Dr Rupy: After recording 300 episodes of the Doctor's Kitchen podcast, working as a general practitioner myself and in A&E and ITU, I've realised a couple of things. Getting healthy is not about hacks, stacks of supplements, extreme diets or the perfect routine. It is the simple habits that we do every single day and every single week that make the biggest difference to how we feel, how we focus and how we age. Here are my top 10 evidence-based habits that I always come back to after recording 300 episodes of the Doctor's Kitchen podcast, doing my own research for my own health and for yours, and of course, working as a doctor for over 15 years.
Dr Rupy: Today marks the 300th episode of the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. Wow. It feels like an age ago that I started recording in my old publisher's audio recording room actually. It was quite a swanky setup because we only intended to record six episodes of the Doctor's Kitchen podcast to promote my first book, The Doctor's Kitchen. I had no intention of creating a podcast whatsoever. I left a six-month gap before I did season two because of popular demand. People wanted me to talk about thyroid health or skin health or specific conditions and that's what led to actually the second book, Eat to Beat Illness, because I wanted to clarify the research and the thinking around how we can eat for specific health goals.
Dr Rupy: And since then, it's been an absolute rollercoaster. I've sat down with world-class researchers, doctors, nutritionists, neuroscientists, exercise physiologists and many, many more, all with the aim of trying to share their knowledge so you can improve your health one meal at a time, one habit at a time, one day at a time. And what I've realised is getting healthy is not actually about hacks or supplements or extreme diets or the perfect routine. What's made the biggest difference for me personally are these few simple rituals that I come back to time and time again. Even when I'm sleep-deprived, even if I've fallen off the wagon, even if my exercise regime has been disturbed for whatever reason, currently because I've got a newborn, or I feel overwhelmed or anxious.
Dr Rupy: Looking after a very cute but very demanding newborn has actually brought to the forefront some of the health habits that I dialled in and now have fallen by the wayside. And I'm at this point in my life trying to piece them back together, which is a really interesting exercise because it enables me to empathise even more so with people who are starting out for the first time or, like me, have had a great routine, fallen away from it and now are trying to rebuild this routine again. So in this episode, I'm going to walk you through the five daily and five weekly habits that have actually stuck with me previously and ones that I want to help dial in again. These are ones that make me feel better, think more clearly, stay grounded, no matter what the week looks like. Some are foundational, others I layer in when I have the space as well. But all of them are habits that I've grown with and I've learned through the process of recording 300 episodes of the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. I'm really excited to dive into these with you. These are evidence-based, they are deeply emotional as well for me and I feel that these are things that are very, very human. They're sort of grounded in this evolutionary perspective of how we are designed and how we've evolved to think and act and eat. So I really hope you enjoy this episode.
Dr Rupy: The first of the daily habits that I try and do most days is creating boundaries with my phone, particularly first thing in the morning. Now, if you're in my inner circle or you're close to me, you're part of the team here at Doctor's Kitchen or you're a family member, I've just got back from a silent retreat and I cannot stop going on about my silent retreat. I'm one of these people that it's kind of like I've found a new supplement and I feel like everyone should be taking it. Silent retreat, my one which was for three days, which involved no phones, no email, no digital devices, but also no speaking, no listening, no reading and no writing, was a complete switch off for my brain. So it was almost like you've gone into an old cupboard or a drawer that's just full of junk and then you've just sorted everything out. That's kind of like what the silent retreat was for me. It was pretty magical.
Dr Rupy: And one of the things that I realised after the retreat was the reflex I have, I've got my phone right next to me, the reflex I have of just grabbing my phone at any opportunity where I feel boredom. And everyone has this, whether you're commuting, just look around, everyone's on their phone. Whether you're in a queue in a shop and even if that queue is only two or three people deep and it's moving pretty fast, if you've got 15 seconds, you're going to look at your phone. You might trick yourself into thinking it's because you want to see the time, you want to just make sure that you haven't missed any messages that might be urgent, but actually what we're doing is looking for a constant source of entertainment because we are no longer comfortable with boredom. Boredom is something that I fear is being stripped out of our day-to-day and it is nourishing. We are actually designed to be bored. And I always like to think of the evolutionary lens whenever I look at lifestyle measures, how we eat, how we move, etc. One of the reasons why sitting is so bad for us is because we are designed to be walking for long periods of time across plains. We're not designed to be sitting down. One of the things, one of the reasons why it's beneficial for us to be eating in daylight hours is because that is optimum for our digestive tract. It's when we would have been eating for the vast majority of our evolution. And the other thing that I think is really important to get to grips with is boredom, like whether you're hunting or gathering berries or farming or whatever it might be, there are activities that we have been optimised to do which are sort of mindless. And so this idea that we need to be constantly entertained, constantly fed, is a very new phenomena and I don't think our bodies are actually adapted to this.
Dr Rupy: So going back to what I try and do with my phone by creating boundaries, which is a habit I'm trying to do particularly in the morning, I try not to look at my phone off airplane mode for the first 60 minutes of my day. So I might look at my phone as it serves as my alarm. I might look at my phone to check my Oura ring or whatever your wearable is to see how you've slept because that for me dictates how I train that day. I might also use it for meditation, so I have a guided meditation app or sometimes I just use a little chime on my phone, but I'm not getting any influx of messages. I don't have any WhatsApps, I don't have any texts. I definitely don't look at email for those first 60 minutes. And I heard this on another podcast where the analogy was, if you're bored on a Sunday morning, let's say, and you just get up and you've just grabbed your phone that's on your bedside table, whatever it might be, and then you just start flicking through Instagram. It's almost like you're inviting these people into your room first thing in the morning. You're inviting a comedian in, you're inviting a food producer in, you're inviting an AI specialist in, you're inviting an entertainment or comedy or comic or whatever it might be. You wouldn't reasonably introduce these folks into your room first thing in the morning on a Sunday. It just would be weird and absolutely absurd. But essentially, this is what we are doing when we look and scroll through our phone. We are being entertained at such a rapid rate that it is inconceivable for our brains to tolerate this. And I fear that this is a lot of what is underlying people's anxieties, people's attention deficit. I'm not saying that these things don't exist, but I think the magnitude of the phone and its impact on our brain is in some way related to the increase and the prevalence of these conditions.
