Lasting change begins with a shift in both mindset and behavior. Many people remain stuck in self-defeating patterns because of unconscious narratives, emotional triggers, and a disconnection from their body’s inner wisdom. Change isn’t just about willpower or information—it’s about learning to rewire the brain through small, intentional actions that generate powerful emotional feedback loops. Identity transformation happens not through repetition, but through experiences that create a sense of success. In a world flooded with conflicting advice and manipulative marketing, reclaiming agency requires tuning into your own signals, building self-trust, and recognizing that behavior change is a design challenge—not a character flaw. Empowerment comes from realizing that the ability to change is built into who we are as humans. In this episode, I speak with Tom Bilyeu, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and Dr. BJ Fogg about cracking the nut of behavior change. Tom Bilyeu is a filmmaker and serial entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Quest Nutrition, a billion-dollar company built to combat metabolic disease through value-driven innovation. After nearly a decade of chasing financial success and feeling unfulfilled, he realized the importance of loving the struggle itself. This insight led him and his partners to shift focus from profit to purpose. Quest quickly became the second fastest-growing company in North America, according to Inc. Magazine. After achieving significant personal wealth, Tom turned to the other global crisis he saw—disempowering mindsets. To address this, he co-founded Impact Theory, a media studio with his wife, Lisa Bilyeu. Their mission is to scale mindset transformation by producing empowering content that shifts the cultural subconscious. Just as Disney built the most magical place on Earth, the Bilyeus aim to build the most empowering one. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK. A practicing GP for the last two decades, Dr. Chatterjee wants to inspire people to transform their health by making small, sustainable changes to their lifestyles. Host of the #1 Apple podcast, Feel Better, Live More, and presenter of BBC 1’s Doctor in the House, Dr. Chatterjee is the author of 5 Sunday Times bestselling books and his TED Talk, “How to Make Diseases Disappear,” has now been viewed over 4.8 million times. His newest book is Happy Mind, Happy Life: The New Science of Mental Well-Being. Dr. BJ Fogg is a behavior scientist, author, and founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, where he has researched human behavior since 1998. He developed the groundbreaking “Behavior Design” system, which explains how behavior works and how to design it effectively. Over the past decade, his lab has focused on practical applications—from helping people navigate coronavirus-related challenges to training climate change professionals in behavior change strategies. BJ is also the creator of the “Tiny Habits” method, a simple, science-backed approach to habit formation that has helped over 40,000 people make lasting life changes. His work empowers individuals and organizations to design behavior that benefits both people and the planet. He shares his insights in the New York Times best-selling book, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10%. Full-length episodes can be found here: Why Your Mindset Matters If You Want Health And WealthHow to Make Change That Lasts with Dr. Rangan ChatterjeeHow to Make Behavior Change Stick
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Coming up on this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show. The thing I always lead with is humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. And if you focus on the amount that's malleable, the amount that you can change your life is so extraordinary.
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Over 1,500 five-star reviews back it up, and it comes with a full 365-day guarantee. Head to bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use code HYMEN10 to save 10%. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale.
And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, the Hyman Hive.
And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website at drhyman.com for my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Teaching people. How do you get people to shift their mindset? Because it's a hard thing.
It is. I think the big thing is you have to get certain core beliefs. So there's one... One, people come to me because they're in an emotional, painful point. They know they can do more, be more, but they don't know how to get there.
Because people stay stuck in this negative inner dialogue and loop of negative thinking, and it's habitual, and they're almost inside of it like a bubble. They can't see. It's like a fish swimming in water. It doesn't know it's in water.
Dude, do you know the talk that—oh, God, I'm blanking on his name—
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Chapter 2: How does chronic stress affect our health?
I will hypothesize that the reason is our friends help establish our values and our belief system And so I'm writing a book now, which is like the tentative title. This will never be the real type It's called build yourself. Like how do you construct a mindset that actually lets you go forward? so I'm a freak for looking at the human animal as a biological entity and so understanding how thoughts
wire your brain your brain has certain things that it's going to do like good luck ever not ever thinking it's just one of the things your brain is is heartwired genetically incutating right exactly like your brain is going to cough up thoughts that that just is its nature humans are an active species humans also balance out that active nature of wanting to explore and control their environment with a deep laziness designed to conserve calories
So it's like you have this weird push-pull. So if you really accept that the human is this biological creature, that thoughts become literal physical wiring in your brain, and that your brain wants to think the thoughts that are easiest, whatever you repeat then becomes the easiest. It goes into what's called the default network in the brain, and that's just where you always default.
So you talk about these people being stuck in these loops. They get stuck in these loops.
You talk about the default mode network, which is this part of the brain where sort of the ego lives. And it's this sort of more rigid sense of little self that separates you from the world. And things like meditation, like you look at these monks who have been meditating for 40,000 hours in a cave. These default mode networks are shut down and they just are connected and one with everything.
And that becomes their default, right? They can slide so easily into that. And psychedelics do the same thing, right. Have you done psychedelics? I have. Oh, Mark Hyman, we've got to talk about that. So I am intrigued and completely chickened. I grew up in the 70s, you know.
What can I say?
