What’s up Renegades? Jay here doing the intro to this guest post by my brother, Nate Miyaki. Nate always drops pure unadulterated dopeness, but this may be his greatest post ever.
Enter Nate…
*Warning – It is highly recommended that you listen to “Regulators” by Warren G and Nate Dogg before reading this article.
1. Because its a bad ass song.
2. So you understand all of the references.
Nate Dogg, where you been?
I’ve been chasing skirts out in the 4-1-5. Fool, you know how we do it.
Actually, I’ve just been busy as sh*t Hustlemania-style. But hey, that’s Da Life of a Regulator.
In my absence, I’ve seen a disturbing myth about carbs rise up and take over the streets.
It’s got my homies and some suckers all in a mix. And dude, they are totally jacking you.
Good thing when you “glanced in the cut”, you could see your homey Nate. Because I figured it was time “I best pull out my strap and lay them busters down.”
The Renegade Diet & Intermittent Feast
“The bulk of Lee’s education was gained informally from his voracious reading…Lee wrote notes, often verbatim transcriptions in longhand, from passages he found both true and helpful. Reviewing them would inspire him to further writing. These were his private journals, where Lee contemplated the thoughts of men and women of like mind.” – John Little on Bruce Lee in The Artist of Life.
With a combined 30+ years in the industry, I’ve contemplated how interesting it is that Jay and I — through our independent paths of reading, researching, applying, testing, refining, hacking away the unessential, simplifying, etc. — have come to similar conclusions in regards to optimizing diet structure.
Feast at night, baby!
I guess I could narrow it down to the fact that — it is based on our evolutionary history and instinct, it naturally aligns with engrained psychological and social patterns, it triggers fat burning during the day and anabolic activity at night.
And it is flat-out one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to eat in the real world, where most people are unsuccessfully struggling with dietary compliance.
In other words, it is effective as hell at getting the job done. Enough said.
Yet there I was the other night…
“It was a clear black night, a clear white moon…(I) was on the streets trying to consume” some carbs at night, of course, like I always do.
The goal was to refill my glycogen stores that had been depleted through a period of fasting and training, recover from intense anaerobic exercise, kick start some muscle repair and growth, and properly prepare for the next day’s training session.
My peaceful carb load was interrupted by a headline shooting across my computer screen — M.I.L.F. Patrol — hahaha, just kidding, but not really…
The other headline was — Why You Should Cut Carbs at Night.
I don’t know why — maybe to have a diet that you hate and can’t stick to?
They took my carbs, they took my Rolex, “I looked at the brotha and said, damn what’s next?”
Trying to cut calories and carbs at night goes completely against our evolutionary instincts, natural desires, and social patterns. That’s why it rarely works as a baseline diet plan in the real world, off the magazine pages.
Starving on lettuce leaves and low-carb shakes at night, and somehow pretending you’re cool with that, is a miserable way to diet.
Only a very small percentage of athletes can make this work as their standard, everyday plan. Even then, a lot of them can only make it work during their in-season, go crazy during off-season binges, and rebound/yo-yo.
You know the guy who went from ripped to waddling in six weeks. No skirts for you.
So I figured it was time to hit the Eastside of the LBC on a mission trying to find Mr. Rene-“G”-ade.
We need to set these suckas straight so we can get back into freak mode.
Why The Myth Persists
I get it. Eating BIG at night — particularly carbs — is different than what you normally hear in the diet world. And sometimes we just cling to tradition regardless of whether or not it actually produces results.
We fear the unknown.
But you gotta break through if you want to find the most efficient, most functional, and most sustainable path.
Cut your carbs at night. Ha! That is kind of like women running to elliptical machines because they still believe cardio is the best way to burn fat and shape up.
But the brave few that kick this myth to the curb and make strength training their foundation are the ones that ultimately build the bikini bodies us Renegades drool over and dream about.
You know what I’m talking about. The ones that seem to be shouting at you, “Hey, I’d like to have you over for a nice surf and turf dinner.”
Sorry. As always, I digress…
Back to Da Myth, my friends.
There is “sixteen in the clip and one in the hole, Nate Dogg is about to make some bodies (and a big fat carb myth) turn cold.”
Renegades! Mount up!
Carbs at Night- Da Truth
Eating at night doesn’t make you fat. Eating carbs at night doesn’t necessarily make you fat either.
You have to look at our suggested diet structure as a whole — not just isolated parts — to fully understand the big picture.
Eating too many calories or too many carbs over the course of the entire day makes you fat.
If you’ve eaten large and/or frequent carb-based meals throughout the day, and then eat another large dinner on top of that, chances are you will overshoot your daily calorie and carb needs, and gain fat.
It’s the total calorie and carb intake that’s the problem, not the distribution.
Numbers never lie.
If you fast, eat lighter and lower carb during the day, and train like a Renegade, chances are you enter dinner in a relatively large calorie deficit with depleted energy reserves, and even a large meal with a significant amount of carbohydrates will be used to restore energy reserves first, before spilling over into fat stores.
Carbs at Night – Da Proof
Honestly, I look to science to “explain”, not to “prove”. I let my results in the real world do the proving.
But for those who favor a more theoretical approach:
1. From the Obesity (Silver Spring) Journal. Greater weight loss and hormonal changes after 6 months diet with carbohydrates eaten mostly at dinner.
This study was designed to investigate the effect of a low-calorie diet with carbohydrates eaten mostly at dinner on anthropometric, hunger/satiety, biochemical, and inflammatory parameters…Greater weight loss, abdominal circumference, and body fat mass reductions were observed in the experimental diet in comparison to controls… A simple dietary manipulation of carbohydrate distribution appears to have additional benefits when compared to a conventional weight loss diet in individuals suffering from obesity. It might also be beneficial for individuals suffering from insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome. Further research is required to confirm and clarify the mechanisms by which this relatively simple diet approach enhances satiety, leads to better anthropometric outcomes, and achieves improved metabolic response, compared to a more conventional dietary approach.
2. From Metabolism Clinical and Experimental: Glycogen synthesis versus lipogenesis after a 500 gram carbohydrate meal in man.
The data imply that: (1) The capacity for glycogen storage in man in larger than generally believed, and (2) Fat synthesis from CHO will not exceed fat oxidation after one high-carbohydrate meal, even if it is uncommonly large. When a single high-
carbohydrate meal is consumed, dietary CHO merely has the effect of reducing the rate of fat oxidation. These findings challenge the common perception that conversion of CHO to fat is an important pathway for the retention of dietary energy and for the accumulation of body fat.
Now, I’m not saying you need to throw down 500g of carbs every night. But the reality is in a somewhat glycogen depleted state (ie. following a period of fasting, lower carb eating during the day, and training), the body has a metabolic preference to store carbs as glycogen first before “spilling over” into fat stores.
Yes, even at night.
Wrap Up
If you want the practical takeaway message from my ramblings, there are two of them:
1. Don’t fuck with Nate Dogg or his homies. The Renegade Crew runs deep, and we all got each other’s backs.
2. Fast like a hunter in the morning, train like a Renegade whenever, FEAST like a beast at night, and enjoy Da Surf “n” Turf with bikini babes regularly.
As you can see, Nate Dogg and The Rene-“G”-ade had to regulate first.
The next stop is the Eastside Motel, because “Nate’s got the freaks, and that’s a known fact.”
And I know before you got jacked, you were on the same track.
PS. Click HERE to check out Nate’s Feast Your Fat Away.
NOTE: Jay is no longer accepting guest post. Please do not submit a request for one.