Dr Rupy: So what I try and do is create that space wherever I can. When I commute, I'm really trying not to use my phone at all. When I'm in a queue or waiting to get a coffee or drinking my coffee, I'm actually trying not to scroll on my phone as much as possible. When I'm eating, I'm just eating. I'm not watching TV or looking at my laptop at the same time, apart from certain exceptions. I don't want to be puritanical about this. And certainly at weekends, I'm trying to use my kale phone as much as possible. So this cocaine versus kale phone idea was popularised by a blogger called George Mack a couple of years ago. And the idea is your cocaine phone, I'm saying this in inverted commas, is pure dopamine. It's got all your TikTok and WhatsApps, it's got email, it's got LinkedIn, it's got every sort of app that is super addictive and super entertaining that is built around everything online. And then you have a kale phone, and this is literally another separate phone that has a limited number of apps on. It might have text, it's got the ability to call, it's got a separate number, so you only give this to your loved ones or your closest friends. And maybe it's got maps and Uber and that's about it. So it's got the bare minimum that you need to navigate the modern world and nothing extra that is dopamine producing. I love this idea and I'm trying to use my kale phone at weekends and out of hours as much as possible and create that physical separation from my phone.
Dr Rupy: The other thing that I've realised is, let's imagine that you are scrolling for 10 minutes and you're just flicking through your feed, whether you're using Instagram or TikTok or even LinkedIn these days. What happens is you create multiple thought loops every time you see an image or see a video. Let's imagine I'm looking at a video, it's of a lovely crème brûlée being made super quick with a little twist in it. And this leads to one thought loop in my brain. Oh, crème brûlée, that's amazing. When's the last time I had crème brûlée? Oh, I love crème brûlée. Oh, maybe I'll have that for my birthday this time. Oh, maybe I could do it with this, or maybe I can help make it healthier with using coconut cream or etc, etc, etc. That's one thought loop that's going to continue, almost like a plate spinning in the background. I scroll again, I see some news, it's about America and tariff situations and perhaps that's affecting the price of coffee. That leads to another thought loop. Price of coffee. Oh, maybe I should get, I should order more coffee this month so I don't run out. I wonder what kind of coffee I should go for. Or maybe I should go for a Brazilian instead of a Colombian. I wonder what that will happen to, whether that will affect the price at all. What are the coffee brands out there? Oh, I haven't had a V60. Oh, I should really change my espresso machine. These are all the different thoughts that you might be having in the background. And then again, you go to another post and it might be completely different. It's of a friend's wedding and you're like, and that leads to another bunch of thoughts. Why wasn't I invited to that wedding? Who are these people in this picture? I wonder if I need to reach out to my friends a bit more. I wonder how so-and-so is doing. These are all thought loops. We've only looked at three posts. And I'm being a bit facetious here, but just imagine after 10 minutes of scrolling, the number of plate spinning that your brain is doing, because you might not be conscious of those thoughts that have been generated, but your brain is a powerful machine and there are always things going on at a subconscious level that you are not aware of. And those thought loops continue in the background. And this for me is the reason why after a doom scrolling session for 10 minutes or even an hour, you feel absolutely drained. And it makes complete sense because your brain is one of the most metabolically active organs in your body. It costs 20% of the energy. All the different metabolic actions that are occurring around your body, one of which is your brain, you've got muscles, you've got liver, you've got your kidneys, etc, etc. Your brain is really, really energy intensive. So it's no wonder it can be draining and fatiguing as well.
Dr Rupy: This is why, particularly in the morning, to set up my day, I want to make sure that I'm starting with as much energy as possible. So I'm trying to create that physical separation from my phone. Modern life is full of enough noise from work, to family, etc. And so these notifications, the endless scrolling, these are things that are going to be fragmenting our attention and it takes away from what I feel is the most important thing, my sleep, my relationships, my connection with my son and my self-awareness as well. So what do I do practically? No phones at mealtime. Me and my wife always keep our phones away from the table. We will sit down at the table as well. We don't eat in front of the TV. That's a treat. So if we're having pizza and we want to watch a movie, we'll do that on the sofa, but otherwise, the vast majority of time, I'd say 90% of the time, we're sat at the table. I keep my phone physically out of reach when I'm at work as well, or when I want to do some focus time on my computer. And I'm actually trying to replace scrolling with silence and it sounds super, super boring and honestly, it is boring in the first instance, but actually you begin to appreciate the space and the creativity that your brain, your brain is an entertaining machine. It is so, so creative. You know those thoughts that you have when you're in the shower, when you're not doing anything? Those magical moments that just occur spontaneously. That, that is the beauty of your brain. And so when I'm walking, I just want to let my mind wander all day. Daydreaming is a wonderful thing. And in fact, we talked about this with Johann Hari on the podcast a number of pods ago for his book Stolen Focus, where that was sort of the first trigger for me to start wondering more. And more recently, we had neuroscientist TJ Power come on the podcast and talk about the power of the phone and how it steals your attention. And he said verbatim, the number one objective is just me not going on the phone. This is TJ Power, he's a neuroscientist. And he really believes in this rule. I have to see sunlight before I see social media. I have to see sunlight before I see social media. And I would say, this is TJ, I would say with that, I count WhatsApp and email as social. They're very damaging as well. They're like a slot machine where you might get good news or bad news. So there's this dark magic in that. The idea is that you get outside before you go into your phone. And everyone in the UK can do this. It's great for your system. I completely agree. See sunlight before you see social media. It's a great, great heuristic, a great rule, a great guide.
