Speaker 1: This episode was recorded on cameragle Land. Hi guys, and
Speaker 1: welcome back to another episode of Life on Cut. I'm
Speaker 1: Brittany and I'm Keisha, and today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about something that affects every single woman I know, every
Speaker 1: single person I know. But today we are really going
Speaker 1: to hone in on women stress. Think about the last
Speaker 1: time you spoke to a friend. When did you run
Speaker 1: into somebody and say, hey, how are you going? And
Speaker 1: they answered with I am great. I've been having so
Speaker 1: much fun lately. I'm super relaxed. I'm loving my life.
Speaker 1: It's not often that you hear that response. The most
Speaker 1: common response is overwhelmed, stress, flat out like a lizard, drinking,
Speaker 1: can't sleep, running around, chasing my tail, running around after
Speaker 1: the kids. Anxiety is high, haven't had a day off
Speaker 1: in weeks. I feel like that is the most common response.
Speaker 2: I do too, and I just feel like, even within myself,
Speaker 2: I just have this constant feeling of not being able
Speaker 2: to quite catch my tail, like not being able to
Speaker 2: quite catch up. You know, we joke a lot about
Speaker 2: the whole Oh, this week's been really stressful, but don't worry.
Speaker 2: Next week will be better. But then we just keep
Speaker 2: on saying that time after time after.
Speaker 1: Time, next week's worth exactly.
Speaker 2: And stress is something that I think we are all
Speaker 2: all experiencing to such a large extent, but none of
Speaker 2: us really have particularly easy and simple ways to break
Speaker 2: that stress down and to reduce it in our lives.
Speaker 2: And that's why today's guest is the wonderful doctor Rungan
Speaker 2: Chatategy Now. He is a practicing medical doctor. He's got
Speaker 2: over two decades worth of experience. He is also a writer.
Speaker 2: He's written over six books, he hosted TV shows for
Speaker 2: over a decade, and he has one of the most
Speaker 2: popular podcasts in the world in the health and wellness category.
Speaker 3: It is called Feel Better, Live More.
Speaker 1: And I think we all underestimate just how much stress
Speaker 1: affects our lives and affects our body mentally, spiritually, physiologically,
Speaker 1: the whole kitten kaboodle. And the best thing about doctor
Speaker 1: Chattagy is he really breaks it down to make it simple.
Speaker 1: It's not complex. He wants to make it palatable because
Speaker 1: he genuinely cares about changing people's lives. So, from your
Speaker 1: twenty three years practicing medicine, what do you think is
Speaker 1: some of the most common issues women are facing I
Speaker 1: know from the outside, from people in my life and
Speaker 1: myself included, I feel like burnout and overwhelm are the
Speaker 1: things that seem to be consuming everyone's lives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would agree. I think stress, fatigue, burnout, overwhelmed
Speaker 4: seems to be the symptom of the day, right. I
Speaker 4: mean you're asking for women. I think a lot of
Speaker 4: men feel that as well, but specifically with women, I
Speaker 4: would say absolutely, that is a huge issue. I think
Speaker 4: it's getting worse, and I think we're looking at it
Speaker 4: the wrong way. Actually, one thing I've realized over my
Speaker 4: you know, twenty three years of practice now is that
Speaker 4: stress doesn't just come from the outside we think it does.
Speaker 4: We think stress is only to do with what we
Speaker 4: have going on. I've got to do this, I've got
Speaker 4: to do that, I've got to pick this person. We've
Speaker 4: got to do that. My boss has asked me to
Speaker 4: do this. That is true, those things are all stresses.
Speaker 4: At the same time, I would say for most of us,
Speaker 4: the majority of stress we experience is generated by ourselves.
Speaker 4: What do I mean by that? This was probably the
Speaker 4: key learning in my life a few years ago, which
Speaker 4: is probably the number one reason why I generally feel calm, happy, content,
Speaker 4: generally in control of life, even though I have a
Speaker 4: busy life, because I realized that we have the power
Speaker 4: with our minds to frame every situation. We can take
Speaker 4: what I call a victim mindset to life, and I
Speaker 4: say that with compassion, I honestly do. I'm not I'm
Speaker 4: not blaming anyone for that. Or we can say what
Speaker 4: I call the architect mindset to life, where we understand
Speaker 4: that we get to frame every single situation. And so
Speaker 4: you know, it's something that until you get it, it
Speaker 4: seems like what you talking abouts, right, But I'll tell
Speaker 4: you how I got this. One of the most powerful
Speaker 4: conversations I've ever had on my own podcast, which has
Speaker 4: been running for seven and a half years now, is
Speaker 4: with a ninety three year old lady called Edith Eager. Now.
Speaker 4: When I spoke to her, she was ninety three years old,
Speaker 4: and she was telling me about her childhood. Now, when
Speaker 4: she was sixteen years old, she got taken to Auschwitz
Speaker 4: concentration camp with her sister, and both her parents were
Speaker 4: murdered within two hours of getting there. Right, She's a
Speaker 4: sixteen year old, young, young lady and two hours after
Speaker 4: her parents have been murdered. She's asked to dance and
Speaker 4: perform for the senior prison guards. And do you know
Speaker 4: what she said to me? She said wrong, And listen,
Speaker 4: I never forgot the last thing my mother said to me.
Speaker 4: My mom said to me, Edith, never ever forget. Nobody
Speaker 4: can take from you the contents that you put inside
Speaker 4: your own mind. So she then tells me, when I
Speaker 4: was dancing in Auschwitz, I wasn't actually dancing in Auschwitz.
Speaker 4: In my mind. I was in Budapest opera house. There
Speaker 4: was a full orchestra playing, there was a full house,
Speaker 4: there was beautiful music, it was wonderful. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 4: your parents have been murdered, you're you're literally in a
Speaker 4: death camp, and you're reframing this in your mind. And
Speaker 4: there's many things she told me, But the final word
Speaker 4: she said to me, which relates to your question, is
Speaker 4: she said this. She said Wrongan, I have lived in Auschwitz,
Speaker 4: and I can tell you the greatest prison you will
Speaker 4: ever live inside is the prison that you create inside
Speaker 4: your own mind.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you, Brittany Ikish that Penny dropped for
Speaker 4: me that day. I thought, that's what we all do.
