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

An episode of [The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1291423644), 30 Jan 2026, 20 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/01KESKSYESJXN51KTSANZN3AZM.mp3

Dr. Andy Galpin is a professor and performance scientist with a PhD in Human Bioenergetics. He specialises in muscle, strength, and human performance - translating exercise science into practical plans that actually work. In today’s Moments episode, Andy explains the fastest way to lose fat while preserving muscle - without falling into the crash-diet, over-cardio trap! Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: Apple: Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Dr. Andy Galpin: https://www.andygalpin.com/

## Transcript

[0:00] I've definitely grown up my whole life thinking that the way that you burn fat is by running.
[0:09] I mean, this is what most people think, right?
[0:11] They do.
[0:12] You want to burn fat around here, the belly fat, the best way to do is go for a run.
[0:16] And a lot of people have very little luck with that and end up beating themselves up.
[0:20] So to close off on this conversation, I'd like to hear your take on that.
[0:25] You need to think about fat loss in a broader approach than most people give it to, which
[0:33] is to say, when you say fat loss, let's get specific.
[0:36] What we're meaning is we're losing fat and ideally we're preserving muscle.
[0:41] That's what we typically want.
[0:44] We're also talking about losing fat so that it stays off as long as possible.
[0:51] Those are baked in to that phrase, but oftentimes forgot.
[0:55] So the advice I'm going to give you is with those two assumptions in mind.
[0:58] You're trying to keep as much lean mass as you can and you're trying to make this a successful
[1:02] journey and not something you have to repeat again time and time.
[1:06] Totally, right?
[1:07] Yoyo dieting.
[1:08] In fact, one of the more probably the highest, most cited paper I've ever published was on
[1:15] yoyo dieting.
[1:16] I can review article on that so you can go read that as people love that paper.
[1:21] I was just a co-author, Jackson wrote that paper, so credit goes to Jackson for that.
[1:27] But making sure you're paying attention to say, those parameters in mind, how do I lose
[1:32] weight?
[1:34] You can look across meta analyses and review articles and you will see the number one predictor
[1:39] a long term successful weight loss and my can weight loss, I mean fat loss is always
[1:45] adherence.
[1:47] It's adherence to your workout program and it's adherence to your nutrition program.
[1:51] So step number one, before we worry about any change in diet, we start arguing about
[1:58] which method of exercise is best before we start really going way down the line to things
[2:03] like genetic testing, like you're really wasting your time here and a lot of that stuff,
[2:08] especially if you're not paying attention to what's going to make you adhere the longest
[2:13] amount of time.
[2:15] In fact, if you just stopped right there, that's enough for most people.
[2:19] Can you put yourself in a position where you're able to feel abundant with your nutrition
[2:23] approach?
[2:24] And notice I'm trying not to say diet here, right, should be an nutritional approach.
[2:29] You have a balance between living life and flexibility, but then also figuring out what
[2:32] triggers you and maybe you don't have a trigger, maybe you can be more flexible, maybe
[2:36] you need more stringent, like all the things that go into it, you've got to figure out
[2:39] a system.
[2:41] People will not be on a diet very long, collectively, on average diets don't work for those
[2:47] exact reasons, right?
[2:48] You've got to get to a caloric deficit somehow, but you've got to do that in a way where
[2:52] you still are happy and sustainable, totally, right, and you're still for energy, and you're
[2:58] there and that it's working for you, right, and that's different for every physiology.
[3:02] Okay, great.
[3:03] And you've got to meet an exercise system, the same thing, right?
[3:05] If you hate running, there's no reason.
[3:08] You don't have to run a step to lose a ton of weight.
[3:11] If you love running, you shouldn't run.
[3:14] If you hate lifting weight, fine, I can work with any parameter you give me.
[3:17] If all we're concerned about is preserving lean muscle mass and losing fat over the
[3:20] long term, that's really what we have to consider the most, okay?
[3:24] Now within that, does that mean every training and nutrition program is the same?
[3:28] No, no, not at all.
[3:30] There are fundamental differences.
[3:31] Here's the problem to think about.
[3:34] If I said, hey, you're going to do the same training program in us, your life.