Dr Rupy: Habit number two is starting every meal with protein, especially breakfast. Now, if you're a regular listener, you've probably heard me say this a lot over the last couple of months and it's not just because I'm trying to promote my latest book, Healthy High Protein. Eat more protein is hardly new advice right now, but here's why I still come back to it. As a medical student and as a junior doctor, I would grab something quick for breakfast, like toast or cereal or even granola that was, had a healthy looking pack, or just some banana or fruit or something like that in the morning. And by mid-morning, I would crash and struggle to stay focused, which led me to overeat and consume the cookies and the Haribo and all the different sweets that we'd have, particularly at the nurses station that some lovely patients' family had brought in, which would lead to a sugar rollercoaster for the rest of the day. And I imagine if you're anyone like an average person in the UK, you've probably had this experience as well. And since becoming a dad, mornings are so much more chaotic than ever. My weekly eating schedule is a lot more chaotic than ever. And this is why this habit is so much more important. My default now is protein first, particularly at breakfast. So my breakfast today, for example, was hot smoked salmon, a little bit of leftover pomegranate that we had from another recipe that we were doing, some rocket, and I had the salmon skin and a little bit of chickpeas. That's that was literally my breakfast. It's got a core protein source, it has a plant-based protein partner, it has a little bit of colour and some vegetables. This is literally how I eat every single day. And the reason why is because protein, particularly at breakfast, which sets you up the rest of the day, helps stabilise blood sugar levels, which means that you're going to have less crashes, which can lead to less focus issues. It can improve satiety, which means you're going to be craving food less. And one of the reasons why is around this idea of the protein leverage hypothesis, which states that your body will continue to be hungry if you do not meet your protein threshold. So the amount of protein that you require every meal. And for most people, it's around 25 to 30 grams as a minimum. And that's essentially what I aim for, but you can figure out your protein requirements by just going on a protein calculator. The doctorskitchen.com has a free one. And everyone should be at least aiming for 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of ideal body weight per 24 hours. Ideal body weight is your actual, your ideal body weight. So if you're overweight, you're 100 kilos and you should be 80, you want to use that formula for 80 kilograms, not the 100 kilograms. And this will support muscle maintenance, it will support, particularly during midlife, and it will also improve aging because protein is not just about muscles, it is about hormonal health, bone health, immune health. There are so many things much more than muscles that protein is useful for. You've already heard me say this quite a bit, but one of the reasons why protein in the morning for me is so is so important is because it sets up the rest of your day. And just by doing this very simple switch of just being a lot more mindful about protein in the morning, people have come to me obviously from the book and stuff, but even in clinic when I was still seeing patients in the NHS, people would just find this switch just super, super easy to do and really revolutionary as well. I had a lot of patients that were doing low carb and paleo, particularly for type two diabetes and pre-diabetic states. And I was a bit of a sceptic at the time, but now through the lens of protein, I understand a lot about how this helps people naturally keep within an energy balance and also improve their hormones and their hunger cues as well. There's actually a study, a protein distribution study. This was part of the Quebec New Age project and it tracked over 1700 older adults aged between 67 and 84. So not necessarily generalisable to everyone. And what they found is that people who had balanced protein intake throughout the day, so not just at lunch and dinner, but also breakfast as well, they found that they had better muscle strength than those who ate most of their protein in one meal. The limitations are obviously that it doesn't necessarily prove that protein distribution directly causes strength changes. And what I would take from this is that being a lot more mindful about distributing protein throughout the day enables someone to hit their protein goals easier because it's already quite hard to hit 1.2 grams for most people and some people need 1.6 grams. So if you're missing out on that vital breakfast protein, which I was for many years as a medical student and as a junior doctor, by just having granola or cereal or like tea and toast, which is still a very typical diet for a lot of people, particularly older adults or people who are just super busy, then you're missing out on having a good amount of protein throughout the entire day, which can help with aging and muscle strength, but also all the vast majority of other things that protein is super, super important for that I talk about over a previous podcast, but also in healthy high protein the book.
Dr Rupy: Now the way I do this myself, I have a very simple sort of, it's not an algorithm or anything, but it's a bit of a nice formula. It's CAT. It's a simple mental model. It's core protein, added plant protein and a topper. So at each meal, I pick a main protein, could be eggs, could be Greek yogurt, could be tofu, fish, chicken. I add a lentil or a nut or a bean to that, a plant-based protein partner, and I top it with something like it could be nutritional yeast, it could be tahini, it could be a bit of yogurt, whatever you like. So if you look at my breakfast today, I essentially did this. I had a core protein source, which was hot smoked salmon. I had a plant-based protein, which was the legumes, the sort of chickpeas, and then I have a topper as well. So it could be hemp seeds, it could be pumpkin seeds. I actually didn't do that, but I had enough of the hot smoked salmon, so I definitely hit my protein goal. But that's a nice little way of essentially ensuring that you're not just over-consuming one particular protein, you've just got a nice variety and we know variety is really good for our gut health as well. Another thing that gets me out of trouble is having my Doctor's Daily Bread. I bake a batch of this every single week. I slice it, put baking paper between it, I put it in the freezer, and in the mornings, it's super easy to just toast a slice of it, a toast a slice in the toaster, ricotta cheese, a bit of roasted vegetables, it could be leftovers, hummus, an egg, whatever it might be. This Doctor's Kitchen Daily Bread that I toast is packed full of seeds, packed full of psyllium husk, so it's got tons of fibre, and it's got a ton of protein in as well. It's got around 7 to 8 grams per slice, depending on how thick you slice it. And this gets me out of trouble all the time because it's super quick and I know I'm doing something great for my gut health as well.
