Every Saturday morning, I eat a big plate of "'49ers flapjacks" at my neighborhood diner. Eating like that is just good sense because you need to pack your craw with good grub before heading down to Sutter's Mill to pan for gold, which I'm guessing is the feeling the restaurateur is trying to evoke.
Anyhow, that kind of fare isn't typically part of my dining the rest of the week. It's a treat I give myself because I don't want to be the kind of person who, on his deathbed, wishes he'd eaten more flapjacks and done more panning for gold.
I know it's dietary crap. Too many white-flour, garbage carbs topped off with even more garbage carbs from maple syrup. But I don't sweat it because before eating my flapjacks, I give myself a little dietary insurance by taking 6 capsules of cyanidin 3-glucoside (C3G).
Most of the effects of C3G are realized in days and weeks in the form of increased muscle gains, bigger muscle pumps, enhanced recovery, and fat burning, but those effects are precipitated by what happens in the minutes after you take it.
But it's those quick-acting effects that make it such a good insurance policy against crappy carbs. What C3G does in the minutes after you take it is increase your peripheral insulin sensitivity, which has to do with how readily body cells in your periphery tissue (muscle and fat) absorb glucose, or sugar.
If peripheral insulin sensitivity is high, you can eat lots of flapjacks, or lots of any other carbohydrate source, for that matter, and you won't experience a large insulin release. Carbs can be preferentially shuttled off to muscle instead of being stored as fat. And, because insulin levels remain low, fatty acids can still continue to be released.
It's hugely more complicated than that and involves a host of metabolic pathways, but suffice it to say, increased insulin sensitivity before a meal, especially a meal high in "garbage" carbs, is a good thing.
People who use C3G daily to build muscle, increase exercise performance, enhance recovery, and burn fat generally take 4-6 capsules 30 minutes before they start their pre-workout supplementation. On non-workout days, they take 4-6 capsules 30 minutes before their biggest meal of the day.
But you can also use C3G to give yourself a little insurance policy against poor meal choices or cheat meals in general. Just take 4-6 capsules of C3G (sold as Indigo-3G®) 30 minutes before eating. For those of you who already use C3G, this would be in addition to your normal daily dosage. Maple syrup is optional.
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