Pod Insights Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee BITESIZE | The 5 Minute Habits That Can Transform Your Health | Dr Rangan Chatterjee #661 About this episode Why is it that so many of us find it hard to stick to a new diet or lifestyle plan? We all start off well enough – full of energy and optimism but then the novelty soon wears off and life gets in the way. After some time, we are right back where we first started.
Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 92 of the podcast when my good friend, Dr Ayan Panja, put me in the hot seat.
In this clip, we explore why lasting change doesn’t often come from huge life overhauls or extreme routines, but from small actions repeated consistently over time. We discuss why so many health plans fail, how 5 minute habits can create a powerful ripple effect throughout our lives, and why sustainable lifestyle change may be much simpler than we think.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Rangan Chatterjee? Before we get into this week's episode, I am really excited to share that I am bringing my Thrive Tour, Transform Your Health and Happiness to Canada and Europe this September and November. It's a live, interactive, uplifting show that over 20,000 people came to last year across the UK and Australia. I'll be sharing powerful stories, life-changing insights, and simple tools that will inspire you to feel better, think clearer, and live with more intention and joy. To get your tickets right now and see all of the dates and venues, go to drchatterjee.com/live. I really hope that you can join me.
0:46 Rangan Chatterjee? Welcome to Feel Better, Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 92 of the podcast where my good friend Dr. Ian Panger put me in the hot seat. In this clip, we explore why lasting change doesn't often come from huge life overhauls or extreme routines, but from small actions repeated consistently over time. We discuss why so many health plans fail, how five-minute habits can create a powerful ripple effect throughout our lives, and why sustainable lifestyle change may be much simpler than we think.
1:31 Rangan Chatterjee? We have been conditioned to think that health is hard, that it's complicated. Let's say you want to move your body more. We've been conditioned to think that that happens if you go to the gym or if you're training for a half marathon. If you don't have one of those lofty goals, that it doesn't count. We sort of overly focus on those big, unattainable goals and we forget that it's about it's about getting really good at doing the little things. If you get good at doing five minutes every day, that's where the magic happens. That's when things start to change. I think the biggest issue at the moment is that nobody's got any time. Absolutely. I mean, you're a GP like me and people will constantly come in and say to me,
2:16 Rangan Chatterjee? "Look, Dr. Chatterjee, you know, I get that. I want to do that. I want to do some things that are going to help me with my..." Health and my wellbeing, but I don't have time, I'm busy. I'm really trying to show people that every little bit does count. And five minutes of movement, let's say every day, simple movements that fits in around your lifestyle. It's going to have much more impact on your life and your wellbeing than going to the gym for one hour a week. And like you, I don't believe that you can be healthy by just focusing on one area of your health. It's very typical that someone will go, right, okay, I'm going to change my diet this year. I'm going to do something that I've never done before. I'm going to get a new diet plan. I'm going to stick to it. I'm just going to change my life. Right?
3:00 Speaker 01 Heard that before.
3:01 Rangan Chatterjee? You've heard that before and you know, I've probably been guilty of that myself before. Right? It's very common human trait to do that. But it very much feeds into that all or nothing approach, which I'm trying to move people away from. But if we take diet, for example, people are trying to reduce their sugar intake. They're trying to reduce how much alcohol they're consuming and often they'll go completely cold turkey. Right? No sugar, no alcohol. And for a week or two, they managed to do that and they're feeling good, they're feeling, you know, they're sleeping better. They've got more energy, they can concentrate for longer. But then two weeks in, three weeks in, it just slowly starts to slip back and go right back to where they started.
3:43 Rangan Chatterjee? Because maybe the diet or the alcohol wasn't the problem. Maybe they were the way that they coped with the stress that was in their life. Let's say there was a lot of work stress or family stress. Well, actually, a bit of sugar in the evening helps kind of numb that a little bit and helps soothe it.
4:00 Speaker 01 It's a sticking plaster, isn't it?
