Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
- Skipping Breakfast a Big No-No for Sustainable Weight Loss
- Healthy Fats Added to Coffee Do Not Make it Breakfast!
- Skipping Breakfast in favor of Bulletproof Coffee
- Serotonin Deficiency Harms Sleep Quality
- Must Have Your BulletProof Coffee?
- BulletProof Coffee Already Wrecked Your Sleep?
- Once You’ve Got Your Serotonin Deficiency Under Control, Now What?
- References and More Information
Bulletproof coffee has become quite the fad with fans touting its use as a way to lose weight, shrink that spare tire, and have more energy. The basic recipe calls for 2 cups of coffee, a minimum of 2 tablespoons grass-fed butter, and 1-2 tablespoons MCT oil (some people substitute virgin coconut oil) all mixed together in a blender.
This coffee drink is promoted as a replacement for breakfast by Dave Asprey of the Bulletproof Executive as a way to feel “lean, focused and energized” and helps you “transform your diet without chewing on sticks of butter”.
While I have no doubt that this choice of morning beverage will indeed produce a high level of focus and intensity due to the quick injection of caffeine and medium-chain triglycerides (used by the body for energy rather than fat storage) to the bloodstream, any weight loss benefits to a bulletproof coffee habit over the long term are completely ludicrous.
At the very least, bulletproof coffee certainly won’t be helping you lose weight and keep it off. Yes, it’s just another yo-yo scenario and here’s why.
Skipping Breakfast a Big No-No for Sustainable Weight Loss
According to Julia Ross, bestselling author of The Diet Cure, skipping breakfast and replacing it with coffee or a drink like bulletproof coffee is a big no-no and not just because it increases your chances of overeating starches and sugars later in the day.
Skipping a nutritious morning meal particularly one with a quality source of protein does a number on your body’s ability to produce the neurotransmitter serotonin which is derived from the amino acid tryptophan.
Tryptophan, like all the amino acids, is contained in protein. Meat is the best source of tryptophan but only from animals roaming on pasture.
Healthy Fats Added to Coffee Do Not Make it Breakfast!
Adding a bunch of healthy fats to coffee in no way redeems the situation and bulletproof coffee does not qualify as a meal replacement!
Protein (food) —–> Tryptophan (amino acid) —–> Serotonin (neurotransmitter) —–> Melatonin (hormone for restful sleep)
Serotonin is what helps you feel happy, calm, and self-confident even in the face of stress. Moreover, ample serotonin is important for a restful night’s sleep as the body converts serotonin into melatonin at dusk.
Inadequate melatonin results in insomnia problems.
What about adding collagen, gelatin or protein powder to bulletproof coffee? Does this make it better?
Please note that adding collagen hydrolysate or gelatin to your bulletproof coffee does not solve the problem as these protein sources are completely devoid of tryptophan-containing primarily the amino acids glycine and proline in large amounts.
Protein powder would be the worst choice, however, as all brands are highly processed (don’t be fooled!) with the delicate protein molecules denatured even if processed at low temperatures due to the powdering process.
Skipping Breakfast in favor of Bulletproof Coffee
Skipping breakfast in the morning short circuits the body’s ability to produce adequate serotonin throughout the day. While eating protein later in the day definitely helps, because none was consumed at breakfast, your body ends up playing serotonin catch up all day every day.
Ms. Ross says that we all need about 20-30 grams of protein 3 times per day to fulfill the body’s requirement for amino acids in order to produce adequate neurotransmitters like serotonin.
Drinking coffee even if it’s bulletproof coffee first thing in the morning instead of breakfast has the double whammy effect of suppressing appetite as well. It’s the caffeine that reduces appetite so not only aren’t you getting the protein you need in the morning, but you likely won’t eat enough throughout the rest of the day either which further impacts serotonin and melatonin production in a negative way.
What good is feeling “energized and focused” from bulletproof coffee during the day if it also leaves you irritable, stressed, emotionally unstable and unable to get a quality night’s sleep when you get home?