Dr Rupy: Habit number three is micro-movements throughout the day. And as I'm reading this, I'm literally just stretching out my legs. I used to think that if I didn't have a solid 45, 60 minutes a day for a proper workout, there was sort of like no point because I wasn't getting hot and sweaty. But the guests that I've spoken to have reminded me on multiple times and guests from all different disciplines, exercise physiologists, neuroscientists, etc, that even five-minute bursts of movement can improve your metabolic health, your mental health and keep you in weight maintenance as well. Now we know that sedentary behaviour is linked to a higher risk of many health issues like heart disease or type two diabetes. In fact, I recently had Professor Robert Thomas on the podcast and he was saying to the contrary, if you are doing a really good workout in the morning for 45 minutes and then you sit at your desk the entire day, you are in some way negating the benefits of that workout. So doing a little bit of movement regularly throughout the day and reducing our sitting time as much as possible is the goal and it's something I try and practice daily. There are some experimental studies that show that breaking up sedentary time with short, regular bouts of movement can have a significant impact on your metabolic health markers. So things like post-meal insulin sensitivity and fasting insulin, which are also markers of metabolic flexibility. So your ability to utilise nutrients from carbohydrates and fat as effectively as possible. And we know that this metabolic flexibility is something that can protect us against issues like type two diabetes, potentially even reducing inflammation, which could have a knock-on effect on cancer and dementia as well. And it also keeps your glucose levels, your blood sugar levels nice and stable, again, preventing those energy crashes, but also protecting us against things like pre-diabetes and type two diabetes as well. There was also an interesting study looking at energy and mood. So published in 2024 in Nature, it was the first of its kind to test whether taking short breaks from sitting during the day actually caused improvements in mood and thinking. So what they did is they recruited 211 university staff who sat a lot during the day. And I think we all know lots of people for whom this would be attributable to, myself included, perhaps not when I was working in A&E and hospital, but certainly in general practice where a lot of the time you're sat down and you're just calling people through the tannoy. And what they found was they monitored them for 15 working days. They wore movement sensors, they got smartphone prompts to either stay sitting or take a three-minute break where they did slow walking, standing, or fast walking. And then they measured their mood, their effective state, their energy, and they used a validated scale as well with memory and a numerical task. So pretty interesting study design. And the results showed that just taking three minutes to move, especially walking, led to small but real improvements in how good people felt, how energised they felt. And the faster they moved, the bigger the effect. So it suggests, I don't want to say this is a, you know, open and shut case, but it suggests that even tiny movement breaks, just three minutes long, can directly improve mood and energy in everyday life. And I think that's something to be celebrated and it's something that we try and do as often as possible. Our researcher, Sakina Coco, for example, is always doing micro-stretching. Whenever we're doing podcast sessions with our video producers, we're always trying to do little movements here, little stretches. Our editor as well, we're trying to do like spinal movements and flow and stuff. So doing this as a team, wherever you work, or even just at home as well, maybe you're on mat leave and you've got a kid. I'm trying to do little stretching exercises next to my little one as well. So I'm trying to put into practice some of these research-backed suggestions because it can have a tangible effect on your mood in the short term and the effects could add up over those days, those weeks, those months to not only have long-term health effects, but also those day-to-day effects as well.
Dr Rupy: Habit number four comes from my TEDx talk in 2019 and that is just one more. It's something I've been relying on for many years personally and sharing with others and using in my own kitchen. Every time I make a meal or I'm buying something from a restaurant or I'm at lunch and I'm grabbing something on the go, I'm always thinking to myself, can I add just one more? Just one more fruit, veg, nut or seed at every mealtime. Whether I'm eating in or eating out, can I add some pumpkin seeds to this meal deal that I've just bought? Can I add a side of greens to the casserole that I've just made? Can I add a sprinkle of hemp seeds to this berry dish with dark chocolate? I'm always thinking just one more. And I think it's a lovely little reminder to just constantly nudge yourself to eat a little bit more. Now, why would you want to eat so many fruits and vegetables? Well, there's research suggesting that we need to be aiming for closer to 10 portions of fruits and vegetables every day, not the arbitrary five portions of fruits and vegetables every day. So that's 800 grams of fruits and vegetables a day. This is the optimum level to lower the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer and early death. They were looking at large population studies. So I think this is a good guide to aim for. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing harm by not having 800 grams of fruits and vegetables, but it's certainly something that if you are in the game of optimising your health as much as possible, this is probably going to have a big, big effect on those markers.
Dr Rupy: How on earth do you do this? It sounds really intimidating to get 10 portions of fruits and vegetables every single day. But let's break it down. Every single meal, that means you're going for three portions of fruit, vegetables, nuts or seeds at every single mealtime. That's 80 grams of fruits and vegetables or 30 grams of nuts and seeds. So to achieve that, let's say my breakfast this morning, I've got a small handful of chickpeas, a small handful of pomegranates, and then I top it with some pumpkin seeds. It's actually quite achievable when you break it down bit by bit. And in fact, I wrote a whole book on this called Doctor's Kitchen 321, where every single recipe had three portions of fruits and vegetables per serving, two servings per recipe, and all using one pan to minimise the washing up. Because it sounds like you're going to have to have multiple pans on the go to have your all your different fruits and vegetables. But honestly, it is really, really achievable when you break it down like that. How I do it, I mean, when I think of fruits and vegetables, I don't just think of like your typical grocery market with cauliflower and pears and bananas, etc. I'm thinking greens, beans, lentils. These are all counting to your fruit and vegetable intake as well. When you think of a portion, you think roughly three to four heat tablespoons of cooked veg. That could be steamed broccoli or a handful of raw leafy greens that you just massage together so you're actually getting a lot of the vitamin C as well. And then I also think about sides a lot. So roasting veg on the side, it could be corn, it could be butternut squash, it could be the flamed red peppers that you get in jars, for example, and any way in which you can throw those into a stew, pasta sauce or a curry, it's just an absolute bonus as well. So just think of that just one more philosophy. It's definitely improved my fibre intake without counting anything, without adding plant points to the equation, without having to measure my fibre intake every single day. I'm eating way, way higher than 30 grams of fibre every single day because of this just one more philosophy. And it's definitely helped a lot of people achieve that as well. So every time you sit down to eat, just think, can I eat just one more fruit, vegetable, nut or seed? And get your kids into this as well, because the quicker we get them thinking this way, the easier it will be for them to adulthood and that becomes the norm instead of a meal deal with like a white bread sandwich and a side of crisps. That's not a just one more philosophy. That's a just one more processed food philosophy and we want to avoid that.
