help people simplify it.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

What were the common denominators that you noticed that people were doing that could be easily tweaked?

[Michael Bostick]

I think that the simple way to look at it is what I call the four pillars of health. Food, movement, sleep and relaxation. Now those are the four pillars which I believe have the most impact on our short term health and our long term health. And importantly, we have got a fair degree of control over. Because I could say that air pollution and what's going on with, you know, with pollution and its impact on us is an issue, and it is, but there's not a huge amount that people can do about that. So everything I do is about trying to make things practical. And I say as a piece of practical advice for all of your listeners, if they're struggling to make changes in their life or they're trying to make changes to improve their health, their happiness, their relationships, I would say ask yourself, which one of those four pillars do I need the most help in? Because what I found over the years is that people have their favorite pillar. You know, I'm really into food. So when I want to make a change, let's say at New Year, I'll go to more changes in my food pillar. Meanwhile, I'm neglecting the fact that I'm only sleeping five hours a night or I'm chronically stressed. And so I think a really helpful framework for people is to ask themselves, which one of these four pillars do I need the most help in?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I want to know what you think about yours. Which one? Because I know which one it is. And I'll do mine too.

[Lauren Everts]

Probably relax. Yeah, relax.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. And if five years ago, if you'd asked me, I would have said it's relax because I thought my food was pretty good, my movement was Pretty good. I focus on my sleep, but I probably took on too much. I was a little bit stressed, always felt as if I couldn't switch off. But I think I've changed those things now. But I think for many people, maybe for your audience, that stress piece is huge.

[Lauren Everts]

Did you see, was there one of the pillars that if somebody kind of like for example, you mentioned when you came in that you saw the episode with Matthew Walker, like, if somebody gets their sleep under control, does that make a bunch of the others way easier to manage? Or is there like, do you do them in order? Is it what?

[Michael Bostick]

No, there's what I've learned. And this comes from real life clinical experience. Right. There's no one right approach for everyone. So we all have our bias. So if you change your health and life by changing your diet, what happens is that you then become really vocal about the importance of diet and then you might share that with your followers on Instagram. And there's nothing wrong with that. But we've all got to understand that not everyone enters at the same place. So, for example, if you improve your sleep, let's assume you're not sleeping as well as you could sleep and you improve your sleep, well, there's all kinds of knock on effects that are going to happen. You're actually going to be more emotionally regulated, you'll have more energy, you're better able to resist temptation, so you start to eat better, you actually eat less. We know, for example, that if you're sleep deprived, let's say five hours compared to eight hours, you eat on average 22% more the following day. So loads of people are trying to reduce how much they eat, but they're sleep deprived. So sometimes, and this is why I like that question, which of these pillars do you need the most help in? Sometimes the best way to improve your diet and even lose weight sometimes is not to focus on foods, but to focus on sleep. But you can apply that in other ways. Let's say stress, for example, and this is really the subject of my new book, Make Change At Last. It's what is the real reason why you can't make the changes? And so let me explain what I mean by that. Okay. A lot of people, and I imagine your audience are trying to reduce their sugar intake. Would you say that's quite common?

[Lauren Everts]

I said that to everybody, right?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. And so I think too often we try and change the behavior without understanding the role that behavior plays in our life. Now, it took me a few years, maybe a decade as a doctor to really Understand this. I thought just giving my patients knowledge was enough, but it's not. At least external knowledge is not enough. What we need is more internal knowledge. So let me explain that through the lens of sugar. Right. If on January 1st, or whatever point in the year you decide I want to cut out sugar or alcohol. Right. Whichever one you're trying to do, you can white knuckle it with willpower for two or three weeks. Everyone can. Like, they really can. They can do two or three weeks. But look at it this way. If your alcohol consumption is there and your way of managing stress, there's only two ways you'll actually change it in the long term. Either you have to reduce the stress in your life, which some people find difficult, because if not, you'll go straight back to the alcohol, or you have to find an alternative method of managing stress. Does that make sense?

[Lauren Everts]

Sure.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You could replace the stress with weightlifting.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So I have this exercise that I've been using with patients for years, and I'm sharing it in the hope that it's useful for your audience. Okay. It's called the three Fs. Feel, Feed, and find.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay.

[Michael Bostick]

Right. So let's imagine that someone, I don't know if you guys have ever been in this position where you've made healthy choices all day, and then you're on the sofa in the evening with the television on and you feel like having some ice cream. Do you recognize that?

[Lauren Everts]

Oh, what's that? Ice cream.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I love Van Winkles.

[Lauren Everts]

Van Leeuwen. Oh, yeah.

[Michael Bostick]

Right. So this is a very, very common scenario that I've experienced before. My patients have. Right. So let's understand what's going on there. So the three Fs is just A, I think, abusively simple framework to help people identify what's really driving their behavior. Okay. So next time you're on the sofa and you're craving the ice cream, I just want you to take a quick pause just for maybe a minute before you go to the freezer and get it and ask yourself the first F. What am I really feeling? Oh, am I physically hungry or am I emotionally hungry? Okay. Is it really hunger like you could be? Actually, you know what? I ate a full meal an hour ago. I'm actually not hungry. I've just had a row with my partner. I'm feeling a bit lonely. I'm feeling stressed because I didn't take a break at lunch, whatever it might be. Then go ahead and eat it. Right. Because we don't want guilt or shame. That never helps change our behavior. In the long term. But what that first F does is help you develop an awareness of why you're engaging. Okay, you go and eat it if you want to. Then the next time you do the first F and the second F, what am I feeling? I'm feeling stress. Oh, the second F is feet. How does ice cream or sugar or alcohol feed the feeling? Oh, when I'm stressed, sugar helps me feel less stressed. At least in the short term. Okay. At least now you're understanding why you keep going back to that behavior. Go ahead and eat it if you want to.

[Lauren Everts]

So is it just about understanding why you're wiring to a certain behavior at this point?

[Michael Bostick]

It is at first, I would say the most important step that we all need to take if we want to make change that lasts. That's the key. We can all make short term changes. But I know from my patients over the years that people don't want a change for two or three weeks. They want a change that lasts for good or at least in the long term. So those first two Fs are really, really powerful because as soon as you develop an awareness of why you engage in a certain behavior, you change your relationship with that behavior. Right. So let's just go to the third F for a minute. So now that you know the feeling stress, now that you know how food feeds the feeling, sugar makes me feel less stressed. Then you go to the final life, which is find. Now can I find an alternative behavior to feed that feeling? So as you said, right, if you're feeling stressed, yeah, you could go to sugar. Or let's say you love yoga. You could actually go on YouTube and do a 10 minute yoga sequence. If you're feeling lonely, instead of going to sugar, you could phone a friend, you could phone your mother or whatever it might be. If, if the reason you're going to sugar is because you feel isolated, you've been on zoom calls all day, you've not seen another human being and you want some time to yourself. You could run yourself a bath.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So do one. That, that it is universal, that I've seen a lot that I don't know that a lot of people maybe have asked you phone addiction. Yeah, do that, what you just did with phone addiction.