4:02 Rangan Chatterjee? Sticking plaster, right? And it's same with a glass of wine often. And I found, and I'd be interested in your view on this. You've got to really understand what that is serving for that patient. It's no good saying, hey, you're eating too much sugar, you have to reduce it. Right? Well, if we don't understand why they're choosing to do that in the first place, is it psychological reason? Is it conditioning? Is it they don't know? Is it an education issue that they don't know how harmful it is? Or is it a way to soothe the stress in their life? Actually, depending on which one of those things it is, that will also alter the approach. You take simply saying you've got to reduce your sugar without understanding why they're doing that. You know what? I just haven't found it to be that useful in the long term. I mean, what do you think?
4:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, I think behaviour change is is is the key to this and understanding what makes you tick. Because people will think, wait a second, you know, that is why I'm craving sugar at this time of day because whatever, you know, I'm stressed or they've had sugary snacks earlier in the day and they're crashing.
5:05 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah. And so we've just said, we can't look at one thing in isolation if we're going to make long term change. And I was thinking, okay, I had this idea for five minutes. I've seen over and over again that five minutes chunks of health are achievable and people can do them repeatedly in the long term. It's come from a lot of experience, but also research. So the experience is, and there's many patients I could bring up here, but there's one in particular I always remember, a forty two year old chap who came in to see me. He was a little bit overweight, struggling with energy, struggling with his mood. You know, a very typical patient that you might see in general practice. So I chatted to him for a while and I felt that
5:50 Rangan Chatterjee? his lifestyle was probably contributing in a huge part to the way he was feeling, but I don't think he was quite aware of what he was doing that was contributing and also what he could do about it. So we went through a variety of different things. And at the end of it, he really seemed to enjoy and resonate with what I said about strength training. He said, um, yeah, I'm in doc, strength training, I'm going to do it. I can see all the benefits for it. And what would you like me to do? Forty minutes, three times a week at the gym. And I said, hey, look, that would be absolutely amazing if you can do that. And he goes, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do it. And he and he walks out of the surgery. You know, he's feeling good. He's got a smile on his face and he's full of motivation. He comes back a month later with a follow up and he walks in and I said, hey, look, so how are you getting on?
6:36 Rangan Chatterjee? And his body language changes. He's, he becomes a bit sunken, his shoulders rolling and he's, he looks a bit sheepish and he says, "Hey Doc, I've not actually managed to go yet because work's been really busy. The gym's quite far away from work and my house is quite expensive, so I've just not done it yet." And I didn't think, why is he not doing what I've asked him to do? I thought, Rangan, you've clearly not given him advice that he feels is relevant in the context of his own life. And I took my jacket off and I said, "Right, I'm going to teach you a strength workout right now
7:18 Rangan Chatterjee? where you don't need to join the gym, you don't need to buy any equipment and you don't even need to get changed." He's like, "Okay." So I went through it with him. I taught him these five moves.
7:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, the kitchen workout.
7:29 Rangan Chatterjee? Called the classic five, which I, I think are the best five body weight exercises that one can do without any equipment. What was interesting is that I said to him then, "What I'd like you to do is do this five minute workout twice a week in your kitchen." He's like, "What, like 10 minutes a week?" I said, "Yeah, can you do that?" He goes, "Yeah, of course I can do that." I said, "Okay, fine. I'll see you in a month." So he goes out, like probably a bit bemused that I told him to only do five minutes twice a week. A month later, he comes back and his body language was different. His chest is out, he's standing up straight, right? There's a sort of smile on his face, complete contrast to the month before. And he says, "Dr Chastity, I love it. I started off doing it five minutes twice a week, like you told me to.
8:11 Rangan Chatterjee? But you know what? I really like it. I love doing it. So now I do it for 10 minutes every evening before my evening meal." And he's been doing that for a number of years now, at least four or five years after that, he was still doing it. So this guy now does 70 minutes of strength training every week, when before he couldn't manage it. And there's a few little keys in there for me, which is when you make things simple for people and easy, they start doing it.
8:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely.
