Most Replayed Moment: The Fastest Way To Lose Fat Without Losing Muscle! - Dr Andy Galpin

Steven Bartlett (0:04)

I've definitely grown up my whole life thinking that the way that you burn fat is by running. I mean, this is what most people think, right? They think you want to burn fat around here, the belly fat. The best way to do is go for a run. And a lot of people have very little luck with that and end up beating themselves up. So to close off on this conversation, I'd like to hear your take on that.

Andy Galpin (0:25)

You need to think about fat loss in a broader approach than most people give it to. Which is to say, when you say fat loss, let's get specific. What we're meaning is we're losing fat, and ideally we're preserving muscle. That's what we typically want, okay? We're also talking about losing fat so that it stays off as long as possible. Those are baked in to that phrase. But often times forgot. So the advice I'm going to give you is with those two assumptions in mind. You're trying to keep as much lean mass as you can, and you're trying to make this a successful journey, and not something you have to repeat again, time and time. Totally, right? Yo-yo dieting. In fact, one of the more, probably the highest, most cited paper I've ever published was on yo-yo dieting. Like a review article on that. So you can go read that. People love that paper.

I was just a co-author. Jackson wrote that paper. So credit goes to Jackson for that. But making sure you're paying attention to those parameters in mind. How do I lose weight? You can look across meta-analyses and review articles and you will see the number one predictor of long-term successful weight loss, and by weight loss I mean fat loss, is always adherence. It's adherence to your workout program and it's adherence to your nutrition program. So step number one, before we worry about any change in diet, we start arguing about which method of exercise is best, before we start really going way down the line to things like genetic testing, like you're really wasting your time here, and a lot of that stuff, especially if you're not paying attention to what's going to make you adhere the longest amount of time. In fact, if you just stop right there, that's enough for most people. Can you put yourself in a position where you're able to feel abundant with your nutrition approach? And notice I'm trying not to say diet here, right? Should be a nutritional approach. You have a balance between living life and flexibility, but then also figuring out what triggers you, and maybe you don't have a trigger, maybe you can be more flexible, maybe you need more stringent, like all the things that go into it. You got to figure out a system. So you're not, people will not be on a diet very long, just collectively, on average, diets don't work, for those exact reasons. You got to get to a caloric deficit somehow, but you got to do that in a way where you still are happy and sustainable, totally, and you still feel energy, and you're there, and that it's working for you. That's different for every physiology. Okay, great. You got to meet the exercise system, the same thing. If you hate running, there's no reason, you don't have to run a step to lose a ton of weight. If you love running, you should run. If you hate lifting weight, fine. I can work with any parameter you give me, if all we're concerned about is preserving lean muscle mass and losing fat over the long term. That's really what we have to consider the most. Okay, now within that, does that mean every training and nutrition program is the same? No, no, no, not at all. There are fundamental differences. Here's the problem to think about. If I said, hey, you're gonna do the same training program the rest of your life, you'd probably be like, well, but if I told you that with nutrition, people are like, well, yeah, of course, like there's magic diets that do like, no, keto, great, meta training, great, high carb, great, great, great. You can do them all. They can all work for you. Some people taking on gluten helps. Some people go great, great, great. Sure, all of it is possible. All right, we come from very different backgrounds. If you look at any of the research, for example, like a really interesting point on genetic testing.

If you're not taking account genetic background on that, genetic testing for things like nutrition, precision nutrition is entirely worthless because we see classic markers that are associated with, say, more effective carbohydrate utilization or fat utilization or body composition. And they might predict a decent percentage of variance in European Caucasians. You apply those exact same things to West African or East African, and those variants go to zero. People forget that part when they start talking genetic testing. They have not been validated across all ethnic backgrounds. The ones that have have shown they range from like 40% variance to zero. So like really, like you're way, way, way ahead of the cart here, paying attention to things that just do not matter. We got to get you on a system that works. Okay, great. For some people that might be more nutritionally based. All right, you can lose and preserve muscle mass really well by just going decently high on protein and then regulating your calories. The example I gave you earlier, you want to go more carbs, less fat? Great, you want to do the opposite? Like we can play those levers, no problem. All right, what's your problem though? Oh, I struggle with car cravings. Okay, great. Oh, I struggle with hunger pangs. Okay, great. I struggle with, okay, well, then we're going to make those decisions based on more of this, more of that based on like, where is your pain point? What's your problem? I struggle with the, okay, great. I have to, now we're personalizing, now we're individualizing it based on things that are going to matter, orders of magnitude more than other things that I've just talked about, right? That stuff will trump it. Exercise is the same thing. Maybe you hate exercise. Okay, great. Maybe we can get you to walk a few times a day and we'll get most of our fat loss through nutrition. Maybe the opposite, you love training, but man, you just struggle to eat whatever or not eat something. All right, great. Maybe we'll play the game more with, you know, willpower will push the pace on our exercise. High intensity, fine. Low intensity, fine. Weights, great. Cardios, great. Surfing, great. Like I don't zone six tone. I don't care. All of it can be done. OK, some of the foundational things that tend to be consistent for those two things on most people is you need to make sure protein is adequate. Hard to maintain muscle mass with lower protein, especially if we're going hypocaloric. So keep protein high. You want to do some thing revolving strength training at least once a week for the same exact reasons. Something that makes you burn a lot of calories, long duration, high intensity, either way. That's all you really have to do. If you can do that stuff consistently over time, you're going to get there. You're going to be just fine. Where we see problems are people that put themselves into positions of scarcity.