[Michael Bostick]

Same thing. Okay, so let's be clear here. If you have like an extreme addiction with alcohol or phones for that matter, you may need some more help, that's for sure. Okay, just to, just to acknowledge that. But a lot of us have these kind of low grade addictions where they're really affecting the quality of our life, we have a dependency on this behavior. And we keep consuming more information, thinking that more information is what we need. Oh, phone addiction is bad. Sugar is going to hurt my teeth and it's going to do this. But the problem is what I've realized and really why I wrote this book is to try and solve this problem. Which is why, despite increasing knowledge, we've got more health podcasts, more books, more online blogs than ever before, right? Yet despite all this information, people are getting sicker. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense. More knowledge is not equating to more change. And this book is my attempt to solve that problem. These are the if. If you don't go to the hidden drivers of your behaviors, you'll never change them in the long term. So in answer to your question, Lauren, in terms of let's say someone's scrolling Instagram for three hours every evening and they want to stop, maybe it's impacting their relationship with their boyfriend or their partner, or they're not able to focus on things that they really need to focus on because they can't stop looking. Right? This is very, very common. Again, let's say you've just had dinner and you're on the sofa and you pull out the phone to start scrolling. You could apply those three Fs. Okay, take a pause. What am I feeling? Yeah, maybe you want to consume information or maybe you're actually looking for connection. Maybe you're actually lonely and the reason you're spending two hours is because you're actually alone. One of the things I found since COVID with my patients and since all the lockdowns is that people got used to doing things at home, right? So let's say yoga, for example. Let's say pre Covid, people who like yoga would usually, they might practice at home, but they'd often go once a week to a class and there's a community and they'd meet other people, like minded people. Since COVID where it all went online, I think an inertia has set in into society and I include myself in this. And we've not broken out of that yet. So people are still doing everything in front of their computers online. And so many people are lonely. Men and women, we know this is a big issue. And you know, feeling lonely has devastating health outcomes in and of themselves. But feeling lonely also drives us to other behaviors. So it's pretty common that people are feeling a little bit isolated and lonely. And that is the cause of spending two to three Hours online. Cause they're looking for some kind of connection. But the 3F exercise completely works with that setting as well.

[Lauren Everts]

You know, it's funny because, like, you're in this office and we have a flexible schedule because of COVID But one of the reasons that I'm a proponent of getting people in is actually not for work productivity and all that. It's actually for what you're describing, to get people in an environment where they're interacting and having friends and like, all this stuff that we kind of came up with that I think a lot of unfortunately, like, younger people have lost because they. They come up in an environment where we just went through this period of time. But I think you. It's. It's hard to, like, I guess, antiquate the benefit of just being in a group setting and interacting with people on a regular basis. Not only just from a social skill perspective, but just from a pure happiness and fulfillment perspective.

[Michael Bostick]

It's. It's huge. Look, I saw a patient a few years ago. This is actually pre Covid, right? I saw this. This young man. He was from recollection about 34 years old. And from the outside, it looked as if he was crushing life. So he's earning good money, drives a nice car, runs his own business. He's working when he wants. He's working at evenings, working at weekends. But he came in to see me in my consultation room. I said, doc, I kind of lost my mojo. Sometimes I'm in the morning, I just lie there. I've got no motivation. I don't want to get up. Sometimes I just look out the window. I feel low. Something's missing, right? There's more to this story than just that. But that, in essence, is what he came in with. So I did a series of tests on him. They all came back normal. I spent a bit of time with him, trying to get to understand what was going on in his life and talk to him. And I said, sure, you have symptoms that are consistent with a diagnosis of depression. But I, as a doctor, never. I've never liked to label people, right. I've always been driven by what is really going on here. Why is this seemingly successful guy struggling so much? And it became really clear when I spoke to him that he didn't spend any time with anyone else. I said, you know, do you have any friends? He goes, I've got friends, but I never got time to see them. Now, he was quite lucky. He was working in the town where he grew up, so a lot of his community was there. Which a lot of us don't have. We moved away for work or whatever, right? So he had that, but he never saw them. So I said to him, I said, okay, for the next six weeks, I want you to meet up with your friends once a week. And when you're with them, put your phones away so you're fully present for the interaction. Now, I appreciate that's not the normal prescription you might get from your doctor, right? But I was like, I think there's something going on here. I think he has a deficiency of connection and community in his life. I think this could be playing a role.

[Lauren Everts]

So to pause you for one second, don't you think that as you're saying that, like, that makes total sense? Don't you think that more doctors should diagnose that kind of pain 100%?

[Michael Bostick]

And that's why in, you know, this is my sixth book, there's a chapter on community in this book. There was one in my last book on happiness. There was one in my book on behavior check. Community is central, right? We feel that we don't need it, that we can do everything on our smartphones and online and on our laptops, so we could be remote workers. I love that stuff as well. But everything needs balance, right? And so literally, with him, he came back six weeks later like a different person. He came in. I remember him knocking on the door. He had a big smile on his face. I said, how you doing? He says, I'm doing great things. Just feel better. I've got my mojo back. And I said, what have you done? He said, well, listen, every Sunday morning, my friends would meet up in the local cafe, and we'd just get a coffee and catch up for an hour. And then after three weeks, they decided, hey, why don't we, on a Wednesday evening after work, play football together or soccer, right? That is all he did.

[Lauren Everts]

I'm cultured. I know what you were talking about.

[Michael Bostick]

I'm just trying to. I'm trying to be respectful to your audience, right? But the point I'm trying to make is he did not have an antidepressant deficiency. He had a friendship deficiency. And once that friendship deficiency was corrected, everything in his life came back online. And I see this everywhere, you know, men and women alike. And I'm sure some of your audience may resonate with that, either themselves, or maybe they might see it in their partner.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Don't you think, too, that there's so many things that are murky with this topic, Meaning so many people are prescribed to, like, Xanax let's take. And then, because they're prescribed to Xanax, the Xanax ends up making them feel depressed. And then they get prescribed to antidepressants to fix the depression, which is actually from the Xanax. Do you see stuff like that all the time?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Or take Adderall. Doctor, I'm so anxious. I'm on Adderall seven days a week. I'm so anxious, I can't sleep. I can't sleep at all. I'm only sleeping five hours a night. And it's because of the Adderall, which makes them anxious.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, I mean, you're speaking to my heart here. This is literally why I do what I do. I have seen this in medicine since I qualified. I've been a medical doctor for 23 years and this is what I fight against. Because what people don't understand is when we go to medical school and it's the same in the UK as it is here in the United States.

[Lauren Everts]

I was going to ask you if there was differentiators.

