How To Catch Cravings & Feel CALM In 60 Seconds | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

0:00I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. and if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is gonna help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

0:38Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:49Next time you find yourself in the evening on the sofa craving ice cream, I want you to have a pause. before you get the ice cream, just have a pause. I go, what am I feeling here? Is this really physical hunger or is this emotional hunger? Right? It's a very simple question, but often we don't take that pause. It feels like physical hunger. Okay, fine. So let's say it's physical hunger. But it's a, yeah, it's not though. But it might be, it might be. And you might want it and there's nothing wrong with it now and again, right? So it's not. The body's craving sugar. Yeah, but the more you ask yourself these questions, the more you start to trust yourself, right?

1:27So the first step is feel. What am I feeling? I actually, I don't know. I had a really big dinner. I'm not that hungry, but I just had a row with my partner or I've been on Zoom calls all day and I haven't seen anyone or been out for a walk. This is a treat to myself because all day I'll be doing things for other people. Okay, then go ahead and eat it, right? Go ahead and eat it. Next time it happens, do the first step and then go to the second step. So the first step is feel. What am I feeling? The second F is how does food feed the feeling? The second F is feed. Okay, so you've identified, let's say you've identified that you're stressed.

2:04You've had a ride with your partner, you're stressed. And you've identified that when I feel stressed, ice cream makes me feel better. Because it does, at least in the short term. Temporarily, yeah. Right. Then you go, and so you're drawing that connection. Oh, wow. I'm having ice cream because I go to it when I'm feeling this stress. Okay, great. Now you have a degree of self-awareness that you may not have had before. And even simply having that awareness changes your relationship with that event. There's good research on this, but it really does. Even being aware of what's driving your behavior changes your relationship with that trigger, right?

2:46And then the third F, which you can do the next time, is find. Okay, now that I know what I'm feeling, the first F, right? Now that I know how food feeds that feeling, the second F, now the third F is fine. Can I find an alternative behavior to feed that feeling? Okay, so, oh, I'm feeling stressed because I've been on Zoom calls all day and I haven't had any time to myself and ice cream is going to make me feel better. Okay, what else could I do? Oh, well, I love yoga. I could do 10 minutes of yoga or I could go and run a bath. Yeah. And I could soak in a bath with a candle on for 15 minutes. So you're still dealing with that feeling, but maybe in a more helpful way.

3:33And you can apply that 3F exercise to most things in life. Alcohol, too much time on social media, whatever it is, it's a very simple exercise. You know, my whole thing is I like to talk about the big ideas, but then I want to make it really practical for people. so that they can actually apply that. So I think for many people, they're going to go, that's quite a useful exercise for me, right? So that's one way that we can think about stress. I could talk to you about all kinds of stress reduction practices like yoga, like journaling. I think breath work is one of the best, right? We overuse the word hack, I think, these days, but breathing and changing the way we breathe, I think, really does qualify as a hack.

4:18So a lot of people don't realize that the way they breathe is information for their body. Okay. So I don't know if you saw this study, Lewis, or not, but it was from UCLA, actually, that 80 % of office workers change the way that they breathe when looking at email. But they don't know they're doing it. So here's the thing, right? You're engaging a task. Maybe there's loads of emails and you're on deadlines and you're rushing through them and you're focused. the way you breathe will often start to change. So what will happen? You'll breathe a little bit faster. You'll breathe more from your chest than your diaphragm and your breathing will be a bit more shallow.

5:02Okay, so what does that do? That sends a signal to your brain that there's danger around me. It always comes back to the stress response, right? Your breathing signals is telling your brain there's danger and then that encourages you to stay breathing in that way. So you're literally sending stress signals back to your body from your brain because your brain thinks you're in danger. So if you can then be aware of that and consciously change the way that you breathe, and there's all kinds of techniques. One of my favorites is what I call the three, four, five breath. When you breathe in for three, you hold for four and you breathe out for five.

5:40A very simple breath that I've been teaching my patients for years. And essentially, anytime your out-breath is longer than your in-breath, you help to switch off the stress part of your nervous system and you activate the relaxation part of your nervous system, right? Very simple. One, three, four, five breath will take you 12 seconds. Five of them will take you a minute. And you will literally change your state because if you slow your breathing down, you then send calm signals up to your brain and then they send carb signals back to your body. So I have a, you know, first thing I do each morning is a bit of meditation and breath work before I actually have my coffee.

6:17That's the first thing I do. And I do it as preemptive, right? So I do it to ground me in the morning, but I also learn about the breath. So if I get stressed in the day, I can just take a step back and do like two or three minutes of three, four, five breathing. And it really helps me. So it's one of many techniques that can help manage stress another one that people don't talk about enough that i've written about is touch like consensual affectionate touch is one of the best ways to lower your stress yeah

6:57thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the daily motivation and i hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:47Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

7:59Thank you.