Category Archives: Fitness
5 Holiday Diet Tips & The Ripped Heskett Brothers
PART I – 5 HOLIDAY DIET TIPS
* I recently wrote an article for my column over at T-Nation. It was some non-fluff, no B.S. Holiday diet advice that will give you a better strategy the next few weeks than “drink more water” or “carry around celery sticks with you to all of your Holiday parties” or “buy a magic pill detox kit to start the New Year after your XXX-MAS debauchery”. I’ve included part of the intro section, the 5 actual tips, and a link to the full article published on T-Nation if you are interested.
THE INTRO SECTION
Here’s the unfortunate truth – almost all the holiday “diet” advice you get from a variety of mainstream sources goes against our natural human instincts, which is to feast like a beast once a day. It also goes against our evolutionary history and social patterns, which is to eat animals, and party like animals, at night.
That’s why those mainstream fitness tidbits rarely work. It sounds good on paper, but doesn’t work in real life situations when the animal inside takes over. Yet, we keep coming back to this fluff because we know we need some kind of help.
But what, you’re supposed to be cool with nibbling on a disturbingly unsatisfying 200-calorie, low-carb snack while everyone else is chowing down on a wicked dinner spread, hitting the open bar, and fooling around under the mistletoe? That’s like saying you can look all you want, but you can’t have sex over the holiday season – unnecessary, unfathomable, impossible. And it doesn’t have to be that way.
Everyone today is focused on Intermittent Fasting, which I think is a viable play call in a fat-slashing playbook. But I tend to focus on the infinitely more fun part, The Intermittent Feast. Cut calories and carbs at night? Ha! Maybe if you want to hate your life.
One of the core principles is an eating structure that mimics our evolutionary past, the hunt and feast structure – eat lighter while active during the day, eat the majority of your calories and carbohydrates at night while relaxing or socializing.
Doesn’t that already sound more doable over this upcoming holiday season? If not, good luck with your snack packs. If yes, lets dive into some feasting details.
THE 5 TIPS
1. Don’t Eat Light at Night — when you try to cut calories at night you binge anyways, eating at night doesn’t make you fat, eating too many calories over the entire day makes you fat, you can either set your diet up to suffer or set it up to cruise…
2. Eat Light During the Day So You Can Eat Big at Night — optimizes body’s ability to burn fat for a large portion of the day, most people find it relatively easy to cut calories and make better food choices during the day as long as they know they can eat a larger meal at night and get to end the day satiated and satisfied.
3. Unleash The Feasting Beast — If you’re eating a big, real, whole foods dinner, chances are you’ll be stuffed, and you won’t have much “room” leftover to binge on holiday foods like pie.
4. Don’t Fall Off the Infomercial Edge — Intermittent Feast is not a B.S. fad diet approach with the promise of some magical structure allowing you to eat crap every night. You still have to make good food choices most of the time to lose fat and optimize health.
5. Implement Strategic Cheats — Don’t waste a cheat night on bean dip and light beer. But at a party at a 5-star restaurant, where the company is buying everything, the top shelf of the bar is open, and the cleavage is out and about, it may be time to let loose.
Full T-Nation Article here: 5 Holiday Diet Tips That Don’t Suck
PART II – THE HESKETT BROTHERS
Chris Heskett
I received an email recently from a new friend of mine — Chris Heskett. He had read some of my work, it made a huge difference in his physique, and he took 2nd place at the OCB Charm City Classic Physique Competition. Congrats my brother.
The dude looked awesome as you can see. This is the type of physique I think a lot of us aspire to achieve — lean, muscular, a throwback to a more classic physique instead of the chemical warfare/freak show that dominates the bodybuilding industry today. It was an honor to be informed that my nutrition advice was a part of his preparation.
Chris also has a real brother Benjamin (not brother as in the expression that I always like to use, kind of like Hulk Hogan). He also has a very impressive physique. They’ve agreed to come on here at some point and tell us more about their protocols. They are also hosting a natural bodybuilding/physique show in the Spring of 2013 — OCB Bodybuilding competition March 30 at Bloomsburg University. So if you are in the area, check it out.
In the meantime, if you want to connect with them, here are their facebook pages:
Nate’s TV Interview on High 5 Fitness
I just did an interview on the local fitness show High 5 Fitness. Amazingly, I managed to not swear at all (bull crap is not really considered a curse word right?)! We covered a lot of topics related to my nutritional approach:
1. Why you can’t out-train a poor diet, and why all of your exercise should be geared towards building/maintaining muscle, NOT burning fat (if your goals are purely cosmetic).