[Michael Bostick]

It's. I've got loads of good friends who are medical doctors in the us and it's the same thing. We don't get taught about the creation of health. What we get taught about is how to identify symptoms, put a label on them and diagnose them. And once we made the diagnosis, we can breathe a sigh of relief and start the treatment, which is usually medication. Now, listen, sometimes that has value, but we have literally gone to an extreme now where we are medicating everything. And this is one of the reasons why I couldn't keep practicing in the way in which I was practicing, because a lot of these medications have side effects, Right? And so the side effects. Then we have to medicate. Then we have to medicate, as you say, the side effects. And we don't think about, well, what would happen if we got to the root cause. And the root cause. You've got to be careful when you say lifestyle, because people often will take it as that. You're blaming them. Oh, I'm doing it to myself. No, no, no, we're not doing it. No one's doing it to themselves. But we simply do not see these conditions that are overwhelming the US healthcare system. We do not see them in traditional societies.

[D]

I don't mean to brag, but my hair has never been this long and this thick in my life. I don't think it's ever been this shiny either. And I attribute that to a medley of things. I've been working on my hair for a while now and this is what has worked a lot of scalp manipulation. So I'm doing a lot of scalp massage, micro needling of the scalp. I eat so much meat and I think the aminos in the meat really grows my hair. And then I got this Gueshaw brush. It's amazing. I'll put it on my stories and then of course supplementation. And the supplement that I use that I swear by is Nutrafol. So I had hair shedding that was my problem and I noticed that Nutrafol really targeted the root cause of this. So I've seen improved hair growth like I've said, but also decreased shedding and just visible thickness. Nutrafil is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand trusted by over 1 million people. See thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months with Nutrafol. I noticed too that I was wearing clip in extensions all the time and I haven't worn them in like a year. I literally threw them away. The cold dry air of winter can be unforgiving, but your hair doesn't have to suffer. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. When you go to NutraFool.com and enter promo code SkinnyHair, find out why over 4,500 healthcare professionals and stylists recommend Nutrafol for healthier hair. Nutrafol.com spelled n u t r-a f o l.com promo code skinnyhair that's nutraful.com promo code skinny hair Quick break to.

[Lauren Everts]

Talk about Travis Matthew if you know me and you watch this show, you know I love a good piece of clothing. I love style, I love to look and feel good at the same time and most of all be comfortable. Which is why I love the brand Travis Matthews so much. And what I love about it is it is a one stop shop to basically get everything, whether it's jackets or polos or zips or dresses or shoes. They have hats, they have gloves, they have everything all in one place. Sunglasses, belts, you name it. And all of their clothing covers all of the basic needs. They have stuff that looks great on everyone. If you watch this episode on YouTube, you see I wear their shirts a ton of the time and absolutely love them. They have good polos and they have great button ups. If you're new to the brand, I highly suggest you go to travismathieu.com and then check out their best sellers. They have so many great products that you can dive into right away. And like I said, you can build a well rounded out closet just with one single brand. So if you're looking to avoid decision fatigue and trying to bounce back and forth between a million different brands and you're just looking for something comfortable, stable and stylish, Travis Matthew has you covered again, both for men and women. What I personally love about the brand is the versatility of their products. Travis Matthew apparel is designed for confidence and comfort no matter where the day takes you. You can take them to the office, you can wear them after for drinks, you can wear them on dates, you can wear them before bed. They have you covered basically throughout the entire day and the entire week. So check them out. Consider Travis Matthew your holiday headquarters and discover the perfect gift for everyone on your list. Visit www.travismathew.com and receive 20% off your order with code skinny. Again, that's travismathu.com and receive 20% off YOUR order with Code Skinny. Quick break to talk about ynab. You guys spend so much time and effort into earning your money. We all do. We deserve to spend it without the stress or second guessing. This is why I'm so excited to partner with ynab. Ynab is a life changing app that helps you do what you want with the money you have. You'll create a flexible plan for your money throughout the simple practice of giving every dollar a job, keeping you focused on the life that you want. Again, financial stress is one of the biggest stressors that we all deal with in our lives. Not understanding money, not knowing what to do with it, not knowing how to keep it, causes so much friction in our lives that we can just do away with. This is why I love talking about this topic and why I'm so excited to partner with YNAB. You can cover your mortgage and fund your 401k without sacrificing dinners with friends or that long awaited trip to Greece. With the YN app, you'll stop wondering where your money goes and start deciding where it will take you instead. Eliminating a ton of stress that comes with money. Keeping it, Making it. So many of us get out of school and we go through life not being financially literate and then wondering why we're so stressed and why we don't have the funds that we feel we should have in our savings and our retirement accounts. 92% of users report feeling less money stress since using YNAB. This is so important. Again, like I said, once I became financially literate and started understanding what to do and how to keep my money. So much of the stress that I felt in my day to day life went away. So check it out. Life is short. Spend it well. With Ynab, of course we have an incredible offer. TSC, him and her show listeners can claim an exclusive three month free trial with no credit card required at www.ynab.com skinny that's Y N A B.com skinny again for an exclusive three month free trial with NO credit card required. Www.ynab.com skinny.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I may have like low grade ADHD or ADD. I don't know. I can get distracted easy. If I went to you and you said, lauren, I'm gonna put you on Adderall for, for your low grade adhd, I would come back to you in three months and I would say, I can't sleep. I'm sleeping four hours a night and I'm super anxious. Which goes against the two pillars that you talked about, which is sleep and relaxation. So a lot of these pills, it seems like, are taking the four pillars that you talked about. They take away, yeah, they end up taking away the pillars.

[Lauren Everts]

Like side effects. We get more side effects.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It's like, it's, it's like, it's like stacking the side effects on top of the side effects. That's probably frustrating.

[Lauren Everts]

I'd like to talk a little bit about the differences in the US and the UK and I'll, I'll preface by just telling, you know, just sharing something like Lauren and I, fortunately at this stage in our life, you know, we're able to travel often and we go to Europe pretty regularly, not trading, but like at least once a year have been. And when we go over there, we let it loose. So, you know, like we're eating the pizza and the pasta and we're having drinks and wine and we're eating gelato and all these things. And we actually come back and are sometimes losing weight or feeling better. We come here and it's a real struggle. Like we're militant about what we eat and we're disciplined and like it. Do you, do you notice a difference when you travel here compared to European countries?

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, 100%. So when I get off the plane in America, there's, there's two things. There's many things I notice, but there's two key things. Okay. So depending on which airport you land in, you notice a stark difference in the size of people. And I say that with an open heart. I'm, I'm not judging or blaming, but you really do notice it the work. I shouldn't say the worst. The most stark contrast was when I landed once in Philadelphia airport.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

That's so weird that you say that. I showed that to Michael the other day.

[Michael Bostick]

Really?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yep.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. I literally couldn't believe it when I landed. And I thought, wow, the level of obesity that I'm seeing, you know, I got on a plane in the uk, I got off a plane in Philadelphia, and I felt like I was stepping into a different world. I have such compassion for people. I don't believe people are doing it themselves. And I think this relates to the second point, the second big thing. I notice the food environment in the US Is so different from in Europe. I can taste it in the food. It doesn't taste as natural. A. The portion sizes are humongous. Right. So I've learned that often. I, you know, if I'm here with my family or my wife ever, we just need one to share one. Right. So it's a. The volume, but it tastes to me at least, because I'm used to, you know, mostly having whole foods, because that's how I've trained myself and I've changed over the last few years. You can taste it.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You can taste the chemicals, and then you add on. You add on the plastic that it's on and it's hot, and then you can taste the plastic.