8:37 Rangan Chatterjee? And once they start doing it for a few days, what happens? You start to feel good about yourself. Behaviour change on so many levels, it's actually identity change. Because now he's not the kind of person who can't do a health plan. He's the kind of person now who can do a health plan.
8:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:53 Rangan Chatterjee? Because I said five minutes twice a week and he's done that.
8:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:57 Rangan Chatterjee? And then he increases it. A in himself, not because I asked him to, but because he wants to. And that's another key point for people is that nobody in the long term will ever, ever do something. Because somebody else told them to do so. Right, they might do it for a week or two weeks. But long term, you're only going to continue doing something if you've got some degree of ownership on it. I've seen it work over and over again.
9:24 Speaker 01 And the fact that he was doing more than you'd initially asked him, you mentioned something called the ripple effect, which we'll come on to. But I'm going to make a confession. I know that works because you asked me and one of your other friends to try it for two weeks. Do you remember?
9:38 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah, I do.
9:39 Speaker 01 And I tried it and I noticed I felt less tired and a lot stronger. And it was simple stuff. It really worked.
9:46 Rangan Chatterjee? The only way you're going to keep doing something is when you feel the benefits.
9:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:49 Rangan Chatterjee? You do that every day consistently, you're going to feel better, you're going to have more energy.
9:53 Speaker 01 Because it's cumulative, isn't it? It's almost invisible. But, but as I found when I was trying what you suggested. Literally after a week, you, you notice the benefits. And so it just makes you carry on. It sort of sucks you in, doesn't it?
10:06 Rangan Chatterjee? Sucks you in. It's that easy that it sucks you in. And before you know it, you're doing it regularly consistently. It's about when you make things practical for people. Not just practical in terms of time, practical in terms of how easy it is to do something. We'll come, we'll come on to that later, no doubt. Then people actually make the changes. And before you know it, they're feeling good and they're empowered to keep going. And I've looked at health in a rounded three hundred and sixty degree fashion. So you have to look at the whole picture. I was thinking about what is that other component that is, that is vital for health? It's what I've called heart.
10:43 Rangan Chatterjee? That's about connection, right? That's about connection with other people, the world around us, our friends, our work colleagues, our partners, our children. But also connection with ourself. I've found over and over again, when you get that heart piece right, when you get that connection right.
11:03 Rangan Chatterjee? Mind and body sort of take care of themselves. But you know, when we don't have that connection, we seek to find it or to compensate for it with a lot of our behaviours, whether that's sugar, whether it's alcohol, whether it's, you know, mindlessly scrolling Instagram in the evening.
11:22 Rangan Chatterjee? Whatever it is, often I've realised, and it's taken me a long time to realise this and seeing a lot of patients, but often that is the drive. And we are living in a, in a society devoid of connection. You know, we're ultra connected in so many ways, but that's electronic connection. And that's not the same as human meaningful connection. And the feeling of being lonely is thought to be as harmful for your health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
11:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's the study I've seen. Yeah.
11:47 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah. So that, so we can't ignore that.
11:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
11:50 Rangan Chatterjee? And what I try and do most evenings is something that I call the tea ritual. And the tea ritual is something, as I say, I use in myself, but I also use with many of my patients. That's really, really simple. The idea is that our relationships are under strain these days. You know, look at the divorced rates, they're going through the roof.
12:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, the connection, I mean, it's just, it's harder, I think, to, to connect because of society. And I think one of the reasons why it's so hard to connect, because your brain is just full of information. So you're distracted and you're not present. Yeah.
12:27 Rangan Chatterjee? I think even when we've got those golden moments with the people that mean the world to us, all of us, pretty much at times, we're with the people we love or the people we really care for. Physically, we're there, but emotionally, we're not. Mentally, we could be a million miles away because we're thinking about our Instagram feed or we're also sort of half reading emails at the same time. And you know what it's like. So what is the tea ritual? Well, the tea ritual is five minutes where you connect each day with somebody who's close to you. Now, for me, because I'm married and I find that because we've got two young kids and I'm busy and my wife is busy, often. Days could go by, but we were like passing ships.
