Feel Better In 5: Your Daily Plan to Feel Great for Life

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We will feel better within days and our initiative will lead to “meaningful and long-lasting” change. Dr. Chatterjee and I discuss the latest science of behavior change, which shows that most health plans, whether they’re about losing weight, exercising more, or quitting bad habits, aren’t designed to last. It’s because they’re based on an incorrect assumption that all you need is willpower and motivation. Dr. Chatterjee shares his top tips for creating lasting habits, which include starting with simple actions that you attach to an existing habit.

I can definitely see this book helping alot of people. I also really liked the photos in here. There was something so calming about them. Maybe it was the objects themselves in the photos or it was the colouring, I don't know. But they were definitely a nice welcomed touch to this book. I’m not sure there’s a doctor on the planet today I have more confidence in than Rangan. We all need to hold a megaphone to this man’s powerful voice.” I should probably review this book once I try what he advises because I don't have a life-changing story yet and I felt a bit cynical about hearing how 15 minutes a day significantly helped someone with say, chronic pain, but the claim that the worst outcome is that you'll only feel slightly better rather than much better seems pretty plausible.

But the point is you need to find a way, even if it’s just for a moment going, yeah, that felt great. I feel so much better now. Everyone wants to be healthy. But thanks to the unceasing distractions in modern life, virtually everyone also struggles to maintain this priority. And thanks to a flood of conflicting opinions and complicated programs, figuring out how to be healthy can be overwhelming. But what if all it took to make a real difference was five minutes of your day?

From Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, a pioneer in the emerging field of progressive medicine and star of BBC's Doctor in the House, Feel Better in 5 draws on his 20 years of experience, including real-life case studies from his medical practice, to identify simple, effective strategies that will help you become healthier, happier, and less stressed. The other thing he says is that if you are going to start a new habit, you need to make it a habit. A habit is something you do effectively without thinking. Most of us brush our teeth twice a day. We do this first thing in the morning and last thing at night. We just do it. It is part of a routine associated with the ritual of getting into or out of bed. The point is that if we don’t do it one night, things feel wrong. We don’t feel liberated from our teeth brushing habit, we feel strange and uncomfortable. His point is that creating habits might not be easy, but once they are established, they build their own momentum.Every day in my practice, my patients tell me they do not have time to exercise. Believe me, I understand this well. Modern life is busy! I too have a consuming job and young kids at home so I know how precious spare time can be. It was the height of the scorching summer of 2018 and I could see how uncomfortable the heat was making Letitia. She was a forty-eight-year-old single mother who’d always struggled with her weight. She’d tried the gym and various workout classes but was concerned that people would stare at her because of her size. That day, Letitia had come in with her daughter, who was also overweight, and who she was worried about. Sixteen-year-old Namono seemed quite low and moody. At one point, she snapped at her mum, saying, "Well you never go out either. You’re just in the kitchen all day, listening to music." I got the strong impression that there were difficulties in their relationship. I don’t know if you want to speak into that for a moment, but I thought it was a really great contrast to help us understand. For any of us listening right now, or watching, you could imagine like, oh, I’m going to shove… By the way, I love ice cream. Ice cream is awesome. Everything in moderation. But if you just like shoved your face with sugar or ice cream or something that you know wouldn’t be good for you three times a day for five days a week over years, you could imagine not feeling very well, right? In part 1 of our exclusive three-part serialisation of Dr Rangan Chatterjee's brilliant new book, "Feel Better in 5", find out how to improve your fitness with his easy five minute routines. Keep going down as far as you can and stop if you manage to get your thighs parallel to the ground.

So if I said to somebody, you can call a… What do you guys call it? A soft drink, right? A full fat, a full sugar, fizzy soft drink, whatever someone’s favorite is. For five minutes today, you had to drink that continuously. Just imagine that, if you’re watching this or listening. It wouldn’t take much imagination to believe that, yeah, you know what? Within two or three days, my teeth are going to feel disgusting, my sleep may go, I’m going to get moody with sugar highs and sugar lows. Rangan Chatterjee: Thanks for that. It’s funny that this was the last thing that went into the book. I actually thought I’d finished the book, and I was like looking at my manuscript. I thought, yeah, okay, I’ve finally done it. Then it came to me, then I thought…I’ve practiced medicine for nearly 20 years and I’m taking a stand. People are needlessly suffering and this is preventable and unacceptable. As regards Dr C’s breathing exercises, which are placed in the Mind section for some reason, these are “Simple Breathing” and “Breath counting”. They are all well and good but I’m somewhat disappointed that he doesn’t include some of the good breathing exercises he presented in one of his previous books, which I much preferred, since I don’t own those books. Chatterjee also has recommended habit lists to help a huge variety of issues, from diabetes to depression. Practical solutions and simple interventions to help you de-stress and re-set your life. Find Out More This book shows that behavioural economics doesn’t have to be the spawn of Satan. It shows that it can be used for good as well as evil.

I spent time talking to him, and it was pretty clear to me that there were various aspects in his lifestyle that were contributing to the way that he was feeling. So I discussed a number of options that he might want to consider. He loved the idea of strength training. He said to me, “Yeah, Dr. Chatterjee, I’ve not done that since I was a teenager. It’s going to give me more energy.” He said, “It’s going to improve my moods. It’s going to help me look better. I’m in. What shall I do? Shall I do 40 minutes, three times a week, at the gym?” Wrong. I know from my own life, and the experiences of patients I’ve helped over 20 years as a GP, that simple, small changes to your health are what add up a sustainable difference. That’s why I’ve written Feel Better In 5, a book that breaks down the most important aspects of health into five-minute chunks – no willpower or instant transformation required. The reality is that every single behavior you do needs a trigger. So what do I mean by that? We had an appointment today to do this interview, right? So you would have had a trigger. Now that trigger could have been your memory. You could have just remembered, hey, I’ve got to do this call with Rangan at this time. Memory works, it just happens to be the most unreliable trigger there is. Right? You know, as a doctor, Marie, I’m really passionate about giving people advice that’s going to work for everyone. You know, I don’t just want to give advice that works for the affluent in society. I want advice that works for everyone, and I really think this approach does. Dr Rangan Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK. A practising GP for the last two decades, Dr Chatterjee wants to inspire people to transform their health and happiness through making small sustainable changes to their lifestyles. Leading the charge on how healthcare and medicine is understood in the UK, Dr Chatterjee has co-created and teaches the widely acclaimed 'Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine' course with the Royal College of GPs, that has now been delivered to thousands of doctors and healthcare professionals.

Forget willpower, forget total transformations – it doesn’t have to be that hard. I know from my own life, and the experiences of patients I’ve helped over 20 years as a GP, that simple, small changes to your health are what add up a sustainable difference. That’s why I’ve created Feel Better In 5, a daily plan that breaks down the most important aspects of health into five-minute chunks. So, I set myself a goal of writing a book about action. How do you actually take action on your health? And I think I say it early on in the book. I say, “Look, if you want more of the science about this, my recommendation is go to my first two books,” or go to any of your books. The science is there, but what I really try to do, Mark, and I’ve really seen in the UK that I think I’ve managed to do that given the impact it’s having, given the amount of people who are finding it really useful is I’ve tried to distill everything I know for almost 20 years of seeing patients. Distill it all down and go, “Okay, if you want a book that’s going to show you what to do and how to do it, I’m just going to give you exactly what you need to do,” and I’m really proud of it. It may not seem like this. I mean, you’ve obviously written what? A gazillion books. How many books have you written now? 15? Something like that? 20? The majority of my patients don’t need a pill, they need a lifestyle prescription. My goal is to change the way we look at illness.