Dr Rupy: The fifth habit is finishing dinner at least three hours before sleep. This is probably one of the biggest changes that I've made after interviewing Dr Satchin Panda on the podcast. Now, because of my role in A&E, I used to eat super late, sometimes 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. after a clinic shift, actually a lot later than that, closer to midnight on some occasions. And if anyone has ever done night shifts, you'll know that your gut feels horrible because you are typically eating outside of when your microbes are expecting food because they operate on what's called a circadian rhythm, which is the rough 24-hour cycle by which all biological things operate on. So your cells, your liver cells, your pancreas, they all operate on this circadian rhythm as do your microbes as well. When you eat outside of that, in the same way when you're travelling long haul and you start eating at a completely different time because you're in a new time zone, you get weird symptoms. You almost feel like you're coming down with a cold, you get a runny nose, post-nasal drip, you get headaches, you get digestive complaints, you might get alternating diarrhoea and constipation, lots of different things that can happen. And we essentially push ourselves into different time zones when we eat sometimes late, sometimes early, because of night shifts or because of shift work, etc. So when I try and eat my dinner is at least two to three hours before sleep because eating dinner versus late is linked to so many benefits. It improves your blood sugar levels, it enables your microbes to make better use of the energy, so there's actually better use of the calories. So it's good for weight maintenance, better digestion and gut health for the reasons that I just mentioned. It improves the quality of your sleep because when you eat, it can decrease the availability of something called melatonin, which is colloquially known as the sleepy hormone because it helps you initiate sleep, although melatonin itself has a really strong antioxidant role, it has an anti-cancer role, it's a really, really powerful hormone that we want to make sure that we're getting good doses of every single day. And so as it naturally rises towards the end of the day, if we're going to eat and that disrupts that, then you're not going to get the exposure to melatonin that you want. And having that longer overnight fast improves our metabolic flexibility. So improves your body's ability to utilise both fats and carbohydrates as efficiently as possible. How I try and do this is I try and eat around 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. every single day, even if it's light. And I make sure that at the end of eating, I start my sort of wind-down routine. That could be teas or book or stretching, whatever it might be. This idea of having a strict 16 versus 8-hour window, so 16 hours of fasting and an 8-hour window of eating, I actually think is quite useful as a guide, but people take it as gospel. And when I spoke to Dr Satchin Panda on the podcast, he told me that the whole concept of 16:8 purely came about because the researcher in the lab at the time who was doing these tests on mice wanted to make sure that their tests weren't interfering with his day-to-day. So he purposely made it eight hours of eating, so he only needed to be in the lab between those eight hours and then he could spend a longer amount of time outside. So we don't know whether 16:8 is the best strategy for everyone. It could be 15:9, it could be 14:10. It really depends on your convenience levels. What we do know, and I could say this with some degree of confidence, is that a fasting window of at least 11 to 12 hours is going to be beneficial for most people. Pragmatically, it means that you're less likely to overeat, but also it gives you that fasting window where you could potentially start utilising fats a lot more readily as well, which again improves that metabolic flexibility. But this idea that you need to be rigid about 16:8, I wouldn't read into that too much because when you actually dig a little bit deeper, you realise it's simply arbitrary. For those of us that are actually doing night shifts and shift work, like I used to do, I would say if possible, take your dinner with you and have it as a break around that time before you would tend to go to sleep. So if you tend to go to sleep at 10:00, try and have your dinner at 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. if possible. And if you're doing night shifts, and this is something that is really, really hard to do, I know, is try not to eat during your night shift. Eat at the start of your night shift, so it's like your breakfast, and eat at the end of your night shift, which is like your dinner. That way you're less likely to disturb your microbes in the middle of the night, shaking them up to get to work to digest food for you, because the energy utilisation from food consumed in that window is likely to be poor. And because a lot of things aren't open during that time, and if you've forgotten to bring your work food or whatever the issue might be, or you don't have access to proper food, what we do have access to tends to be fast food, pizzas, burgers, Deliveroos, etc, etc. And that is definitely not the food that you want to be eating in the middle of the night because again, your microbes aren't ready to receive that food. So a lot of those poor quality fats are just going to hang around in the bloodstream. And that is really not what you want if you want to try and preserve your health for the long term. So try and avoid it as possible, as much as possible. I know it's difficult. It's really hard. This is actually one of the conversations that we had with Dr Michael Farquhar from the Evelina Paediatric Hospital, who is a sleep medicine expert himself. It is tough, but this is the evidence that we have and I would really try and avoid that eating window if possible.
Dr Rupy: I want to transition to weekly habits that I've learned over the last 300 episodes now. So habit number six is treating sleep like medicine. This is something that has become painfully more aware for me as one of the things that I drastically need to improve because of the wearable device that I use. I use an Oura ring personally. I don't have any financial affiliation, although they have sponsored the podcast in the past, but there are many other trackers out there, whether it's Whoop or whether it's Garmin, Apple Watch, they're all relatively the same in terms of their efficacy and their comparability to sleep studies, which would be the gold standard. As they tend to be on your wrists and fingers, they're not entirely accurate, particularly for things like heart rate variability. So the way I would interpret that data, if you choose to use one, is a, with a lot of caution, and b, just looking at trends. So I can see my data over the last six to seven years since I started using it, and I can I can definitely see the reduction in my deep sleep over time as I've dealt with a lot more stresses. I now have a newborn. There are a whole bunch of different reasons as to why that's happening. And also because I'm hitting 40 this year as well, and our sleep quality unfortunately can decline with age. This is a hard one right now, but it definitely has made me appreciate sleep even more. So wherever I can, I guard my bedtime like it's a it's a flight and I don't want to miss it. And the reason why is because sleep plays an incredible role of clearing beta-amyloid out of the brain, which is involved in Alzheimer's pathology. Beta-amyloid is a result of, I mean there's lots of reasons as to why we have beta-amyloid, but it can be the result of metabolic waste products as a result of normal metabolism in the brain. On the podcast, we had Dr Louisa Nicola talking about sleep and brain health, and she explained that sleep is one of the most underrated high-performance tools that we have, but it's also one of the things that we need to protect if we want to look after our brain in the long run. And with the rise in the prevalence and incidence of Alzheimer's, this is something that I'm acutely aware of. So I try and do everything I can to support good brain health. I eat the right foods, I have lots of omega-3 in my diet, I supplement with omega-3, I have tons of phytochemical-rich foods in my diet, I exercise regularly. Arguably one of the things that we have least control of because we can't just flip a switch and go to sleep at the same bedtime and expect that we're going to have the same quality of sleep. This is something that I'm trying to optimise as much as possible. Your brain and sleep essentially is like an internal washing machine and you want to make sure that you put your brain on a decent enough cycle so it clears out all that debris as much as possible. We never used to sort of understand that we have this glymphatic system in the brain that works whilst we are in sleep or certain sleep stages that washes out these metabolic byproducts. And this is why I'm really fastidious about again, not using my phone or any devices whilst I'm in bed as much as possible, trying to create a calm space as much as possible, and waiting for my little one to get into a better sleep routine himself, so he'll stop disturbing my sleep. But whilst I'm taking this hit in the meantime, there are some other things that I've been looking at to potentially improve my sleep.