I'm really interested in psychedelics, really interested. I've micro-dosed psilocybin. I didn't find it very interesting. So it felt like a low grade buzz, but without the fatigue. So if I were going to drink, it actually probably would be slightly more pleasurable maybe to be to have that a micro dose of psilocybin because there are no sort of after effects that I find unpleasant.
But I didn't find I was more creative. I certainly didn't find that I could focus. I found myself sort of drifting in and out of attentive focus. So I was like, meh. For the people who say that it really helps them be creative or more productive, not me. But I've never done a full-on.
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Chapter 3: What role does mindset play in behavior change?
If, on the other hand, you're an undernourished teenage girl with anorexia, it may not be, but we want to know, is fasting good or bad? It depends, right? And so with that example on my podcast that I shared, I would say, well, listen, if you resonate with both of those people's messages, Why don't you do this? For four weeks, try this expert's diet and pay attention. Those are the two key words.
Pay attention. How do you feel? What's your energy like? Your vitality? Your sleep? How much focus do you have? What is your gut like? How are your bowels? Pay attention. And then for the next four weeks, try the other one and at the same time, pay attention. Now,
i'm not saying that will work a hundred percent of the time yes we need advice from experts like yourself or me to help guide us but ultimately neither one of us know for sure which is the perfect diet for that individual we can provide frameworks like you have your pegan diet right it's a framework yeah basic foundational principles but it's highly flexible exactly personalized
And I feel the problem, Mark, when it comes to making change that lasts is if you have outsourced your inner expertise to external experts, What ends up happening is that we start to feel like failures. Oh, I followed that person's diet. It didn't work for me. It can't be the diet. It must be me. There's something wrong with me. Like I'm a failure.
And then guilt, shame, all these things start coming in, which means that actually we don't make any changes or we actually feel worse about ourselves than when we started before. So this book is really my attempt to go, listen, I submit to you, Mark, and let's see what your perspective is on this. I imagine that people who follow you and people who listen to your podcast each week
I reckon 95% of them already know that excess sugar is not helping them. They already know that. So if they've still got an issue with excess sugar, it's not more external knowledge they need. It's like, oh, why is it despite the knowledge, do I keep going to sugar? And so can I just share a really simple exercise that I've used for many years with patients?
It sounds really simple, but it's very, very powerful. I call it the three Fs. The first F is feel, the second F is feed, and the third F is find. Right, I'll go through it. So I imagine that a lot of your listeners, Mark, are trying to reset their relationship with sugar, right? So what people often say is, Dr. Chachi, I was fine in the day, But at 9pm, I was on the sofa, I was watching TV,
i really wanted ice cream okay have you ever felt like that before me never okay right it's really common now they want to make changes they know my wife is terrible by the way she she buys she loves me and she thinks it's love and she buys me my achilles heel which is sicilian van luyn's pistachio ice cream well it sounds delicious it's amazing yeah and i don't do it very often but i know exactly that moment where like
Yeah. And I'm not saying you should or shouldn't have it. It's up to you, right? But if you're trying to reduce your sugar intake, yet you still find yourself with half a tub of ice cream every evening, perhaps this exercise will help you.
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Chapter 4: How can we break negative thinking loops?
Always ask yourself, what do I need? What am I feeling and what do I need? Am I hungry? Do I need food? Am I lonely? Do I need ice cream or do I need to call a friend? Am I tired? Do I need a nap? Or do I need sugar? And so there's a very simple set of non-judgmental questions you can ask about what am I actually feeling right now and what do I need?
And we often don't stop to make that distinction. That's what you're asking people to do is inviting them to go gee, I have this Hershey ice cream, but what's really going on with me right now? Am I depressed? Am I sad? Am I tired? I need energy. Have I been, you know, just eating too much carbs and I'm craving carbs? Like what's going on?
And I think it's a very powerful tool to sort of create self-awareness around the choices you're making. And then
yeah then figure out what you what you really need in that moment and and then go reach out for that if it's calling a friend if it's you know taking a nap if it's whatever it is it's going to sort of deal with what you need rather than the food which becomes our default then we've you know we've created a culture where that's what happens when your kids shut up here eat this candy if you're screaming eat this ice cream here you know have have some treat as a way of kind of mollifying kids and it becomes this
sense of our reliance on things that are really bad for us to make us feel better rather than understanding how to actually feel better.
Yeah, this stuff is game changing for people because I imagine, Mark, that there There's many people out there who know what they should be doing now for health, particularly people who listen to health shows like yours or mine, right? These are people who are really interested. Yes, for sure, the general public, we need to keep help educating them on what are the healthy choices to make.
But that external knowledge is not enough. I opened my new book with a very powerful story of a GP colleague of mine, a medical colleague, an expert in toxic diabetes. You know, she'd always send me the latest papers with her own informed commentary on them and emails. And then one day she actually sent me a text message saying, hey, Ranga, are you around this weekend? I really need to chat.
So I arranged to meet her. And what happened is that she basically said that there was a patient that week in her clinic who with a diagnosis of type two diabetes. And she was trying to educate the patient and said, listen, look, excess sugar, too many ultra processed foods, it's gonna cause your body to be inflamed, it's gonna affect your gut microbiome.
And she was trying to educate this patient and the patient just stopped her and said, why should I listen to you? You're fatter than I am.
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