Speaker 4: We go around the world, and the car driver cuts
Speaker 4: us up and we get stressed and angry, and we
Speaker 4: feel that it was the car driver that made us
Speaker 4: stressed and angry, but it isn't. Actually it's our response
Speaker 4: to the car driver that's making us angry.
Speaker 1: I relate to that so much, and I've spoken about
Speaker 1: this and we wrote about it in our book. But
Speaker 1: I spent a month with this Buddhist monk and the
Speaker 1: one thing, the big takeaway that I took from his
Speaker 1: learnings was that your whole life and quality of life
Speaker 1: depends on your reaction to the given situation. It's not
Speaker 1: the situation, because that's happened regardless. You can't change it.
Speaker 1: But you can change the way you think about it.
Speaker 1: You can change the way you deal with it, and
Speaker 1: you can change the way you move on. And I
Speaker 1: still try to put that into practice now. I even
Speaker 1: had road rage this morning on the way here, and
Speaker 1: then I had to stop myself for a second and think,
Speaker 1: why am I so angry? I can't change what is
Speaker 1: happening right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's such a beautiful example, and there's so many
Speaker 4: things there. First of all, even if we know this stuff,
Speaker 4: it doesn't mean we won't still do it right. So,
Speaker 4: as you said, you had road rage this morning, but
Speaker 4: you're at least aware now that actually you know what
Speaker 4: I was generating that stress like. It wasn't the driver,
Speaker 4: it was actually me. I didn't need to That's the
Speaker 4: key learning for people, because why I'm so passionate about
Speaker 4: this idea is, yes, it relates to your contentment and
Speaker 4: your happiness, but it also relates to your health. Right,
Speaker 4: And this is the big thing I try to outline
Speaker 4: in my in my latest but may change at last.
Speaker 4: So I tried to say, guys, the reason why we're
Speaker 4: struggling to make changes that actually last in the long term,
Speaker 4: and we keep trying to think, why can't I give
Speaker 4: up sugar, Why can't I do this, why can't I
Speaker 4: do that? Is I think we forget about internal stress.
Speaker 4: So let's use the car driver as an example. Right,
Speaker 4: so we all know that feeling when we're driving our
Speaker 4: car when someone cuts us up, and that we might
Speaker 4: start shouting or going, you know, stupid drivers, shouldn't have
Speaker 4: a license whatever, you know, whatever story, whatever, our version
Speaker 4: of that is. What we do in that moment is
Speaker 4: we're creating internal emotional stress. That internal emotional stress is
Speaker 4: not neutral. You will have to neutralize it in some
Speaker 4: way or another. And how do most of us try
Speaker 4: and neutralize it? Sugar kathee, alcohol, two three hours, sort
Speaker 4: of doom, scrolling on Instagram, whatever it might be. Those
Speaker 4: things are a response to the stress that we created
Speaker 4: by the way we interacted with that neutral situation. And
Speaker 4: once we learn to go wait a minute, maybe I
Speaker 4: can train myself to not go mad every time a
Speaker 4: driver comes into my lane because I used to be
Speaker 4: that guy and I'm not anymore. Right, I've become aware,
Speaker 4: first of all, and little by little, by practice, or
Speaker 4: I couldn't do it, and that night I was like, ah, wrong,
Speaker 4: And you know what, you did it again today, didn't
Speaker 4: you next time? You don't need to reract like that,
Speaker 4: just like if you're going from the sofa to a
Speaker 4: five K. We understand that you can train your body physically,
Speaker 4: but you can also train your mindset. And so, going
Speaker 4: back to your original question, loads of women are struggling
Speaker 4: with stress, overwhelm, fatigue. I'm not at all saying that
Speaker 4: aren't external stresses on women. That there absolutely are, but
Speaker 4: what I'm also trying to say is that actually a
Speaker 4: lot of the stress in our lives is by the
Speaker 4: way we look at the situation, and if we learn
Speaker 4: to look at situations differently, often we won't feel as stressed. Doctor.
Speaker 2: Strategy is something that I've heard you speak about before
Speaker 2: that is kind of related to this whole mindset shift
Speaker 2: around food in particular, Like you just mentioned, a lot
Speaker 2: of us seem to struggle with the whole sugar craving,
Speaker 2: the whole like it gets to a certain part of
Speaker 2: the evening and we scurry away into the kitchen and
Speaker 2: we'll find whatever we can in the pantry or in
Speaker 2: the freezer or in the fridge because we're just trying
Speaker 2: to kind of feel something that we describe as a
Speaker 2: sugar craving. What's your take on emotional eating and why
Speaker 2: is it that, especially when we're fatigued, we're burnt out,
Speaker 2: and we're stressed, so many of us are kind of
Speaker 2: turning to this this little buzz that we're trying to
Speaker 2: get over night time before we go to bed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question, and I think again, this
Speaker 4: is the big missing piece when we talk to people
Speaker 4: about food or improving the way that they eat. People
Speaker 4: are eating not just for physical hunger. They're eating for
Speaker 4: emotional hunger as well. Right, and if you're eating for
Speaker 4: emotional hunger, you don't need another diet. But telling you
Speaker 4: about the principles of healthy eating, right, you already kind
Speaker 4: of know that you need to understand what are these
Speaker 4: internal triggers. One of the exercises that I love and
Speaker 4: I've been doing with my patients for years is called
Speaker 4: the three f's or the freedom exercise. Okay, So the
Speaker 4: three fs are feel, feed and fine. Okay, So next
Speaker 4: time someone is on their sofa at nine pm in
Speaker 4: the evening and even though they had a full meal
Speaker 4: at eight o'clock, they feel like some ice s cream.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that's ever happened to you, you guys.
Speaker 1: It was literally me last night. I was just thinking,
Speaker 1: this is me last.