Serotonin Deficiency Harms Sleep Quality
The research is ominous regarding serotonin deficiency causing insufficient melatonin production with the resulting effect of unwanted weight gain – even obesity over the long term.
According to Dr. Mercola, “it’s also well proven that lack of sleep is linked to obesity, while if you’re not getting enough sleep, there’s a good chance your melatonin production is not up to par either. The disturbance to your melatonin levels caused by lack of sleep may be one more reason why it leads to weight gain, and this could have far-reaching impacts on your health.”
In addition, Science Daily reported that scientists found that proper melatonin levels stimulate the production of beige fat, a heat-generating type of fat (also known as “good” or “thinning” fat) that helps your body to burn calories rather than store them.
Must Have Your BulletProof Coffee?
Long story short, if you must drink bulletproof coffee, at the very least, wait until after a protein-rich breakfast to do it!
This way, the impact on your serotonin and melatonin levels will not be as severe as drinking it as a replacement for breakfast with its appetite-suppressing effects affecting the rest of the day’s protein consumption as well.
You may find that this one simple change alone will leave you feeling happier, more emotionally flexible, less stressed, and with increased ability to tackle whatever challenges you face each day with improved self-confidence.
BulletProof Coffee Already Wrecked Your Sleep?
If you suspect that your serotonin levels are in the tank and you need neurotransmitter supplementation to help you with worry, anxiety, OCD thoughts or actions, depression, panic attacks, and/or chronic insomnia, Julia Ross recommends this dosage with the amino acid tryptophan:
- 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP – sources): 50 mg in the mid-afternoon and before bedtime.
OR
- L-tryptophan (sources): 500 mg in the mid-afternoon and again before bed especially if insomnia is a problem.
Note that 5-HTP is cheaper than L-tryptophan but some people get nausea from it, so switch to L-tryptophan if 5-HTP doesn’t work for you.
Raise the dosage as needed to eliminate low serotonin symptoms.
Once You’ve Got Your Serotonin Deficiency Under Control, Now What?
Once you’ve started eating breakfast again and eliminated or at least delayed your cup of bulletproof coffee until after you eat in the morning, you might perhaps feel motivated to try and wean yourself off coffee completely.
According to Julia Ross:
People who crave chocolate, coffee, alcohol, and even exercise are typically low in the neurotransmitter endorphin.
Using supplementation of the amino acids that are precursors to endorphin may really help in trying to shake the bulletproof coffee habit.
- Amino acid d-phenylalanine (DPA): 500 mg, 2-4X/day (sources). Use DPA if you are addicted to coffee and also an anxious person.
OR
- Amino acid d-phenylalanine (DPA) bound to the amino acid I-phenylalanine (LPA) – known in combination as DLPA: 500 mg, 2-3X/day (sources). Use DLPA if you crave the energizing effects of coffee and are not typically an anxious person.
Do you think a deficiency of neurotransmitters might be the reason some folks love their bulletproof coffee so much?
References and More Information
Why You Need to Change WHEN You Drink Coffee
Melatonin Regulates our Mood, Weight, Reproduction and May Fight Cancer
BC Recipe
Melatonin helps control weight gain
Why You Need to Change WHEN You Drink Coffee
Healthy Coffee Substitutes
Coconut Oil for Weight Loss
Coconut Oil Capsules: As Beneficial as Straight Up?
The Truth About Your Morning Coffee Fix
If you add an egg to the bullet proof coffee that can be “breakfast” and you will have enough protein and good fat to get you to lunch….I do it every morning and it works…say good buy to sugar crash and brain fog!!
Unfortunately, 1 egg only has 6 grams of protein in it. And, if you wake up with brain fog and need bulletproof coffee to fix it, there are some serious gut imbalance issues that need to be addressed and not band-aided over with a caffeine infusion.
What would be your ideal breakfast Sarah?
