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c CTI Class
Will I lose weight by drinking it? That sis can take weeks, and is difficult to maintain. If
sounds easy! Give me a Bulletproof consuming MCT oil can quickly induce a state of nu-
coffee please! tritional ketosis, it could be a pretty neat hack to get
your body to consume its own fat stores for energy.
Short Answer: No. Don’t get too excited though. As we said before,
Long Answer: Bulletproof coffee is like a really most bulletproof-prone humans have constant and
fatty latte. And when I say fatty, I’m talking somewhere generous eating patterns. Ketosis doesn’t happen if
close to your entire recommended daily intake of fat your liver has enough glycogen (sugar) to manipulate
(~60g per serving). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. your blood glucose levels (no matter how much MCT-
Many popular studies have recently salvaged fat’s loaded Bulletproof liquids you guzzle). Epileptic pa-
reputation as diet devil, showing that fats can be part tients are sometimes rushed into ketosis to avoid
of balanced diets. But, 440 calories is 440 calories. If seizures by drinking almost nothing but MCT. So it
you eat it, your body will burn it or store it somehow. definitely works, but 30g of the stuff will only take
Most humans that would potentially drink a bul- you so far.
letproof coffee spend a lot of the day in an anabolic Being the geek Matt is, he wanted some data on
state. That is, they’re well fed, and blood glucose is this. So he bought a blood ketone meter and designed
relatively high from eating. This means their body is a quick n=1 experiment.
content to store any excess calories as glycogen in the He ate a dinner with a standard macro breakdown
muscles and liver, or fat in adipose tissue. If you con- at 7pm (40% Carbohydrate, 30% protein, 30% fat),
sume fat in an anabolic state, it’s more than likely to fasted overnight and fed himself a bulletproof coffee
be stored as fat, because that’s easiest for the body. But at 9:30am. He then stabbed himself and measured
Bulletproof coffee has a trick up its sleeve. blood ketone levels every 30 minutes following con-
sumption. To make sure it was the drink and not the
What’s Ketosis? Will it turn me into a fat-burning fasting that raised ketones, he did it all again the next
machine? day, without a bulletproof coffee (labelled ‘Control).
Did 30g of MCT oil move the needle? Was it any
Short Answer: If you’re fasted when you drink it, and different to an identical period of fasting? At the mo-
don’t eat anything else for a while afterwards - maybe. ment he drank the Bulletproof coffee (9:30am), Matt’s
Long Answer: Ketosis is a metabolic state blood ketones were at 0.0mmol. This means his liver
where our body turns to fat as its primary energy is happily adding glucose to his blood to keep him go-
source, saving precious sugars for the brain and a ing. ~99% of the population is most likely somewhere
few other functions. It will happen if you fast for between 0.0 and 0.1mmol/L of blood ketones for the
extended periods, or eliminate nearly all carbohy- vast majority of their lives (Inuits, some athletes,
drates from your diet. ketogenic dieters, those who are starving etc. will be
It has been observed that con- so m ewh e re be twe en 0 .2 an d
suming MCT oil can induce a light 8mmol/L).
ketogenic state. So yes. The Bulletproof
Warning: inducing ketosis is coffee raised blood ketones,
not appropriate for insulin de- especially compared to regular
pendent diabetics. fasting where his energy needs
This is interesting, because were managed by his liver’s
achieving a steady state of keto- glycogen.