Speaker 4: Night, just in case it supplies to anyone. Okay, the
Speaker 4: three F X sise can be really, really powerful. Okay,
Speaker 4: So you're sitting on the sofa, You've got a urge
Speaker 4: to have ice cream. Okay. The first step, so I say,
Speaker 4: have a little pause before you go and get the
Speaker 4: ice scream out of the freezer. Just ask yourself what
Speaker 4: am I actually feeling? That's the first F Okay, is
Speaker 4: this physical hunger. No, I kind of eate an hour ago.
Speaker 4: Is this emotional hunger? Am I tired? Am I stressed?
Speaker 4: Have I just had a row with my partner, you know,
Speaker 4: as the children's bedtime gone on too long? Whatever, it
Speaker 4: might be one of my really feeling. Then go get
Speaker 4: the ice scream and have it if you want to. Okay.
Speaker 4: The next time it happens, you go through the first
Speaker 4: self again, what am I feeling? And then you go
Speaker 4: to the second F How does food feed the feeling?
Speaker 4: So the second F is feed So you've identified the
Speaker 4: feeling as stressed, and then you go, oh, well, when
Speaker 4: I have my ice scream, in the short term, at
Speaker 4: least I feel less stressed. Ah, okay, so that's why
Speaker 4: I'm eating. I'm like, I'm feeling stressed and ice cream
Speaker 4: makes me feel better. Okay, great. The next time it happens,
Speaker 4: you then go to the third F. So you again
Speaker 4: go through the process, what am I feeling, I'm feeling stressed?
Speaker 4: How does food feed the feeling? Oh, the ice cream
Speaker 4: makes me feel less stressed. The third F is find
Speaker 4: Now that I know the feeling, Now that I know
Speaker 4: how food feeds the feeling, can I find an alternative
Speaker 4: behavior to feed that feeling.
Speaker 1: What you're going to say, can you find Can I
Speaker 1: find the food? Can I find the treats going to satisfy?
Speaker 4: No? Well you could you could. You could apply it
Speaker 4: like that, or you could go, Okay, so I feel stressed,
Speaker 4: you normally go to ice cream? What else can I
Speaker 4: do to manage that stress? Okay, let's say you like
Speaker 4: yoga for example, Right, you could put on YouTube and go, actually,
Speaker 4: I'm going to do five minutes of yoga. Right, you
Speaker 4: could identify that you know what I'm not at any
Speaker 4: time to myself today, Right, I've just been on zoom
Speaker 4: calls and so ice cream was a way of just
Speaker 4: twreating myself. Okay, how could you treat yourself in a
Speaker 4: different way? Ah, maybe I'll run myself a bath and
Speaker 4: nourish myself. And it'slightly different way. If it's loneliness that's
Speaker 4: causing you to eat, as it is for many people,
Speaker 4: or they feel a bit isolated or lonely instead of
Speaker 4: going to the ice scream, what else could you do? Well,
Speaker 4: if you live with someone like your part or a flatmate,
Speaker 4: you could go and talk to them. If you don't,
Speaker 4: you could pick up your phone. You could phone a friend,
Speaker 4: you could phone one of your parents if they're still alive,
Speaker 4: or whatever it might be. And I know it sounds
Speaker 4: super simple, but I have used these three s with
Speaker 4: patients four years and it can often be life changing
Speaker 4: because you know, your question was why do we do this? Right?
Speaker 4: A lot of the time we're not conscious of why
Speaker 4: we're doing this. We get the urge and before we
Speaker 4: know it, the spoons in our mouth right with ice
Speaker 4: scream in it. And all this exercise does. It just
Speaker 4: starts to give you a little bit of a gap
Speaker 4: between the stimulus, which is I want to eat something,
Speaker 4: and your response, which is the ice scream. And the
Speaker 4: more you just create a little gap there, the more
Speaker 4: you start to understand yourself. And once you understand why
Speaker 4: you're going to that behavior, right, you've automatically changed your
Speaker 4: relationship with that behavior. Even if you go to it
Speaker 4: in the future, you'll know, you know, I'm managing stress
Speaker 4: here by eating this ice scream, and it means you're
Speaker 4: For most people, they're less likely to do it once
Speaker 4: they're tuned in to why they're actually engaging in that behavior.
Speaker 4: So again, it's a simple exercise that you can apply
Speaker 4: to food. You can also apply to alcohol or three
Speaker 4: hours scrolling TikTok or Instagram. You can. It's a very
Speaker 4: simple you know, will it work for serious addictions, No,
Speaker 4: probably not. But at the same time, for many of us,
Speaker 4: when we've got these behaviors that we're really trying to
Speaker 4: cut back on, it can be a very powerful exercise.
Speaker 1: How much do you think willpower comes into plane? And
Speaker 1: having said that, do you think will power is something
Speaker 1: that you can learned? I even say this last night
Speaker 1: yesterday you mentioned if you're really stressed you want to eat. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: I was really stressed. I'd been crying in the day,
Speaker 1: I'd had a whole lot of things. Got tonight time
Speaker 1: and I bought twenty two East Riggs big ones and
Speaker 1: I started to eat them because I was like, I
Speaker 1: want my hit. Started to eat them, couldn't stop, and
Speaker 1: then there was a complete disconnect with my brain and
Speaker 1: my body. My brain was literally saying stop eating them,
Speaker 1: like stop it now, put what is in your hand down.
Speaker 1: And then I couldn't do it. And then I said
Speaker 1: to myself, at least too slower, and I could not.
Speaker 1: That's why I said, I was like, enjoy the egg.
Speaker 1: That is in your mouth, and I could not. I
Speaker 1: could not. My mind was being like slower down, enjoy
Speaker 1: the moment. And then I just was like a guzzleguts
Speaker 1: and I thought, what is happening there? Why is this
Speaker 1: huge disconnect happening between my brain and my body?
Speaker 4: Were you stressed at the time? Is that what you said?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah through the roof? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah? And you know, stress causes a disconnection, right, because
Speaker 4: when you are stressed, it literally changes the way you
Speaker 4: experience the world. Right, So when you're stressed, your physiology
Speaker 4: completely changes. Right, You're not expansive, you're not compassionate and
Speaker 4: empathetic looking at the other perspective, your whole focus comes in.
