Stressed? Overwhelmed? Tired? Eat, Sleep and Live Better with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

much fun lately. I'm super relaxed. I'm loving my life. It's not often that you hear that response. The most common response is overwhelmed, stress, flat out like a lizard, drinking, can't sleep, running around, chasing my tail, running around after the kids. Anxiety is high, haven't had a day off in weeks. I feel like that is the most common response.

He's written over six books, he hosted TV shows for over a decade, and he has one of the most popular podcasts in the world in the health and wellness category.

he genuinely cares about changing people's lives. So, from your twenty three years practicing medicine, what do you think is some of the most common issues women are facing I know from the outside, from people in my life and myself included, I feel like burnout and overwhelm are the things that seem to be consuming everyone's lives.

We think stress is only to do with what we have going on. I've got to do this, I've got to do that, I've got to pick this person. We've got to do that. My boss has asked me to do this. That is true, those things are all stresses. At the same time, I would say for most of us, the majority of stress we experience is generated by ourselves.

What do I mean by that? This was probably the key learning in my life a few years ago, which is probably the number one reason why I generally feel calm, happy, content, generally in control of life, even though I have a busy life, because I realized that we have the power with our minds to frame every situation. We can take what I call a victim mindset to life, and I say that with compassion, I honestly do. I'm not I'm

not blaming anyone for that. Or we can say what I call the architect mindset to life, where we understand that we get to frame every single situation. And so you know, it's something that until you get it, it seems like what you talking abouts, right, But I'll tell you how I got this. One of the most powerful conversations I've ever had on my own podcast, which has been running for seven and a half years now, is with a ninety three year old lady called Edith Eager. Now.

When I spoke to her, she was ninety three years old, and she was telling me about her childhood. Now, when she was sixteen years old, she got taken to Auschwitz concentration camp with her sister, and both her parents were murdered within two hours of getting there. Right, She's a sixteen year old, young, young lady and two hours after her parents have been murdered. She's asked to dance and perform for the senior prison guards. And do you know

what she said to me? She said wrong, And listen, I never forgot the last thing my mother said to me. My mom said to me, Edith, never ever forget. Nobody can take from you the contents that you put inside your own mind. So she then tells me, when I was dancing in Auschwitz, I wasn't actually dancing in Auschwitz. In my mind. I was in Budapest opera house. There was a full orchestra playing, there was a full house,

there was beautiful music, it was wonderful. And I'm thinking, your parents have been murdered, you're you're literally in a death camp, and you're reframing this in your mind. And there's many things she told me, But the final word she said to me, which relates to your question, is she said this. She said Wrongan, I have lived in Auschwitz, and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison that you create inside your own mind.

you can change the way you move on. And I still try to put that into practice now. I even had road rage this morning on the way here, and then I had to stop myself for a second and think, why am I so angry? I can't change what is happening right now.

your happiness, but it also relates to your health. Right, And this is the big thing I try to outline in my in my latest but may change at last. So I tried to say, guys, the reason why we're struggling to make changes that actually last in the long term, and we keep trying to think, why can't I give up sugar, Why can't I do this, why can't I do that? Is I think we forget about internal stress.

So let's use the car driver as an example. Right, so we all know that feeling when we're driving our car when someone cuts us up, and that we might start shouting or going, you know, stupid drivers, shouldn't have a license whatever, you know, whatever story, whatever, our version of that is. What we do in that moment is we're creating internal emotional stress. That internal emotional stress is not neutral. You will have to neutralize it in some way or another. And how do most of us try

and neutralize it? Sugar kathee, alcohol, two three hours, sort of doom, scrolling on Instagram, whatever it might be. Those things are a response to the stress that we created by the way we interacted with that neutral situation. And once we learn to go wait a minute, maybe I can train myself to not go mad every time a driver comes into my lane because I used to be

that guy and I'm not anymore. Right, I've become aware, first of all, and little by little, by practice, or I couldn't do it, and that night I was like, ah, wrong, And you know what, you did it again today, didn't you next time? You don't need to reract like that, just like if you're going from the sofa to a five K. We understand that you can train your body physically, but you can also train your mindset. And so, going back to your original question, loads of women are struggling

with stress, overwhelm, fatigue. I'm not at all saying that aren't external stresses on women. That there absolutely are, but what I'm also trying to say is that actually a lot of the stress in our lives is by the way we look at the situation, and if we learn to look at situations differently, often we won't feel as stressed. Doctor.

sugar craving. What's your take on emotional eating and why is it that, especially when we're fatigued, we're burnt out, and we're stressed, so many of us are kind of turning to this this little buzz that we're trying to get over night time before we go to bed.

internal triggers. One of the exercises that I love and I've been doing with my patients for years is called the three f's or the freedom exercise. Okay, So the three fs are feel, feed and fine. Okay, So next time someone is on their sofa at nine pm in the evening and even though they had a full meal at eight o'clock, they feel like some ice s cream. I'm not saying that's ever happened to you, you guys.

