EP. 196 — Transforming Health with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Jameela Intro [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. Today’s episode is continuing on my desire for us to take information that we find empowering and use it to regain bits and bits and bits of more autonomy in our lives. We live in a society where our government don’t always take the best care of us. I think that’s fair to say. Don’t always take the best care as to what’s in our food, or really making us understand the harms of social media or being on screens all of the time, or not exercising. And we kind of all have a bit of a surface level understanding of that, but we don’t have anyone really fully stressing to us how bizarre and stressful our lifestyles are. You know, I talk about this all the time that Esther Perel discusses our rising anxiety and our rising depression and how we always see that as a kind of pathology, that we as individuals are sick and we never go, “Wait, what is the cause of this rise and all of these things? Can it just be a pathology or a people having a very normal reaction to a sick society? Is there something wrong with our lifestyles?” Because when you look at big cities like New York or London or Los Angeles or wherever, often the rates of depression and anxiety can be much higher than they are in some places like Italy or certain parts of Spain. There is something to the way a society runs that obviously is going to impact the way people feel. And maybe this isn’t all sickness in us as much as in our society. So how can we, as individuals who aren’t really being cared for or catered to, who often have doctors who don’t even make us think about this? How are we supposed to protect ourselves? We can’t just drug everything away. I’m a big fan of of medication and, you know, mainstream meds, etc. but there has to be a more holistic approach. And the reason I love today’s guest is because he is a very legitimate source of information, being that he is a proper doctor who practices proper mainstream medicine, who has also kind of gone through his own awakening as to the fact that it’s not good enough to only give your patients care that is in reaction to their sickness. It is important to teach your patients about preventative care, to actually look at their whole lifestyle, to look at their emotional well-being as a part of their health. His name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and you’ve probably seen him all over Instagram by now. His videos just continue to go viral, where he has excellent educators and speakers and thinkers join him to discuss the ways in which we need to be able to better really look after ourselves. Not in a punishing way, and not in a reactive way, in a truly preventative way that is geared towards our happiest and most enjoyable well-being. I really appreciate his expertise. I really appreciate his manner. I find it very unpretentious and I find him very reassuring. And I just think some of the things that he speaks about in this episode seem so incredibly basic and and like things that should occur to all of us all the time, but we don’t realize how much we are, uh, diverted away from really considering these tiny little practices throughout the day that anyone could start practicing now, today, and every day, and how quickly they can genuinely, genuinely improve the quality of your life. So sit back, relax and enjoy the lovely words of Dr. Chatterjee.

Jameela [00:03:59] Dr. Chatterjee, welcome to I Weigh, how are you?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:04:01] Yeah, I’m good. Thanks. The end of a busy week, but, uh, I’ve really been looking forward to talking to you, so thanks for having me on.

Jameela [00:04:06] Likewise. You’ve been doing so much work within the kind of autonomy space of being able to take a holistic approach to taking a hold back of your own life. And so when I say self-help, I want to be careful because that can elicit all kinds of ideas of what you do. But can I ask you why this space is something that you’ve moved into after a life in medicine?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:04:27] So I’ve been a medical doctor now for 22 years, so I’ve seen tens of thousands of patients. And I would say one of the most important things I’ve learned throughout my career is that one of the most important things I need to give every single one of my patients is a feeling of agency. So if they come in and I make a diagnosis and say, “You have to take this medication,” for example, unless we’re careful with how we communicate that to our patients, it can be very disempowering. It can often feel like, “Well, there’s nothing I can do. I just happen to have this condition that now I need to take this medication for.” So I’ve always felt very, very strongly that no matter who comes in to see me, no matter what the health complaint is, I want to make sure that when they walk out of my door, I want to make sure that they feel that there’s something that they can do to impact the quality of their life. It may mean that they sometimes need a medication as well, for sure, but more often than not, my bias is to try and use lifestyle. And lifestyle is a bit of a loaded term, right? Because people don’t always feel that they have got agency or choice over their lifestyle. A lot of people feel really stressed out. They’ve got really difficult lives, a lot of pressures, a lot of people to look after, maybe they’re not earning enough money. I get it. But nonetheless, the majority of what I see as a doctor these days, 80 to 90% is in some way, Jameela, related to our collective modern lifestyles. And let me be really clear here, I’m not putting blame on anyone, right?

Jameela [00:06:02] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:06:02] I get that life is challenging. I get that life is difficult, but nonetheless, I think I need to be honest with people and go modern life, the way we are collectively living now, is having a huge impact on our wellbeing. I’m not just talking about things like type two diabetes. I’m also talking about things like depression, anxiety, self-esteem, how we feel about ourselves, insomnia. And so circling back to your original question, why am I so passionate about this? Well, when I look out, I see a sick society. I see people who, in my view, are not being given empowering information that they can utilize in their own lives. So everything I do, whether it’s on my podcast each week, whether it’s in my books, in my journal with my patients, whatever it is, I always want that patient, that individual, that member of the public to feel that there’s something, no matter how small, that they can do, that is really going to make a difference.

