If you’re a fan of the Paleo diet approach, one thing that you might have come across or heard about before is ‘bulletproof coffee’. This beverage is one that followers firmly believe boosts their health status, helps them shed excess body fat, and can help calm hunger all day long.
Want to know more?
Let’s give you a quick run down of this concoction and what it will do for you.
What Is Bulletproof Coffee?
Bulletproof coffee was invented by Dave Asprey, who runs his own health blog focusing on the Paleo diet plan. He considers this beverage an ‘upgraded paleo’ component, which helps users take their approach to the next level.
This morning beverage consists of adding grass fed butter along with medium chain triglyceride oil (MTC oil) to hot coffee. If you don’t have MCT oil on hand, coconut oil can easily be substituted instead.
Per cup, you should come to around 50 grams of fat total, with almost 100% of that content being saturated.
This is to be taken in with your morning meal, which will then provide additional energy all throughout the day.
The Benefits
Proponents of this beverage say that it can enhance fat burning. The method? Considering this is a 450 calorie cup of coffee, you may wonder how it could possibly help you lose weight.
The way in which it claims to do so is because caffeine is a natural energy stimulant, it’ll boost energy levels immediately and then the fat from the coffee will sustain you throughout the day. Those who drink this first thing in the morning should experience far less hunger over the course of the day – but yet have correspondingly high energy levels to go with it.
This makes it easier to accomplish the two primary fat loss objectives – eat less and move more. Hence, fat loss can take place.
In addition to this, because there are no carbohydrates in the coffee, you can immediately start using fat reserves for activity you perform, rather than burning up those carbohydrates first.
Note however that you will also be using some of the energy from the coffee itself, so it won’t be coming 100% strictly from your body fat.
So Is This Healthy?
At the end of the day, weight loss results aside, you still need to evaluate whether or not this beverage is a healthy choice.
Considering the fact that you are getting approximately 60+% of your daily fat intake in one serving, not to mention 200% of your recommended saturated fat intake, you should really question this.
While your body does need some saturated fat to function optimally, too much can still put you at risk for increased heart-health problems.
Further to that, if you don’t cut back on how much food you are eating during the day despite drinking this beverage, it could actually lead to weight gain.
Simply adding one mug of bulletproof coffee to your day without making any other changes would in fact having you gaining at a rate of about one pound of body fat per week (since there are 3500 calories per pound of body fat).
In addition to that, keep in mind that the recommendation is to only eat this for breakfast. So in essence, you avoid the problem above. But in doing so, you are cutting out one of the healthiest meals of the day – a time to feed your body nutrients it’s been deprived of over the nightly fasting period. This means you aren’t taking in any protein or any fiber, both of which are essential to eat first thing during the day.
With bulletproof coffee, you have a tradeoff. Use it and maintain your weight by cutting out breakfast or cut out breakfast and suffer from nutritional shortages. Clearly no choice brings an ideal scenario.
So tread carefully. As much as you may hear people touting this to be the best thing you could do for your health, still give it some thought.
Making Your Own
Still want to forge ahead? If you want to give bulletproof coffee a try, here’s a recipe to prepare your own.
2 cups of coffee (non-decaf variety)
2 tbsp. of grass fed, unsalted butter
1-2 tbsp. of MCT oil
Mix these ingredients up into a blender and then heat again if necessary and serve.
There you have the facts of bulletproof coffee. It should be considered more of a fad than anything and like all fads, it should be avoided.
What’s your experience been with bulletproof coffee?