[Lauren Everts]

Well, that's what. The reason I shared that story is not to brag that I get to go to Europe once a time. It's that I go there and I. I have some. I'm gluttonous. Like, not, you know, I'm not overeating, but I'm eating things that I would never eat here in the United States, the way that the United States prepares.

[Michael Bostick]

But there's a really interesting point there isn't that when many of us feel health is really difficult, we have to overly restrict. And is health meant to be this hard? Well, unfortunately, I would say in this American food environment, unfortunately, it kind of. It is difficult. And many people, if you. Depending on how you're wired and your genetics, some people feel better when they actually do restrict. When, let's say they don't consume gluten. Look, gluten gets really controversial. You know, people say, should people stop it? Should they not? It depends for who and in what context. Like the first chapter in this book is called Trust Yourself. Why did I write a whole chapter on trusting yourself? Because one thing I think that's happened today is that going back to what I said before, Lauren, about this idea where we've been bombarded with more knowledge, but it's not translating to more health outcomes. One of the reasons for that is because we've outsourced our inner expertise to experts. Right. To outside experts. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I've had my own podcast, Feel Better Live More, for seven years now. Okay. And what I would find is if I spoke to one expert, well, credentialed Harvard Medical School, and they will come on and they would say, listen, I have found that for patients with severe mental health problems, a ketogenic diet can be transformative. Right? And they'll present evidence to support what they're saying, and they'll show you studies, and they'll give you clinical case studies of their patients. Sounds really compelling. Two months later, you'll have a different expert, right. From a different medical school, very well credentialed. And they might say, a whole food plant based diet is really good for mental health. And again, give you research and give you case studies. So what people will do on Instagram, they'd say, hey, Dr. Chatterjee, I'm really confused now. Both of those experts sounded trustworthy. I don't know which expert to trust. I think this is a big problem. And I'll tell you what I think the problem is. I don't think they're asking themselves the right question. I don't think we should ask ourselves, which expert should I trust? I think we need to ask ourselves, why do I no longer trust myself?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I completely agree with you. There's. There's a lack of intuition happening. And I think, I think, to be honest, to even ask the podcast host, I think you're right. You should be asking yourself of. Of how you actually feel, intuitively, how you feel. Well, we're too inundated with too much content all the time. Exactly.

[Michael Bostick]

Even good content is confusing.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It's over saturation.

[Lauren Everts]

I'll give you a stupid example. I'm an individual that I can wake up, not eat any breakfast, have two cups of coffee and a shot of espresso, go to the gym crusher, then eat later and feel great. But I would not prescribe that to everybody. Like, like if she did that, you would be bouncing off the walls. You'd be.

[Michael Bostick]

It just, I can do what you do, but my wife couldn't exactly think people cheated.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

My theory is that you guys wake up with more testosterone than us.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. I mean, there's many factors that play into that, including our past experiences and the state of our gut microbiome, which is going to depend on the inputs we've had in our life. But it's this black and white thinking that I think is causing us problems with our health. But frankly, across society, everything becomes black. Black or white. Is fasting good or bad, Doctor? But hold on a minute. It depends for who and in what context. If you are, you know, severely overweight and let's say you have type 2 diabetes, fasting, if done in the correct way, might be a very helpful tool for you. If you're a teenage girl and you're anorexic and you're struggling putting on weight, fasting may not be the right tool for you. But we want to know, is it good or bad? It depends. And in that example about differing diets, which is confusing people, I say, just like you, Lauren, I say, listen, if you like that expert for four weeks, try their diet. And whilst you're trying it, pay attention. Energy, vitality, sleep. What's your focus like? What's your gut like? Are you less bloated, are you less constipated, whatever it might be? And then try the other person's night for four weeks. And again, ask yourself the same things and you will know at the end of that trial. Ah, you know what? I like them both. And here's the truth. They can both be right for different people. We need to figure out what works for us.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Don't you think, though, that sometimes when someone's like, I don't know, I'm confused, so I don't have to take accountability? There's a little bit of like a, like this is. There's too many opinions. Should I be vegan, should I, should I eat meat so I don't have to take accountability? I think you're, you're right. It's, it's actually taking the matter into your own hands and experimenting on yourself and being your own human guinea pig. And like you said in your book, trusting your own gut, your own insulin.

[Michael Bostick]

I think it's the only way we navigate the world of more and more information, more and more noise around us. Good noise, bad noise, helpful noise, unhelpful noise. The only way you get through that is by starting to trust yourself. And so I believe after 23 years in medicine, whilst I acknowledge every single person is different, I believe in this modern age, the most important thing that each and any one of us can do each day is have a daily practice of solitude.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I literally was just going to say, don't you think the problem is that people don't want to sit in quiet 100% 100%.

[Michael Bostick]

I think. Listen. Solitude, for some people, it's a scary word. Think of it as time for yourself. Right. If you're constantly consuming information from the outside, even good information, like on your show or on my show, you're not giving yourself a chance to listen or.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Even hear what you think. Yeah, I can't. I. I personally love solitude. It's my favorite thing ever. And if I don't get it, I'm not. I'm. I am exponentially a more unhappy person if I don't have solitude because I can't hear myself think. It's too much noise.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah.

[Lauren Everts]

On that note, I heard. I think. I believe I heard you say on a podcast that humans, for every nine bits of negative information they hear, they only take in one bit of positive information. Funny, I was thinking about this as I thought about asking you this question. As an entrepreneur, you. You deal with so much bad information that you almost have to be delusional away and only look for the good. Like, you almost have to ignore a lot of the. Because it's so hard to do anything. So you almost train away. But for the. For somebody who's taking in all bad and all they can see is the bad that's going to life and everything's doom and gloom. And I think a lot of people that watch the news or they scroll, Twitter, like, how do you train people to look at that one piece of good information and focus on that instead of the other stuff? Yeah.

[Michael Bostick]

I mean, the first thing you have to acknowledge is that humans. So that includes us three and everyone listening, have a negativity bias. It's okay. It's hardwired into us. That is what has allowed us to survive. Right. So we have to be aware of that, first of all, that we had to know 50,000 years ago, if that noise in the bush, if it was the wind or a wild predator wanting to attack us, and we were rewarded by living. If we overreacted, that sounds like I.