Jameela [00:07:01] It’s very rare to hear that. I mean, I’m in America, where it almost feels like you’re discouraged by most doctors to look into what you could do to be preventative about disease. It’s often a more reactive medical system over here. And, you know, coincidentally, they also charge you to the point where you can barely make your mortgage for health care, and I wouldn’t dare be a conspiracy theorist would say there’s something in that. But it’s really nice, after nine years in America, to hear a doctor say that they are interested in a more holistic approach because I, I have personally experienced, I’ve spoken about this a lot on the podcast, huge changes. I’m finally addressing my diet, addressing as in like being more nutritional and being more thoughtful of the source of the food, and making sure that I am exercising every day in a way that I find sustainable and comfortable and good for my joints. And the way that I’ve changed my relationship with social media has massively impacted my sleep and my habits and my self-esteem, and all of that has led to general, much better health in a way that I feel younger even than I did ten years ago for the first time in my life. And so I really subscribe to that. And I, uh, not to play the race card, but I do wonder also if there’s any kind of influence, being that you are from a South Asian background. You know, we are very much so, I believe, a people who who do think that like food and relationship and family and nurture and environment is, is central to well-being. Has that influenced you at all?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:08:34] Yeah, 100%. I think you’ve picked up on something really, really astute there. Now, of course, in the UK and the US there are many South Asian background doctors anyway, right? So this is not a scientific trial, but my observation is that you often do see that. Now why might that be? Well, I grew up in the UK. My parents were immigrants from India. They came over to the UK in the 1960s, in the 1970s. I went to a prestigious Western medical school in Edinburgh, right? so we’ve got a very traditional Western medical education. And I thought, Jameela, that when I left medical school, I’d been taught everything I needed to know to help my patients get better. But I very soon found out that that was simply not the case. What we get taught in medical school is a very pharmaceutical based model of care. We’re taught to diagnose disease, and then we’re taught to treat that disease, usually with pharmaceuticals. Now, that can work for some conditions. But for most of what I see, and there’s good research now suggesting that 80 to 90% of what doctors now see is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. And I remember throughout my career being very frustrated. I remember in my first week as a GP, I remember a young lady came in, I think she was around 19 or 20 years old. She was really struggling with her moods. She thought that she was depressed and she wanted help and she thought she needed an antidepressant. I remember thinking, looking at my guidelines and the protocol and it was sort of saying, “Yeah, put her on an antidepressant because she’s got symptoms consistent with depression.” And I thought, this just doesn’t feel right to me. How can I just label her and put her on a medication without understanding what’s going on in her life? So what I did with her is I spent 20 minutes or so talking to her, I invited her back the following day at the end of my morning clinic, so I could spend a bit more time with her, trying to understand what was going on in her life, and I would see her every week for the next 4 or 5 weeks. And little by little, I got to know her. She got to know me. We built up some trust, and I discovered that she had split up with her boyfriend three months before that she found really, really hard. She was engaging in a lot of unhelpful behaviors which are understandable, like take outs, poor diet. She was staying up late binge watching boxsets. She wasn’t moving her body. She was feeling a lot of stress. And I thought, well, hold on a minute. She has symptoms consistent with depression, but I do I need to label her and put her on a medication or might be able to help her change some of these things? And so little by little, we started to change things. I even said to her at one point, “You know, you’ve gone through a big breakup. Of course you’re not going to feel fantastic. You know, it’s it’s understandable. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got a medical condition. It means that you’re going through a really tough situation in life at the moment, and you’re compensating with poor food choices, with no movement, with huge amounts of stress and poor sleep. What would happen if I help you start changing these things? I think it might make a difference.” So together, we came up with a plan. Over the next few weeks and months, she started to make changes in what I call the four pillars of health: food, movement, sleep, and relaxation. Small changes. And bit by bit she started to feel better. And three months later, Jameela, she was like a different person. She said, “I’m back to how I used to be. I feel fine, you know, I have some good days, I have some bad days, but I had to figure that stuff out myself.” So going back to your question, how much does my backgrounds and my upbringing influence me? Hugely.

Jameela [00:12:17] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:12:17] Because as a kids, you’re an Indian family, you grow up with the concept of food as medicine.

Jameela [00:12:22] Yeah, everything is fucking turmeric, ginger, and white rice.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:12:26] Yeah. If I had a cold or a sore throat, I can still remember, mum would make me hot water, grated ginger, honey and turmeric. If I wasn’t very well, there’d be extra turmeric in our dinner. Now, what’s really interesting is that we now have evidence today that turmeric is anti-inflammatory and can have all these benefits. So I think culturally you grow up with that as an idea, as a concept that food can be medicine. And Jameela you said something before about prevention. And I wonder if I could just share something with you that I think is a really common misunderstanding. Making small changes to our lifestyle, in the context of our lives as much as we can, it’s not just about prevention. Sure, it can help prevent us getting sick in the future, but it can sometimes be used as the treatments like I did with that patient. I helped her manage her mental wellbeing by using lifestyle as medicine. In 2015 and 2017, I made a series of documentaries for BBC One where patients and families who were sick, they were struggling, they were under GPs, they were under specialists. In six weeks, in every situation, I either managed to help them get fully their disease into remission or significantly better. Whether it was type two diabetes, fibromyalgia, panic attacks down by 70% in just six weeks or by helping them make small changes to their lifestyle. So I’m really passionate about trying to spread this empowering message that your lifestyle can be your medicine. But I’m not saying that to put blame on people. I am not saying that people are doing this to themselves. As I’ve already said, I get that life is tough, but people just don’t realize how small changes can make a massive, massive difference.

Jameela [00:14:15] Absolutely, but I do also think just to, just to make very clear that while that patient kind of had more of a situational case of depressive symptoms, I just want the listener to recognize that also sometimes medication is something that is necessary, even just temporarily. You know, as someone said I think on this podcast that sometimes it can be the step ladder that helps you turn the light on. It’s not going to turn the light on for you. It’s not going to take away all your problems, but sometimes it can calm everything down enough.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:14:43] Yeah.

Jameela [00:14:43] There are more, sometimes very severe cases or chemical imbalances that can lead to depression. So we’re not saying don’t take medication if you need it. It’s all a case by case basis. But one thing I absolutely will say is that, and it’s something I’ve seen a few of my friends do, is that once they get on medication, the kind of floor of their depression, you know, rises and so they feel much better than they did before. And then they stop exercising and they stop looking after their food or looking after their sleep because they’ve got something that’s kind of just about carrying them over. Does that make sense? That they’ve got something that’s making them already feel kind of steady, and then after a while they start to decline again. I think if you are on a medication for your mental health, what is so vital to do is at least now start introducing these things like daily exercise. And it doesn’t have to be stressing out at the gym in a fancy outfit. It can truly just be going for a walk with a podcast, walking a dog. Um, it can be, you know, you can pay attention to your diet, you can pay attention to your lifestyle and you know, your social life and how much affection you’re receiving. I just wanted to make that clear because I never want someone to hear a doctor say anything like that, and then chuck their antidepressants in the toilet.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:15:52] I mean, I would love to re-emphasize that. So the case I use to demonstrate what I was talking about is just one particular case. Every case needs to be treated individually.