Have I just had a row with my partner, you know, as the children's bedtime gone on too long? Whatever, it might be one of my really feeling. Then go get the ice scream and have it if you want to. Okay. The next time it happens, you go through the first self again, what am I feeling? And then you go to the second F How does food feed the feeling? So the second F is feed So you've identified the feeling as stressed, and then you go, oh, well, when I have my ice scream, in the short term, at

least I feel less stressed. Ah, okay, so that's why I'm eating. I'm like, I'm feeling stressed and ice cream makes me feel better. Okay, great. The next time it happens, you then go to the third F. So you again go through the process, what am I feeling, I'm feeling stressed? How does food feed the feeling? Oh, the ice cream

makes me feel less stressed. The third F is find Now that I know the feeling, Now that I know how food feeds the feeling, can I find an alternative behavior to feed that feeling.

twreating myself. Okay, how could you treat yourself in a different way? Ah, maybe I'll run myself a bath and nourish myself. And it'slightly different way. If it's loneliness that's causing you to eat, as it is for many people, or they feel a bit isolated or lonely instead of going to the ice scream, what else could you do? Well, if you live with someone like your part or a flatmate, you could go and talk to them. If you don't,

you could pick up your phone. You could phone a friend, you could phone one of your parents if they're still alive, or whatever it might be. And I know it sounds super simple, but I have used these three s with patients four years and it can often be life changing because you know, your question was why do we do this? Right? A lot of the time we're not conscious of why we're doing this. We get the urge and before we know it, the spoons in our mouth right with ice

scream in it. And all this exercise does. It just starts to give you a little bit of a gap between the stimulus, which is I want to eat something, and your response, which is the ice scream. And the more you just create a little gap there, the more you start to understand yourself. And once you understand why you're going to that behavior, right, you've automatically changed your

relationship with that behavior. Even if you go to it in the future, you'll know, you know, I'm managing stress here by eating this ice scream, and it means you're For most people, they're less likely to do it once they're tuned in to why they're actually engaging in that behavior. So again, it's a simple exercise that you can apply to food. You can also apply to alcohol or three hours scrolling TikTok or Instagram. You can. It's a very simple you know, will it work for serious addictions, No,

probably not. But at the same time, for many of us, when we've got these behaviors that we're really trying to cut back on, it can be a very powerful exercise.

want my hit. Started to eat them, couldn't stop, and then there was a complete disconnect with my brain and my body. My brain was literally saying stop eating them, like stop it now, put what is in your hand down. And then I couldn't do it. And then I said to myself, at least too slower, and I could not. That's why I said, I was like, enjoy the egg. That is in your mouth, and I could not. I could not. My mind was being like slower down, enjoy the moment. And then I just was like a guzzleguts

and I thought, what is happening there? Why is this huge disconnect happening between my brain and my body?

your body saying that it thinks that it's in danger. Right. And that's the problem these days is that our stress response has been activated not by wild predators. It's been activated by the state of our daily lives, by our email inboxes, by our multiple social media channels we're trying to keep up to date with or whatever it might be, right, and our body responds in a different way. But that's the key point, Brittany. You have to understand that actually

stress literally changes your physiology. So you know you're saying there's a disconnect there. Yeah, there is a disconnect there. That's literally what is going on. Right, So instead of beating yourself up about that, it's like recognizing, oh wow, okay,

when I get really stressed. You know, let's say yesterday happens again in two weeks, right, is there anything you can learn from yesterday what you didn't do, for example, that you could have done that could help you have less stress if a similar day happens in two weeks.