Speaker 4: When you're stressed, you're looking for problems. You feel a
Speaker 4: bit tense, anxious, hypervigilant. That's natural because stress ultimately is
Speaker 4: your body saying that it thinks that it's in danger. Right.
Speaker 4: And that's the problem these days is that our stress
Speaker 4: response has been activated not by wild predators. It's been
Speaker 4: activated by the state of our daily lives, by our
Speaker 4: email inboxes, by our multiple social media channels we're trying
Speaker 4: to keep up to date with or whatever it might be, right,
Speaker 4: and our body responds in a different way. But that's
Speaker 4: the key point, Brittany. You have to understand that actually
Speaker 4: stress literally changes your physiology. So you know you're saying
Speaker 4: there's a disconnect there. Yeah, there is a disconnect there.
Speaker 4: That's literally what is going on. Right, So instead of
Speaker 4: beating yourself up about that, it's like recognizing, oh wow, okay,
Speaker 4: when I get really stressed. You know, let's say yesterday
Speaker 4: happens again in two weeks, right, is there anything you
Speaker 4: can learn from yesterday what you didn't do, for example,
Speaker 4: that you could have done that could help you have
Speaker 4: less stress if a similar day happens in two weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean absolutely. Firstly, I wouldn't buy the East
Speaker 1: Dregs on special. Secondly I would probably do pilates.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But also, did you take a break in the day, right?
Speaker 4: Were you just powering through and the stress just accumulated?
Speaker 4: Because that's another thing. Often when we're busy and with stressed,
Speaker 4: we don't take breaks, and all those breaks, even a
Speaker 4: five minute walk can help reduce stress. Elves reduce strevel,
Speaker 4: so you're less likely to get to your threshold. And
Speaker 4: at your threshold is when you buy the twenty two
Speaker 4: Easter eggs. Right, you don't buy it when you're just
Speaker 4: a little bit stressed. You buy it when you're right
Speaker 4: at your threshold. So again, I don't believe in the
Speaker 4: concepts of wasted time anymore. Right in the sense that
Speaker 4: we spend time that has a consequence, and if we
Speaker 4: can learn from how we spent our time, it wasn't
Speaker 4: a waste. So your stressful day yesterday could be a
Speaker 4: very powerful teaching moment for you. Could be like, oh wow,
Speaker 4: so I've still got that tendency when I'm really stressed
Speaker 4: to go and buy twenty two easter eggs. How I
Speaker 4: not have that much stress in my life? If the
Speaker 4: same events happen next time? Could I take a walking break?
Speaker 4: Could I do a bit of meditation halfway on what
Speaker 4: I'm commuting home instead of listening to the news. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying you did that, but could I put on
Speaker 4: some relaxing music for five minutes or put on a
Speaker 4: meditation app and just reset. It's not as hard as
Speaker 4: we think it is once we're aware of what's actually
Speaker 4: driving our behaviors.
Speaker 2: On this concept of relaxation, I think a lot of us,
Speaker 2: I mean, particularly for women in our age categories they've
Speaker 2: got a lot on their plates, a lot of them
Speaker 2: will be raising young children, a lot of them will
Speaker 2: still have full time jobs, and even for us who
Speaker 2: don't have kids, like I feel as though my day
Speaker 2: is just.
Speaker 3: Go go, go, go, go, go, go go go.
Speaker 2: I get to the very end of the day, I
Speaker 2: shut the laptop and I try to get to sleep.
Speaker 2: And the concept of relaxation is one that we've had
Speaker 2: many conversations about things like toxic productivity and how we
Speaker 2: are not meant to be trying to fit every single minute,
Speaker 2: every hour of our day to be the most productive
Speaker 2: that we can. And relaxation is something that I feel
Speaker 2: quite uncomfortable with. Guilty, Yeah, I think it is guilt,
Speaker 2: And there's definitely a discomfort when I'm taking time, you know,
Speaker 2: time that I would say would be time out to
Speaker 2: try and put myself into a relaxed state. And it
Speaker 2: almost creates like a bit of a cycle for me
Speaker 2: where I'm like, Okay, I know that relaxation is necessary
Speaker 2: so that I can get good sleep and so I
Speaker 2: can feel good and maybe say that I can be
Speaker 2: good tomorrow. But then when I'm actually trying to do
Speaker 2: the things that relax me, I feel guilty about the
Speaker 2: fact I'm not using the time more efficiently. Is this
Speaker 2: something that you see a lot like in your clinical practice?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, especially with women. I've seen this for years.
Speaker 4: In fact, in my first book, I wrote about this,
Speaker 4: and I actually said in that book that one thing
Speaker 4: I've heard from female patients over the years, time and
Speaker 4: time again is when I talk some about me time
Speaker 4: and some time each day for it, you know, one
Speaker 4: of the things I would I would often say some is,
Speaker 4: you know, can you find ten minutes a day where
Speaker 4: you do something unashamedly for you, not for your partner,
Speaker 4: not for your kids, something that just you want to do.
Speaker 4: And often if I was able to persuade them and
Speaker 4: inspire them to go, now, this is really important, give
Speaker 4: it a try, they would come back and say, you
Speaker 4: know what, Dot, you gave me permission to relax. And
Speaker 4: it was a really interesting phrase I heard because I
Speaker 4: thought I never thought my job as a doctor was
Speaker 4: to give anyone a permission to do anything. But I
Speaker 4: do find that it's particularly with women. They would often
Speaker 4: describe to me exactly what you just said. I've seen
Speaker 4: definitely with mums loads of times, and I appreciate both
Speaker 4: of you said that, you know, you don't have kids,
Speaker 4: so that's not necessarily the reason why. But what I'll
Speaker 4: often say to them is, look, if you're not if
Speaker 4: you're feeling guilty about this, what I often encourage me to
Speaker 4: do is, what is it you would love to do?