Jameela [00:16:04] Individualism.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:16:05] That person needs to be assessed. You can have ten people with symptoms of depression, and they could have ten different reasons. One person it could be related to childhood trauma. One person it could be related to social isolation. One person it could be something else. But no matter what the cause is, no matter whether you need medication or not, introducing some positive lifestyle changes is going to help you. It’s going to help you now, and it’s going to help you in the future. And we’ve got so much evidence now on these things, so we know that even a ten minute walk can make a meaningful change in your mood. Just ten minutes. So if someone’s listening, and they think, “I don’t really like the gym, I don’t like working out.” Okay, what about a ten minute walk each morning? Could you do that?

Jameela [00:16:47] And what exactly does that ten minute walk do? Could you explain to people physiologically and chemically what that does?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:16:53] It does all kinds of things. We know that movement, all kinds of movement, movement helps to change the way that our brain functions in a whole variety of different ways. So, for example, one thing that comes on the back of movement is an increase in the levels of a hormone called BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor. You don’t need to know what it is, but in essence, what it does is help to grow new nerve cells, right? So that’s one way that exercise can help change things in our brain. What’s another way? Well, when you go for a walk and let’s say you do it without a phone. I mean do it with a podcast, with music if you want. But let’s say you did it without a phone, a ten minute walk. What you’re doing is by not focusing on something, you’re allowing a part of your brain called the default mode network to kick into gear in, and that part of the brain does a whole host of things. Two of the things it does is it helps us solve problems, and it helps us be more creative.

Jameela [00:17:53] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:17:53] So some of the time when we have low mood or we’re struggling with our mental well-being, we feel stuck, right? We don’t know how to move forward. We don’t have any motivation. We could sometimes feel lazy. We can procrastinate. But a ten minute bounce of movement will literally start changing that. It will change the chemicals going around your body. It will kick into gear your default mode network. You’ll solve problems, you’ll feel more creative, and you will literally feel like a different person. So movement is absolutely fantastic for your mental wellbeing. The problem often is, is that when people feel low, they struggle with motivation to actually get moving in the first place.

Jameela [00:18:34] Mhm. I think that’s really important cause also some people feel like exercise is something you have to set aside an hour for, or you have to travel to a gymnasium for, and something that I’ve been trying to really focus people on, on my social media is just it can be ten minutes dancing around your kitchen. If it’s too late at night for you to get out and go for a walk, just find any way to move your body. Run up and down some stairs. Do anything and it really doesn’t take more than about 5 to 15 minutes to be able to get that vital boost that helps reregulate your system and give you a real sense of, I found it anyway, instant autonomy. I’m someone who’s had poor health my entire life, and it’s very hard for me to feel in control of my body because I have something called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which really impacts every single cell in my body. And there’s something about being able to move and walk just for long enough that it doesn’t hurt my joints, but it just gives me back this feeling of like, I am in control, I am in power. And that really kind of transmits from just the moment of literally moving my body into how I feel about my life. I feel more in control of my life after I do even the smallest amount of exercise.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:19:40] You mentioned a sense of control.

Jameela [00:19:42] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:19:42] A sense of control is one of the most important things you can give yourself, right? So we know from the scientific research that people who have a sense of control over their lives, they’re happier, they’re healthier, they do better at work, and they have better relationships. Now it’s really, really important, particularly at the moment, if you look out across the world, a lot of us get really down, right? We see the state of the world, we see what’s going on, and the world feels out of control. But the truth is, the world is always out of control. There’s so much going on in the world that you have no control or influence over. But what often happens these days is that people will doom scroll on social media. They’ll sit there watching the news, they’ll feel bad, they’ll get depressed, and they will then engage in more unhealthy lifestyle behaviors because they just think, what’s the point? If you can do something small, like a five minute bout of movement each morning, for example, you give yourself a sense of control. Now, I do this in my own life. I have a little morning routine. I know that I can become a bit of a cliche for some people.

Jameela [00:20:48] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:20:49] But the truth is, particularly since I had young children, I found that when I have a bit of time to myself in the morning, I’m a much better human being. So there’s a few things that I do first thing in the morning before my wife and kids get up. One of the things I do is I have a five minute strength workout in my kitchen, and I’ve rarely missed a day for three years, and it’s got nothing to do with willpower. I just want to explain because I think it’s going to be really, really helpful for some people to hear this. One of the things I do each morning is make myself a cup of coffee. So I’m in my kitchen in my pajamas. I like my coffee to brew for five minutes, so I put the coffee grounds in the French press. I pour the hot water in, and I put a timer on for five minutes. Now, in those five minutes, I don’t go on Instagram. I don’t go on email. I do a strength workout in my pajamas. Sometimes it’s body weight. Sometimes I’ve got a dumbbell there or a kettlebell, and then I’ve got the nice reward of a hot cup of coffee when I’ve finished it. Now, the reason I managed to do it is because I’ve followed two of the most important rules of behavior change. Number one, if you want something to stick in the long term, you have to make it easy. So my workout is five minutes. Number two, if you really want to turn a new behavior into a long term habit, you ideally want to stick it on to an existing habit.

Jameela [00:22:12] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:22:12] So an existing habit is something you’re automatically doing without any conscious thoughts. I’m having my coffee in the morning. I don’t need a reminder. I don’t need an alert on my phone to make myself coffee. I’m going to do it, and it’s going to brew for five minutes. So by sticking on my workout there, it means I always do it. So I have this real sense of achievement every single morning, and it is so easy. Just like brushing your teeth. Everyone listening right now probably brushes their teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening. The reason they managed to do that because that wasn’t a habit when they were three years old, probably wasn’t a habit when they were five years old. But because it’s so easy and you do it at the same times each day, it’s now a habit and you can do the same thing with movement. You can apply those principles. I’ve taught these five minute little hacks to so many of my patients, and I apply it myself, and it gives me a sense of control every single morning. Now, you don’t want to do a strength workout? You can do some yoga, you can do stretches, you can do jumping jacks, you can put on one of your favorite tunes and dance. It doesn’t matter, but I can pretty much guarantee that if anyone listening commits to doing five minutes of movement a day first thing in the morning, in whatever way works for them in the context of their life and their family and their friends, I guarantee that you’re going to start feeling different very, very quickly.

