Intermittent fasting and bulletproof coffee

(Steven Baggs) #1

Is bulletproof coffee ie- having some cream and butter in my coffee actually breaking my fast and causing my body to change where its drawing energy from? I’m worried that I’m breaking my fast time in half when I have a coffee mid morning.

(LUCAS KRAUSE) #2

Great question. I’m not an expert but my understandings is that anything under 200 calories should not impact metabolism (maybe as long as these are not carb/sugar? )

I’m not sure how this effects other things like autophagy, or other fasting benefits with autoimmune healing, etc.

You might want to read dr fungs book (complete guide to fasting) it goes into a lot more detail. He recommends fat fasts for some people or other benefits as well.

They say the best fast is the one you can do.

I personally have not had issues doing water fasts but if I didn’t have the excessive body fat I might do fat fasts to keep my bf stable.

(KCKO, KCFO) #3

Fung says a small amount of either coconut oil or HWC, like a teaspoon, not the couple of tablespoons BPC recipes contain, should get your through the fast.

There is no standard on what makes a fast broken. Some say anything but the liquids, others under 100 cal. is fine, others 200 cals. is ok. Depending on why you are fasting should be the determining factor. If you are at normal weight, you might need some fats to get through an extended fasting period.

If you are many lbs. over weight the less supplemental fats the better so your body uses its own fats.

(John) #4

Tough question that there don’t seem to be good answers to. When is the precise moment you go from not-fasted to fasted, and vice-versa. In my mind when you are fasted you are using only internal sources of fuel to run your body, so eating anything should stop (maybe not completely depending on the amount) and switch some percentage over to utilizing the external fuel you just consumed. If that fuel was fat, your body should be back to burning internal fat in no time with little to no other effect that I can think of. Carbs and to a lesser extent protein impact insulin, change blood sugar levels etc. your body has to deal with the sugar but the insulin secretion should have a larger impact on how well you can easily access internal fuel. In the meantime, between burning the glucose and insulin levels returning to normal, I believe you will be using the protein you ate as well as some autophagy.
The eating fat scenario seems to be roughly equivalent of ingesting alcohol, it doesn’t affect insulin but your body needs to process it before it can get back to burning fat. This makes sense along with the reports I have read on various fat fasts.
So to me, eating fat should do nothing but slow down your internal fat burning as it seems to have little impact and i’m not sure of any difference between burning fat you just ate vs fat you just released. Carbs and protein should break the fast for much longer.

(Mike W.) #5

Just remember that most HWC isn’t pure fat and has some carbs. I would use butter if you HAVE to, but definitely recommend just water from my personal experience.