The Bulletproof Diet

Inflammation.

It’s the common thread to all things not good.

Helping us reduce inflammation is what this book is, essentially, all about.

Daniel Amen gives us the Latin root of the word in his great book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (see Notes): “Inflammation, from the Latin word inflamma, meaning fire, is associated with many illnesses, including depression and dementia. Just as poor blood flow is devastating to brain function, so is chronic inflammation in your body.”

Note: We don’t want our bodies on fire. :)

The key driver of the fire?

What Dave calls antinutrients—the Kryptonite in our quest to going bulletproof.

Check out the book (and this handy-dandy reference sheet) for more on what qualifies as Kryptonite. For now, know that we need to put out the fires if we want to optimize and actualize!

P.S. John Durant points to one of the key fire starters in The Paleo Manifesto (see Notes) where he tells us: “In wheat, for example, gluten makes up the majority of wheat protein. Even though gluten is associated with the small percentage of people with celiac disease (about 0.4 to 0.8% in the United States), it causes gut inflammation in over 80% of people.”

P.P.S. Here’s how David Perlmutter, one of the world’s leading neurologists + nutritionists puts it in Brain Maker (see Notes): “If you were to ask someone on the street about depression, you’d be likely to hear something along the lines of ‘It’s a chemical imbalance in the brain.’ Well, I’m here to tell you that that would be incorrect. Two decades of scientific literature highlight the role of inflammation in mental illness, from depression to schizophrenia.”

<— You catch that? Depression isn’t a “chemical imbalance in the brain.” It’s inflammation.

And, one of the simplest, most powerful ways to address this inflammation is to remove wheat from your diet. Then get to work on the other Kryptonites in your life!!

Chapter 2 features Dave walking us through the Top 10 Diet Myths and his Bulletproof perspective on each.

Here’s a super quick look:

“DIET MYTH #1: IF YOU’RE NOT LOSING WEIGHT, YOU’RE NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH”

Dave walks us through the research that shows the fact that willpower can easily be depleted. If your diet is forcing you to constantly exert willpower, you’re likely to run out.

Why not choose an approach that BUILDS willpower by (gasp!) doing things you actually enjoy—like sipping a bulletproof fat coffee and eating otherwise deliciously satiating and surprisingly energizing health fatty foods?

“DIET MYTH #2: YOU’RE NOT AS HUNGRY AS YOU THINK YOU ARE”

Feeling hungry all the time saps your energy and performance. Dave walks us through how our hormones get all out of whack eating low-fat diets and how to re-set that.

(It’s nuts how hungry I used to be all the time and how much my energy fluctuated on a low-fat/high-carb approach. Thank you fat for the stable energy. :)

“DIET MYTH #3: A LOW-FAT DIET IS HEALTHY”

Dave walks us through the faulty research that led us to obsess about reducing fat. Healthy fat is the foundation of the Bulletproof Diet.

“DIET MYTH #4: EATING FAT WILL MAKE YOU FAT”

I never would have believed that I’d cut my body fat % in half when I went from low-fat/high-carb to a lower-carb/high-fat approach. But that’s precisely what happened. I now effortlessly maintain a single digit body fat % eating a CRAZY (C.R.A.Z.Y. I say!) amount of fat. Frankly, I still can’t quite wrap my head around that one as I was so convinced that eating fat makes you fat but, alas, that’s just not true.

“DIET MYTH #5: CUTTING CALORIES IS THE BEST WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT”

Not true. And, remember that your brain consumes 20-30% of your calories (!) so, if you want high performance, you’d be wise to feed it wisely!

“DIET MYTH #6: EVERYTHING NATURAL IS GOOD FOR YOU”

We’ll talk about this in a moment when we get to fruitsandvegetables but not all “natural” food is created equally.

“DIET MYTH #7: YOU HAVE TO WORK OUT A LOT TO LOSE WEIGHT”

It starts with the nutrition. Overtraining doesn’t help.

“DIET MYTH #8: COFFEE IS BAD FOR YOU”

It’s not? Sign me up! I finally started experimenting with this a couple months ago. Check out Dave’s case for Bulletproof fat coffee goodness here.

“DIET MYTH #9: SALT IS A HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCE”

Another thing I used to avoid that I’m happy to welcome back. In fact, I’ve been practicing one of Dave’s little hacks by taking 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of sea salt in water when I wake up. Apparently, that’s when your body assimilates salt most effectively and it boosts energy. I’ll take it! :)

“DIET MYTH #10: MODERATION IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS WHEN DIETING”

Dave tells us this just isn’t so. Cyanide and lead are not good in moderation. And, if you’re committed to OPTIMAL performance, why would you deliberately introduce any Kryptonite into your system—knowing it’s going to lead to increased brain fog and reduced awesome?

—> “‘Everything in moderation’ leads to just moderate performance. Reject moderation and aim for something greater. Moderation has nothing to do with being Bulletproof.”