Jameela [00:23:48] Something that Esther Perel suggested earlier this year has really resonated with me, where she says that she feels like we are pathologizing what is often a very natural reaction to the state of the world social media, the news cycle, the cost of living crisis, the ways in which we have made it so hard to just be able to deal with growing up in this world, uh, which is already hard enough with all the hormonal changes and the, you know, the way you start to kind of navigate through becoming an adult. We have created such a hyper stressful and pressured environment for youths growing up that then gets pathologized as an anxiety disorder or a depressive disorder, when actually a lot of these reactions, to me at least feel very sane. Like if you do feel very stressed out based on your environment, that that feels very normal, that doesn’t feel necessarily like a pathology, it doesn’t mean you don’t need some assistance. It doesn’t mean you don’t need therapy or maybe some help with anxiety medication, etc. but I definitely feel as though there is a pharmaceutical benefit to rather than fixing our society, just medicating those who are having a normal reaction to our society. Does that resonate with you?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:25:07] More than you could possibly believe. This is something I’ve seen in medicine my entire career. We’re very good at labeling things, labeling people. And the problem is is then people feel that there’s something wrong with them. “I have this problem.” It’s just, there’s nothing I can do about this. I was just born with this. This is what I’ve got. And of course, I’m not talking about everything, right?

Jameela [00:25:29] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:25:30] But in response to your question, I think there is a lot that we overly medicalize. And there’s a phrase isn’t there? I think it’s Krishnamurti. I’m not sure I’m getting it quite right, but it’s something like, “It’s no measure of success to be well adjusted to a sick society.”

Jameela [00:25:47] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:25:48] There’s something in that. Society, much of it, is quite sick. There is a huge amount of pressure. There are unreasonable demands being put on people in workplaces, right? There are all kinds of temptations now. It’s easy to hate on social media. And, you know, I do my fair share of that as well, right? But I don’t think it’s social media or technology that’s necessarily the problem. It’s how we use it. But the truth is, do I feel better when I’m not on social media? 100%.

Jameela [00:26:20] Yeah. Well, it was also bloody, you know, a lot of these apps were developed with the help and guidance of neuroscientists in order to make them as addictive as possible. So it’s also the fact that we should be teaching people from the second they open their first social media account, that this is an addictive piece of technology. This is something that is designed to draw you in and keep you there as long as possible. It’s going to play with your emotions. The algorithms are going to force to the kind of front of everyone’s attention, uh, things that are going to make you feel afraid or make you feel anxious because those are the things that our brains are going to continue to look at. They are the things that we’re going to continue to maintain focus on. Like our brains are built to predict and protect, and they just keep showing us like, it’s so interesting like growing up in an era where it was sex that used to sell. But now as I’ve become older, it’s outrage and fear that sells. And it doesn’t even matter if something’s true anymore. It can circulate at such speed, and the algorithm seems to allow an extra kind of platform to anything that can create the most divisive reactions online. And I think that because we’re not really, really media trained and social media trained, we don’t realize that what we’re looking at is a, is a deep state of manipulation that is designed to just keep us hooked because we are in a state, whether we recognize it or not, of fight or flight. Is that a horrendously inaccurate thing to say? Because that is just my theory.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:27:48] No, I completely agree. I think these platforms and to be clear, I use them to try and spread my messages, and I try and spread positive, uplifting messages as much as possible.

Jameela [00:27:58] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:27:59] Look, I think they’re, they’re hugely problematic. The first thing we need to recognize is that it’s not our fault. It’s not that we have some sort of failing within us that we can’t resist. These things are designed to be addictive. We know that the makers of this tech, a lot of them don’t let their kids on the platforms because they know how hard it is to resist. You know, it’s no surprise to me that over the last two years, I have prolonged social media breaks every summer. It started off a few summers ago as a two week break. Last year it was a six week break. That we’re simply not aware off enough about social media is this idea of perfectionist presentation. That’s what the researchers call it, right? So we all do it to a certain degree, you know. You share a certain part of your life. That’s not the entirety of your life. It’s one aspect of your life. Now we can talk about this. We can say with our conscious minds, people are only presenting one side of themselves to us. There’s much more there. They may not be living this life. They may not look like that in real life. That may be a filter, whatever it might be. But to your subconscious brain, it doesn’t make a jot of difference. If you’re picking up this thing and you’re just scrolling and in one minute you maybe see 30,40 posts. You’re constantly getting signals you’re not enough. You’re not enough. You’re not enough. No matter if you’ve just been on the best holiday of your life, and you’ve come home and you’re having a bad Monday at work, and you go online and you see someone posting a lovely photo of them in Bali watching the most beautiful sunrise ever. Now, it’s not that person’s fault in Bali. They’re on holiday, they’re having a laugh. They wanted to share that. But to you, even though you’ve just had the best holiday of your life, you feel less than. You feel that, “My life is rubbish. Everyone else is having more fun than me.” And I think many people my age, and I’m in my mid-forties struggle with social media addiction. But I think, thank God we didn’t have it when we were growing up. So as a father, I’m very, very careful with what I allow my kids to see and what I expose them to. My kids are currently 13 and 11. None of them have a social media accounts. They haven’t asked me because they know quite clearly my views on this. Now, if they do, I’m going to have to think about it because at the same time, I don’t want my son, for example, to not fit in with his friends and not be, you know, a social outcast. But at the same time, I have seen patients who particularly adolescents and people in their 20s where social media has been toxic for their mental wellbeing. In fact, a few years ago, I saw a 16 year old boy on a Monday with his mum. On the Saturday, he was admitted to the emergency department at the local hospital because he tried to self-harm. And when I saw him on the Monday, I was so shocked because this wasn’t a family, you know, I knew the family pretty well. I was thinking, “What’s going on here? I wouldn’t have expected this.” And as I got to know him, I felt strongly that his use of social media was contributing. You know, to give you the kind of quick version of this story over a period of a few weeks to months, I helped him come off social media. It started off with one hour before bed. Over a few weeks, it increased to one hour in the morning and two hours before beds. I also helped him make some tweaks to his diet, which was full of junk food that was putting him on a blood sugar rollercoaster that wasn’t just a sugar issue in his blood, it was a mood issue. Because when your sugar’s going up and down, it’s the stress signal to your body. It can affect your moods. And over the period of six months, I helped him completely change his life to the point where he was well, primarily by resetting his relationship with social media. So I do believe that these things are way more toxic than we think.