[Lauren Everts]

Would have done well in the wilderness.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I call him. He's looking for the saber tooth tiger.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, but it's true. It's true. Right? Cause if you have this positivity bias, Oh, I think it's the wind. Everything's gonna be fine. And you were wrong. You're dead. But if you.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I'd be dead.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, well, exactly. But if you go the other way. And that's why we take in nine bits of negative information for every one bit, because we're trained. That's what's gonna keep us alive. Unfortunately, Today, not unfortunately. Fortunately, many of us are living in a much safer world today. Not everyone, but many of us. And so that negativity bias is now working against us. And it's leading to anxiety, depression, low mood, procrastination, lack of motivation. Right. So you have to do something each day to work against that. That is why we keep hearing about gratitude. It's almost a cliche now we hear about it so much. But it works because gratitude, a daily practice of gratitude, trains you to look for the positive that is already there. So I have my own morning routine each.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Let's hear it.

[Michael Bostick]

Okay.

[Lauren Everts]

She's gonna make you share it.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

This is the podcast for it.

[Michael Bostick]

Okay. So the first thing I want to say on routines is that every single person has a morning routine, whether they think they do or not.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Totally agree with you. Love that.

[Michael Bostick]

No one's like, oh, it's not for me. This morning routine stuff, this 5am Club, I'm not doing it. I'm like, oh, wait a minute, you got a routine. The question is, have you been intentional about it?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Are you scrolling Instagram for two hours? Are you beating your meat when you wake up, what are you doing? You're doing something.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. You're doing something and there's consequence.

[Lauren Everts]

Yeah.

[Michael Bostick]

So what I say and what I've really figured out over the last years is that so many of our thoughts, our behaviors, our actions, our feelings are downstream from the content that we're consuming. Right? So if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do, and I'm not judging you or blaming you, if you go on your phone and go straight onto the news and you see the negativity around the world, you go onto your work email and see the 10 emails you didn't get to which you have to get onto straight away, and you get into an argument on social media, whatever it might be, does it surprise you that half an hour later your outlook on the world might be a little bit negative? You might be a bit reactive with your boyfriend or your children or whatever. When you look at it like that.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You'Re like, I love this conversation.

[Michael Bostick]

If I put in negativity half an hour later, of course it's more likely I'm going to be negative. So if you change how you start each morning, right. And put in positivity, not fake positivity, Right. But training yourself to look at the positives, you are going to change the trajectory of your day. I've seen that with thousands of patients. I've seen it with myself. So going back to your question, what do I do? So I have a framework for a morning routine that I've taught my patients for years, that I apply, that I call the three M's. Right. The first M is mindfulness. The second M is movement, and the third M is mindset. Now, you can apply this framework in five minutes or one hour. It depends how much time you have. I started a few years ago doing five or ten minutes. Yes. I now probably do 30 or 40 minutes each day. But I didn't start there. It took me time because I realized very quickly that I'm a better human being in every single way. When I do my three M's, I'm a better husband, a better father, a better doctor. I'm better at every aspect of my life. So the first stem is mindfulness. Okay. It can be any practice of mindfulness. For me, it's meditation. It could be breath work. It could be having a cup of coffee and tasting it and not looking at TikTok at the same time. Right. Anything just to force you to be present. Not to force you. To encourage you to be present.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Looking at the newspaper, being like, ugh, did you hear what is going on in Provence?

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

That's what he does to me. I'm like.

[Michael Bostick]

I'm like, are you.

[Lauren Everts]

But hold on. But I would say again, going back to what works, I. Again, maybe I'm wired. I don't scroll and see a bunch of neg. Like, I just don't see the world. I don't see the world as a negative place to begin with.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So that's maybe your mindfulness.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So that's great. So listen, why I always provide frameworks is because I have seen firsthand through my clinical practice that different things work for different people.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yeah.

[Michael Bostick]

Right. So you may be completely fine with that. And I would ask.

[Lauren Everts]

I'll give you, like, an example, like when people tell me, like, you can't get on the thing to see the email because then you feel like you're obligated someone. Like, maybe I'm fucked up, but I don't feel that obligation to those people.

[Michael Bostick]

No, that's great. And I would. I would imagine. Are you quite calm in the morning?

[Lauren Everts]

I'm actually very calm.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So maybe you don't need that approach. Right. So maybe you're fine with your mornings.

[Lauren Everts]

I think that. But again, I think that I have had to train my mind over a very long time to look at the positive. And when I say I don't see the world as a negative place, I am not not acknowledging that there's terrible things that happen in the world. I just have learned to look at the bright side.

[Michael Bostick]

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

[Lauren Everts]

I've gotten better. I've gotten better.

[Michael Bostick]

Is this similar?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I mean, it's.

[Lauren Everts]

I think every married couple out there.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Is listening, like, yeah, he's hanging like a gargoyle. Do you want a coffee? I'm like, yes, I want a coffee like I've wanted for the last 18 years. Every morning.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah. So the point is, right? So let's go back to this framework. Just in the sense that I hope it's useful for people.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yes, please give us the morning routine.

[Michael Bostick]

Emma's mindfulness. So this is what I do. I do templ, some meditation, right? That's my mindfulness practice. But you choose the one that you like. Then I go into my kitchen and I'm in my pajamas. This is really important, right? I like to make coffee. So I weigh out my coffee, I pour in the hot water, and I put a timer on for five minutes. In those five minutes, I don't go on email or Instagram. I do a five minute workout, a strength workout in my pajamas, right? And I'll explain the science of behavior change for people if they want that later. But it's really important how I set that up because I've rarely missed a day of that five minute workout for five years. And it's got nothing to do with motivation. I use the same principles that we all use to brush our teeth every day.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It's a habit stack.

[Michael Bostick]

It's a Habit stack. I made it easy so I can never say I don't have time. And I've stuck it on to an existing habit.

[Lauren Everts]

Which is the coffee.

[Michael Bostick]

Which is the coffee. I'm gonna have my coffee. And therefore I do it. So basically that's my second M movement. And then I go to the third M, which is mindset. So I've got my hot black coffee made exactly the way that I like it. And then what I'll either do, I do both these days, but what I used to do is I have a few books lying around my kitchen, uplifting books. And I'll just read a few pages just to get me in a positive mindset. But I also now have three questions I ask myself each day. Okay, am I okay sharing them?

[Lauren Everts]

And they're the same questions every day.

[Michael Bostick]

Same questions every day. Because I think if you ask yourself the same questions every day, you force yourself to go deeper. If you change the questions each day, I find that you can distract yourself. You don't have to go deep. You can just keep at a superficial level. Now, I know people love these questions because I've been telling my Instagram audience for the last 18 months and my patients for many years, people find them really, really effective. Right. The first question, they're so easy. What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? Okay, simple practice of gratitude. Even if you think your life sucks and you've got too much work to do and your boss is an idiot, whatever it might be, there is something in your life you can be grateful for. The heating that's on, the food that you can afford. A friend that reached out to you, whatever it might be. And if you practice every day writing that down, you will slowly start to change how you see the world. You said you've been working on this for a while, right? So it can change. Question 1. Question 2. What is the most important thing I have to do today? That is one of my favorite questions. Because in a world where our to do lists are never done and we're always thinking about what we didn't get done, we forget about what is truly important. And often we say, often we only do the truly important things when everything else is done.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You eat the frog.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

You eat the frog. You pick the frog.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So what was the most important thing that you decided today would be?