Dr Rupy: Number one is sleep regularity. Having the same bedtime and wake time, aiming for 100% if possible. I'm currently getting closer to 80%, but aiming for 100% means that your body is operating on a rhythm. Now, again, I don't want to sound puritanical about this because there are going to be opportunities where you want to enjoy life. You want to stay out late, you want to go to someone's birthday or an event, you want to go to a restaurant and you can't get a booking until 9:30 p.m. because it's super popular, whatever the excuse might be. There are going to be times where your sleep is going to be disturbed and you should enjoy that. You should really look at it through the lens of, okay, I'm doing this because my little one, this is not something that I'm opting into at the moment, but I'm going through a phase of my life where my little one is disturbing my sleep and I want to appreciate that as much as possible and flood my brain with gratitude for the opportunity of having a child which comes at the trade-off of sleep deprivation in the short term. That's totally fine. But where possible, sleep regularity is something that will train your brain to switch off at the same time. If you combine that with avoiding screens and stimulants close to bed, that is another win-win as well. When I say stimulants, I include caffeine in that. So I try and avoid caffeine at least 8 to 10 hours prior to bed. So I'm not having any caffeine after 10:30, 11:00 a.m. usually. Some people are more sensitive and may need to avoid caffeine entirely or even earlier than that time period.
Dr Rupy: The other thing is I try and optimise my environment, blackout blinds, night masks, or sleeping masks rather, creating a cool place as well. There are some really funky mattresses that can adjust your half of the mattress's temperature so you can optimise and dial in your exact temperature needs that enable you to fall into a deeper sleep. I actually think that's a great investment personally. I don't have any affiliation with any mattress brands, but if I did, I'd opt for one that has that cooling technology and I think that's something I'm going to be investing in personally. They can be quite expensive, but if you think of the opportunity of improving your sleep over many years and what the knock-on effect of that quality sleep could have on your brain and your function and longevity, it's a very easy calculation for me that has a massive upside to it. So I think it's personally worth the investment. Other things that could be useful, magnesium, it really depends on your magnesium state. Is it one to try? Absolutely. You could use magnesium threonate or magnesium bisglycinate or magnesium citrate, looking at anywhere between 200 and 400 milligrams per day. Some people might need more. For some people, it might not have any impact. I've tried it personally and I don't, I haven't noticed an impact on my sleep scores, so I personally don't take it, but I know my wife, for example, loves taking it and she finds that it definitely helps. So I think one of these, these are one of the things that it's good trial and error. A CO2 monitor is something that I'm about to experiment with after Dr Louisa told us about it on the podcast. A CO2 monitor measures the CO2 in your bedroom environment, which for us is probably going to be high mid-evening because it's me, my wife and my dog and we're all breathing and expelling CO2 and that gathers in your space. And so ventilating your room is really important because when the CO2 rises, it signals to your brain to breathe more and increase your respiratory rate and it can also wake you up in the middle of the night as well. So this is something I'm currently experimenting with to see what the ideal CO2 levels are in our bedroom and whether this increases overnight. I'll be reporting back on that as well. And the other thing, the potential role for mitigating poor sleep, something that I'm very interested in at the moment as I'm getting on average five to six, which is far lower than what I need. Polyphenol-rich supplements, so things like green powders that have been freeze-dried to optimise the preservation of those nutrients. So I'm looking at moringa, broccoli sprouts, and freeze-dried berries that are quite hard to get in fresh form, things like bilberries and blackcurrants, and creatine. So there may be a role for creatine monohydrate at protecting the brain in sleep-deprived individuals. I personally take 5 grams at the moment, but there may be a potential for taking higher doses if you could tolerate it up to 10 grams or even to 20 grams actually, but I think 3.5 to 5 grams is a safe dose. 10 grams, again, is safe and may have those extra benefits as well. Whether or not I'm going to be able to tell or there's a biomarker available that will determine whether I'm actually getting the benefit, I'm not aware of one, but I'm going to be trying it anyway because it's safe and I want to mitigate the sleep deprivation effects as much as possible.
Dr Rupy: The seventh habit is mapping a few simple meals for the week. Now, I'm not one to rigidly meal plan, but I do take 10 to 15 minutes to map the week to ensure that me and my wife know that, okay, our son is going to be eating XYZ on these days. Let's generate some meals utilising the same ingredients to minimise multiple cooking stages and multiple cooking pans as well. So why I do this, it reduces stress, it reduces food decision fatigue. The WFD question is something that shakes me to my core. What's for dinner? It's a text I get on the regular and that's why this whole mapping a few simple meals for the week has come about because it's come about as a result of need and me not wanting to have to think about what we're going to cook every single day for my wife to make sure that we have everything at home and in the pantry, etc, etc. And it also just makes healthy eating easier during the week. This is one of the decisions why we made the Doctor's Kitchen app have a meal planner in the first place because I know that mapping a few of my Doctor's Kitchen meals for the week and it generates a shopping list just means that me and my wife are across everything. It takes that decision fatigue out and it's great. I mean, I simply do a batch cook of a lentil stew or a tray bake with lots of vegetables and we'll pair that with whatever looks fresh at the butcher or the fishmongers or whether we've got some tempeh or tofu that I'm just going to simply air fry or bake. And we do theme nights as well. So our Tuesday, we all know it's salmon night. And our salmon's either going to be marinated in gochujang with some brown rice, broccoli, a bit of sesame and another veggie on the side, or it's going to be curry Monday. Curry Monday is usually tempeh or tofu that's simply baked or air fried and then we throw it into a Thai marinade. It could be a green curry sauce, it could be coconut with like sambal. It could be Indian where I make lentils, mustard seeds, curry leaves, cumin and fennel and then we'll add some black beans, sorry, not black beans, black chickpeas to that, some frozen spinach. So every week we're doing a theme. It's not necessarily exactly the same meal, but it is the same theme. So we know, okay, we're going to need some gochujang, we're going to need some curry paste, we're going to need some salmon, whatever it might be. And honestly, that has taken away so much stress of that WFD question that gets texted to me otherwise every day without fail or asked of me every morning and I've got to think about it and I'm like, got to map out what's in my fridge and luckily I'm pretty good at that, but a lot of people don't want that decision fatigue. So where possible, I mean, you can use the Doctor's Kitchen app for free and and use that meal plan functionality if you start an account, but simply just doing a little list of ingredients, a little idea of themes, you can have a little black board on your kitchen and be like, Monday night's going to be taco night. Wednesday night is going to be curry night. Friday night is going to be American theme night and you could do sweet potato wedges with Cajun chicken and cauliflower bites and broccoli or peas or whatever it might be, a tomato salad with a little bit of feta cheese, whatever it might be. Try and use theme nights and get creative with it. And even if you want some suggestions of what, you know, how to use up ingredients, just type in in the search bar on the Doctor's Kitchen app, tofu, sweet corn, berries, tomatoes, it will generate a ton of different varied meals that take away the strain and the sort of tyranny of that question and also introduce variety and inspiration into your meals.
