The Bulletproof Diet: Lose Up to a Pound a Day, Reclaim Energy and Focus, Upgrade Your Life

by Dave Asprey

time I was 30, I was diagnosed with the rapid onset of second-phase thrombin-induced platelet aggregation. Basically, my blood was thick, like sludge, and my physician was concerned that I would die of a stroke or heart attack—

called a single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scan so I could finally learn why my brain was betraying me.

electroencephalogram (EEG) brain-wave monitoring machine in my home office and became certified in using a biofeedback technique called heart rate variability to learn how to control my nervous

more than 100 other top experts in human performance on my number one–ranked health podcast and nationally syndicated radio show, Bulletproof Radio. The information in this book is based on the distilled knowledge of those experts and the results of the more than $300,000 I spent biohacking myself with self-experiments.

you’ll know the answer within only 2 weeks while losing up to a pound a day and never feeling deprived or hungry. Are

Inflammation is the body’s natural response to a pathogen, toxin, stress, or trauma. When something stresses the body, it responds by swelling up in an effort to heal itself. Inflammation is necessary for proper tissue repair.

lift weights and your body works to repair the stressed muscle or when you cut yourself and increased blood flow ferries in white blood cells to heal the injury. This is called acute inflammation, and if you’ve ever had an injury or surgery,

This causes even more damage as your immune system attacks important body systems.4 The trick is to reduce your body’s immune

antinutrients that are hidden sources of Kryptonite in your daily life. These toxins form in plants and plant products as they are growing or in storage, and their main function is to keep animals, bugs, and fungi from eating the plants so the plants can reproduce.

The main categories of naturally occurring antinutrients are lectins, phytates, oxalates, and mold toxins (mycotoxins).

A lectin is a type of protein that permanently attaches itself to the sugars that line your cells, disrupting small-intestine metabolism

The lectins we’re talking about are specific compounds made by plants that bind to joints, irritate the gut, lead to bacterial overgrowth, and contribute to leptin (with a p!) resistance, a condition that causes the brain of an overweight person not to receive the signal that the stomach is full.5

Consuming antioxidants is normally a good thing, but some antioxidants, like phytates, have both negative and positive effects. Your body can handle a certain amount of phytates, and eliminating them from your diet completely wouldn’t be possible, but it’s a good idea to minimize the main sources so your minerals will be absorbed.

Certain animals like cows and sheep have special bacteria in their guts to help them break down phytates.

I don’t recommend eating raw kale, spinach, or chard in salads or even smoothies.

When exposed to even low levels of mold toxins, many people lose their edge. At higher levels, mold toxins cause serious damage, such as cardiomyopathy, cancer, hypertension, kidney disease, and even brain damage.

Decaf coffee contains more mold on average than caffeinated, partly because coffee people cringe at the thought of ruining high-quality beans with decaf processing and therefore use lower-quality beans to make decaf.

insulin resistance, which means that leptin may play a role in controlling insulin sensitivity.10

Leptin levels drop during short-term fasting and return to normal after eating,12 making it one reason that Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting (which you’ll learn about in detail later) is a painless but important way to retain leptin sensitivity.

It turns out there is another molecule called vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP), which works alongside leptin. VIP is produced by a number of tissues, including the gut, the pancreas, and two important regulatory systems in the brain, the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. Studies show that when animals don’t have enough VIP, their blood sugar, insulin, and leptin all become elevated and the animals crave sweets.13

VIP functions as a neuromodulator and neurotransmitter and has many key functions. It can cause changes in the GI tract by modifying hormone and electrolyte levels, modify how the pancreas and gut break down fats and sugars, stimulate bile flow, and control gastric acid release.

During times of stress, such as when you are exposed to a toxin, VIP production is suppressed. When mice are exposed to toxin from Aspergillus, a genus of toxic molds common in food and moldy buildings, VIP levels drop.15 It’s likely that humans experience a drop in VIP when exposed to toxic molds as well.

Biogenic amines are neurotransmitters that influence brain function. Histamine is a BA that is well known for its role in seasonal allergies. When your body makes BAs, they are kept to certain limits, but most people don’t realize that BAs like histamine can also be found in certain foods.

The single most common source of dietary histamine is fermented soy, particularly soy sauce. I happened to be eating a lot of sushi when I was getting frequent headaches and hives.

This involved finding a company in Thailand that bred eggs from a parasite called a porcine whipworm, then ordering them and swallowing the eggs so they would hatch in my gut.