Jameela [00:32:00] It’s a great point that you make that we intellectually understand all of these things. This is going to be the thousandth time someone’s heard that social media is bad for us and social media, etc., but it’s so vital to make the point that however much we intellectually understand it, it doesn’t change the fact that when we engage in it, our subconscious is not aware of our intellectual understanding of it. Our subconscious is still accessing negative programing. I think that’s a really, really important point, because however much I understood even as an anorexic that starving myself was bad and that I was going to get osteoporosis and this, that and the other, my subconscious didn’t understand and was still looking at these images of fashion magazines, or still hearing all this messaging about how women need to take up less space. It’s important not to overestimate the power of the subconscious and how it’s not always easy to just override it with a kind of basic intellectual understanding of what’s going on.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:32:51] I completely agree, and it’s a key message. So what do you actually do about this?

Jameela [00:32:55] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:32:55] Okay. In my clinical experience and my personal experience, if I’m honest, there’s a few simple things that actually do make a difference, right? They can be hard to implement, but they’re not that hard. So for example, you could have some rules in your house about when you are going to use your phone and social media, when you’re not. We’ve all got different lives. We’re all in different stages in our life. In my house, with my family, at the dinner table, no tech is allowed at all. There’s never a computer, there’s never a smartphone. So that means that’s a safe space where we are not getting distracted. We’re connecting, we’re chatting, it’s lifting our moods, and we’re not looking at social media. Okay, that’s a simple thing that’s made a massive, massive difference. And I think is setting a good example to my children as well. Now, if anyone thinks that’s extreme, I would just ask them to imagine 20 years ago.

Jameela [00:33:53] Yeah.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:33:53] Well, that was the norm in every single house on the planet because it didn’t exist.

Jameela [00:33:57] I was told something quite impactful by a doctor recently that that when you are looking at social media while you are eating, and if you come across something that is stressful or distressing while you’re eating, you’re I think your fight or flight can sometimes kick in even though you’re not imminently in danger. And that means the food that you are eating is now no longer being digested properly, and therefore it’s harder to gain the nutrition from what you’re eating because your body has gone into a stress mode of fight or flight. So therefore, it’s no longer prioritizing the digestion of your food because it’s preparing to react to what it is that you’ve just seen. That completely, if that’s true, I mean, that’s one doctor who’s told me that who I think is very intelligent. But that completely shifted the way that I approached my environment. I stopped even watching movies that could be stressful while I was eating. I took food away from the television, back to the table, and now I do not look at anything or even have stressful conversations while I’m eating. I’ve turned it into a very thoughtful practice to actually make sure I’m, otherwise what’s the point? Other than the fact that it’s tasty, if I’m not getting the nutrition that I need.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:35:04] So we think about the stress response in the body, it has one real goal, which is to keep us safe.

Jameela [00:35:10] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:35:10] You know, it’s a bit of a cliche, but a million years ago, if a wild predator was approaching our camp, we saw it, our stress response would kick into gear. All kinds of things would happen, including digestion getting shut down because digestion at that point is not essential to survival. So you do go into this fight or flight states. All kinds of shifts happen in your body and brain so that you can run away and get away from danger. Now, one of the big problems today in the 21st century is that we’re no longer having our stress responses activated to wild predators were having it activated by our social media feeds, by the state of our lives, by our email inboxes, by our never ending to do lists. And here’s the point that people don’t realize is that to your body, whether it’s a physical threat or a psychological threat, your body largely reacts in exactly the same way. Now, if someone doesn’t believe me, let me give you a simple example. Many of us know that feeling when we’re feeling nervous, or we’ve been in an exam and felt a lot of pressure, we feel an urge to use the bathroom, right? A lot of people have experienced that. So what is that? Well, there’s no real danger there.

Jameela [00:36:20] Do you mean a nervous poo?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:36:22] Yeah, basically. You’re you’re you’re having psychological stress and that’s changing your physiology. It’s changing your guts. Everyone knows that. Most people have experienced that. So thoughts, the things we consume, can absolutely do that. There’s also research showing that if you eat mindlessly, you’re not paying attention, you’re watching TV at the same time, you’re not paying attention to your hunger signals, tt can change and hugely increase the amount you consume for the rest of the day. The point I’m trying to make is the states in which we’re in when we eat absolutely does play a role. That’s why I think that recommendation to just have mealtimes without your phone.

Jameela [00:37:04] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:37:05] It’s a very simple one, but it can be very effective. Another really simple one is to turn off notifications. I did that about six years ago and it was life changing. So that’s another practical tip. And the last tip I would give people on this is really think about the start of your day and the end of your day. If you can start and finish without looking at social media, ideally without going online if you can. I know it can be hard. Try that for seven days, and I genuinely think that most people will feel calmer. They’ll feel more in control. They’ll sleep better. We’re all different, but I’m hoping that some of those tips land for people. But I think, you know what? I’m sick of this phone having all this power over me. I’m going to give those things a go.