[3:39] You'd probably be like, well, but if I told you that with nutrition, people were like,
[3:46] well, yeah, of course, like there's, you know, magic diets that do, like, no, keto, great,
[3:52] meta training, great, high carb, great, great, great.
[3:54] You can do them all.
[3:55] They can all work for you.
[3:57] Some people taking on gluten helps, some people, great, great, great, sure, all of it is
[4:01] possible, right?
[4:02] If you come from very different backgrounds, if you look at any of the research, for example,
[4:07] like a really interesting point on genetic testing, if you're not taking account genetic
[4:14] background on that, genetic testing for things like nutrition, precision, nutrition is entirely
[4:20] worthless because we see classic markers that are associated with, say, more effective
[4:27] carbohydrate utilization or fat utilization or body composition.
[4:32] And they might predict a decent percentage of variants in European Caucasians.
[4:37] You apply those exact same things to West African or East African, and those variants
[4:41] go to zero.
[4:43] People forget that part when they start talking genetic testing.
[4:46] They have not been validated across all ethnic backgrounds, the ones that have shown
[4:50] they range from like 40% variants to zero.
[4:54] So like really, like you're way, way, way ahead of the cart here, paying attention to
[4:59] things that just do not matter.
[5:01] We got to get you on a system that works.
[5:04] Okay, great.
[5:05] For some people that might be more nutritionally based, all right.
[5:09] You can lose and preserve muscle mass really well by just going decently high on protein,
[5:15] and then regulating your calories.
[5:16] The example I gave you earlier, you want to go more carbs, less fat, great, you want
[5:19] to be opposite?
[5:20] Like we can play those levers.
[5:22] No problem.
[5:23] All right.
[5:24] What's your problem though?
[5:25] Oh, I struggle with car cravings.
[5:27] Okay, great.
[5:28] Oh, I struggle with hunger pangs.
[5:29] Okay, great.
[5:30] I struggle with, okay.
[5:31] Well, then we're going to make those decisions based on more of this, more of that based
[5:35] on like, where is your pain point?
[5:36] Wish your problem.
[5:37] I struggle with the, okay, great.
[5:39] I have to, now we're personalizing, now we're individualizing it based on things that
[5:43] are going to matter orders of magnitude more than other things that I've just talked
[5:47] about, right?
[5:48] That stuff will trump it.
[5:50] Exercise the same thing.
[5:51] You hate exercise.
[5:53] Okay, great.
[5:54] Maybe we can get you to walk a few times today, and we'll get most of our fat loss through
[5:57] nutrition.
[5:58] Maybe the opposite.
[5:59] You love training, but, ooh, man, you just struggle to eat whatever or not eat something.
[6:03] All right, great.
[6:04] Maybe we'll play the game more with, you know, willpower will push the pace on our exercise.
[6:09] High intensity, fine, low intensity, fine, weights, great, cardio, great, surfing, great,
[6:15] like, don't zone six, I don't care.
[6:19] All of it can be done.
[6:20] Some of the foundational things that tend to be consistent for those two things on most
[6:26] people is you need to make sure protein is adequate, hard to maintain muscle mass with
[6:32] lower protein, especially if we're going hypochloric, so keep protein high.
[6:38] You want to do something revolving, strength training, at least once a week for the same
[6:43] exact reasons, something that makes you burn a lot of calories, long duration, high intensity
[6:48] either way, that's all you really have to do.
[6:51] If you can do that stuff consistently, over time, you're going to get there.
[6:54] You're going to be just fine.
[6:56] Where we see problems are people that put themselves in a position of scarcity, what do you mean
[7:02] by scarcity for anyone that doesn't name them, depriving themselves of something?
[7:06] You feel like you're never good to do the thing you want to do.
[7:09] This is a psychological thing, right?
[7:10] Totally.
[7:11] Which causes the yo-yo effect.
[7:12] Which causes the problem of consistency and adherence over time, right?
[7:18] So making sure you do that, I personally have some go-to standards I like to do, I'll
[7:23] happily share that with you.
[7:24] I tend to like to have a decent balance between kind of our anaerobic strength training,
[7:30] high heart rate stuff, and our more steady state, longer duration stuff.