Speaker 4: Like absolutely love not you know, I want, I need
Speaker 4: to do this because it's going to help me relax,
Speaker 4: need to do my meditation, all right, forget all that
Speaker 4: for a minute. What would you love to do that
Speaker 4: sounds like fun? Because we know from the research that
Speaker 4: regularly doing things that you love makes you more resilient
Speaker 4: to stress, and at the same time, being chronically stressed
Speaker 4: makes it harder for you to experience pleasure from those
Speaker 4: things that you used to love. And so, like, I
Speaker 4: remember this one patient. She was a fourth I think
Speaker 4: she was forty four years old, and she was a mother,
Speaker 4: and she had Crohn's disease, inflammacy bow disease, which is
Speaker 4: on the rise and fortunate there's many reasons for that.
Speaker 4: But I said to her, look, I really want you
Speaker 4: to take fifteen minutes each day for yourself, want you
Speaker 4: to do something that you love. And literally, for her
Speaker 4: it was getting into salsid dancing. Right, She'd always wanted
Speaker 4: to do that, but she never thought she could justify
Speaker 4: the time she was doing some for her husband, doing
Speaker 4: some for her children, doing stuff for her community. She
Speaker 4: never felt yep, actually I'm worth it. It's okay to
Speaker 4: have fifteen minutes a day for me. And just doing
Speaker 4: that for four weeks, her symptoms, her symptoms and croneses
Speaker 4: went down by over fifty percent. Wow. And you know,
Speaker 4: didn't cure it, just to be clear, but it was
Speaker 4: much more manageable for her because her stress levels went down.
Speaker 4: And so you know, and I think, what better prescription
Speaker 4: to get from your doctor than do something that you love. Right.
Speaker 4: This could be dancing, It could be playing your guitar
Speaker 4: if you're into playing guitar. It could be singing in
Speaker 4: your kitchen, dancing in your kitchen. It could be watching
Speaker 4: your favorite comedian on YouTube for ten minutes and laughing.
Speaker 4: But I often find that's a simple and easier way
Speaker 4: to get into relaxation sometimes, and it can be very effective.
Speaker 1: Doctor Chatji, your book, The Four Pillar Plan How to Relax, eat,
Speaker 1: move and Sleep your way to a longer, healthier life.
Speaker 1: What a great name for a book, because everybody wants that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the four pillars, and how do you
Speaker 1: decide that these were going to be the specific special fourth.
Speaker 4: Well, so, the four pillars of health that we have
Speaker 4: the most control over and have the most impact on
Speaker 4: our health are food, movement, sleep, and relaxation. And what
Speaker 4: I say in that book, and I still maintain to
Speaker 4: this day, is that you don't need perfection in any
Speaker 4: one of the four pillars, but you need balance amongst
Speaker 4: all four. Okay, you need to think about those four.
Speaker 4: And I think a really helpful piece of advice for
Speaker 4: anyone listening to this right now is to ask yourself
Speaker 4: in which of these four pillars do I need the
Speaker 4: most help? Most of us intuitively know that if you ask,
Speaker 4: you know, food, movement, sleep, and relaxation, which one is
Speaker 4: our kind of weak area?
Speaker 3: What happens if you have two, Well.
Speaker 4: Let's come to that. If you've identified that, actually, this
Speaker 4: one's really bad, right, I would say you're much better
Speaker 4: off making one change in that week, Carrier, rather than
Speaker 4: trying to strengthen your favorite area, and you're your strong
Speaker 4: area a bit more so, what I would often see
Speaker 4: is people, let's say, people who are really interested in
Speaker 4: nutrition their diets already, let's say eighty five percent goods.
Speaker 4: They're obsessed with taking the diet from eighty five percent
Speaker 4: good to ninety or ninety five percent good, but neglecting
Speaker 4: the fact that they're only sleeping five hours a night.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, you know what, keep your diet where
Speaker 4: it is, a little bit of sugary stuff at the weekends. Fine,
Speaker 4: don't stress about that. I would much rather you focus
Speaker 4: on bringing that five hours a sleep up to five
Speaker 4: and a half hours, or to six hours if you can. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: seven hours if you can. But you know, just a
Speaker 4: little bit of improvement. I found over the years that
Speaker 4: it's much more effective to strengthen your weakest pillar. Right,
Speaker 4: So I think it's a very simple thing for people
Speaker 4: to ask themselves, which pillar do I need the most working?
Speaker 4: And pick one thing in that area where you can
Speaker 4: start to make it better. In response to your question,
Speaker 4: if you find there's two areas well, the first thing
Speaker 4: I'd say is which one is weaker? If you know?
Speaker 4: If you don't know, I would say, yeah, put your
Speaker 4: attention on those two, right, don't worry about the other
Speaker 4: two pillars. Just go these two. Read a lot of
Speaker 4: attension at the moment, I don't know. Let's say it
Speaker 4: was stress and sleep for example. You know, you say, Okay,
Speaker 4: what's one thing I can do each day to help
Speaker 4: me destress and what's one thing I can do that's
Speaker 4: going to help me sleep better? And just focus on
Speaker 4: those things. I think that where we really get into
Speaker 4: trouble is where we try and make loads of changes
Speaker 4: in all of these four pillars and we end up
Speaker 4: doing nothing.
Speaker 3: Britt what do you reckon you'd struggle with the most.
Speaker 1: Sleep's definitely mine, one hundred percent. And that's actually something
Speaker 1: that I wanted to chat to you about. Obviously, men
Speaker 1: and women are wired very differently. How do these pillars
Speaker 1: or sorry, which category or which pillar itself affects women
Speaker 1: and men differently?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say, stress, okay,
Speaker 4: is probably one of the big ones where you see
Speaker 4: a I think it's the thing that affects so many
Speaker 4: of us these days. You know, the World Health organizers
Speaker 4: say that stress is the health epidemic of the twenty
Speaker 4: first century. I would say the way that we can
Speaker 4: often manage stress and the way we look at stress
Speaker 4: can be quite different. I think women absorb a lot
Speaker 4: of the stresses off the world around them into their bodies.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, it really relates to what you
Speaker 4: said before about this guilt. I think women very much
Speaker 4: are wired to want to, you know, look after the
Speaker 4: world around them, you know, nurture, and I think the
Speaker 4: way modern society has changed, where there is so many
Speaker 4: things to do and so many pressures, I think it
Speaker 4: probably adversity affects women more than men. And we know
Speaker 4: that women, for example, get higher rates of autoimmune disease
Speaker 4: than men, and stresses a big part of that. Right.
