Habits and Hustle
Episode 433: Dr. Andy Galpin: Forget Diet Trends - Simple Nutrition Principles That Actually Work
Tue, 18 Mar 2025
Ever wonder what a world-class performance specialist eats to fuel his day? You might be surprised to learn it includes wild game like elk, deer, and yes, even bear meat! In this episode of Habits and Hustle, I talk with Dr. Andy Galpin, a leading expert in human performance who works with elite athletes across multiple sports. Dr. Galpin cuts through the noise of trendy diets to share fundamental nutrition principles that drive performance. We dive into why calorie balance, whole foods, and adequate protein (about 1g per pound of bodyweight) matter more than following any specific eating schedule. We also discuss hunting, eating bear meat, and how nutrition needs differ based on activity. Overall, Dr. Galpin emphasizes individualization, finding what works for your specific body, goals, and lifestyle rather than following one-size-fits-all approaches. Dr. Andy Galpin PhD is a tenured full Professor at California State University, Fullerton. He is the Co-Director of the Center for Sport Performance and Founder/Director of the Biochemistry and Molecular Exercise Physiology Laboratory. He is a Human Performance scientist with a PhD in Human Bioenergetics and over 100 peer-reviewed publications and presentations. What We Discuss: (01:01) Optimal Nutrition for High Performance (10:11) Protein Intake and Wild Game Consumption (21:03) Impact of Blending on Digestion (25:22) Importance of Fiber Intake and Supplements (33:11) Understanding the Impact of Supplements (44:19) Magnesium Supplements and Nutrition Insights (52:30) Antioxidants, Supplementation, and Coaching Program (01:03:12) Daily Routine and Coaching Philosophy …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: AquaTru: Get 20% off any purifier at aquatru.com with code HUSTLE Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. BiOptimizers: Want to try Magnesium Breakthrough? Go to https://bioptimizers.com/jennifercohen and use promo code JC10 at checkout to save 10% off your purchase. Timeline Nutrition: Get 10% off your first order at timeline.com/cohen Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here, code Jennifer20 for 20% off. Momentous: Shop this link and use code Jen for 20% off Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Dr. Andy Galpin: Website: https://www.andygalpin.com/ Podcast: Perform Instagram: @drandygalpin
Chapter 1: What are the fundamental principles of nutrition for high performance?
What is the optimal, I know everything's very individualized based, but what is the optimal diet for high performance?
Define high performance for me, but some categorical rules I can answer here.
Okay, for optimal cognitive performance.
Cognitive performance is a different answer here, right? So you can go into the small details with examples like people like to bring up blueberries. Lots of research, a cup of blueberries per day is actually going to have statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in cognitive function. We use this very routinely. It's been very well demonstrated.
Okay, I know. Blueberries, wild salmon. Got it. Right? All this stuff. It's all true. It's all true.
It's all honestly super true. So if you then wind back to some of your previous questions on that, does it matter which format that you like to give yourself structure with? You're like, what the hell did he just say? You could have called that a diet. That's all diets are. They're just a different format that gives you structure.
Right, right, okay.
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Chapter 2: Why might common diet trends be overrated?
That's all it is, right? I don't even call them diets because it's nonsensical.
Do you think eating, I mean, I love breakfast. Can I not eat breakfast? Of course you can eat breakfast. They're like, oh, well, you won't be an autophagy and you're going to be blah, blah, blah.
That's garbage, like almost all nonsense out of that stuff. Fasting is insanely overrated. I like it. Do it a bunch. But if you're thinking that skipping breakfast in the morning is going to solve almost any of your health problems, you're generally massively misguided. If it is helping you, avoid triggers. Then awesome. If it is helping you manage your calories, awesome.
If you don't like breakfast in the morning, awesome. Totally fine. We actually just, this actually on the way over here, I submitted back revisions. Our paper should be accepted in the next couple of days. We ran a study on intermittent fasting in our laboratory. So I'm not against it at all, but I'm certainly against people thinking that they have to do it for any short or long-term reason.
You have to figure out a way to get yourself high-quality foods. You have to figure out a way to manage calories somehow. And if fasting is a way that checks those boxes on a positive, well, great. If it doesn't, then I don't care at all about it. I will promote a six meal a day diet as much as I will a one meal a day diet. Whatever is, those are not the factors that matter.
The factors that matter are the other things. Now, having said that, We will use things like fasting a lot for cognitive performance with things like our surgeons and our firefighters and our other responders because they generally are going to go, hey, I can't take a break every two hours and go snack, right? I'm in a 16-hour surgery. I'm in a nine-hour surgery, right?
I need to perform really well given these constraints. Awesome. I don't want a surgeon then getting hungry every two hours and like scrubbing. They're going to be like, dude, no, zero chance. So in situations like that, or again, the firefighters are another example or military where you're like, hey, I need to be able to be on for these big chunks of time and then feed and then great.
100%.
But I would never do that for a PGA golfer. Never, right? That would make no sense for us whatsoever to do that. We need to have different constraints and different performance variables. So those people generally eat way more frequently. If you have a personal preference, if you have anything. So it's always about precision.
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Chapter 3: What is Dr. Andy Galpin's approach to protein intake and nutrition?
We do the same individualized programming every day. Like that's, it's a variable we pay attention to, but there's no buckets you just go into because you show up in your male or you show up in your female or you show up in your anything else, right? So we're really going to pay attention to that. And we test, we're actually doing a trial right now.
My grad student Zoe is running a study where we're actually doing the first ever detailed sleep analysis throughout the entire menstrual cycle. So we're looking at blood. We're directly testing high-fidelity sleep every single day throughout the entire cycle. We're directly testing blood. We're directly testing ovulation. We're testing these things every single day for maximum precision.