Bacon and eggs with some spears of asparagus cooked in butter on the side with a glass of grassfed raw milk.
Sarah, I start work at 8 am, which means I leave for work about 6:30. At 6:00 am I cannot stomach anything like that! Many of us early risers have a problem with breakfast and it gets depressing to keep getting berated for not eating it. I don’t believe it does you any good to eat when you are not hungry. I would rather save my calories for later on in the day when I actually have an appetite!
I don’t drink coffee very often, maybe once or twice a month. I consider it to be a treat. When I do have it, I make it with home made ghee where I get the butter from a local farm (grass fed, no pesticides, etc) and coconut oil. Any time I have added egg to this mixture (also from a high quality, local source), has resulted in a stomach ache and then vomiting. It surely isn’t that the egg is bad to eat raw as I use the same raw eggs to make mayonnaise and have never had a problem with them as raw mayo.
Ive been on bulletproof coffee/diet for a month now… I have zero carb cravings at the end of the day.. and when I do the honey/fish oil at night like the book says I sleep like a champ. Ive never been so focused in my adult life. I literally have to force myself to eat dinner… Breaking the fast at lunch at about 12:30 I am a little hungry but I have never had control over my eating habits my entire life… There is a lot of negative people about bulletproof coffee/diet but try it and you will not be a naysayer anymore. I seen will brink rip on this coffee idea a few months ago and then come out with his own version Bombproof coffee.. lol too funny
The idea that we “need” breakfast is utterly false. Did our paleo ancestors wake up and have a healthy breakfast every morning? One meal a day (if they were lucky) was more the norm. And if they did, It wasn’t a shake or oatmeal it was meat, fat and veggies. It’s amazing we even got this far as a human race with our bad paleo nutrition 10,000’s of years ago. 🙂
Exactly. More than likely if they stored anything it would be nuts, which have carbs and fat and would be a good source of fuel. But they certainly weren’t waking up to bacon and eggs.
They also weren’t waking up to bulletproof coffee.
Fasting of all sorts has it place, but if all, and I do mean ALL of your systems are not healthy, it is a major stressor. Add coffee and you just wring out your poor little adrenals.
Here’s some food for thought on skipping breakfast. I encourage you all to do your own thinking and not believe what anyone with a vested interest in the idea of breakfast tells you from the tv.
According to an article published in the New York Times:
Americans have long been told that routinely eating breakfast is a simple habit that helps prevent weight gain.
Skipping breakfast, the thinking goes, increases hunger throughout the day, making people overeat and seek out snacks to compensate for missing that first – and some would say most important – meal of the day.
“Eating a healthy breakfast is a good way to start the day,” according to the Web site of the United States surgeon general, “and may be important in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.”
But new research shows that despite the conventional weight-loss wisdom, the idea that eating breakfast helps you lose weight stems largely from misconstrued studies.
Only a handful of rigorous, carefully controlled trials have tested the claim, the new report, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found. And generally they conclude that missing breakfast has either little or no effect on weight gain, or that people who eat breakfast end up consuming more daily calories than those who skip it.
But those trials have been largely overlooked, and their findings drowned out by dozens of large observational studies that have found associations between breakfast habits and obesity but no direct cause and effect, said Dr. David B. Allison, director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Allison and his colleagues scoured the medical literature and found that the only long-term, carefully controlled trial that randomly assigned people to routinely eat or go without breakfast and then measured the effect on their body weight was published in 1992.
Here’s the link to the article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/myths-surround-breakfast-and-weight/?_r=1
And here’s the link to the study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24004890
This is a meta study. There’s no way to control what was served for breakfast. Also, if we look back into historical accounts of what constituted typical meals, then it it is easier to realize that breakfast did not occur a few our after waking time, which was consumed by chores such as gathering and preparation of foods. Breakfast in the modern sense use to be the luxury enjoyed by ruling classes. However they were also the ones suffering from degenerative diseases.