Speaker 4: In fact, Gable matse dotor Gable maase trauma expert. He
Speaker 4: calls women, I think modern society stress absorbers, right, which
Speaker 4: is really interesting. He says, there's all the stress in
Speaker 4: the modern world, and women seem to be I'm not
Speaker 4: saying men have no stress, to be clear, but I
Speaker 4: do think women are quite unique with how they take
Speaker 4: that stress on and how much it affects their bodies.
Speaker 3: We internalize it more, I think, so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very much so, and often don't vocalize it. Whereas
Speaker 4: you know, you can't say men and women were all
Speaker 4: different within that, but broadly speaking, I think men can
Speaker 4: be better at compartmentalizing things and just moving on. Actually,
Speaker 4: I'll leave that and it's slot there, and I can
Speaker 4: move on to a different part of my life and
Speaker 4: not think about that. Whereas I I certainly my experience
Speaker 4: with seeing patients over the years is that women don't
Speaker 4: do that in the same way. I think potentially people
Speaker 4: can learn to do that, but I don't. I think
Speaker 4: men more naturally tend to do that. I always think
Speaker 4: food we can think about differences between men and women,
Speaker 4: And again these are just broad generalizations. Broadly speaking, a
Speaker 4: lot more men tend to thrive on fasting plans than women. Right,
Speaker 4: that doesn't mean women can't fast. Just to be clear,
Speaker 4: I've got many female that thee is who thrive on
Speaker 4: a certain form of fasting.
Speaker 3: What do you mean when you say thrive, Do you
Speaker 3: mean that they have the results thereafter or that they
Speaker 3: actually feel bitter and have physical health?
Speaker 4: Both? Really both? Because I think there is this narrative
Speaker 4: now that fasting is maybe okay for men, but it
Speaker 4: isn't something women should do. I agree, broadly speaking, that
Speaker 4: men and women deal with this stuff differently. I think
Speaker 4: fasting can be a stressor on the body, right, it
Speaker 4: is a stress on the body. So if you're already
Speaker 4: experiencing lots of stress, and we've just mentioned how women
Speaker 4: may be internalized stress in a different way to men,
Speaker 4: fasting can be an additional stress and tip them over.
Speaker 4: I have seen that as well. But I do think, broadly,
Speaker 4: speaking to that sort of general question, what do men
Speaker 4: and women respond differently to? I think the way they
Speaker 4: deal with stress, I think can be quite different, but
Speaker 4: also the way that they deal with fasting can be
Speaker 4: very different as well. A lot of this cultural than
Speaker 4: the sense that you know, these things are quite punchy
Speaker 4: areas with people to talk about, right, But there is
Speaker 4: a lot of pressure on women these days, I think,
Speaker 4: and I'm saying this as a man, this is what
Speaker 4: I've observed with patients, what I've observed with my wife
Speaker 4: and her friends. Let's compare to I don't know, fifty
Speaker 4: years ago, right. Just to be clear, I'm not saying
Speaker 4: we should be going back to the way things worth
Speaker 4: fifty years ago, right, I'm just just to be super clear.
Speaker 4: Life fifty years ago, for all the potential negatives, in
Speaker 4: some ways, it was simpler, right. People knew what their
Speaker 4: role was. Whether we agree with those roles or not.
Speaker 4: Those roles were quite well defined in many cultures, and
Speaker 4: I think those well defined roles led to a simplicity
Speaker 4: and potentially lower stress. Whereas I think one of the risks,
Speaker 4: or one of the unintended consequences of all the increased
Speaker 4: opportunity now that women are getting compared to fifty years
Speaker 4: gon not even saying it's as good as it should be,
Speaker 4: I'm just saying compared to fifty years ago, what I
Speaker 4: find is that, yeah, women are working now, They're doing
Speaker 4: great jobs, they're starting amazing businesses. Yet if and when
Speaker 4: they choose to have children, they still feel that maternal
Speaker 4: instinct of being the care of being the nurture, being
Speaker 4: the one who wants to look after the kids. So
Speaker 4: in fifty years ago, perhaps broadly speaking, their focus could
Speaker 4: just be on that, whereas now the focus is I'm
Speaker 4: still trying to run my business, I'm still trying to
Speaker 4: crush it on Instagram, and I'm also trying to look
Speaker 4: after the kids. That is a lot to contend with, right,
Speaker 4: And I don't think this has been planned. I'm saying
Speaker 4: this is an unintended consequence, but I think it's something
Speaker 4: we need to wrestle with as a society. I think
Speaker 4: we need to wrestle with this idea is like, are
Speaker 4: we putting too much on women's plates? How can we
Speaker 4: change that? But I also to defend men here, and
Speaker 4: I'm a man saying this, But I also do believe
Speaker 4: that men are also struggling with new gender roles, right,
Speaker 4: Men are also struggling with well, what is my role now?
Speaker 4: Like I remember, my dad was never ever at a
Speaker 4: school play, a school performance. Like dad worked, right, Dad's
Speaker 4: job was to earn the money to feed us all.
Speaker 4: Whereas I remember when my kids were young, I had
Speaker 4: a busy job, but I was I still felt huge
Speaker 4: pressure and I wanted to be at my children's performances,
Speaker 4: you know, I wanted to be at school at two
Speaker 4: pm to watch them read out a recital, lever it
Speaker 4: might be. And again, I'm not complaining, right, I'm not
Speaker 4: complaining at all. But I do think it's interesting and
Speaker 4: I don't think I think we need to have honest
Speaker 4: conversations about how our roles have changed. And it's okay
Speaker 4: to say actually were struggling with this. And I think
Speaker 4: saying that we struggle with this doesn't mean we wanted
Speaker 4: to go back and it doesn't mean we're being sexist.
