Last updated: 19-Oct-18
The benefits of coffee have long been known, but Bulletproof Coffee is a revolutionary new way of drinking coffee – blending Upgraded Coffee, unsalted grass-fed butter and Upgraded Octane Oil to support your body’s natural ability to activate Ketosis (‘fat burning’ mode) and deliver an instant energy boost that stimulates the mind and keeps you feeling satiated for longer. Drinking Bulletproof Coffee as part of a high-fat diet can actually kick your athletic performance into a higher gear!
Bulletproof was founded by Dave Asprey, a pioneer within the field of biohacking – the process of using system thinking, science, biology and self-experimentation to take control of and upgrade your body, mind and life. Dave spent two decades and over $300,000 hacking his own biology, dropping 100 pounds, upgrading his brain by more than 20 IQ points, lowering his biological age and sleeping more efficiently in less time.
Let’s take a closer look at the ingredients:
Upgraded Coffee Beans – Free from mould toxins, these high quality coffee beans act to suppress adenosine – a neurotransmitter that influences attention, alertness, and sleep. Essentially, when adenosine hits a certain level, your body decides it’s bedtime, meaning you have trouble staying awake and paying attention. When you sleep, adenosine resets, the thermometer drops back to zero during the night, and you wake up in the morning ready to go. Caffeine actually competes with adenosine. It binds to receptors in the brain like a key fitting into a lock. If caffeine is in the lock, adenosine can’t bind, and it can’t make you feel tired. When caffeine blocks adenosine, stimulating brain chemicals like glutamate and dopamine join the party and flow more freely — giving you a surge of energy, improving mental performance, and slowing age-related mental decline. Caffeine has also been shown to both boost learning potential and increase serotonin, a major mood influencer, ensuring you feel more positive
Upgraded Octane Oil – This innovative ingredient draws on healthy fats found in the heart of the coconut and is a purified form of medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil – a substance that rapidly metabolizes into ketones, providing instant energy to the brain without breaking down glucose from dietary sugars or carbohydrates. 18x more concentrated in C8 MCT than coconut oil, the Upgraded Octane Oil is not only seen to be an impressive tool in achieving enhanced cognitive function, it also has potent microbial balancing effects that help to support healthy digestion and immune function.
Bulletproof is changing outdated feelings towards fat and encouraging people to embrace the most effective way to instantly perform better, increase focus, enhance energy and live longer.
Bulletproof athletes
One of the most popular critiques of a diet that’s high in fat and low in carbs (HFLC) is that it isn’t good for athletes. The argument is usually that you need carbs to produce glycogen, a stored form of sugar that fuels your muscles. However, research shows that you not only don’t need carbs, you can actually gain an advantage if you cut them out!
Why you don’t need carbs to train hard
A groundbreaking study out of the University of Connecticut found that low-carb endurance athletes perform just as well as high-carb endurance athletes, if not better.
Until now, most studies have concluded that you top out at around 10% of energy recruited from fat 1 and for the rest you rely mostly on glycogen, a form of sugar stored in your muscles and liver. That’s the main reason high-carb diets have been the standard for athletes for so many years. With a low-carb diet, your glycogen stores empty quickly, you run out of fuel, and you start breaking down your muscles for energy. Right?
Well, maybe not. If you teach your body to prefer fat for fuel you can work out intensely without any problems, according to this new study.
The paper’s authors measured the performance of ultra-endurance runners who regularly run upwards of 100 miles:
- Half of the participants ate low-carb (<20% of calories from carbs) for 6 months
- The other half ate high-carb (>55% of calories from carbs) for 6 months
- On test day, athletes ran for 3 hours. The researchers measured the runners’ energy expenditure and gathered blood, muscle tissue, saliva, and a variety of other samples.
The results were impressive. The HFLC runners showed, to quote the authors, “extraordinarily high rates of fat oxidation.” 2
In other words, the low-carb athletes were fat-burning machines. They recruited tremendous amounts of energy from fat during the 3-hour run and showed no more fatigue than the high-carb runners did. What’s even more fascinating is that both groups had the same muscle glycogen levels during and after exercise, and they weren’t breaking down their muscles to do it.
The takeaway is that a HFLC diet can help you:
- Massively increase the fat you burn
- Preserve muscle tissue
- Keep exercising like a boss without metabolic downsides, even at an elite level. In fact, the study’s lead author said that several of the marathoners switched over to a HFLC diet after seeing how well the participants performed.
Other benefits to low-carb training
Training on a HFLC diet can give you several other advantages.
- Fat and cholesterol support your testosterone levels, which leads you to burn more fat. Carbs – especially simple carbs – cause your testosterone to drop 3, making you store more fat.
- Your energy stores are deeper if you’re running on fat. The average person can only hold about 500 grams of glycogen at a time, but as we all know too well, fat stores are more or less bottomless.
- You hold less water weight on a low-carb diet. Without that bloating you’ll be faster and lighter on your feet and you’ll also look leaner.
How you can mix HFLC and exercise
If you want to burn more fat without sacrificing muscle or athletic performance, try the following:
- Eat a high-fat, low-carb diet like the Bulletproof Diet.
- Get 5-20% of your calories from carbs each day. The study’s participants ate 20% carbs, but they were running for hours on a regular basis. If you don’t fit that bill you may want to try fewer carbs and more fat.
- Eat fat before exercising so your muscles have quick access to fuel. Bulletproof Coffee is a great pre-workout supplement.
- Get your carbs from non-starchy, nutrient-dense veggies like broccoli, bok choy, fennel, and kale.
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885974/
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026049515003340
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22804876
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