[7:34] So if someone's going to be able to work out three times per week, I'm probably doing
[7:38] one thing where we're going a long duration, call it a hike, call it a swim, call it a run,
[7:42] whatever we can do.
[7:43] And then the other two days, I'm probably doing a combination of lifting and then probably
[7:47] finishing with some high heart rate thing, right?
[7:51] So we'll do like a little bit of strength and hypertrophy, muscle growth work, and then
[7:55] we'll do a circuit or an aerosol bike or some sprints or like what can we get you into
[8:00] it's like really, really hard.
[8:01] If I can get you in an environment where you're working out with some other human, I love
[8:05] that.
[8:06] Is there any reason why you do the strength first and then?
[8:09] Absolutely.
[8:10] That's a great question.
[8:11] If you do strength training before endurance work, your strength training will not
[8:16] compromise your endurance.
[8:18] In fact, sometimes it exacerbates it.
[8:22] If you do your endurance first, you're going to be more fatigued and you're going to lose
[8:27] strength.
[8:28] So you'll have worse performance in your strength training.
[8:30] What's the most important thing we haven't spoken about?
[8:33] You know, if there was one more thing you could add of all the things you know, that would
[8:36] allow Jennifer, who's a 34 year old single mother or Dave, who's a black cab driver in London,
[8:44] the average person.
[8:46] I think it is exciting what's coming in the world of human health.
[8:52] And I think it's helpful for people to know that stuff because a lot of challenges
[8:57] we're facing, any worse, we have things that are going to be possible pretty soon.
[9:05] Kind of stuff I'm talking about, this idea of precision exercise, precision nutrition.
[9:13] It's not really available to many people, to expensive, et cetera.
[9:17] We're going to cross those barriers pretty soon.
[9:20] We are working on a project right now called the Human Digital Twin.
[9:24] So this is a combination of a couple of my companies.
[9:26] So the sleep company, absolute rest, our blood work company, Vitality Blueprint, Spring
[9:32] Box.
[9:33] There's another company called Axial Force that actually has four sensors in your shoe.
[9:39] And we can see early changes potentially in gate.
[9:43] So how you're walking, which could potentially, and research is needed here, but potentially
[9:48] be early signs of Parkinson's development, their logical disorder.
[9:51] So we'll see this in gate before we'll see this in symptoms.
[9:55] Companies that are involved in this entire thing, we can take all those data, we're actually
[9:59] doing this right now, put them together and make what's called the digital twin.
[10:04] This allows us to make your physiology.
[10:07] So from our perspective of Vitality, we've got all your blood work and molecular biomarkers
[10:12] from absolute rest, we've got your sleep, we've got your movement patterns.
[10:14] We can actually work with another company to watch you physically move and do this.
[10:18] We can take your physiology and upload it.
[10:20] Then from there, we can run endless simulations of combinations of nutrition and training
[10:25] and supplementation, medicine, movement, daytime patterns, sunlight, water, all those things,
[10:33] and figure out really quickly how you're going to respond the best for whatever outcome
[10:37] we want.
[10:39] It's not ready at all right now, but we're actually, again, running it right now, we'll have
[10:43] our first cohort done probably in the next week or so.
[10:46] We have, we really, really soon, I don't know how well the model is going to be the first
[10:51] time through it.
[10:52] I don't know if our group is going to be the best at it, it doesn't matter, but this
[10:56] is clearly going to be something the world is capable of.
[10:59] Because we get better at being human sensors and we can bring those data in, we're going
[11:05] to be able to deploy things like this and say, hey, yo, this is most likely to work for
[11:09] you.
[11:10] The digital twin is already being used for like the heart, it's in place, we have the
[11:15] digital twin of the kidneys as well, the lungs are coming soon, the heart is coming pretty
[11:19] soon, there's lots of groups, I'm not involved in any of those projects, but that's coming
[11:23] on board.
[11:24] So the ability to not have to guess anymore and most importantly, try.
[11:28] I tried this for six weeks.
[11:29] It didn't work.
[11:30] I tried this for nine, that's going to go away really fast.
[11:34] Great.
