# The 5-4-3-2-1 fat-loss rule

5 days active · 4 structured sessions · 3 sweaty · 2 strength · 1 very-high heart rate.



## Takeaways

- Tick the boxes daily.

- Nutrition for the deficit, exercise for the maintenance.

- Don't trust the treadmill's calorie counter.



Galpin's rule of thumb for fat loss: be active five days a week (walking, your job, anything — rest days are fine too); do structured exercise four days; train hard enough to sweat on three of them; lift on two; get your heart rate really high on one.

Exercise doesn't burn as much as machines claim and the body compensates ('adaptive thermogenesis' — total expenditure plateaus at high activity), so nutrition drives the deficit; but people who exercise during a diet are consistently better at keeping the fat off. Sleep restriction pushes what you lose toward muscle; HIIT during restriction partly protects it.

The Day log has the five boxes; Trends shows the weekly scorecard.



## Sources

- The role of exercise and physical activity in weight loss and maintenance (Swift DL, Johannsen NM, Lavie CJ, Earnest CP, Church TS, 2014)

- Constrained total energy expenditure and metabolic adaptation to physical activity in adult humans (Pontzer H, Durazo-Arvizu R, Dugas LR, et al., 2016)

- The effect of sleep restriction, with or without high-intensity interval exercise, on myofibrillar protein synthesis in healthy young men (Saner NJ, Lee MJ, Pitchford NW, et al., 2020)

- The effects of physical activity on sleep: a meta-analytic review (Kredlow MA, Capozzoli MC, Hearon BA, Calkins AW, Otto MW, 2015)

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Educational summary of published research, not medical advice. Screening scores are not diagnoses. If a score is elevated or you feel unwell, talk to a clinician.

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