13:13 Rangan Chatterjee? You know, you get up, you're nodding your heads, right?
13:16 Speaker 01 Coworkers, I used to call it.
13:17 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of people, it is, but a lot of people will resonate with that and connect with that. And I have found that by having five minutes every day of connection time, it has transformed our relationship. So the way it works in my house is when the kids are in bed and we've cleaned up the kitchen, before we do anything else, before we go on our devices or, you know, whatever the things that we want to do in the evening individually are, for five minutes, we'll have a little tea ritual. We've got an iced tea pot, put the kettle on, and we have mint tea in the evening. We'll sit down and we won't have devices and for five minutes, we sit there and just ask each other about each other's days. Right? Now, listen, A, I get it. It sounds so simple.
14:03 Rangan Chatterjee? Fifteen, twenty years ago, I don't think you needed to have tea rituals. But what does that do? Just that five minutes of connection each day, you feel closer. You feel more connected. You're more loving towards each other. You start to feel that you care more for your partner in a way that you've always cared, but it's easy to take people for granted when you're just busy all the time. And I've used that with my patients. If you haven't, I'd recommend you do it because it is so many patients come back to me and say, Dr. Chachi, that has transformed my relationship. And I think it's, it's really almost twenty years of clinical experience of seeing patients, helping
14:42 Rangan Chatterjee? people from all waters of life with all kinds of different problems and actually seeing from them what really works for busy people with busy lives. Here's the reality. You could buy any health book off the shelf and if you follow it for two weeks, you'll feel better.
15:01 Rangan Chatterjee? You will. It doesn't matter what the diet plan is, if I'm honest, right? If you follow it or the movement plan or whatever, if you manage to stick to it, most of them are going to work.
15:11 Speaker 01 You talk about making it stick, don't you? That's what you're talking about now.
15:15 Rangan Chatterjee? Exactly, exactly what I'm talking about. How do you make it stick in your life?
15:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:18 Rangan Chatterjee? Anything can work for two weeks, but what I'm interested in and what you're interested in as doctor is what's going to still be working in two months, in two years.
15:25 Speaker 01 Absolutely, yeah.
15:26 Rangan Chatterjee? If we talk about this five minute workouts, for example, you don't need to get any equipment. You don't need to get changed. You don't need to go to a gym to make it as simple as possible. Like that patient I told you about right at the start.
15:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:38 Rangan Chatterjee? That's why he did it because there wasn't a reason really to say no. We think, oh no, good habits have got to be deprivation. We've got to stop doing things. We've got to go and punish ourselves at the gym. You know, we've got to stop eating the foods that we like eating. Hold on a minute, who said it's got to be that hard?
15:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:55 Rangan Chatterjee? That's where we've gone wrong. We've been so reductionist around the way we look at health.
16:00 Speaker 01 Hmm.
16:00 Rangan Chatterjee? Right? Health is not that complicated. We're being bombarded in the 21st century with messages, with emails, with things to do, with overload. All that information and all that indecision about what we should do.
16:11 Speaker 01 It's paralyzing, isn't it?
16:12 Rangan Chatterjee? It is. It's a reason not to do anything. We're paralyzed by choice. We end up doing nothing.
16:16 Speaker 01 Hmm. There's a couple of things I want to pick up on. The first is I want to talk a bit more about the ripple effect because it's something I see a lot in practice as well. And we were talking about how once people feel better, they're more likely to continue with behaviours. But there are knock-ons out there to feeling better in one way and how it filters into other areas of your life. But do you, I mean, do you see that yourself a lot in practice?
16:39 Rangan Chatterjee? A hundred percent. I mean, just like you. I think if you can start people off with something that they like and they start to do it consistently, without realising that they start to do other things in other aspects of their life. That's the kind of the hidden secret, the gateway into everything else.
16:59 Speaker 01 You just need an entry point really, don't you?
17:00 Rangan Chatterjee? Need an entry point. Something you like, something you resonate with, do it consistently and it will lead to other things. And one of the other things I think that is really relevant for people when they're starting off or embarking on a health journey is that they overestimate motivation and willpower.