2. Why the Paleo/Caveman diet is a great educational tool/eating template for sedentary populations, but also why the athlete should add back in a select few starches to support anaerobic training.
3. The science, psychology, evolutionary history, and practical application of the Intermittent Feast eating structure.
4. Simple calorie recommendations based on different goals: slashing fat, body recompositioning, gaining muscle mass.
5. Why the hard training athlete eating a no carb diet is just as much of a mismatch as the sedentary person eating a high carb diet.
Plus a few viewer q and a’s. Check it out:
Fat Loss Simplified
Here is the best and most honest fat loss/health enhancement advice I could ever give you:
Upping your # of glasses of water per day is good advice, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Maybe you do need more Vitamin C or calcium or whatever, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Perhaps you actually do need a prescription for something, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Definitely increase your fish oil/Omega 3′s, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
You can shake your weight (or anything else) until it breaks, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Going gluten free is a great step, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Maybe that fat burning pill actually works, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Yes, smuggle me in some exotic herbs from the mountains, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Sure organic foods are better than factory produced foods, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Green tea is awesome, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Maybe that 100 calorie snack is better than the 500 cal version. BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Maybe that miracle detox cleanse isn’t total bullshit, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Maybe polyphenols and other miracle nutrients are cool, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Correcting any hormonal imbalances will help, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Avoiding carbs like the plague may be part of the answer, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Maybe your genetics suck, maybe they are awesome, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Increasing your fiber rocks (actually it softens), BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Maybe 3.8g of BCAA’s before your workout will give you an edge, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
A real or fake tan is a good illusion, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
You can buy an infomercial slimming shirt or dress, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Boob jobs, stomach surgeries, and liposuction may change your appearance, BUT YOU STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT.
Even if magic pills did exist, YOU WOULD STILL NEED TO STOP EATING SHIT!
Except once a week of course. Then eat some SHIT during a cheat feast at night to make your plan more realistic, functional, and sustainable. *Warning: if you see me coming down the block on a feast night, hide your pets and small children.
Listen up man (or girl)
1. You can keep getting information overloaded regarding the details that produces less than 10% of real world results, or you can focus on the one, simple step that produces 90% of results.
2. You can focus on all the crap and miracle cures and easier ways that are being sold to you, or you can focus on the one free step that is guaranteed to produce results.
3. You can keep reading health blurbs for entertainment purposes or to make you “feel” like you are doing something good for your health and fat loss goals, or you can actually get out there and DO something about them.
4. You can keep spinning your wheels with fluff, or you can toughen up and get some shit done with the cold, hard TRUTH.
My goal was not to offend anyone with this post (if I did, I’m sorry), my goal was to actually help you.
My name is Nate Miyaki, and I approved this message. You can share it with anyone you like.
6 Nutrition Tips & Gain’s Web Commercial
What’s up everyone? Hope all is well.
I’ve been crazy busy over at GainFitness creating content for their website/blog, and working behind the scenes as a science reference for their computer algorithms. Nerdy stuff, but fun.
I’d never create or put out content I did not believe in regardless of who I’m working for or what brand/publication it is released under, so the cool thing is they said I can post it here and have it double as articles/blogs/video posts for my own site if I want. Hell Yeah I do. Here are a few links I think you might find useful or just cool:
1. Top 6 Nutrition Tips for the Real World
In this post I give some of the major steps people, specifically busy professionals, can start taking to improve their health and drop some fat. Readers of the Samurai Diet will recommend some principles that go against the mainstream fitness grain (ie 2-3 meals a day works better for most busy professionals, and it is our natural evolutionary tendency to eat more at night, so a sustainable plan structures a diet as such). But I also believe these tips make a fat loss plan more realistic and functional in the real world.
This is a video commercial that GainFitness put together about their app. It gives you an idea of what we are doing/trying to create. And if you are interested, it gives you an idea of what I’ve been up to over the last month.
I’m working with Gain part-time now, so if you are the type of person that likes regular fitness tips, stay tuned. I’ll actually have time to write/create more. Good or bad? We’ll see…
GainFitness Guest Blog Post
Hey guys and gals,
I think I might have mentioned to you before that I’ve been working behind the scenes with a start-up company called GainFitness. They have a cool I-phone App and web tools that they are using to create mobile workouts and bring some of the benefits of personal training to the general public (program design, tracking tools, accountability, etc.).
Anyways, I wrote a guest blog post for them about the problems with “computer posture” and why mid-back training is so important in the office worker’s overall strength training routine. Here is the link:
