Can Data Driven Diets Help Us Hack Our Way To Better Bodies?

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According to businessman Dave Asprey, he managed to create a diet that utilizes rich foods like avocados, steak and butter in order to maintain a healthy body weight, all with little exercise. Asprey has called his diet the “Bulletproof Diet”. The man claims that he lost 100 pounds, boosted his IQ and lowered his biological age.

Asprey is the founder of Bulletproof Executive. The company mostly sells supplements and specialized coffee. Asprey opened his first Bulletproof Coffee shop in Santa Monica, CA. He hopes that Bulletproof can eventually become a thriving global corporation, and he insists that his company is the secret to healthy living.

The man might just be perfect for such a promotion. He’s 6 feet 4 inches tall and in good shape. He is constantly alert, hyper-focused and articulate. He is passionate about his trendy health interests, and he is in constant motion. He says that he regularly consumes substances that are designed to improve his cognitive function. Asprey also consumes nicotine, which causes him to be somewhat jittery.

As a boy, Asprey suffered from rashes and nosebleeds, and he says that he felt mentally slow. By the time he was 22, he weighed more than 300 pounds. But despite his poor health, he had a thriving career in the technology industry throughout the 1990s and 2000s. But starting in 1995, he decided to get his health under control. However, despite dieting and exercising, Asprey lost little weight, and rigorous dieting made him unhappy.

After a few years, he took a new approach. He started tracking his food intake along with his energy levels, mood, sleep patterns and physical activity in order to see what patterns emerged. Various diets for Asprey all failed, and he underwent several physical and bloodwork tests. He even had his DNA studied. In 2006, he consumed a parasite called the porcine whipworm. It did not work as intended.

After 20 years of trying strange techniques, Asprey had wasted more than $300,000. Still, his background in computer science urged him to keep hacking and to continue to try bettering his health. Eventually, he started finding success. He developed dietary guidelines that said that half of his calories should come from healthy fats, such as coconut oil and avocados. He says that these fats provide more energy and satiation than carbohydrates. The rest of his calories come from organic proteins and vegetables.

Asprey avoids virtually all sugar, even from fruit, and he also stays away from grains, legumes and pasteurized dairy. Asprey also criticizes trendy superfoods like kale and nut milks. According to Asprey, they contain dangerous toxins. The diet is ketogenic, which means that instead of burning carbohydrates and glucose for energy, the body burns fat. And with that, the Bulletproof Diet was born.

However, the centerpiece of the Bulletproof Diet is Bulletproof Coffee. The coffee is freshly brewed, and it is mixed with “brain octane oil” and grass-fed butter. It is supposed to be consumed early in the day in order to boost energy and prevent hunger. The coffee is not only the main part of his diet, it is also the main component of his business model.

And Asprey will frown if you try and create your own Bulletproof Coffee at home. He says that butter and coconut oil from the store are filled with toxins that will cause a “crash” later in the day. Instead, Asprey says that people need to buy his certified “mold-free” coffee for $18.95 per pound. It is available at his coffee shop and on the internet. Next month, Asprey is also planning to release a Bulletproof cookbook.

It might all sound too good to be true, but a trip to the Southern California coffee shop will reveal a group of people who all look to be in tremendous shape. People who consume the coffee have said that they feel like they can do anything. At the very least, Asprey puts on a good show. The shop recently held a convention that promoted every health-gimmick in the book. And you can be sure that people were adamant about the proven results.

It’s no surprise that many doubt Asprey’s claims. Medical research has proven very little about his Bulletproof diet, which is noted for being high in fat and low in exercise. So far, the only thing supporting Asprey’s statements are the claims made by himself and his followers.

Nutrition professor Marion Nestle wrote in an email, “I don’t know any diet, exercise or healthful-living shortcuts. We all want to live forever, and if changing one thing in our diets can do that, we can all hope. The success of the dietary-supplement industry is best explained by wish-fulfillment fantasies.’’

For now, Asprey is happy with his results, so more power to him. There’s not much proof that his diet will work for everybody, but it certainly seems to work for him. Feel free to give his diet a try if you want to shell out for expensive coffee.

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