Dr Rupy: And the eighth habit is stocking up on BBGs. And this will help you with habit number seven. So beans, berries, greens, seeds and nuts. You've probably heard me say this a bunch of times on the Doctor's Kitchen. This really is the Doctor's Kitchen method. If you've got them in your fridge or your cupboard, you can always make something absolutely nourishing. It's going to be supporting your gut health, it's going to be supporting your brain, it's going to be supporting your polyphenol count for the week. Healthy eating does start at the shop and BBGs are just an easy way to get a variety of those fibres, vitamins, protective phytonutrients every single day, supporting your brain and your heart needs as well. And all it is to start off with is just having a handful of cooked legumes. This could be black beans, chickpeas, lentils, green lentils, pre-lentils, whatever. Frozen berries or fresh, strawberries, bilberries, blueberries, it doesn't have to be the fancy ones, just a handful of those every single day. And then greens, I tend to get greens at every meal, but whatever greens you can get your hands on. I've recently started experimenting with the moringa that you can buy from Asian stores. We usually get it shipped in, but there are some British moringa producers. And you just make a saag out of that. That could be, you know, just stewed down Swiss chard leaves, kale, spinach and some moringa leaves thrown into that, or just simply served on the side of a meal. So it could be rocket leaves, massaged kale, whatever your green preference is. And seeds and nuts, whatever seeds you like, could be pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, peanuts, almonds, walnuts, just grab them whenever you can and just add it to as a topper or even the side of a diversity bowl or just as a snack. A simple way in which I get my BBGs in every single day is I'm making sure I'm always having some legumes at one meal at least. So this morning, I had them in my breakfast, but I will simply have them in my diversity bowl for lunch as well, just on the side, it could be black beans. Frozen berries with dark chocolate every day is actually like a staple dessert if you like of mine or a snack with some peanut butter. Hemp seeds, I have either on their own, topping yogurt or topping even the berries that I have with my dark chocolate. And greens, like I said, I just tend to have it on the side of most meals anyway. So I'm always ticking off my BBGs every single day. And do me a favour, if you've ever heard me talk about BBGs, just try it for a week. Try and make a rule for seven days of ticking off your BBGs and see how you feel. Try and get your one of your bees in the morning. I'm talking about beans because again, that's giving you fibre and protein, a small amount of protein, but fibre at least. That will help cravings and it'll keep you satiated for longer as well. And hit the rest of your BBGs for the remainder of the day. I'd love to know how you feel because there is good evidence that having this every single day reduces inflammation, improves your gut health. And we know that we can rapidly change our gut microbes after just a couple of days. And so having this complexity and this nourishing BBGs every single day is bound to have a tangible impact. And I think as soon as seven days as well.
Dr Rupy: Habit number nine is scheduling movement like meetings. If it's not in my calendar, it doesn't often happen. And I want to make sure that I am moving regularly. So I try and schedule at least two what we call zone two cardio workouts, which is steady state aerobic exercise. It could be brisk walking, cycling. I try to use cycling because I can be really data-driven about the wattage that I'm putting out. One resistance training session that's focused on legs and one resistance training session that is focused on upper body or general. And then a short hit session per week. So that's quite a lot of exercise every single week. There are five sessions that I'm trying to fit in to an already busy lifestyle, running the business, doing the podcast, doing books, speaking events, social media, creating recipes, running the tech company, dealing with a team, and I've got a toddler and I've got like family responsibilities, etc. So there's a lot going on. And so if I don't schedule my movement like a meeting, it often doesn't happen. And I'm trying to also get those micro-movements in during the day as well. So if you want to make sure that you are hitting your movement goals, which is going to give you energy, it's going to improve your weight, it's going to improve your metabolic flexibility, you need to schedule it as well. Steady state cardio or zone two training can feel a little bit boring because you are on a bike or you're running or you're brisk walking at a pace that doesn't feel massively uncomfortable. You are still sweating a little bit, but it's not like a hit session in any shape or way or form because you're not exhausted at the end of it. In fact, at the end of it, after you've been going for 45 to 60 minutes, you kind of feel like you can go for another 45 or 60 minutes. And that's the point. You want to be doing an activity that we talked about with Kieran Chopra on the podcast at the start of this year, who is an exercise physiologist and has done a lot of my testing, including VO2 max and my resting metabolic rate tests as well that I believe everyone should have done every single year. You want to be stressing your body in that light way because what it does is it upregulates things like mitochondria. It's really, really good for your metabolic health as well. You should be able to talk in broken sentences when you're doing this activity. It might feel a bit boring, it might not feel like you're actually pushing yourself, but that's the point because you're going to be combining this type of exercise with resistance training and hit training. Resistance training is essential for strength, balance, and again, muscular health, which is directly tied to metabolic health, particularly as we age. And the compound exercises are the ones that we want to be focused on. We spoke about this with Professor Lee Breen on the podcast a couple of months ago as well. The four exercises that I believe we should all be able to do are squats, press-ups, deadlifts and pull-ups. If there were just four exercises that I feel we should all be able to do, it's those four. Now, that doesn't mean that you need to get 100 kilos, put it on your back and start doing squats. Squats can be as simple as doing bodyweight squats or sitting from a getting up from a seated position. We talked through the different grades of activity that you can work up from. So if you are not confident, it could be literally getting up from a seated position, going into bodyweight squats, then putting dumbbells in your hands and then doing squats, and then working up to a back squat that I would highly recommend you do with a personal trainer to assess your form. And the same thing with press-ups. Press-ups could be starting off by just pushing off a wall, then pushing off a counter at an angle, then pushing off the floor off your knees, and then going into your feet, etc, etc. And the same thing can be done with deadlifts and pull-ups as well. If we can do these four, these are compound exercises. Compound basically means you're getting a lot more bang for your buck. You're not just doing a single muscle group like a bicep curl that's just largely working on your biceps. You're getting a whole constellation of different muscle groups working all together that are going to be helping with stabilising your core and also improving overall muscular strength that's going to be helping with aging as well. So try and do those four exercises. There are going to be others as well, but those are my choice when I do resistance training and I'm short on time. And I try and do that twice a week as a minimum. And the one session that I really do not like doing, but I do it because I know it's going to be improving my heart, my heart rate recovery, my muscular strength and my metabolic health is hit training. So this is fast muscles. It's doing an activity intensely for two minutes on and then two minutes off. There are variations of this. Some go up to four minutes on, four minutes off, which is really, really tough. It could be as simple as 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off. And it it's whatever is super strenuous for you that gets you to above 80% of your max effort. So this could be running up a hill for 30 seconds and then walking back down for 30 seconds and then doing the same thing five to six times. It might only take 20 to 30 minutes, but it is a really efficient workout that has effects that are measurable at least 24 hours after that workout as well. So it's one of these really, really efficient workouts that we want to be doing at least once a week. You don't want to be overtraining with hit training. So I'm not a fan of doing hit training three, four times a week like some people are. You want to get a variety of these different exercise stresses to your body because that's how you're going to get the most benefit. If you can only do one cardio session a week, one resistance training and then one hit training, that's fine. If you're only going to be able to do like one or two of them, I would do resistance training and a hit training session. But it's really down to like what you prefer as well. But this is the ideal strategy for exercise, which is why I schedule movement like a meeting.