Speaker 4: It just means, hey, this is a real problem. Let's
Speaker 4: come together and try and figure out how we might
Speaker 4: move forward with this. Did that all make sense?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: I also think what plays in here is the way
Speaker 4: we now live, right is quite alien to how we
Speaker 4: used to live. So the nuclear family, for example, is
Speaker 4: a modern invention. Right for most of human evolution, we
Speaker 4: did not bring up kids by ourselves, you know, in
Speaker 4: nuclear families. It was in tribes, it was in communities.
Speaker 4: And so this has a real consequence. Right now, everything
Speaker 4: has plus points and negative points pretty much everything in life.
Speaker 4: There's an upside and a downside. Okay, So one of
Speaker 4: the upsides of many people will say now is we
Speaker 4: have independence, we can move away, get a really good job,
Speaker 4: go to the city, have all this opportunity that we
Speaker 4: didn't have in the past. Great, that's an upside. Downside
Speaker 4: is we've often moved away from our parents, our siblings,
Speaker 4: our community, the people who knew us, the people who
Speaker 4: would support us. So the consequence of nuclear families is
Speaker 4: so many couples, their relationships are under huge stress after
Speaker 4: they have kids. You know, I've seen it with a
Speaker 4: lot of my friends I've seen it with countless patients.
Speaker 4: And it's not that that people don't love each other,
Speaker 4: it's just it's too much for two And this is
Speaker 4: on the assumption that there's two parents living together, which
Speaker 4: of course much of the time isn't the case. But
Speaker 4: if two parents are working and then they have children
Speaker 4: who look after it and they have no support nearby,
Speaker 4: that is full on. You have no time to nourish
Speaker 4: your relationship, you know, So you know, the partners become dissent,
Speaker 4: they start niggling with each other. That in and off
Speaker 4: itself creates stress, right, And so I think the only
Speaker 4: way we get to a solution is by honestly identifying
Speaker 4: what is the root of this problem and understanding that
Speaker 4: I don't think we were designed to do all this
Speaker 4: by ourselves. That I think is one of the root
Speaker 4: causes of why there's so much sort of stress going
Speaker 4: on and why we're struggling with these new roles.
Speaker 3: On this topic of stress.
Speaker 2: I think for me, the first thing that is affected
Speaker 2: when I feel stressed is that I'm not able to
Speaker 2: get as good quality sleep, and I think that that
Speaker 2: is something that probably everybody experiences.
Speaker 3: But another thing that I think.
Speaker 2: Is specific to women, is that these hormonal fluctuations that
Speaker 2: we go through, whether that be you know, throughout a
Speaker 2: time of life or even a time.
Speaker 3: Of the month.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I'm sample study of one, but
Speaker 2: I've definitely experienced different sleep patterns and the quality of
Speaker 2: sleep that I'm able to get. I feel like it
Speaker 2: changes over the course of like my menstrual cycle and throughout.
Speaker 3: Different periods of my life. What are those changes, how.
Speaker 2: Are they affecting you know, firstly, our stress levels, and
Speaker 2: how are they affecting our ability to get good quality sleep?
Speaker 4: When you mentioned the cycle there, the mental cycle, and
Speaker 4: how in different stages of the cycle you feel different
Speaker 4: levels of stress and different amounts of sleep. That is normal, Okay,
Speaker 4: that's completely normal. You know, your body is hormonally different
Speaker 4: throughout the mental cycle. That's one of the key differences
Speaker 4: between women and men are preate on these twenty four
Speaker 4: hour cycles. Women operate on, you know, traditionally this more
Speaker 4: twenty eight day cycle. Of course, there's a bit of
Speaker 4: variation there whether it's twenty eight days or twenty six
Speaker 4: or thirty thirty one, but you know, broadly speaking, that's
Speaker 4: same massive difference between men and women. And I actually
Speaker 4: remember I spoke to Dr Mindy Pelts on my podcast
Speaker 4: about maybe three years ago. She was just breaking down
Speaker 4: the different stages of a female cycle and how a
Speaker 4: woman might want to eat differently at various times. She
Speaker 4: was you know, I remember very clearly she's saying, you know,
Speaker 4: the week before the periods, she was saying, actually, you know,
Speaker 4: most women do crave carbs, and it's okay to actually
Speaker 4: indulge and have those carbs in that week, but you know,
Speaker 4: at the start of the cycle you may not as much.
Speaker 4: So if you do want to, you know, change your
Speaker 4: diet and go lower carb for example, then that's the
Speaker 4: time to do it. But we also discussed in that conversation,
Speaker 4: let's say in a heterosexual couple, for example, let's say
Speaker 4: a man and a woman, right that benefits have actually
Speaker 4: been quite open about what stage on someone's cycle someone is,
Speaker 4: so I think for many years we thought, well, it's
Speaker 4: you know, it's not the man's business, you know what's
Speaker 4: going on with a woman's mental cycle. But we were
Speaker 4: just hypothesizing, well, might it create more harmony in relationships
Speaker 4: if the other partner, whether it was a man or woman. Frankly,
Speaker 4: doesn't really matter that knew that. Actually, yeah, at this point,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm not sleeping as well, I'm a bit
Speaker 4: more moody. I'm craving carbs. Actually, then you know at
Speaker 4: those points, actually you could if you let's say, if
Speaker 4: that was my wife, for example, and I knew, okay,
Speaker 4: this is the week leading at her period and she's
Speaker 4: struggling with this sleep. With that knowledge, I can be
Speaker 4: more patient. I can you know, try to not take
Speaker 4: things personally and go, oh, this is hormonal. She's struggling
Speaker 4: with this. And I think increasing that communication over these things,
Speaker 4: I actually think while some people may say it's in
Speaker 4: a fridgement of privacy and it's no one else's business. Fine,
Speaker 4: I'm not here to tell, you know, what everyone should
Speaker 4: or shouldn't do. I just think it's quite a nice
Speaker 4: thing to think about. Actually, might that be helpful? And
Speaker 4: certainly since that conversation, my wife and I do communicate
Speaker 4: about this kind of stuff, and I would say it's
Speaker 4: really really helps because I have a much better understanding
Speaker 4: of where she is in her cycle and how that
Speaker 4: also affects her and therefore affects our relationship.
