Dr Rangan’s five rules for healthy eating

Pay attention to when you eat

Intermittent fasting is all the rage. But should our eating window be eight, 10 or 12 hours a day? It can be confusing. And what even is the point?

Dr Chatterjee wants us to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. “We are not designed to eat continuously. Professor Satchin Panda did some research a few years ago showing that over 50 per cent of Americans were eating over a 15-hour period each day. Most humans on the planet 50 years ago were probably eating in a 12-hour window, which allowed all the housekeeping processes to kick into gear in our body overnight.”

“Food” includes the milk or sugar in your coffee first thing in the morning, and of course that packet of crisps in front of the TV at 10pm. For many years Dr Chatterjee has been recommending at least a 12-hour window of not eating. “Around 95 percent of my patients can do it. It means breakfast at 8am and you finish dinner by 8pm. Or 9am till 9pm. Whatever works best for you and your lifestyle.”

The science behind the benefits is still emerging but early data is showing that, when we eat in a fixed eating window and we keep some regularity with eating patterns, it can potentially help with weight loss, better blood-sugar control and better immune-system function. 

“I have also seen, with hundreds of patients, that it can help with things like cravings and irritable bowel syndrome,” says Dr Chatterjee. “Often you find those symptoms get much better because you’re eating with your natural circadian rhythms.”

Unprocess your diet

This is his most important principle when it comes to nutrition. While it’s possible to lose weight on an 800-calorie-a-day diet of junk food, that isn’t good for overall health. 

“Most people who want to lose weight also want to do so and be in good health,” says Dr Chatterjee. “And that’s where the quality of your food really matters.”

Sticking to mostly unprocessed whole foods that are close to their natural form has the power to make you feel less hungry, feel less tempted to eat what Dr Chatterjee calls ‘blissy foods’ (“foods with devilishly blissful combinations of salt, sugar and fats within them, which frankly no human can resist”) and will allow your body to manage your weight for you, rather than you having to actively do it. 

“When you eat whole foods there are beneficial effects on inflammation, on your immune system. These are essentially the foods we’ve evolved to eat. That our grandparents were eating. Only in the past 20 years have we had this explosion of food products as opposed to food.”

So how do you identify processed food? “A very simple rule of thumb that I’ve found to be useful is if something you’re buying has more than five ingredients in it, there’s a pretty good chance that this will be an ultra-processed food product.”

Know why you eat

The truth is that many of us know what sensible eating involves. We know what’s healthy and what we should be eating, and yet we still struggle. 

That’s because, says Dr Chatterjee, the problem is a lot of the time we are not eating because we’re hungry, but for other reasons.

“I say we often eat to fill a hole in our heart, not a hole in our stomachs these days. We eat when we’re lonely, tired or stressed or we’ve had a row with our partner. It’s comfort eating.  I’m not blaming anyone. I also do that.”

If we do want to eat differently then we need to ask ourselves, why is it that we are consuming the foods that we say we don’t want to consume? “You have to do this compassionately and not tell yourself off,” says Dr Chatterjee. 

The “3Fs” is an exercise he likes to do with patients. They stand for: feel, feed, find.

“When you’re on your sofa at 9.30pm and it’s rainy, windy and dark and you feel like having ice cream, first feel. Take a pause and ask yourself what you’re really feeling. Is it physical or emotional hunger?”

The second F is feed. “Now you’ve identified the feeling. How does the food feed the feeling?” The third F is find. “What alternative could feed that feeling?” 

Instead of ice cream, could you run yourself a bath? Or, if it’s loneliness, instead of a glass of wine, maybe you could phone a friend? “It’s a very simple exercise that helps us to start to figure out why we’re making these choices.”

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How do you maintain a healthy diet? Share your tips in the comments below