Dr Rupy: I want to read a quote from Professor Lee Breen who told us, you don't need big muscles to get the benefit. Even modest resistance training improves metabolic health, brain function and cancer protection as well. There are no non-responders to strength training. I want to repeat that. There are no non-responders to strength training. You might invest in a supplement, you might take a probiotic, you might try a new diet. You don't know whether that is going to have an impact on your health or not. You do know that exercise and strength training is going to have a positive response on your body. Ensure that you're not overtraining, make sure your form is correct and you're not giving yourself an injury, but if you do strength training in the right way, you're going to get a benefit. So make sure you schedule movement like a meeting.
Dr Rupy: And number 10, I think this is super important. It's something that I've certainly been practicing during my medical career for over 15 years and thinking about it personally with my loved ones and my family. It's reviewing medications and supplements. Many people take long-term medications. They could be proton pump inhibitors, things like omeprazole and lansoprazole, painkillers, antibiotics without review. These all impact your gut and your overall health. And the question you want to ask yourself at every opportunity, at least monthly, I would say, if not quarterly, but I would say at least monthly, is do you still need this? Learn which supplements are actually relevant to you, learn which medications are still relevant for you, and ask your general practitioner for a regular review. We should be doing regular reviews regardless, but because our health system is so stretched, a lot of things can slip through the net unfortunately, which is why I always ask people to be as pragmatic as they can with their health. You cannot rely on your general practitioner unfortunately to be someone that is going to be alerting you for whether you should still be on this medication or whether you need a review or not. You need to be in charge of your own health unfortunately. Our health IT systems are frankly archaic. I could reel on, rant on about how awful our IT systems are. It's just a junky mess of lots of different programs that have not been optimised for functionality for either practitioners and physicians and other allied health professionals or the patients themselves. So that's why you need to be in charge of your own health. Learn which supplements are still relevant for you, vitamin D, omega-3, creatine, it really depends on your needs as well. And I would avoid random stacks of supplements that have been suggested to you by a YouTube video or by an Instagram advertising campaign and or or whether you know, you see an amazing looking model taking a supplement and that makes you feel like you should be also taking said supplement. These are all unfortunately curated to make you feel that you're missing out if you're not taking said supplement. So please be guided by a professional, otherwise you're just simply wasting your money. And the other thing I would say, as well as all these things, you know, ensuring that we're not over-prescribing and ensuring that we're not taking medication erroneously that we don't need to be, is if you have not dialled in your food and exercise, your stress-relieving techniques, getting outdoor, connection with nature, etc, there is no need to look at supplements. I would argue that if your food's not completely on point, you haven't removed ultra-processed foods, you're not doing your BBGs, you're not eating enough protein, you're not removing anything that has additives and fillers in. You're not eating properly on time, you haven't optimised your stress levels and done a meditation regime. If you need to invest in therapy, I highly recommend that as a means to reduce stress. You haven't generated a schedule to schedule your movement and booking those those exercise sessions. You haven't got a connection with that doors and getting yourself sunlight in the morning. Do all those things before you even think about supplements. Unless you need a supplement because you have a vitamin D deficiency, etc, etc. I wouldn't look at looking at supplements to optimise your health until you've done the former. The former is going to give you the most bang for your buck. If there's anything that I've learned over the last 300 episodes of speaking to some of the world's experts and some of them who love supplements and work with supplement companies and have done amazing work in these research fields, they all turn to the same things. It's food, exercise, connection with the outdoors, removing stress and optimising sleep as much as possible. Don't look at supplements before you've done the former.
Dr Rupy: And that's it. Those are my five daily and five weekly habits that I've learned from the last 300 podcast episodes. There's a few simple things in there that have kept me grounded through busy seasons, the current season, the current era that I'm in as a new parent. It's helped me show better, show up better for work, my patients, my team, feel more like myself as well. You don't need a 10-step routine, just a few basic habits that you can grow with. And start where it feels easy, a protein-rich breakfast, a phone-free walk, a weekly batch cook. You don't need to do all 10 of these things fastidiously. Just start with one and just see if you can habit stack those and create small wings every week to create that momentum. And if you're curious to go deeper on any of these habits, you can find some of the incredible conversations on the podcast that I'm referencing and you'll find the links to those in the description in your podcast player or on YouTube. Thank you so much. I can't wait for the next 300 episodes. Thank you for showing up. It really does mean the world to me that I have your attention. I treat it with respect and gravity and I hope I can continue to do that over the next couple of years as well.