[11:35] You still have to go do all the work.
[11:38] The technology won't work out for you, right?
[11:41] Well, we have some stuff that I'll do that too.
[11:46] What's the cost though?
[11:47] Like when you were saying all of that, I go, do you know what I mean?
[11:49] We spent the entire length of human history with one, maybe arguably two singular goals.
[11:58] One of them at the core was stress reduction.
[12:02] That was what we're after, right?
[12:04] You create communities, so you're safer, you create homes, so you're environmental, you
[12:08] create agriculture, so we're food and we all wanted to reduce the stress thing, right?
[12:12] We didn't call that, but that's what it was.
[12:15] And then we got to the year 2000 or so and we realized, oh, fuck.
[12:20] Maybe that was the wrong target.
[12:22] I saw in your bookshelf at home, there's a book called The Comfort Crisis.
[12:25] Oh, yeah.
[12:27] And that just flashed in front of me as you were saying that.
[12:29] Yeah, shut up.
[12:30] Michael, it's a great book.
[12:33] When we have astronauts come back from the National Space Station, getting people to live
[12:38] on Mars, it's a bit of a rocket problem, but it's a bigger physiology problem.
[12:45] And this HTT project we're on is part of the people we're working with is Cody Burkhard,
[12:50] who runs human works at NASA.
[12:54] Bringing out that line of going, hey, you don't want to release stress.
[13:00] If you do, like what happens when we send people up to space because there's no gravity,
[13:05] your physiology tanks really quickly, right?
[13:09] They come back, oftentimes astronauts come back and they can't physically walk for a
[13:12] few days because in that case, that aspect, now other aspects of stress are way up.
[13:18] We've lost some of the core tenants that it means to be human and we are not ready for
[13:22] that.
[13:23] We are not ready at all to be able to be told, oh, you're running this scan and here's
[13:27] the exact culmination of life you need to run.
[13:31] Not even counting the ethics behind on that.
[13:34] Like the ethics of genetic testing alone are really, really interesting to say the least.
[13:43] The ethics of doing something like that, we have not thought through this stuff, right?
[13:51] There is more in our world than our human experience than just straight answers, right?
[13:58] This is one of the beauties of this ride we get to take.
[14:05] I don't know if we have good answers.
[14:06] I think we've clearly shown.
[14:08] We're not very good at asking those questions before.
[14:11] Never.
[14:13] Because the incentives in the short time is so tempting, we're seeing this with AI at
[14:17] the moment.
[14:19] And then we figure we get the results back in 20 years and by then it's just too late.
[14:25] I mean, look at the current health position that we're in, right?
[14:30] We went after that entire idea of minimizing as many stressors as we possibly could and
[14:35] all we worked.
[14:38] Oops.
[14:39] Now we have to go back and do this weird thing, we re-engineer stress back into our lives.
[14:45] You have to be very careful and judicious when you pull things out of a natural state.
[14:54] I'm being very choosy with my words there.
[14:58] If you're not directing stress, you're letting something else direct that stress is still
[15:02] coming one way or the other, which means adaptation is coming.
[15:05] So you can be intentional and point that ship in one direction or you can cover your eyes
[15:11] and think it's not happening at all and realize you're getting pointed somewhere else.
[15:15] It's better to at least have the acknowledgement.
[15:20] This is why the word consciousness is in the title of my book.
[15:25] This is part of the process, right?
[15:28] You can be aware of it or you can not.
[15:32] From there you can choose whatever you want that's entirely up to you and all that.
[15:36] I just want people to realize you're making a choice one way or the other.
[15:40] When you involve technology into the picture, AI is another really, really challenging thing.
[15:47] In a lot of ways, we've seen this already play out and we know the answer is this gets
[15:55] worse in terms of we're not going to make very good choices right away.
[16:02] How does that manifest itself in the end?
[16:03] I don't know.
[16:04] Nobody knows.
[16:05] To date, we're not particularly good at making that decision.
[16:10] So there's lots of consequences there.
[16:12] I think that we have one last thing I'll say on this is if you break down the way that
[16:21] we structured it, there's four pieces.
[16:22] In order for you to have more success at your performance and health, you number one
[16:28] have to have assessment.