[Michael Bostick]

I said this morning was today. And the context of this is, I've been traveling. I've been in la. I'm still a bit jet lagged.

[Lauren Everts]

You've been doing a lot.

[Michael Bostick]

I'VE been doing a lot, talking a lot. So I said, today I must go for a walk outside at lunchtime and not just stay inside and be at my computer.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Get three minutes and no walk perpetuates you to do really well on the podcast and be clear.

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly. But each day I may answer differently. It's the same question. Right. But each day it's different. And what it does people initially go, well, there's more than one important thing to do each day. That's not the point. The point is you make a decision. Right Now, a lot of people don't know this, that when the word priority came into the English language in the 1500s, it was a singular word.

[Lauren Everts]

There was no plural.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Ah, that's interesting. Yeah.

[Michael Bostick]

But now we've all got these multiple priorities that we can't get done. Right. So this question really helps address that. What is the most important thing now? If someone's listening to this and they try it and they're initially struggling, I say, okay, maybe do one for work and one for home initially, but over time, make it one. So the week before I came out to America to do this book tour on the Monday I remember it was a workish, you know, it's a work thing. I thought, I've got to get in an article to my publisher, Penguin in the uk. That was the most important thing I had to do that day. It doesn't mean that my relationship with my wife wasn't important or my children wasn't important. It was just that that's why I need to put my attention today. On the Tuesday I put down, I'm gonna be away for two weeks. My wife was away at the weekends. Actually, you know what? When the kids are in bed tonight, let me make sure I spend some quality time with her. It doesn't mean my work wasn't important or my responsibilities to, you know, my, my job and my family weren't important. But that was where I wanted to put my focus on that day. On the Wednesday, I remember this really well, that, wow, I'm going to go to America on Friday for two weeks. I won't see my kids when they come home from school at 4pm today. The most important thing I have to do today is make sure my laptop is shut, my phone is in another room so that I'm fully present with them to listen to them. I'm sharing those to help land the point for people. They were unique to me. I promise you, if you take nothing else from this podcast but just that last question and you Ask yourself that question for the next seven days, each morning, and then you act on it. I promise you, your life will start to feel different. What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? What is the most important thing I have to do today? And the third question is, what quality would I like to showcase to the world today? And I'll tell you why I love that so much.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

That's a good one.

[Michael Bostick]

So much of what we do is us simply repeating past behaviors. We think that the person who we were yesterday is a person who we have to be today, but it's simply not true. It's just habit and repetition. You can change who you are anytime you want, but you won't change who you are if you, you know, you have a reactive start to the day. You're just scrolling, you're looking at emails, and then you wonder why you're repeating the same things that you did the day before. This question, it's about visualization, it's about intention. And so for me, it will often be patience or compassion. Like this morning I wrote down, because I take my journal with me and I write it down. I want to show the world the quality of patience today. Right? Why is that important? It means that if I'm tempted to not be patient or compassionate for that matter, let's say someone barges in front of me when I'm ordering a coffee here, or someone cuts me up, you know, cuts in front of me in the road, or I don't like an email, instead of reacting to them, I'm more likely to behave in a kind and compassionate and patient way because I specified it in the morning. It's a simple practice, but if you do it consistently, you will find within a week, within two weeks, you start to show up in a different way. It will make you healthier, it will make you happier, and it will start to change your relationship.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And you have to really quickly tell us the coffee that you drink. If you're a coffee snob. You said you're really into the coffee. What's the coffee that you're drinking in the uk?

[Michael Bostick]

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

[D]

I have been talking to so many people off and on Air about GLP1s, and it's really interesting. A lot of people are really thinking of it as a tool to lose weight. So some of them are not affordable. We know this. There's been a lot of debate and conversation, but there is a platform called Noom who is making it affordable. So their Noom GLP1s are starting at $149. Noom GLP1 is available now, and it ships to your door in seven days. So you don't have to go in anywhere. It just comes to your door. It's very discreet. Basically, Noom combines their proven weight loss program with GLP1 so you can lose weight and keep it off. I think that's what I'm hearing from a lot of my friends or people off air or on air that you want to make sure you have a plan to keep it off, and you want to use the GLP1 as a tool in your toolbox and not the main tool. And what I like about NOOM is their leaders in behavior change, weight loss. So, yes, they offer a GLP one, but they also give you a plan. So they have an app. And noom's app comes with a number of features like protein tracking, so you can ensure that you're getting the right nutrients. And they also have fitness classes. You can keep the muscle while losing the fat. This is so important. I think if you're exploring a GLP one, you want to make sure that you're doing the fitness classes, that you're lifting the weights, and that you're making sure that you're prioritizing protein. And again, I've heard this from so many intelligent scientists, doctors, experts on the podcast. And NOOM doesn't just give you access to meds. It helps you build healthy habits so you can lose weight and keep it off. So a lot of platforms will just give you the GLP one and they don't sort of give you a plan or habits. That's what I like about noom. They set you up for success. If someone was ever asking me personally about GLP1s, I obviously don't know a lot about it, But I do know that you need to have a strategic plan to go with the GLP1. And with Noom, you won't be going at it alone. You'll get access to a clinician, a coach and a supportive community all within the app on your phone. This is very avant garde when it comes to weight loss. You basically can ask your care team anything and you can get support with medication and side effect management. So they kind of COVID everything, which is really awesome. Noom is more than just meds and it's helped millions of people lose weight. I went on and like read the reviews and people are raving about it. People love it. Noom GLP1 starts at $149 and is delivered to your door in seven days. Start your GLP1 journey today at Noom.com that's n o o m dot com Noom a smart way to Lose weight.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Disclaimer not all customers will medically qualify for prescription medicines. Compounded medications are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy or quality.

[Lauren Everts]

