Take Five ::: with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

You can accomplish just about anything in Five minutes. Including a new you!….. unknown

Don’t tell my husband but I have a new crush. It’s not a food or a shoe crush – it’s a man crush! He’s a younger man, tall, handsome with a British accent. Oh my…

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is the author of three books, his most recent Feel Better in 5. He is the resident doctor on BBC One’s Breakfast Show and a regular on BCC radio. His podcast is the number one podcast on Apple, and his TED Talk has over three million views.

Dr. Chatterjee says the key to success is in the five-minute plan. “In Feel Better in 5, “I’ve made health super simple. Everything in the book takes five minutes, maximum. Start small and keep it simple.”

Feel Better in 5

We are pretty overwhelmed, to begin with. So, when you add one more ‘must-do’ to your weekly routine, the needle on the overwhelmed chart begins to escalate. Unless, that one more thing, is easy to do, this is the key. “It sounds like a gimmick, but it’s really not, because if you look at all the behavioral science, this is the way that you create a new behavior – you don’t create a new behavior by making it difficult, you create a new behavior by making it easy.” For a simple thought, this one carries the full weight of reality.

We have all been at the beginning of January saying to ourselves, this will be my year. I have to get in shape. I have to cut back on sugar and alcohol. How is this for self-induced stress! Not good…The thought of the gym 3 days a week before 6 am is enough to make you want to stay in bed. But, if you follow Dr. Chatterjee’s advice and keep it simple. You’ll have no trouble getting up to do your daily 5-minute workout. If you keep it easy, you’re more likely to keep it up.

One of Dr. Chatterjee’s tricks is to tag a new habit to an old habit. If you brew coffee every morning, you could do your 5 minutes while waiting for your coffee to brew. Good habits build-up, just like bad habits, and it’s an excellent idea to reward your good habit with a wall chart or track on your phone. Visually seeing what you have accomplished in a week or a month will propel you onto further success.

Mind, Body and Heart

Ideally, you will want to expand your workout to 15 minutes, 3 – 5-minute workouts. Why three? All three are interconnected and selecting one five-minute intervention for the mind, one for the body, and one for the heart. If you do these three, every day, five days a week, it will change your life. So, it literally becomes 15 minutes a day, five days a week is all you have to do. By doing this, you’re covering the three most important elements of a happy, healthy lifestyle.

Working on your mental health is most important. Especially if we have a habit of downplaying our stress, if we are feeling overwhelmed daily, we will want to concentrate on the mind movements. The body movements are actually a series of five-minute workouts, alternating with grounding your body through a one-minute quiet time. The workout can be strength, HIIT, or yoga – none of it requires any equipment. The third part is for the heart. The three combined are the primary key. All the recommended exercises and movements are listed in the book. And it is quite extensive and varied.

“When it comes to health, the heart does not receive as much attention as it should – it’s our primary connection to all things. Our connection with our self, our connection with our friends or our partners. When you miss one of these areas, it’s tough to make changes stick because they all feed into one another,” says Dr. Chattelerjee.

Restoring harmony to your body

What’s amazing about the premise of the Feel better in 5 minutes is it restores harmony to your body. The connection between the three core pieces of the mind, body, and heart causes a ripple effect. You’ll find that you are eating healthier, sleeping more soundly, and have more energy. And a new feeling of empowerment because of your continued success.

Dr. Chatterjee is also passionate about the cycle of motivation. The majority of his patients come to him when their motivation is high. They want to be healthier and are willing to begin a new regime of exercise and nutrition. He found that when motivation begins to subside, and it will the patient will slowly ease back into his old ways. What his patients needed was a better system to keep the momentum moving forward.

He goes onto say, “the point I’m trying to make is, rule number one for behavior change, is you have to make it easy because even when your motivation levels out, as it will, you’ll still do it. This is a corner stone rule.”

“The second most important rule, is where do you put that new behavior that you want to do? Right? Because a lot of us don’t really think about that. We think, oh, we’ll fit it in when we’ve got time. Schedule your behavior and be consistant.”

“I think if people think back to the behaviors that they’ve tried to introduce into their life and not managed to, I bet that they didn’t follow one of those two rules. That’s so, so important.”

Dr. Chatterjee has dedicated the last twenty years of his practice to the belief in progressive medicine. Progressive medicine takes a full 360-degree approach to health and how the body’s systems can better work together to reduce the risk of chronic disease while improving vitality.

Progressive medicine

With progressive medicine, “I focus on finding the root cause of diseases and help my patients make their illnesses disappear. This means that as a doctor that I focus on all of you, not just the symptoms. I don’t treat the disease. I treat the person.”

“The majority of my patients don’t need a pill, they need a lifestyle prescription.”

I downloaded the book, and I’m excited to hear more about what he has to say. I’ve personally had a hard time getting back into an exercise program, so I am inquisitive about putting this new method into play. Please let me know what you think about Dr. Chatterjee and his new progressive medicine. And, if any of you get into the 5-minute vibe…let me know!