Speaker 1: Do women need more sleep than men?
Speaker 4: As a rough generalization. I was saying my experience, I
Speaker 4: would say, yes, right, that seems to be the case.
Speaker 4: But I can't say it's the case for everyone, right,
Speaker 4: you just can't. We're all the individual, we're all different.
Speaker 4: So I can't say that every woman needs more set
Speaker 4: than every man. But as a broad principle, I do
Speaker 4: think women tend to thrive on a little bit more
Speaker 4: seat than men. Certainly, again, this is again in any
Speaker 4: course one, but in my own marriage, I would say
Speaker 4: my wife absolutely needs more sleep than me, good hour
Speaker 4: and night, more seat than me, and it's very noticeable
Speaker 4: if she's not guessing that. And I don't mean that
Speaker 4: in a derogatory way, just to be really clear, I
Speaker 4: just I'm just genuinely it's sort of just I'm just
Speaker 4: defending my wife that I'm not saying anything nastam. It's
Speaker 4: just and I think we would both agree she does
Speaker 4: seem more seat to me, and that's certainly what's seemed
Speaker 4: with my patients.
Speaker 1: There was an interview that you did with doctor gable Matte,
Speaker 1: and for me, it was so powerful and it was
Speaker 1: something that really changed the way I think. And it
Speaker 1: was sort of around you know, he's in his late sixties,
Speaker 1: and it was around if you had to go back
Speaker 1: and do something differently in your life, what would you do?
Speaker 1: And it was really powerful when I watched it, and
Speaker 1: he talked a lot about he would do everything differently,
Speaker 1: and he would spend more time sitting in joy and
Speaker 1: things that you know, his family and the things that
Speaker 1: mattered to him, because he just thought he had to.
Speaker 3: Work, work, work.
Speaker 1: For me, I really took a lot away from that conversation,
Speaker 1: and I've been thinking about it a lot. Out of
Speaker 1: all the conversations you've had over the years and all
Speaker 1: the incredible peace you've had the chance to speak to,
Speaker 1: is there something or someone or a piece of advice
Speaker 1: that has really stuck with you and changed the course
Speaker 1: of the way that you think and act.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he wishes he'd played more. Right. For all his success,
Speaker 4: for all his expertise, for all the fact that he's
Speaker 4: invited all over the world to speak and he's sold
Speaker 4: a squillion books, he again has regrets. He wishes to
Speaker 4: live life differently. He wishes he'd played more And think
Speaker 4: it goes back to what I said earlier on about
Speaker 4: passion right. Doing things that you love that you enjoy
Speaker 4: is really good for you. It helps you become more
Speaker 4: resilient to stress as well. So I think too much
Speaker 4: of the health conversation these days is about deprivation and restriction. Right,
Speaker 4: we don't talk enough about joy. Doing things that you
Speaker 4: love is good for you. Right, It's really good for you.
Speaker 4: And actually it's something I wish we would talk about
Speaker 4: a lot more. And actually, when I come on tour
Speaker 4: to Australia this summer, I will absolutely be talking about
Speaker 4: this and the benefits of more joy and passion in
Speaker 4: your life. So I've had four conversations with Gabor on
Speaker 4: my podcast over seven years, and they've all touched me
Speaker 4: in different ways. But if you say, what was the conversation,
Speaker 4: what was the piece of advice that has had the
Speaker 4: most impact, It's what I started the show with, right,
Speaker 4: It's my conversation with Edith Eager that I re released
Speaker 4: recently for an episode five hundred special. That conversation changed me.
Speaker 4: It fundamentally changed who I was, because not only did
Speaker 4: she say those magical words you know wrong. And I've
Speaker 4: lived in Auschwitz and I could tell you the greatest
Speaker 4: prison you will ever live inside is the prison that
Speaker 4: you create inside your own minds. But it literally you know,
Speaker 4: I remember coming out of that conversation and I said
Speaker 4: to my videographer, I'm not the same person anymore. Like
Speaker 4: I am not the same person anymore. That the way
Speaker 4: I view myself and the world has fundamentally changed. Because
Speaker 4: for me, understanding that in a death camp she could
Speaker 4: reframe her experiences, it just really powerfully taught me that,
Speaker 4: oh wrong, good. You know what, even on your worst day,
Speaker 4: you're not in a death camp, right, So if she
Speaker 4: can reframe her experiences in Auschwitz, you can reframe them
Speaker 4: in your own life. And that single realization has changed
Speaker 4: the way that I experienced life. It's changed the way
Speaker 4: I experience stress. And if I'm ever struggling, I go,
Speaker 4: what's the other perspective here? How can I take a
Speaker 4: different perspective on this situation, which would mean it would
Speaker 4: not be as stressful. So I've had over five hundred conversations,
Speaker 4: many of them have left their profound effects on me.
Speaker 4: But if you make me choose, it would still be
Speaker 4: that conversation with that ninety three year old lady Edith Eager.
Speaker 3: What a beautiful and powerful woman. That's so special. Thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining us. Today.
Speaker 2: We are so grateful to be chatting to you from
Speaker 2: the other side of the world. But we might not
Speaker 2: have to chat to you from the other side of
Speaker 2: the world for very long because you are coming to
Speaker 2: visit us in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in July. Why
Speaker 2: we are going to have links to doctor Rungan, Charatejy's
Speaker 2: social media podcast and tour in our show notes.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Guys, thank you very very much, really joined my chat
Speaker 4: and I cannot wait to be in Australia this summer.
Speaker 4: So we're coming for a family holiday and those three
Speaker 4: dates and we cannot wait.
Speaker 2: Well, if you have some time in Sibby would love
Speaker 2: to show you around and if you would like to
Speaker 2: have a chat in person. I mean, I don't necessarily
Speaker 2: want to make you worth more on your family.
Speaker 3: Holiday, but if you've got the time.
Speaker 4: We would love to pay right well, listen, let me
Speaker 4: check it out and if so, yes, I'll see you
Speaker 4: guys as Sydney. I look forward to it.
Speaker 1: We would love that.
Speaker 4: Takkay guys. Byeye