Quick break to talk about Symbiotica, one of our favorite supplement brands in the market. We love them so much that we've had the founders of Symbiotica on this show, I think, about four or five times now because there's so much to talk about with them. They have such a wide array of phenomenal products. The one I want to highlight today is their liposomal vitamin C. As we head into 2025 and start the new year, one of the most important things outside of having more collagen to improve your skin and look good is feeling good and making sure that you have the right immune support as we start the year. I just got off with my doctor the other day, shout out Dr. Conover talking about how I want to feel in the new year and I want to feel healthy. I don't want to get sick. I want to start with a bang and start with a ton of enthusiasm and energy. So I'm going to be stacking Symbiotica's liposomal vitamin C every single time. Fun fact that Lauren and I travel. I bring at least two to three liposomal vitamin Cs on the plane and I never get sick because of this. I just jack up my vitamin C levels. It doesn't only help with the immune system. Like I said, it'll help you improve your skin, boost more collagen, and an assortment of different things. What's so cool about Symbiotica is the quality of their products. They're free from seed oils, preservatives, toxins or artificial additives. You're only getting the good stuff your body craves and with their advanced liposomal absorption technology, nutrients are delivered safely and efficiently so your body gets exactly what it Needs right where it needs it. So check them out. Go on there. See what's right for you. Again, you can't go wrong. High quality holistic wellness right at your fingertips. Be present and feel your best for life's most memorable moments. Go to symbiotica.com TSC or use code TSC for 20 off your subscription order plus free shipping today. Again, go to symbiotica.com TSC or use code TSC for 20 off your subscription order plus free shipping today. Enjoy. As I'm hearing you talk, it's funny. Like I, I speak to entrepreneurs a lot and when we talk about like quote unquote priorities, I say like, write all the priorities that you need to do in order to like execute against your plan or build your business or start a whatever it may be and write these long lists, like five, ten things. I'm like, okay, now like cross off like two through nine and just do the first thing. Like just do the one thing. Because it's gonna, what I talk about is like, it's momentum. Like if you do that one thing, it's gonna lead to number two. But when you have this long laundry list of things, you just never get to them and you stack them in the wrong order and you do the easier thing. And I was even thinking as you were talking about, you know, what attributes you wanna show. And in your example you said patience. And that's maybe to combat a negative behavior.

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly.

[Lauren Everts]

But I was thinking, what if you're out and you're applying for a job or you're trying to land a date? Like maybe you wanna say then, like, I wanna show confidence today.

[Michael Bostick]

Exactly. And then what's really important. I love that you put a list there. What I've always been fascinated by as a doctor is a patient's in my consultation room. There are 10 things I could tell them possibly to help them in their lifestyle improve, Improve their health. But if I tell them all 10 things, I'll end up doing none of.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Them because it's too overwhelming.

[Michael Bostick]

It's too overwhelming. And I teach doctors.

[Lauren Everts]

I've created a course called Prescribing Too much optionality too. I don't think we're good with options.

[Michael Bostick]

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

[Lauren Everts]

That doesn't surprise me.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, because it's. It's behavior change. Back then, you had to go from one screen to the next, confirm audit, go to the third screen, put in your car details again, there's like four steps to take each step. Oh, I don't really want this.

[Lauren Everts]

If I have Apple Pay on my phone and I can do an E comm compared to if I don't. Whatever sites implement Apple Pay, that's. I'm. I'm probably. I'm probably done.

[Michael Bostick]

Yeah, exactly.

[Lauren Everts]

The FaceTime.

[Michael Bostick]

Yes, check that out. So don't give yourself too much choice. Think about those three questions. And I want to make one more point, which I think, I really think people are not getting. And this is really the underlying thesis of this book, make change that last. Right. Too often we focus on the behavior. But what I've come to realize after two decades of seeing patients, that it's not the behavior that's the issue, it's the energy behind the behavior. What I mean by that is the reason New Year's resolutions often don't work, in my view, is because underlying them is a feeling of lack rather than a feeling of love.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

It's scarcity.

[Michael Bostick]

It's scarcity. If you don't feel like you're enough and you're consumed with fear, guilt and shame, and you're trying to overcome that by pushing through on your sugar detox or your spinning class, that will last for a few weeks, maybe a few months, but you will always reset back to where you were. If the energy behind it is one of love and someone like, I actually like who I am. I want to improve my life. I want to be kind to myself. You will naturally make better behaviors, better choices. Right? So those three questions, right. I'm gonna put out a challenge to your audience and say, listen, if you can answer those three questions every day for the next seven days, the next 14 days, I bet that other behaviors in your life starts to change without you directly thinking about them. Because if you're feeling stressed all the time and you're feeling negative about the world and you're reacting to all the emails that you're sent, guess what? You are going to consume more sugar and more caffeine and more alcohol. Right? Those Things are downstream from the way that you're feeling. That's why I created that 3F exercise. Whereas if you set the intention each morning about how you want to live, and you're a bit calmer, a bit kinder, you have a bit of gratitude, you will naturally start to eat less sugar, stay up late longer, you'll naturally start to consume less alcohol. I have seen this time and time again. That's why I'm so passionate about this idea. Yes, let's get more external knowledge about what kind of things we should be doing. But let's also get the internal knowledge and insight that only comes when we spend time with ourselves and focus intentionally on how we want to live each day.

[Lauren Everts]

So I hate to do this to you, but I'm gonna make you do it one more time. Cause like I said earlier, the audience sometimes takes notes. Just quickly summarize and repeat the three questions so that they can have them.

[Michael Bostick]

What is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? What is the most important thing I have to do today? And which quality do I want to showcase to the world?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Okay, so Michael's this morning would be my wife. My wife. And the one quality you want to showcase is a good husband. That's. That's. That would start your morning off.

[Michael Bostick]

Maybe you're programming Micah for what he's going to put down tomorrow. When he does these three questions, I'm gonna know.

[Lauren Everts]

What I was gonna tell you is I'm gonna do my commitment to you. I'm gonna do this exercise now. I like this. I see. I. And when I said earlier that, like, I've worked, I mean, I get the benefit of meeting people like yourself that have so much knowledge. And I always say, like, selfishly, we do this show because we've been learning over the last decade from people that are further than us. And, like, we extract that. We're obviously not perfect, we're works in progress. But I've taken so many lessons. And what I've realized over the years is, to your point earlier, you have to do what individually works for you. Imagine, like, there's 800 guests that have been on the show. Imagine if I'm trying to, like, take all of that and say, I'm doing everything.

[Michael Bostick]

You can't do it.

[Lauren Everts]

Yeah. And the disclaimer for our listeners is like, my hope is that people listen to this and they're taking the things that work for them and they're testing different things.

[Michael Bostick]

And, you know, well, I think it's.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Genius because you do make it easy. And Approachable.

[Lauren Everts]

But. But what I. But the point is, is I learned a lot and I've gotten to a much better place than I was a decade ago by having these conversations.

[Michael Bostick]