Fruitsandvegetables.

Was that one word or three?

Let’s count them:

1. Fruits.

2. And.

3. Vegetables.

Yep. That’s three separate words. :)

Let’s not string them together so fast that we fall into the trap of thinking fruits and veggies affect our bodies in the same way. Because they don’t.

Veggies: GOOD! (In fact, that’s the subject of our next Idea.)

Fruits: Although most people say they’re unequivocally awesome, new research shows that’s just not the case.

Here’s how Dave puts it: “In mainstream medicine, the health benefits of fruits are overstated while the health risks of fructose are completely ignored, but there are some doctors out there who have begun warning about the dangers of fructose. Robert Lustig, MD, a leading health expert, the author of Fat Chance, and a specialist in pediatric endocrine disorders at the University of California, San Francisco, has come to the conclusion that even ‘average’ levels of fructose can inhibit performance in a major way. Eating anything more than a little bit of fructose daily is simply not good for your brain or your body, and that’s why the Bulletproof Diet limits fructose to no more than 25 grams a day and preferably less. That’s roughly the amount in 2 large apples. My 100 excess pounds of fat wouldn’t budge when I was eating several pieces of fruit a day, and now I understand why! Avoiding excessive fructose is one of the best things you can do to slim your waistline and absolutely decimate food cravings. So much for ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ Instead, the saying should be, ‘Three apples a day keep the doctor well paid.’”

Hah.

Love that.

“Three apples a day keeps the doctor well paid.”

It took me a while to wrap my brain around the fact that fruits may not be all *that* awesome. As I’ve played with it and reduced my consumption, it’s been amazing to see my energy levels stabilize and soar.

How much fruit are you eating each day?

Is it time to swap out some of the fruits for some veggies?

P.S. This reminds me of John Ratey’s concerns that fruit juice is one of the key reasons for childhood obesity in households committed to good parenting. Here’s how he puts it in a passage about the crazy increase of sugar consumption in Go Wild (see Notes): “Annual per capita sugar consumption in the United States was 5 pounds per person in 1700, 23 pounds in 1800, 70 pounds in 1900, and 152 pounds today. This is why we talk about sugar when we begin talking about what ails us. Want to go wild? Here’s how. Don’t eat sugar, not in any form. Not sucrose, not pure cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup, not honey, not in all those other polysyllabic chemical names that reveal industrial processes rooted in corn: maltodextrin, dextrose, sorbitol, mannitol. Not apple juice. John thinks this is one of the hidden causes of childhood obesity, even in households where there is very good parenting.”

If you’re a parent, I hope you *strongly* consider eliminating the sugar and fruit juices!

So, important point: We should be eating more vegetables than any other food.

Note: EVERYONE (!!!) agrees with this.

The best veggies? Glad you asked. Here they are (and here’s a beautiful guide to them as well!):

Avocados (altho technically a fruit they’re packed with great fat) + Olives (again, technically a fruit and packed with good fat) + Bok Choy + Brussel Sprouts + Collards + Spinach + Kale + Asparagus + Broccoli + Cabbage + Cucumber + Dark Green Leafy Lettuce + Radishes + Summer Squashes + Zucchini.

How’s your veggie intake?

(Mine can use some work! :)

Supplements. They’re important.

Lest you think they’re not important: In Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (see Notes), Daniel Amen talks about the importance of supplements and references this brilliant Mark Hyman gem from The Ultra-Mind Solution: “If people eat wild, fresh, organic, local, non–genetically modified food grown in virgin mineral- and nutrient-rich soils that has not been transported across vast distances and stored for months before being eaten . . . and work and live outside, breathe only fresh unpolluted air, drink only pure, clean water, sleep nine hours a night, move their bodies every day, and are free from chronic stressors and exposure to environmental toxins, then it is possible that they might not need supplements. Because we live in a fast-paced society where we pick up food on the fly, skip meals, eat sugar-laden treats, buy processed foods, and eat foods that have been chemically treated, we could all use a little help from a multiple vitamin/mineral supplement.”

So, if you failed to meet Dr. Hyman’s standard, you might want to consider supplementing. :)Dave walks us through the recommended doses for his Top 10, reasons why to focus on these, etc. For now, I just want to capture the list for you to plant some seeds for further exploration.

The Top 10: Vitamin D + Magnesium + Vitamin K2 + Vitamin C + Iodine + EPA/DHA (Krill Oil) + Vitamin A + Selenium + Copper + Vitamin B12 and Folate.

Reminds me of Joshua Rosenthall’s great line in Integrative Nutrition: “Health is a vehicle, not a destination.”

—> Health is a vehicle not a destination.

All of this work to optimize our lives is not an end in and of itself. It’s a means to being a better human being and showing up more powerfully in all of our roles—whether that’s as a parent, an artist, an entrepreneur, or a teacher.