AMEN Pepper Culpepper 😀
I agree and yes please people find out for yourself, cause there is some really deceptive information that I believe has a greater agenda to keeping your in poor health and disempowered. Carbs will cause you to crave carbs latter, simple. The high fat intake with butter coffee actually fuels the brain, resets leptin, and gives you your life back (no wasting will power on eating foods that rob you of energy, clarity, and vitality). I think some people are just so against actually being in their greatest potential, maybe be it scares them to actually thrive so they try to influence others to stay in mediocrity like they are.
Sara again maybe try the stuff your self and be bold to let go of old thinking.
Check out David Wolfe and the Longevity Now Conference, there is some very wonderful information from the top leading scientist, doctors, and health experts.
The only old thinking going on with bulletproof coffee is the same old same old with folks trying to justify a bad habit by adding something good to it like butter. Coffee instead of food is ALWAYS bad and will ALWAYS lead to problems over time especially for women skipping breakfast. Bulletproof coffee = major hormone issues and a menopause from hell. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Well now I’m disagreeing on the missing breakfast is bad comment. I have been on 5:2 diet for 6 months and on my fasting days, I skip breakfast and don’t eat anything until about 2pm. For those that have not heard of 5:2 diet – you eat normally 5 days of the week and fast 2 alternate days of the week. On your fasting days, women eat 500 calories any which way they like.
Overall, it means that out of a week’s total calories, you have reduced your cals quite a bit without having to count the calories of every morsel you eat.
And back to bullet proof coffee, it was designed by a male, and men always lose weight and cut up much easier and faster than women.
I do a modified bulletproof, but with an added raw home pastured egg, some collagen, a cube of broth (I freeze it) and a cube of coconut oil (I freeze it). 5 drops of stevia and a tsp of green powder. This probably makes it a good breakfast!
“Skipping breakfast in the morning short circuits the body’s ability to produce adequate serotonin throughout the day.”
I just want to question the validity of that statement, because for millions of years, humans did not have the luxury of waking up to food. It had to be foraged. Fished. Hunted. Gathered. It had to be worked for.
I would say it’s not the skipping of breakfast, but rather the drinking of copius amounts of coffee leading to today’s prevalence of insomnia. Ditch the caffeine and eat when you’re hungry.
When I quit worrying about eating every three hours like “they” said I should do and rather ate whole foods with plenty of fat, I found that I was only hungry about twice a day, slept much better (and this is coming from someone with severe, chronic insomnia that couldn’t be knocked out with a boat of xanax.)
Besides, there’s plenty of nutrition in butter, and people really need to eat less anyway. Hunter Gatherers spent about 1000 calories a day looking for food and probably ate about the same. I’ve been learning this in my World History class in college (I did not just pull this information off the internet.)
Peace.
I have diabetes and my experience is that my blood sugar climbs if I skip breakfast and I end up taking more insulin than if I eat. In addition I begin to fade before lunch even if I take healthy oils, with or without caffeine. I do best with a couple eggs cooked in ghee or butter with tomatoes or avocado. I also take coconut oil and fermented cod liver oil. My experiences may be more dramatic because of the diabetes but I don’t feel good when my blood sugar has the opportunity to swing way up and down. I do respect some of what the paleo movement has brought to our attention but I don’t necessarily think diets were perfectly healthy “millions” of years ago. Technologically we’ve advanced but in the main we do unhealthy stuff to ourselves because it tastes or feels good right now or because it seems easier. I don’t think that has changed. Periodic fasting has value but daily fasting is asking for trouble. I predict Starbucks will jump on this bandwagon though.
How about if I add a raw, pastured farm-fresh egg to my BPC? It makes it taste like a latte and it adds protein??? (really hoping here!)
Thanks for this good article. I get it that BPC isn’t a substitute for breakfast, but that begs the question, “what IS a good breakfast?”
I regularly enjoy scrambled eggs (from pastured hens) at breakfast but what are some other good breakfast options?