But now it changes. It doesn't happen overnight. And I don't want anyone who's listening to this, who hopefully feels a bit inspired to think, oh, maybe I can take a slightly different approach to make changes that actually last. Right. I don't want them to say, oh, because this doctor said, do them, that I have to do them. Exactly. No, no. Remember what I said about trusting yourself. Listen, right? Try those three questions. Maybe you want to tweak them. Maybe you've got a better one for you, or maybe you really like one of them. Are you going to do one of them each day? That's completely okay. Or maybe you'll take that 3M framework and go, yeah, I quite like those 3M's. And if someone's listening and they feel that they don't have time for those three M's, I just want to really quickly share. I saw this patient a few years ago. I think she was 40, maybe 38. She had two kids. She was a single parent and she was really struggling with her skin, really bad eczema, and she was really, really stressed. Now, there's many things that can cause eczema, but I certainly felt that chronic stress was making her eczema worse. And I was chatting to her about morning routines and she was like, Dr. Chastity, you gotta be kidding me. I don't have time for these routines. Right? You don't get my life. I'm busy. I've got kids to get ready. I said, okay, do you have 10 minutes in the morning? She goes, no. I said, you have eight minutes. She said, no. I said, do you have five minutes? She said, well, yeah, I can give you five minutes. I said, okay, let me help you craft a 3m 5 minute morning routine. Right? So the first step, mindfulness. What did she do? One minute of a breath that I call the three, four, five breath. When you breathe in for three, you hold for four and you breathe out for five. It's very, very calming, right? So one of Those breaths takes 12 seconds. Five of them take one minute. So she would do one minute of three, four, five breathing. Then she would do two minutes on the second M, which is movement. So she used to like yoga. So she picked her favorite three yoga moves and she would just, for two minutes, just go and do those three moves. And then the final M, which is mindset. She decided Again, I help my patients personalize things for them, it's not what I want, it's what they want to do. She wanted to do affirmations, which are short statements in the present tense, to give your mind positive information. There's some pretty good data on affirmations. I think for some people, they're game changing. And she would just say, for two minutes, I'm calm, I'm happy, I'm stress free. I'm calm, I'm happy, I'm stress free. Now, I am not kidding you, right? All she did was those five minutes. A week later, her skin was about 20% better. Two weeks later, it was about 50% better. And then what happened is that she had built momentum and what I call the ripple effect kicked in because she had felt calm for five minutes and she had a sense of control over her life in a way that she didn't before. She then started to make other positive changes. She'd go for a 15 minute walk at lunchtime. She'd start to buy a bit more healthier food at the supermarket. It all started with that five minute routine. And her skin, I didn't reverse her eczema with that, but it got significantly better. So if anyone's thinking they don't have time, I share that example. To go even five minutes, I promise you, will make a massive difference.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I love that advice. Before you go, you have to tell us about regret and how it's a form of perfectionism. That's very interesting to me.

[Michael Bostick]

This is an idea I have been thinking about for a few years. And I wrote a large section in this book on this. And it was really, there's many things that fed into me viewing regret like this. Okay, so one of the things I've been a bit obsessed with over the past few years are the regrets of the dying. So I had this beautiful conversation on my podcast two years ago with a lady called Bronnie Ware, and she wrote the book the Five Regrets of the Dying. And she was a palliative care nurse for about seven years. And she basically said, look, at the end of their life, people say the same things. I wish I'd worked less. I wish I spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me. I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy. Things like that, right on their deathbed, when it's all over, they're like, yeah, I wish I'd done it differently. And I would think about that. So I would Use that to help me make changes in my present day life, which I have done loads. But where this idea about regret and perfectionism came in is I've realized for much of my life I've been driven by external validation. I've been very harsh with myself, very self critical. But I have changed all that. Whereas now I have a very kind and compassionate voice inside. So you can change it if you know how and if you practice. And of course, this book has loads of tips on how to do that. What I've come to realize, Lauren, is that to me, regret is a form of perfectionism. Underlying this idea that, oh, I regret that, right. And we look at our past in a negative way is this idea that I could have done better, but I don't think I could have done better. I think everyone is doing the best they can based upon what they know and their current life experience. That doesn't mean I cannot learn from the past. I can. There's many things in my past that if I come across those situations again, I would choose different choices, I would act differently. But for me, if I look back on my past with regret and regret is tinged with disappointment for me, I kind of think it makes me think that I had the possibility to be perfect. Why did I not make the perfect choice? No, I'm human. I'm an imperfect human. I made mistakes. That's okay. If I go down the road of regret, I start to feel guilt and shame and that doesn't help me. And I've seen with my patients, it doesn't help them. So I've learned to make peace with my past. Right. I go, yes, you know, I did some things that if I was in that situation again, I would do differently. But I don't beat myself up for my past behaviors. Many people do, they regret. This is how I ended that relationship. I did that to my friend or whatever it might be. I personally don't believe that for most people, it's a helpful way of viewing themselves. As Maya Angelou said, I think you know, when you know better, you do better. Right? So that's how I approach it in my life. And it literally has been transformative. It allows you to forgive yourself and not look back with rose tinted lenses that you could have acted differently. Does that make sense?

[Lauren Everts]

Because it's kind of like what you're. It's very practical. What you're saying is you think you could have acted differently, but at that time you probably couldn't have. You probably didn't have the tools.

[Michael Bostick]

So that's who you were.

[Lauren Everts]

So it's pointless to, it's pointless to beat yourself up because, like, it is what it is and you didn't have the tools at that time to act in a different way.

[Michael Bostick]

But I'm not saying some people say, oh, no regrets, man. And they move forward and go, they're not going to take accountability for the past. They don't want to change. They're like, that's just who I am. But I'm not saying that this is very kind way of looking at yourself. It's got compassion at its heart. And perfectionism is a massive issue. I don't know if you guys know this or not. Rates of perfectionism have been going up in America and the UK since 1980. We all think it's due to social media. No, it was happening before 1980. We think we, we have these unattainable ideas of perfect. It's toxic. And perfectionists, we know that the traits of perfectionism is associated with anxiety, depression, suicide. Right? This is massive. And social media is certainly making it worse because of what we call perfectionist presentation. You know, where this idea that we all present the best parts of our lives. I'm not blaming people. I don't post on my Instagram about my dirty washing or the plates that need, you know, cleaning in the sink. I don't. Why would I do that? But unfortunately, we are being presented these semi perfect lives and our subconscious takes this idea that my life is inferior. There are simple things you can do to start changing that. And I believe that looking at regret as a form of, you know, as a form of perfectionism, I think is going to be incredibly helpful for people. And I put a reel out on my Instagram about a month ago for the first time with this as an idea. It blew up. I think it really resonated with people and I'm really glad because it's, it's massively helped me.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I cannot tell everyone enough. Go buy your book. Make Change that Lasts. I respect so much of what you said.

[Lauren Everts]

Where can they find it?

[Michael Bostick]

Well, Make Change that Lasts is available in all the usual places, you know, Amazon, your local bookshop. It's in a paperback ebook, also an audiobook, which I narrate. So if you like that.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

I love your voice.

[Lauren Everts]

I was going to say if I had your voice in my head in the morning, I would be like 10 years ahead because it is a.

[Michael Bostick]

Do you know what, the amount of people who stop me even in a dusty old voice and say that to me, do you know who would disagree with you.

[Lauren Everts]

Who?

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Yes, his wife.

[Michael Bostick]

My wife. She's like, who are all these people saying you've got a relaxing voice? A lot of people do say that.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

So it's relaxing. It is relaxing.

[Michael Bostick]

I mean, look. And it goes, you guys have got a great show, if people are interested. My podcast is called Feel Better Live More in all the usual places, and it's this kind of stuff each week, so.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

And where can everyone find you on Instagram?

[Michael Bostick]

It's at Dr. Chatterjee, which is. D R C H A T T E R J E E Make change that lasts.

[Dr. Rangan Chatterjee]

Nine simple ways to break free from the habits that hold you back. Thank you so much.

[Lauren Everts]

Quick notice that come back to you about.