Bulletproof Coffee

There I was this morning at 6am turning on the kitchen tap, but alas, no water came out, absolutely nothing. I have to admit my first thought was to go wake Dave and grill him about forgetting to pay the water bill; my second thought was “oh no, how am I going to make my Bulletproof coffee?” Lucky for Dave, I checked my email before going and pouncing on him for his neglect of the bill, to find that someone else in our area had no water also – something else must have been going on to disrupt the service. All is well now, the water magically reappeared half and hour later; Dave is none-the-wiser and got to sleep til 7, and mama got her Bulletproof coffee. So what is the fuss about this Bulletproof coffee anyway?

I just started drinking Bulletproof coffee 10 days ago. I had heard about it for a long time, and when I looked at the website, was surprised to see that it’s not so much Bulletproof coffee as Bulletproof Life. There is a book The Bulletproof Diet, so out of curiosity I ordered it and took it on vacation with me and read it there.

It’s written by Dave Asprey, who describes himself as a “biohacker” – this means he spends time and money trying to figure out how the body works and how to optimize it. I have to say, I was impressed with the book – it was an easy read and made good sense. I ordered a few of the products so that they were waiting for me when I got home. I’ve since totally fallen for Bulletproof coffee and have been making it every day with great results.

Here’s how the coffee thing works:-

• you brew coffee – you can use ordinary coffee, but he makes an argument for being mindful of the mold content of coffee. Until now we’ve used Nespresso machine, so since I was going to be brewing coffee in a French press now and needed to buy it, I ordered his to try. I know how detrimental mold can be to one’s body so if his is guaranteed mold free (or super low anyway), I’ll do it.
• you blend the coffee with organic, pastured, unsalted butter, and MCT oil. I got the Bulletproof Brain Octane oil which is super-high potency MCT’s. We use Kerrygold butter at home, but usually the salted kind on our food, so I ordered the unsalted one for this purpose. The book says to start with 1 tablespoon of each so as not to upset the tummy, but being the kind of person I am I went straight to 2 tablespoons, and thankfully had no adverse effect. I put it in my Vitamix and blend it on low (learned the hard way, blending on high leads to hot coffee on the walls as it spurts out in the tiny crack between the jug and the lid!)
• I add hazelnut flavored stevia liquid, and a small spoonful of vanilla powder (which I also got from his site just to try since I love vanilla). The vanilla makes the coffee a little bit grainy, IMHO, so I’ll probably skip that part once I run out of it and just use the stevia as a sweetener.
  The coffee comes out super-creamy. I thought I’d miss the milkiness of my lattes, but I actually don’t. It looks and feels like a latte, and with the stevia, it’s pretty sweet.

Here’s are the two biggest things I’ve noticed –

1. I think I probably brought a couple of extra pounds back from the Dominican Republic with me (what can I say, all-inclusive resorts are hard!) – and I definitely feel like those fell off without any extra effort.
2. My runs have been really easy every day. Ordinarily I have days when my runs feel easy, and days when they feel hard – with no apparent change in sleep patterns or diet – it just is that way. For the past 10 days, they’ve felt easy and effortless every day. I think it’s because I’m filling up with healthy fat to fuel my runs and it’s definitely boosting my energy.

The Bulletproof Diet talks about intermittent fasting, where you really just have the coffee from dinner to lunch the next day in order to put the body in optimal fat-burning mode. I haven’t found that I could do that – after my run I’m definitely hungry so I have a protein smoothie around 9am and then I’m good until lunch.

I love Bulletproof – I’ve gone back and ordered some of their other additions such as cacao butter and their Bulletproof bars. I swear if you try it, you’ll find more energy and easier weight loss with less hunger and food cravings – it really does seem to be what it’s promised to be. I have also signed up for the Bulletproof podcasts which are free through iTunes, and have found some really interesting topics and guest speakers encompassing a range of different health topics.

Give it a try and report back to me what you think! To get your Bulletproof coffee fixings click here.