[16:30] Once you have all this data, you have to go to step number two, which is then you have
[16:32] to qualify good, bad, great, worst ever, best in world history.
[16:38] We're struggling on that.
[16:40] We don't know what healthy it looks like.
[16:42] I know what clinically deficient records looks like.
[16:45] I know what obesity and type 2 diabetes and we know disease.
[16:49] We don't know what good versus great means.
[16:52] There are no databases I can pull from.
[16:54] There is no metric I can look at and say, what is a great, what's a great vertical jump
[16:58] number?
[16:59] Because somebody need to be able to jump in their 40s to be healthy.
[17:03] We don't know these things and I don't know it by ethnicity and I mentioned that before
[17:07] that's a critical component because it is clearly different, right?
[17:10] There are some markers in basic blood chemistry that are not different in Southeast Asians
[17:15] or that are different in Southeast Asians versus Northern Europeans.
[17:19] We don't have that fully fleshed out and if we do, it's for disease markers.
[17:23] We don't have that.
[17:24] So I don't even know what I'm judging.
[17:26] Okay.
[17:27] Now assessment, great.
[17:29] Where are we going to get these databases to super healthy people as the world continues
[17:31] to get less healthy?
[17:34] I'm losing my population to pull from really, really quickly.
[17:37] Okay.
[17:38] And the next piece is, okay, great.
[17:41] You've told me that this marker should be here.
[17:44] Pick your marker whenever you want.
[17:46] How do I get it there?
[17:48] And that's really where we're struggling.
[17:50] So the second problem is what I call polaris.
[17:51] Like we have no nor star.
[17:53] We don't know where this thing should go.
[17:55] The third one is, okay, and how do I get there?
[17:58] What is the intervention?
[17:59] What is the thing?
[18:00] That's where I actually think people in my field are going to not only maintain but increase
[18:06] their value such as like personal coaches, physical therapists, athletic trainers, people
[18:12] that are going to nurses because you might have an AI that can come in and run something
[18:17] and say, great, your numbers are here and our metrics say you should be here and then
[18:22] you should go do X.
[18:25] I want somebody there with me.
[18:26] I want a human taking me through X.
[18:29] That's going to feel better because we don't know.
[18:32] There's almost no data on, okay, great, well, what is the optimal training for that marker?
[18:36] What is the optimal nutrition or that is really, really limited.
[18:41] So we have to rely on expert.
[18:43] We have to rely on people that go, I know the evidence base, but then also in my experience,
[18:47] I'm thinking about this this way.
[18:49] If you were an NFL quarterback and you tore your ACL and we ran all that stuff on you,
[18:54] you would still come back and go, oh, great, there's a coach over there who's actually
[18:59] run people through ACL recoveries on 15 starting NFL quarterbacks.
[19:05] What's it going to cost?
[19:06] You're hiring that person because you've done it before, fantastic, like the budget doesn't
[19:10] matter at that point because the person's actually done it and they will be there, fantastic.
[19:16] I really feel like our field is going to increase in the value because of that.
[19:20] They're going to want to say, okay, awesome.
[19:23] The numbers came out on this, the AI told me this is there.
[19:26] You've done it before, yeah, done it a lot.
[19:29] Great.
[19:30] I trust you the most.
[19:31] I want you by my side.
[19:32] I want that companionship.
[19:33] As we lose more and more connection to other people, it's my bias depending on my field
[19:40] that like this is a great place where people want someone there online coaching is great.
[19:45] It's fine and all that, but you're seeing actually already a premium coming on like,
[19:49] you know, I want to hire an in person trainer.
[19:51] Can you give me that person where like the boom is the opposite for a while and now it's
[19:54] already swinging back where people would rather have somebody there in person for all
[19:57] those reasons.
[19:58] So that is, I think, an incredibly interesting challenge, but that's the way to think
[20:05] about it.
[20:06] That top one's going to get better, lots of problems.
[20:09] But what are we comparing against and then what do we do about it?
[20:12] That's going to be the real trick.
[20:15] What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode.
[20:20] If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below.
[20:23] Check the description.
[20:24] Thank you.

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