Jameela [00:37:49] It is fucking crazy. It is fucking crazy how much power this tiny piece of ill gotten plastic has over our lives. I’m going to do for the next seven days this. I’m going to make that promise to myself an hour before bed, an hour after I wake up to not be on my phone. I’m going to try this challenge because I sleep much better than I ever have. But I still sleep a bit like shit and I’m having terrible nightmares, and that has to be somehow tied to whatever I’m looking at before I pass out. So I’m going to, and that that affects the quality of my sleep and the quality of my sleep affects the quality of my life and my health, correct?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:38:29] Absolutely. If you don’t sleep well, right.?The impact chronically is huge, right? So what happens when you don’t sleep well? We all know how we feel when we don’t sleep well, right? How patient are we with the people around us? How attentive are we? How good are our lifestyle choices? They’re, they’re not great when we haven’t slept well, but we’re less empathetic. We’re less compassionate when we haven’t slept well. And if I look at the world and see all the toxicity, all the divisiveness, you marry that up with the fact that we are sleep deprived and that scientists at Oxford University think that we’re sleeping 1 to 2 hours less a night than 60 years ago. Here, well, wait a minute, maybe there’s a relationship here because, as you said, when you sleep better, everything in your life gets better. Another really simple tip is charge your phone out of your bedroom. There so addictive, right? If you can, and I’m not perfect at this, but my life is better when I actually do this. When I charge my phone in the kitchen so it’s not in my bedroom, well, I don’t look at it last thing, and I don’t look at it first thing. Then if anyone’s thinking, “It’s my alarm,” I would say, you know what? You can kind of get an alarm clock online for about 5 pounds or $5. It’s not that difficult and it will improve your life. One more thing that I think it’s really practical for people. If someone’s thinking, “Okay, well, if I don’t have my phone on for the first ten minutes in the morning, well, what am I going to do? Because that’s when I check my emails. That’s when I see what my friends are up to online.” I would encourage people to think about some form of journaling practice at that point. I think it could be so useful for people. I have got a series of questions I ask myself each morning. One of them is what is the most important thing I have to do today? And that question has changed my life because when you first hear it, you think, “Yeah, well, I’ve got something important to do at work, I’ve got something important to do in my personal life, in my social life.” But over time you get really good at identifying what is the most important thing I have to do today. And it’s not about having the perfect answer, it’s about having an answer. It really directs your focus. So if I think about the last few days, a few days ago, the answer I gave was I have to make sure today that I give my wife a really good hug and we go for a walk together. What did I put down this morning? What I put down this morning was, the most important thing I have to do today is go for a walk at lunchtime. And it sounds so simple, but this has been transformative for me, it’s been transformative for my patients because what happens in life these days, because we’re so busy, what we do is that the really important things in life, like our health and our relationships, we kind of fit those things in when everything else is done but nothing’s ever done, there’s always something else to do. So unless you direct your focus there, it’s not going to happen. And check this out, Jameela, when the word priority came into the English language, I think in the 1500s it was only singular. You could only have one priority. It didn’t exist as a plural word. Whereas now we talk about the multiple priorities that we have. That’s half the problem. We think everything in life is equally important, but it’s not. And I really again, would challenge people, try it for a week.

Jameela [00:41:45] Yeah. You’re saying reestablish what your actual values are away from capitalism and just people pleasing, but actually the holistic thing of what do I as a human being need? What are my actual needs? What will make me happy in the long term? I personally have definitely moved away from the hamster wheel, and I’ve been talking about this for about a year now I think because my health became so bad from neglecting everything. And I, you know, I just missed so many important moments in my friends lives, etc. I have now, my priority is happiness. My priority is is like pleasure, connection, these sorts of things, like it is my true, true happiness and well-being. And it means that now anything that will take me away for any prolonged period from my partner, or from my dogs or from my friends, there’s just no paycheck that feels worth that anymore. There’s no house I could live in that I want to sit in fucking alone that feels worth it. I don’t, I don’t want to subscribe to anything that isn’t going to build the happiest old age possible for me, and the most wholesome old age.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:42:54] It’s been, it’s been a huge realization in my own life over the past years, which is why I’m so intentional about it.

Jameela [00:43:01] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:43:01] Many of us confuse success with happiness. I did. You know, I was brought up in an Asian immigrant family where it was all about academic success.

Jameela [00:43:10] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:43:10] The problem for me, for much of my life, which yes, helped me achieve but came at a huge cost, was that I only felt good enough and worthy if I got top marks, if I was top of the class.

Jameela [00:43:21] Same.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:43:21] I still remember coming back from school with 19 out of 20 on a test, and my mom would say, “Well, what did you get wrong? Why didn’t you get 20?”

Jameela [00:43:27] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:43:28] My mum and dad were immigrants. They faced discrimination. They faced heartache. Their way of having their children avoid that is to excel at school. If you become a straight A student and become a doctor, you won’t have the problems that we have. That makes sense to them. Problem for little Rangan was that I felt I was only loved when I had top marks, and that could be very, very toxic. You can have guilt, you can have shame.

Jameela [00:43:55] For sure.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:43:56] You can achieve so much stuff and still realize that you feel discontented underneath. And that’s why I’m so careful now about prioritizing what is truly important in life. You mentioned Esther Pearl before. Esther will say something to the degree of this, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships.

Jameela [00:44:15] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:44:15] We know from the scientific research, the Harvard Adult Development Study, over 75 years, the number one factor for your health and your happiness is the quality of your relationships. But so often we neglect them in the pursuit of success and work. You know, someone may listen to this and go, “Jameela, it’s okay for you. Rangan, it’s okay for you. You guys have achieved a high degree of success, so you guys can do that now.” Okay, sure, I accept that. But why that question, what is the most important thing I have to do each day? Why that’s so important is it means no matter who you are, no matter where you are in your life, no matter what challenges you have, that question, just one thing, will help direct you just a little bit into some of those important things. And it doesn’t mean that your workload is going to get easier. It doesn’t mean you don’t have that pressure or a toxic boss, but it does mean that every day you’re likely to do that one thing that keeps moving you towards the person who you really want to be.

Jameela [00:45:17] Mhm. And these questions are a big part of your new book. This is the Three Question Journal, right? And this is a tool you have created for people to in a simple way possible, to take stock of their day and, and start to feel as though their lives are more manageable. Can you talk to me about this book?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:45:35] Yeah, it’s a journal. Look, I’ve written five books over the years on a variety of different topics, all about empowering people. And in every one of those five books, I mentioned journaling.