a little bit stressed. You buy it when you're right at your threshold. So again, I don't believe in the concepts of wasted time anymore. Right in the sense that we spend time that has a consequence, and if we can learn from how we spent our time, it wasn't a waste. So your stressful day yesterday could be a very powerful teaching moment for you. Could be like, oh wow, so I've still got that tendency when I'm really stressed to go and buy twenty two easter eggs. How I

not have that much stress in my life? If the same events happen next time? Could I take a walking break? Could I do a bit of meditation halfway on what I'm commuting home instead of listening to the news. I'm not saying you did that, but could I put on some relaxing music for five minutes or put on a meditation app and just reset. It's not as hard as we think it is once we're aware of what's actually driving our behaviors.

quite uncomfortable with. Guilty, Yeah, I think it is guilt, And there's definitely a discomfort when I'm taking time, you know, time that I would say would be time out to try and put myself into a relaxed state. And it almost creates like a bit of a cycle for me where I'm like, Okay, I know that relaxation is necessary so that I can get good sleep and so I can feel good and maybe say that I can be

good tomorrow. But then when I'm actually trying to do the things that relax me, I feel guilty about the fact I'm not using the time more efficiently. Is this something that you see a lot like in your clinical practice?

In fact, in my first book, I wrote about this, and I actually said in that book that one thing I've heard from female patients over the years, time and time again is when I talk some about me time and some time each day for it, you know, one of the things I would I would often say some is, you know, can you find ten minutes a day where you do something unashamedly for you, not for your partner, not for your kids, something that just you want to do.

And often if I was able to persuade them and inspire them to go, now, this is really important, give it a try, they would come back and say, you know what, Dot, you gave me permission to relax. And it was a really interesting phrase I heard because I thought I never thought my job as a doctor was to give anyone a permission to do anything. But I do find that it's particularly with women. They would often

describe to me exactly what you just said. I've seen definitely with mums loads of times, and I appreciate both of you said that, you know, you don't have kids, so that's not necessarily the reason why. But what I'll often say to them is, look, if you're not if you're feeling guilty about this, what I often encourage me to do is, what is it you would love to do?

Like absolutely love not you know, I want, I need to do this because it's going to help me relax, need to do my meditation, all right, forget all that for a minute. What would you love to do that sounds like fun? Because we know from the research that regularly doing things that you love makes you more resilient to stress, and at the same time, being chronically stressed makes it harder for you to experience pleasure from those things that you used to love. And so, like, I

remember this one patient. She was a fourth I think she was forty four years old, and she was a mother, and she had Crohn's disease, inflammacy bow disease, which is on the rise and fortunate there's many reasons for that. But I said to her, look, I really want you to take fifteen minutes each day for yourself, want you to do something that you love. And literally, for her

it was getting into salsid dancing. Right, She'd always wanted to do that, but she never thought she could justify the time she was doing some for her husband, doing some for her children, doing stuff for her community. She never felt yep, actually I'm worth it. It's okay to have fifteen minutes a day for me. And just doing that for four weeks, her symptoms, her symptoms and croneses

went down by over fifty percent. Wow. And you know, didn't cure it, just to be clear, but it was much more manageable for her because her stress levels went down. And so you know, and I think, what better prescription to get from your doctor than do something that you love. Right. This could be dancing, It could be playing your guitar if you're into playing guitar. It could be singing in

your kitchen, dancing in your kitchen. It could be watching your favorite comedian on YouTube for ten minutes and laughing. But I often find that's a simple and easier way to get into relaxation sometimes, and it can be very effective.

And I think a really helpful piece of advice for anyone listening to this right now is to ask yourself in which of these four pillars do I need the most help? Most of us intuitively know that if you ask, you know, food, movement, sleep, and relaxation, which one is our kind of weak area?

They're obsessed with taking the diet from eighty five percent good to ninety or ninety five percent good, but neglecting the fact that they're only sleeping five hours a night. And I'm like, you know what, keep your diet where it is, a little bit of sugary stuff at the weekends. Fine, don't stress about that. I would much rather you focus on bringing that five hours a sleep up to five and a half hours, or to six hours if you can. Yeah, sure, seven hours if you can. But you know, just a

little bit of improvement. I found over the years that it's much more effective to strengthen your weakest pillar. Right, So I think it's a very simple thing for people to ask themselves, which pillar do I need the most working? And pick one thing in that area where you can start to make it better. In response to your question, if you find there's two areas well, the first thing I'd say is which one is weaker? If you know?