17:18 Rangan Chatterjee? They they make a plan based upon their perfect day when there's no stress in their life, when they're set for eight hours, when they've been working out regularly and they're feeling good, so yeah, I'm gonna do this health plan.
17:30 Speaker 01 Hmm.
17:31 Rangan Chatterjee? But A, that's not real life, and B, it doesn't acknowledge or take into account the fact that motivation and willpower run out.
17:38 Speaker 01 Hmm.
17:39 Rangan Chatterjee? Right, that's something that BJ Fogg taught me about is the motivation wave.
17:42 Speaker 01 Hmm.
17:43 Rangan Chatterjee? Motivation doesn't stay high forever, and his work suggests.
17:49 Speaker 01 It's the three things, isn't it?
17:50 Rangan Chatterjee? Yeah, his work says that for, in order to do any behaviour, you need three things to come together at the same time, motivation, ability and trigger.
17:58 Speaker 01 Hmm.
17:59 Rangan Chatterjee? Right, if we just start with motivation and ability, motivation is how motivated you are to do a certain behaviour, ability is how easy is it to do a certain behaviour? And they've got a very unique relationship with each other. So when your motivation is high, if a task is really difficult to do, you'll still do it.
18:19 Speaker 01 Hmm.
18:20 Rangan Chatterjee? Right, classic is January the first, people's motivation is through the roof, if the gym is forty minutes away and they have to buy some equipment and they have to sit in traffic together, they will go. Motivation's high, so they will do a difficult task, but when your motivation is low, you will only do a certain behaviour if it's easy. And actually, if you talk to a lot of gym managers, you know, here's the sad truth about this, is if everyone who joined the gym actually went to the gym, you won't be able to get in.
18:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've I've heard the same, yeah.
18:55 Rangan Chatterjee? It's, it would be too full to get in, it relies, the whole model relies on people not going.
18:59 Speaker 01 Hmm.
19:00 Rangan Chatterjee? From what I've said so far, does any of this resonate with your own experience as a doctor in terms of helping people make positive changes?
19:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, completely, I mean, I think the first thing is the biggest barrier is time, no one has time these days to do anything, and health has become something that is largely reactive, people tend to come to the GP when they're not feeling well, and there's a difference in people who, well, there's people who feel well or think they feel well, there's people who've suddenly become very ill and might need hospital care, and then there's this group in the middle who. Gradually find themselves not feeling so well. So they're not suddenly ill. And I think a lot of us are in that middle category. It just speaks to most people that walk into my room, I think, because, because everyone's got 15 minutes.
19:51 Speaker 01 You've got 15 minutes to scroll Instagram. So surely you've got 15 minutes to do something that is going to help your health in the long term, just by putting in these simple interventions that are almost not noticeable in a way, because they're so straightforward is, is just a great way to prevent that. It doesn't appear to be stealing too much time. What goes through the middle in the work that you're doing is actually feeling better and living more. You know, that's, that's the sort of clever.
20:20 Rangan Chatterjee? That's the balance. That's, that's the secret. And as I said to you at the end of our conversation last year, my goal is to help empower as many people as possible. You know, I've said over my career, I want to empower 100 million people to understand that they can be the architects of their own health.
20:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:37 Rangan Chatterjee? Now, the way you do that, I think, is by making health accessible, making it simple. Whether they've already got a significant health problem that they want help with, or whether they simply just want to optimize how they feel and increase their focus and creativity. Right. What is the essence of health? What is the absolute essence that people need to know that's going to help them? But it's not only about simplifying health, it's about making it fun.
21:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:01 Rangan Chatterjee? Right. We've got this idea that, yeah, your health's a bit boring. Right. Really? Why does it have to be boring? Health has to be fun. Hope you enjoyed that bite sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles of books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel good
21:45 Rangan Chatterjee? to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it free of charge at drchattity.com forward slash Friday Five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bites Science next Friday.
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