Jameela [00:45:45] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:45:45] And so this year I decided to create my own journal that’s called the Three Question Journal. And really, it’s three questions to ask yourself each morning and three questions to ask yourself each evening. It literally takes minutes to do, but I’ve seen that these questions transform people’s lives. I’ve seen over the years with tens of thousands of patients, which questions help them take stock of their life and actually make positive change? So whether people want, you know, more focus, better concentration, these questions help. But if they want better mental well-being, less depression, less anxiety, better sleep, these questions will help. If I could just share two questions that I would really love your audience

Jameela [00:46:24] I would actually love for you to tell me all three of the morning intentions and all three of the evening reflections. I think they’re wonderful.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:46:31] Okay, well, one of them was that what’s the most important thing you have to do today. I’ve explained why I think that’s so important. Another question in the morning is what is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? Again, a very simple question, but humans have a negativity bias. That’s what’s kept us alive for millions of years. We had to know whether that noise, that rustle in the bush, was that the wind or was it a predator? Because if we thought it was a predator, it was just the wind. No harm done. But if we thought it was the wind and it was actually a predator, well, we could be in serious harm or we could die. Psychologists find that we take in nine bits of negative information for every positive bit. So the antidote to that is gratitude. It’s to focus on what you appreciate in your life. It’s to focus on what you already have, not what you lack. And there is so much scientific research on gratitude. It can help improve sleep, improve mental wellbeing, lower anxiety.

Jameela [00:47:35] How? How does gratitude? The reason I ask you that is just because I think we are still, I think we’re coming out of it and people are becoming, uh, more informed about these things. But it’s hard when you hear gratitude, especially as a British person, to not be like, that feels very LA, woo woo, hippie, and all the kind of other stupid, reductive terms that we can all use, uh, for that. Um, how does gratitude impact your physiology, etc. and your life?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:48:04] Yeah, well, one of the one of the ways it does that, and I accept that there may be some skepticism there, which is one of the reasons gratitude has not been taken on as a practice within medical communities for years. But now, over the past ten years, the research on gratitude has exploded. It’s, there’s even some research showing that our perception of pain is reduced with a regular gratitude practice. People who’ve experienced some sort of post-traumatic stress, they can improve their symptoms by a regular gratitude practice. Why? There’s many reasons for that. One of the reasons is that you move away from this negativity bias. Another sort of way I’d ask people to think about this is a lot of the way we feel our thoughts, our emotions, our actions even are downstream of the content we consume.

Jameela [00:48:55] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:48:57] If you’re consuming the news first thing in the morning, you are literally reinforcing that negativity. And that then means it’s much more likely that that negativity is going to continue throughout that day. You’re much more likely to see the worst in everyone, or be a bit short with your partner, or be a bit frustrated with your work colleague because you started the day with negativity. You’re setting the tone for the rest of your day. Whereas if you set the tone of what you already have and this could be something so simple, it could be, you know, I’m grateful for the fact that I can afford to feed myself. I’m grateful for the fact that I’ve got some technology to listen to this podcast on. Whatever it is, it really makes a difference. And if anyone is skeptical, I say, you know what? Suck it and see. Try it for seven days. Ask yourself that question every morning for seven days, and see how you feel. If you don’t feel any different after seven days, you’re entitled to say,  “That Doc was full of rubbish. I’m not going to listen to anything he says.” No problem with that. But if you try it and you feel better, then you’re empowered. Then you know it makes a difference.

Jameela [00:50:05] The third question is what quality do you want to show to the world today? And I think that’s really beautiful. And it kind of lends itself to the evening reflections, one of which is what did you do for someone else today? It’s that idea of kind of what can I give to others. What is the importance of a question like that at the end of your day?

Dr. Chatterjee [00:50:24] If you can reflect on your day for just a few minutes, it really helps you make changes. A lot of the time, what happens is that we live reactively, we don’t reflect, and then we wake up the next day and wonder why nothing’s changing in our life, why we’re still behaving in exactly the same way. But all it takes is a bit of self-reflection.

Jameela [00:50:43] Mm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:50:43] Right, think about an athlete. Just think about an athlete for a minute. A top sports athlete. The reason they get better is because they’re constantly reflecting with their coach. Their coach is watching them going, “Hey, you know what? That was really good. But actually, on this bit, I want you to change your technique here.”

Jameela [00:50:58] Mhm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:50:59] “Okay. Great coach.” The next day they go and they change it and bit by bit they start to change. That’s the same thing these questions are going to do for people. You are basically being your own coach. Each day you’re kind of figuring out what you’re doing, what you’re not doing, right? The two questions I love in the evening are what went well today? What can I do differently tomorrow? It’s a very compassionate way to start improving yourself. It’s not beating yourself up. It’s not making you feel as though you’re not worthy. It’s going, what went well today? Okay, you know what? Today was really busy and stressful, but despite that, I still found 20 minutes to cook my family a healthy, delicious meal. Instead of the negativity bias of thinking “Oh, the day was rubbish. I still got ten emails to do. I’ve got all this stress in my life.” You focus the attention on, yeah, you know what, one thing went well today. And then I love this second question, what can I do differently tomorrow? In a very non-judgmental way it’s going, “I was really tired today. You know what? I was so stressed at work yesterday. I stayed up watching Netflix too late. I went to bed at midnight and because of that I was exhausted. So I had too much sugar, too much caffeine. I was short with my partner. Tonight, I’m not going to watch that extra episode of the box set. Tonight, I’m going to go to bed on time so that I feel better tomorrow.” Very, very simple. But here’s the thing, Jameela, if you ask yourself these questions every day and it takes minutes to do so, you don’t need to buy the journal. Just take the questions and do them yourself, right? If you do that, the repetition is how you get to know yourself. By asking yourself those questions each day, you start to change. You start to become a different person. You start to identify what your triggers are, what your patterns are, and that question you already asked me about, what have I done for someone else today? You know, when we struggle with our mental wellbeing, we become very insular and inwards. We become very me-focused, and one of the quickest ways to jolt you out of that is to do things for other people. We know from the research that people who do things for others, they are happier. They have better mental health. One of the reasons is it takes you out of yourself. Now, if you try to answer that question, you genuinely haven’t done anything for anyone else that day. It’s a nice prompt to go, “You know what? I can’t answer that today. I think tomorrow I’m going to do something. I’m going to do something.” This could be saying thank you to the barista who makes you coffee. It doesn’t have to be some big, grand gesture, but little by little, if you answer these questions each day, I know it will change your life. Because it’s done it for me, and it’s done it for thousands of my patients.