Obese people (and animals) have excess bacteria from the Firmicutes phylum, which includes the Lactobacillus bacteria found in yogurt and most probiotic supplements. You need these bacteria, but if they’re too active, too plentiful, or from the wrong subtype, you’re going to put on fat.

Polyphenols are antioxidants that also function as prebiotics for Bacteroidetes.

richest source of polyphenols in Western diets by far is coffee! Chocolate is full of polyphenols,

Animals without gut bacteria rely on the liver to make that hormone, and they just about never get fat no matter what they eat. Animals

of MCT called C8 that’s up to 18 times stronger than regular coconut oil.

hosted uBiome at the first-ever Bulletproof Biohacking Conference in San Francisco in January of 2013. uBiome is the first company to set out to allow consumers to measure and understand the genetics of their gut bacteria, and right on their heels came the American Gut Project.

Bile helps break down and absorb fats, so the amount of bile your liver secretes is a factor in weight loss and detoxing.

Consuming fat is a signal for the body to produce more bile, so by eating more healthy fats you can increase bile production and excrete more toxins. This

There are five basic things your diet should provide: energy for your brain, fuel for your body, nutrients for your cells, no unnecessary toxins, and, perhaps most importantly, satisfaction.

All mammals share the second brain—called the limbic brain—which I like to think of as a furry, slobbering “Labrador retriever brain.” This one controls the instincts that keep our species alive, like seeking food and reproductive behavior.

If you only eat enough food to keep the first two brains happy or eat the wrong things, your human brain runs out of energy first, which means you run out of willpower. The next thing you know, you give in to your craving and wake up halfway through a pint of ice cream.

you eat a low-fat, low-calorie breakfast your body will secrete insulin, which allows your cells to use the sugar you just ingested and thus causes your blood sugar level to drop. Your Labrador will start to panic because it thinks the body is running out of the fuel it needs to stay alive. The Labrador starts to pester you to eat something sweet to raise your blood sugar. This

The healthy female body is about 29 percent fat, while men are about 15 percent fat.

The biggest problem with fruits is the main sugar they contain, fructose. As I already mentioned when discussing leptin, your liver converts fructose to either glucose or triglycerides, the latter of which are then stored as fat.

Eating fructose isn’t just bad for your waistline; it can contribute to heart disease and damaged arteries in a number of ways.

Fructose also easily links to proteins such as collagen, the main connective tissue in the skin and arteries, and to fats. When linking to collagen, fructose creates toxic advanced glycation end products, or AGEs for short. (“Glycation” refers to the linking of sugar molecules with proteins, DNA, and fats.) These are aptly named, as these end products play a role in the aging process and create additional oxidative stress in the body.4 AGEs not only are a major cause of skin wrinkles, but also age arteries and can lead to atherosclerosis.

Some of the bad bacteria that love fructose create uric acid as a by-product of their own metabolism. When too much uric acid builds up in the body, it can lead to deposits of sharp uric acid crystals in the joints, under the skin, and even in the kidneys, where they cause kidney stones. When

Bulletproof Diet limits fructose to no more than 25 grams a day and preferably less. That’s roughly the amount in 2 large apples.

coffee is more of a “superfood” than anything else in your diet. In study after study, coffee—even with mold—has been shown to improve focus, memory recall, and performance.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center discovered that men who drank four or more cups of coffee per day had a 59 percent lower chance of prostate cancer recurrence.

I’ve been increasing my energy throughout the day by taking ½ to 1 teaspoon of sea salt in water right when I wake up. That’s when your body uses salt the most efficiently.

The best salt I’ve found is pink salt mined in Utah or the Himalayas from pollutant-free ancient seabeds. But switching from table salt to any kind of sea salt will give you a massive upgrade,

Our cells, organs, and brains are all made of fat and need high-quality fat to function optimally. Fat is also the basis for the lining of your nerves, called myelin, which allows electricity to flow efficiently. When you have more myelin, you literally think faster.

On average, men should aim for at least 120 to 150 grams of fat (8 to 10 tablespoons) per day. Women should aim for at least 90 to 120 grams (6 to 8 tablespoons) per day, although your body weight, activity level, genetics, and hunger all play roles in determining the exact right amount for you. That’s why I recommend that healthy fats make up a range between 50 and 70 percent of the calories you eat each day.

harder-to-find short- and medium-chain fats, which include the butyric acid found in butter and several types of medium-chain triglycerides found in coconut