And one of the things you'll see is things like menstrual cycle length is not the same from woman to woman. Everyone knows that. But it's not even the same within each woman. But let's say it is. Let's just say you're a 28-day cycle all the time. Great. Your ovulation cycle is not the same. And this really, if you test it every single day, cycle after cycle, you'll see this pop up.
You don't necessarily ovulate on day 14.
That doesn't always happen, right?
When like men are like, what is he even talking about? But girls are like, no, dude, it's finally, right? This is exactly. Totally, yeah. So we're not going to make critical decisions about their nutrition or supplementation or stuff based on like a, well, you're a woman, therefore you should be ovulating day 14, and therefore, here we go.
We're going to test these things and then go, okay, for you, this is what's going to go on. That's what we're going to do based on your physiology.
You said something, though. You said there are six things that are fundamental in your nutrition for optimal... Yeah.
Calorie balance, whole real foods for the most part. We want a reasonable balance of macronutrients. By reasonable, that could mean some people do better on a really high-fat, low-carbohydrate. Some do the opposite. Really low-fat, really high-carbohydrates. Some don't care at all or are in a balance. So when I say reasonable, I'm just saying like... what is actually working for you or not.
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Chapter 4: How does eating wild game like bear and elk fit into a healthy diet?
What? Bear? Yeah.
What do you mean, bear? Bear. Like the animal. You know, like Winnie the Pooh, the bear. Like a grizzly bear? I can't hunt grizzly bears very often, but black bears are pretty easy to get, so they're quite tasty.
Wait, you've hunted a bear? Yeah, of course. Of course, isn't everybody? I feel like I'm losing out. I'm missing out on something. It's quite tasty. You've eaten a bear?
many times okay is it fatty is it like what is it it depends on what if you get them post hibernation like you do spring bear hunt they're going to be much leaner right you get them prior to like a later winter hunt and they're going to be much fattier it's not like any other animal though it's weird it is weird to me uh when people no offense but react this way because if i said like hey i ate a cow yeah of course
And then like I say, I ate a beer and you're like, like you can't comprehend.
Cannot comprehend it.
Deer, people don't freak out. But then bear like, of course, right? They're like any other animal that we can hunt and eat.
How is it different than a cow, taste-wise?
The general thing you'll hear people say about bear meat is it's greasier, right? So it has this weird thing, and that can be off-putting. It's not gamey, though. If you get a whitetail deer, and it's not processed properly, or you get it during the rut, then you'll get that classic gamey taste. That'll smell weird. But a normal non-deer, or non-poorly processed deer, it was going to taste fine.
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Chapter 5: Is there a difference in nutritional needs between men and women?
Not everything, but we try to for the most part. Do you ever go to Whole Foods? No. I haven't been to a grocery store in many, many years.
How many years? My wife goes. Oh, okay, okay. So it's not that because you don't believe in the grocery store.
Yeah. I mean, we'll eat, I don't know what a fair number is. Maybe, I don't know what percent. But we still buy grocery stuff, particularly if we want a specific cut or something that she's doing, she's making, where she wants a specific way it's prepared. Then she'll buy other stuff. But in terms of our general meat consumption...
I probably have, I don't know, 400 pounds of frozen meat in my house right now between elk and axis deer. And I have some mule deer still. And then the salmon run just got done. So my nephew brought over a bunch of wild salmon. So we got a bunch of salmon in there. We got clams and we got a bunch of other stuff. What else do we have in there? Like, it's just like we're in the winter.
So we just got done with all those, like the seafood season. So we got crabs in there. We got a bunch of other stuff. So yeah, we had a large portion, but we still buy... Like sometimes occasionally even buy cow and beef and things like that. Pork, of course.
Not enough pork. I mean, I'm Jewish, so I don't eat pork.
My wife's Jewish and my kids are Jewish too, but she's a bad Jew.
Yeah, she's a bad Jew. Most Jews don't eat pork, but I mean, pork now sounds much better than bear, I got to tell you.
No. Well, pork is more delicious. I will give you that.
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Chapter 6: What role do fiber and supplements play in optimal nutrition?
Ground meat versus actually blended meat because these studies have been done. You blend it up and you drink the meat.
Drinking the meat?
Yeah, yeah. For this exact reason. It is what happens if I pre-digest, basically, pre-break down the food item. There are differences. There are differences in absorption. The amount that you actually get from the gut actually into the rest of your system is kind of how you can think about that. There are differences.
That said, how much of a difference in that particular example of if I ate that peach or if I blended it up, how much more would that cause my blood glucose to spike? I would probably, if they showed me data that said it spiked it more when you blended it, for those other reasons, I'd believe it. Does it do it to a magnitude that I care about? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know the data.
I don't know the specific study that they're referring to. My initial skepticism, you can see there. I don't know if I would care enough. But it's plausible based on what I do know from studies in a very similar realm. So I'd say plausible, but I don't know. I don't really do that very often, so I'm not super worried about it.
Right. Maybe not you, but other people who have to be more conscientious of their insulin or sugar.
It depends on how far up or down that priority list it is for you. If everything else is really dialed and this is the last little thing to figure out, then maybe this is making a big enough of an impact.
But if we're still worrying about this over top of the other big rocks we talked about earlier, you're eating 20 grams of protein a day, you're having irregular sleep schedule, then I'd be like, dude, you're way focused on the wrong thing. So it could be real, but whether you need to focus on it or pay attention to it would be up to what the individual situation is.
Right. And also, I guess, so in terms of just, it's better to have that than have, you know, like French fries or something. Totally, exactly, right?
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