Here are two approaches you can use to lose weight. They are complementary but even when standing alone, they work well also. The basic idea is that changing food habits is way, way more effective than exercise. Exercise is complementary, what/how you eat is what informs your body how it should be functioning …
First one you may have heard of. Bulletproof coffee. I hate the name.
It is adding fat to black coffee. This means, unsalted butter by itself, or unsalted butter plus MCT oil which you can find in a supermarket.
This is just refined coconut oil. It has medium-chain fats ( Medium Chain Triglycerides) which are an excellent source of energy. Tastes like nothing.
Make the black coffee, and then blend the butter and oil. It must be blended, to break up all the molecules and mix them.
It turns into a frothy latte that tastes really good. You don’t need much butter, start with say two cubic centimetres.
A tablespoon of oil.
Woolworths has it in the vitamins section which is with the medical products. ‘MCT Oil’.
Coles has it as a cooking oil which is not quite as good because it’s a bit less concentrated but it’s the same price.
Coffee by definition liberates fat for energy. By providing the coffee with all the fat, it creates energy that lasts for several hours.
And the fat blunts the insulin-spike the coffee usually makes. So you don’t get the instant hit and then crash 30 minutes later, instead an ongoing wave that keeps going. The mental clarity it creates is really noticeable also.
Finally, all the fat is incredibly satiating. You will not desire anything to eat. People losing weight will have one or even two of these for breakfast and commence meals at lunch. Providing fat as energy and stimulating the body to use it as energy (because of how the coffee works in tandem) starts training your body to regard fats instead of carbohydrate as a source of energy. This is a reprogramming. This means body weight will be consumed instead. This re-patterning is the only way to properly lose weight, and is why people can starve themselves but not lose weight because that fundamental program of the body thinking ‘carbohydrates for energy’ is still the same.
So you just need:
1. real coffee
2. a blender
3. MCT Oil
4. Unsalted butter
5. I like to reheat mine slowly in a saucepan because the blending and the additions cool it down
6. Theres a stack of information about this online, too much, so much hype and marketing and stuff around it. Because it’s insanely popular. Very very very popular. So many recipe variations. Cream is good, it tastes better, butter has some other qualities that help for these functions. If you really can’t stand it with butter try ‘double cream’ which is the higher fat more pure cream.
I sometimes add some good quality, pure vanilla essence for flavour, one with no added sugar and crap.
You can start the coffee anytime. It’s not just for weight loss. Athletes
and people trying to be more effective find it brings them much more energy and mental clarity. Qualities in the fat that are efficiently delivered by the caffeine, also do interesting things like reduce inflammation.
So coffee goes from being a drug thats useful for 30 minutes, to a functional supportive aid all day.
The 2nd approach is called the slow carb diet. By Tim Ferriss. It’s an eating lifestyle used by Hollywood, professional athletes, and hundreds of thousands of others. Ferriss compiled data on it and people lose a lot – kilos – in a matter of weeks. It just falls away because the body is operating in a different paradigm.
It’s from the book 4 Hour Body by Tim Ferriss which is worth finding.
There are I think only two chapters about the diet in there. Read it in a book store or the library will definitely have it or kindle.
Here’s the following article by the author:
He links to two articles a bit of the way in. The first one gives a lot more detail on food choices. The second one is a couple of personal stories. Don’t get caught up in the fine details just yet. There are progressions to make it more effective but just keep it simple to start.
It’s designed with compliance in mind. So no calorie counting. Eat as much as you want. And one cheat day a week. The reasons for this are obviously psychological. But Ferriss has proven that spiking the insulin and body chemistry with carbohydrates like this actually radically enhances fat loss afterwards in a way that is impossible without it.
Bodybuilders do this, they are obsessed with getting body fat really low for body definition. They have a regular cheat day.
There are some things you do to mitigate the risk on the cheat day but basically yes you can eat in a focused manner knowing that you are not permanently locked in, you get to relax totally on the day of your choice once a week.
Every day red wine at night is permitted, no more than 1-2 glasses. Malbec is suggested as a safe low sugar red but I can help you find some other varieties if necessary.
Exercise is the ‘advanced’ component. It is for those who want to totally commit. It’s not required. But he makes it easy by focusing on kettle bell swings, so in future you can buy one and do swings at home – so accessible – which you’ll feel really good about. Your local gym probably has them.
You’re not what anyone would consider obese, you seem pretty healthy and you don’t strike me as having a food addiction. I think you could find some very encouraging results quickly. Bringing your more health and vitality and confidence and all the associated side effects.
The diet was designed before ‘bulletproof’ coffee was known. it seems they aren’t totally compatible. The diet urges you to eat breakfast within an hour of waking, and to have no milk or cream in coffee but to flavour it with cinnamon or vanilla essence if you want. You could try Stevia, it has no calories and is natural. I find it a bit hit or miss but it’s in the baking area of supermarket.
The coffee has definite weight loss properties but to be really correct about it – so you don’t inhibit the process in the short term, if you are doing the diet: don’t add butter to the coffee. DO add MCT oil and blend. It’s tasteless. This will be less satiating so it’s easier to eat food.
The brand is called Coco Earth. The preferred one is in Woolworths, in the medical pharmacy section with the vitamins. Small bottle, 500ml, dark glass, blue label. ‘The Juggernaut MCT Oil’. It’s about $14 and you can start with a tablespoon in coffee.
In Coles in the cooking oils section, olive oil etc. It’s Coco Earth again and it’s a tall slim transparent glass oil MCT oil. This one is a tiny bit cheaper but it’s still 500ml but is not as concentrated as the previous option, less ideal.
Also you can try straight coconut oil in coffee, blended. also for flavour. It’s quite a bit cheaper and actually tastes really good in coffee without needing anything else to flavour it.
This will make it easier to have coffee and breakfast at the same time too on the diet. This is the 2nd best option to MCT Oil. Coconut oil is well known for its abilities to promote weight loss because of certain chemicals.
Feel free to ask me about any of this i – understand it all fairly well –
the book explains other things to do around it that will make it much more effective.
And if there are references to using protein powder, don’t do it. It’s highly manufactured – even the ones claiming to be really clean and pure, are really industrialised. It might mean you get X amount of grams of protein but the body doesn’t like it, it shows in the eyes and skin. Stick to food.
The whole, entire idea is insulin sensitivity. to prevent insulin responses, and to make your body much more sensitive to insulin so the body doesn’t need to release very much. This is a fundamental cornerstone for longevity (and weight control).