Jameela [00:53:39] It’s interesting. There’s been a kind of rise of on you know, I think TikTok especially, but on all social media of, I think an encouragement towards increased hyper individualism, which like doesn’t necessarily come from yours or my culture, but from in the West, hyper individualism is on, is is so strangely on the rise given that we’ve never been, we’ve never had more ways to be able to access and connect to other people, but we have become so much more navel gazing. And now with the discussion of boundaries, which I think is a healthy concept, the concept of boundaries that we all need and God knows that they’ve saved my life, but I think the, um, term boundaries has been somewhat, dare I say, weaponized to now mean that there are viral videos. I mean, like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of likes that are of people almost in a kind of robot like way, as if they are HR like a guide for how to tell someone who reaches out to you in a moment of distress, like a loved one who reaches out to you asking for help, that like “I’m afraid I have to set a boundary here because I do not have the capacity to listen to your problems right now. I am looking after myself and prioritizing myself.” Now, I think that there’s there’s a spectrum there, right? Of the fact that absolutely, if you are, if your cup is too full and you actually don’t have any more to give, I think there are kinder and more compassionate ways to direct a friend maybe to someone else, or tell them that maybe tomorrow I will be able to listen to you, but just today I can’t. Um, but we’ve been encouraged to be very ruthless about these quote unquote boundaries, to preserve self in a way that I think has to be tied to the loneliness epidemic that we are seeing in the West.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:55:15] Yeah, it’s so, so interesting. I think that’s a very astute observation. I think we try and make things black and white and simple as humans, right? In the past, many of us, myself included, grew up, I didn’t even know what a boundary was.

Jameela [00:55:28] Yeah.

Dr [00:55:28] I don’t even know how to spell it right. I didn’t, like in Asian families I’m not sure

Jameela [00:55:32] I don’t think we, I still think we don’t have them in Asian families.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:55:35] Yeah, so I get that, right? That actually maybe these boundaries, they need to be porous. Like they can’t be hard and fast and not let anyone in. They have to be porous and changeable. And the truth is, sometimes you will do something for other people at the expense of yourself. And I don’t think there’s a problem with that. The problem is it is happening all the time. I spoke about a year ago to this Kenyan marathon runner on my podcast called Elliot Kipchoge. He’s the only marathon runner to have ever run a marathon in under two hours, and he’s Kenyan. But one of the things he shared with me, which I’ve never stop thinking about, is I asked him about his training and he said, “Oh, I never run alone. Never. We always run together.” I said, “Yeah, but Elliot, you’re like one of the fastest in the world.” He goes, “It doesn’t matter. We always run together because it means if I don’t show up, someone’s on the phone saying, “Hey, Elliot, are you okay? What’s going on, man? Why aren’t you here?” And I really probed on this. I said, “You know, that seems to be a massive difference between, you could say, East and West or African culture and let’s say Western culture.” They were trained together. It wasn’t about him individually. It was about what can they achieve together. Whereas in the West we kind of run alone, like we do it to manage our own stress. We go to the gym by ourselves because we’ve accumulated the stress.

Jameela [00:56:54] Mm.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:56:54] We now need to work it off. And I’m not saying I have a clean answer to that, but I do think there’s something quite powerful there to explore boundaries. If you’re a people pleaser. I’m a people pleaser in recovery. I, for most of my life, put everyone else’s needs above my own. I have started to change the balance on that over the past few years, but also, it doesn’t feel good to me to put down really, really strict boundaries. Because you know what? Life is messy.

Jameela [00:57:21] Yeah, life is overextending yourself sometimes. It’s how we learn. Life is pushing it too far, sometimes. Just sometimes. Oh, God. Deep, deep, deep love and deep friendships are sometimes built not exclusively on sacrifice, but I think sometimes upon the gesture of of prioritizing someone, even just for a moment. And I think that’s all, when I look back at all of my friendships, it’s the big moments where we were there for each other, even when it wasn’t convenient that solidified a lifelong bond.

Dr. Chatterjee [00:57:51] Yeah, 100%, I completely agree. So again, like with everything these days, things have become black and white. You either have boundaries or you don’t. Well, it’s not that simple.

Jameela [00:58:01] No, boundaries being porous is a beautiful way to put that. I really appreciate that. And I think it also kind of like, in a lovely way, rounds off this conversation because it adds into the the mix of the things that you have prescribed as a doctor to people, which is addressing their quote unquote lifestyle and their sleep habits and their nutritional habits, uh, and also self-reflection, self autonomy, exercise, etc. but I think also just at the very end here, we’ve touched on the importance of human connection, the importance of of of being very, very acutely aware of the, of the literal, and we have so much hard data now to prove that there is a literal risk, like a high risk to your physical and mental well-being that can be directly linked to loneliness. And so amongst all of the other things that you prioritize, I think a big one, we need to come back to reflection. We are encouraging people to go off into their own corners and hide until they are well enough to be palatable for society. And I think that that is a huge mistake. And I’m so glad that I grew up in, uh, South Asian culture with all of our flaws. It is instilled in me to prioritize human connection, and I really thank my upbringing for that. And I hope that we don’t completely lose that in this obsession with hyper individualism and navel gazing. Dr. Chatterjee, thank you so much for coming today. And I think the journal is a wonderful idea, because sometimes it’s hard to remember to be accountable to these little changes and these little habits. I really appreciate the work that you’re doing, and I think especially the fact that you are such a legitimate actual doctor. This you know, there can be a lot of pushback when people say nutrition is linked to health or lifestyle is linked to health. Sometimes, um, some people feel that is, um, unscientific, but to have you here to talk about this from the experience as an allopathic practitioner, to have you also include holistic practice is really important and legitimizes this conversation. And I thank you for that.

Dr. Chatterjee [01:00:02] Thank you for inviting me. And I think you’re doing fantastic work and all the advocacy that you’ve been doing online for years, so I really appreciate the chance to talk to you. Thank you so much.

Jameela [01:00:11] Thank you everyone. Go get the journal.

Jameela [01:00:26] Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jamella Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chappelow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please, rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording, sharing what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners.

Listener [01:01:01] I weigh my smile and my humor. I weigh being a great partner and a good daughter and a great granddaughter and a nice sister. I weigh being a good, compassionate person who has nothing but good intentions for our world. I weigh being myself no matter who is around, and I weigh my journey to self-love.