If you don't know, I would say, yeah, put your attention on those two, right, don't worry about the other two pillars. Just go these two. Read a lot of attension at the moment, I don't know. Let's say it was stress and sleep for example. You know, you say, Okay, what's one thing I can do each day to help me destress and what's one thing I can do that's going to help me sleep better? And just focus on

those things. I think that where we really get into trouble is where we try and make loads of changes in all of these four pillars and we end up doing nothing.

I think, you know, it really relates to what you said before about this guilt. I think women very much are wired to want to, you know, look after the world around them, you know, nurture, and I think the way modern society has changed, where there is so many things to do and so many pressures, I think it probably adversity affects women more than men. And we know that women, for example, get higher rates of autoimmune disease than men, and stresses a big part of that. Right.

In fact, Gable matse dotor Gable maase trauma expert. He calls women, I think modern society stress absorbers, right, which is really interesting. He says, there's all the stress in the modern world, and women seem to be I'm not saying men have no stress, to be clear, but I do think women are quite unique with how they take that stress on and how much it affects their bodies.

can learn to do that, but I don't. I think men more naturally tend to do that. I always think food we can think about differences between men and women, And again these are just broad generalizations. Broadly speaking, a lot more men tend to thrive on fasting plans than women. Right, that doesn't mean women can't fast. Just to be clear, I've got many female that thee is who thrive on a certain form of fasting.

I have seen that as well. But I do think, broadly, speaking to that sort of general question, what do men and women respond differently to? I think the way they deal with stress, I think can be quite different, but also the way that they deal with fasting can be

very different as well. A lot of this cultural than the sense that you know, these things are quite punchy areas with people to talk about, right, But there is a lot of pressure on women these days, I think, and I'm saying this as a man, this is what I've observed with patients, what I've observed with my wife and her friends. Let's compare to I don't know, fifty

years ago, right. Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should be going back to the way things worth fifty years ago, right, I'm just just to be super clear. Life fifty years ago, for all the potential negatives, in some ways, it was simpler, right. People knew what their role was. Whether we agree with those roles or not. Those roles were quite well defined in many cultures, and I think those well defined roles led to a simplicity

and potentially lower stress. Whereas I think one of the risks, or one of the unintended consequences of all the increased opportunity now that women are getting compared to fifty years gon not even saying it's as good as it should be, I'm just saying compared to fifty years ago, what I find is that, yeah, women are working now, They're doing

great jobs, they're starting amazing businesses. Yet if and when they choose to have children, they still feel that maternal instinct of being the care of being the nurture, being the one who wants to look after the kids. So in fifty years ago, perhaps broadly speaking, their focus could just be on that, whereas now the focus is I'm still trying to run my business, I'm still trying to crush it on Instagram, and I'm also trying to look after the kids. That is a lot to contend with, right,

And I don't think this has been planned. I'm saying this is an unintended consequence, but I think it's something we need to wrestle with as a society. I think we need to wrestle with this idea is like, are we putting too much on women's plates? How can we change that? But I also to defend men here, and I'm a man saying this, But I also do believe that men are also struggling with new gender roles, right, Men are also struggling with well, what is my role now?

Like I remember, my dad was never ever at a school play, a school performance. Like dad worked, right, Dad's job was to earn the money to feed us all. Whereas I remember when my kids were young, I had a busy job, but I was I still felt huge pressure and I wanted to be at my children's performances, you know, I wanted to be at school at two pm to watch them read out a recital, lever it might be. And again, I'm not complaining, right, I'm not

complaining at all. But I do think it's interesting and I don't think I think we need to have honest conversations about how our roles have changed. And it's okay to say actually were struggling with this. And I think saying that we struggle with this doesn't mean we wanted to go back and it doesn't mean we're being sexist. It just means, hey, this is a real problem. Let's come together and try and figure out how we might move forward with this. Did that all make sense?

There's an upside and a downside. Okay, So one of the upsides of many people will say now is we have independence, we can move away, get a really good job, go to the city, have all this opportunity that we didn't have in the past. Great, that's an upside. Downside is we've often moved away from our parents, our siblings, our community, the people who knew us, the people who

would support us. So the consequence of nuclear families is so many couples, their relationships are under huge stress after they have kids. You know, I've seen it with a lot of my friends I've seen it with countless patients. And it's not that that people don't love each other, it's just it's too much for two And this is on the assumption that there's two parents living together, which

of course much of the time isn't the case. But if two parents are working and then they have children who look after it and they have no support nearby, that is full on. You have no time to nourish your relationship, you know, So you know, the partners become dissent,

they start niggling with each other. That in and off itself creates stress, right, And so I think the only way we get to a solution is by honestly identifying what is the root of this problem and understanding that I don't think we were designed to do all this by ourselves. That I think is one of the root causes of why there's so much sort of stress going on and why we're struggling with these new roles.

twenty eight day cycle. Of course, there's a bit of variation there whether it's twenty eight days or twenty six or thirty thirty one, but you know, broadly speaking, that's same massive difference between men and women. And I actually remember I spoke to Dr Mindy Pelts on my podcast about maybe three years ago. She was just breaking down the different stages of a female cycle and how a

woman might want to eat differently at various times. She was you know, I remember very clearly she's saying, you know, the week before the periods, she was saying, actually, you know, most women do crave carbs, and it's okay to actually indulge and have those carbs in that week, but you know, at the start of the cycle you may not as much. So if you do want to, you know, change your diet and go lower carb for example, then that's the

time to do it. But we also discussed in that conversation, let's say in a heterosexual couple, for example, let's say a man and a woman, right that benefits have actually been quite open about what stage on someone's cycle someone is, so I think for many years we thought, well, it's you know, it's not the man's business, you know what's going on with a woman's mental cycle. But we were just hypothesizing, well, might it create more harmony in relationships

if the other partner, whether it was a man or woman. Frankly, doesn't really matter that knew that. Actually, yeah, at this point, you know, I'm not sleeping as well, I'm a bit more moody. I'm craving carbs. Actually, then you know at those points, actually you could if you let's say, if that was my wife, for example, and I knew, okay, this is the week leading at her period and she's struggling with this sleep. With that knowledge, I can be more patient. I can you know, try to not take

things personally and go, oh, this is hormonal. She's struggling with this. And I think increasing that communication over these things, I actually think while some people may say it's in a fridgement of privacy and it's no one else's business. Fine, I'm not here to tell, you know, what everyone should or shouldn't do. I just think it's quite a nice

thing to think about. Actually, might that be helpful? And certainly since that conversation, my wife and I do communicate about this kind of stuff, and I would say it's really really helps because I have a much better understanding of where she is in her cycle and how that also affects her and therefore affects our relationship.

seat than men. Certainly, again, this is again in any course one, but in my own marriage, I would say my wife absolutely needs more sleep than me, good hour and night, more seat than me, and it's very noticeable if she's not guessing that. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, just to be really clear, I just I'm just genuinely it's sort of just I'm just

defending my wife that I'm not saying anything nastam. It's just and I think we would both agree she does seem more seat to me, and that's certainly what's seemed with my patients.

And it was really powerful when I watched it, and he talked a lot about he would do everything differently, and he would spend more time sitting in joy and things that you know, his family and the things that mattered to him, because he just thought he had to.

of the health conversation these days is about deprivation and restriction. Right, we don't talk enough about joy. Doing things that you love is good for you. Right, It's really good for you. And actually it's something I wish we would talk about a lot more. And actually, when I come on tour to Australia this summer, I will absolutely be talking about this and the benefits of more joy and passion in

your life. So I've had four conversations with Gabor on my podcast over seven years, and they've all touched me in different ways. But if you say, what was the conversation, what was the piece of advice that has had the most impact, It's what I started the show with, right, It's my conversation with Edith Eager that I re released recently for an episode five hundred special. That conversation changed me. It fundamentally changed who I was, because not only did

she say those magical words you know wrong. And I've lived in Auschwitz and I could tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison that you create inside your own minds. But it literally you know, I remember coming out of that conversation and I said to my videographer, I'm not the same person anymore. Like I am not the same person anymore. That the way

I view myself and the world has fundamentally changed. Because for me, understanding that in a death camp she could reframe her experiences, it just really powerfully taught me that, oh wrong, good. You know what, even on your worst day, you're not in a death camp, right, So if she can reframe her experiences in Auschwitz, you can reframe them in your own life. And that single realization has changed the way that I experienced life. It's changed the way

I experience stress. And if I'm ever struggling, I go, what's the other perspective here? How can I take a different perspective on this situation, which would mean it would not be as stressful. So I've had over five hundred conversations, many of them have left their profound effects on me. But if you make me choose, it would still be that conversation with that ninety three year old lady Edith Eager.