creativity – The Brilliant Beast Blog

The Butter Coffee Dip

No, not something for dunking your donut.

The Dip. This is the term used by Seth Godin to describe the valley of hardship you must cross to reach the promised land of whatever endeavor you start. Every good result, beneficial enterprise, and upgrade in life involves some form of a dip. I’ll use the word plainly, without emphasis, moving forward.

Stop: This article is not for the sensitive or faint of heart. It’s meant to help you determine whether you’ve got the resources to be able to adapt to fat using butter coffee. There’s a bit of explicit and abrasive content here. And it’s long. It’s meant to challenge you. If you’re ready for it, please proceed. Otherwise save yourself some grief and leave this page – hopefully for another day.

The dip that I describe here is the barrier to using butter coffee for fuel. It involves the challenge that lies between you and proper fat utilization for energy and wellness. If you want to be ketogenic, or be able to primarily utilize fats for energy, you will come to this dip and be forced to reckon with your current metabolic tendencies. Butter coffee is an excellent gateway tool to optimal fat metabolism if you love coffee.

The rewards are great. If you have ever fasted, or had to skip breakfast to do something first thing in the morning, you may have felt a type of euphoria before finally eating. High focus, light mood, ease of effort, and creative outpour. Some people fast regularly for these benefits.

There is a way to access this “mode of operation”, let’s call it, without the hunger. There is a way to have it for a long period of time. Every day. And for the rest of your life. Once you get past the dip.

For some this will be easy. My own adaptation was fairly simple, as well as that of other people I’ve spoken to. Anecdotally, these “lucky” people are under 40, have no major health issues like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, or organ dysfunction, and are physically active or relatively fit. You may not agree with the term lucky if you are within this group. Regardless, these are attributes I have seen that make the dip shorter or less troublesome.

I have seen others struggle with the dip more than I have. Much more. The type of person I have seen struggle to maintain ketosis are over 40, have some health issues like obesity, diabetes, or metabolic dysfunctions, and generally are not as lean or muscular as the first group. However, I have seen a few examples of people in this category of mine who made it through the dip, regularly drink butter coffee, and enjoy the benefits of ketosis.

Many people I’ve talked to, in both categories, had decided to discontinue their efforts toward ketosis because the struggles did not justify the goal. There are definitely people of the first category who did not make it through the dip.

Don’t take this as a scientific grouping of people who will and won’t benefit from fat adaptation or butter coffee. Argue all you want about this. This is my narrow, limited experience with people. Whatever your current physiology and life circumstance, I believe you have the chance to enter a new realm of wellness. And I believe it is most likely through a transition of diet that relies on carbohydrates to one that is more strongly based on fats.

I will apply an insight from a field outside of medicine and health to the task of overcoming the dip here. I heard this from a conversation between Tony Robbins, master life coach, and Tim Ferriss, the human guinea pig. It is an insight from a plastic surgeon, one who’s created more attractive looks for women by minuscule adjustments to their faces. This surgeon lives by the practice that a mere two millimeters of adjustment can make all the difference. Most people are just within one or two tiny millimeters from being irresistibly beautiful.

Take this with a grain of sea salt. I know the general feel about plastic surgery, and I understand how this comes off. However, I look at the core lesson. A tiny distance separates me from accomplishing things I feel are impossible.

This can be expanded to wellness. The idea that for most people, the prize of a healthy body and mind awaits just a few more steps from where they’ve stopped. Just a couple of tiny steps from the point of utter pain, suffering, or misery. I believe that for most of humanity, for most of the endeavors that have been attempted, this is true. Wellness on an individual level is not exempt. Here, I address a very small endeavor that has slipped past many because of the tiny adjustments that need to be made before reaching the rewards.

Before you fully enjoy the benefits of butter coffee and other good fat in your diet, you will come to a few barriers to pass. They were well worth my time and effort to overcome, and so I share this with you. I urge you to read these elements of the dip that I encountered in the past five years to adjust myself to this superior energy source. I welcome you to join me in enjoyment of ketosis, higher focus, and overall improved wellness. But only after accepting the reality of what you must surpass to get here.

First

You will need to move through the fear that grips most people.

It’s partly the fear of eating fat. Simple. Although you might eat animal fat already, the social mores against butter, lard, and other forms of fat are strong. People around you will stare, ask hard questions, and flat out make fun of you. I’m talking about people you work with, play with, and love. By starting this experiment of wellness, you are entering a world of fat consumption. You will be harassed. You must embrace this to proceed through to the other side. My most effective quote for dealing with this: “Fuck’em all”. In gentler terms, I didn’t deal. I simply looked ahead and kept moving.
There’s also the fear of taking control. You are tackling this big aspect of your life called wellness. If you are afraid of actively making changes to improve your wellness, you are not alone. It sucks to try something you thought was good for you and find it was a waste of time, money, and attention. It’s also embarrassing when your friends and family find out and they tell you that you shouldn’t have done that. So, you’ll need to accept this fear and move through it. You will need to accept responsibility for your wellness. Whether you suffer or not is in large part a result of your own daily doing. To be well, you must decide to do. Know that it only seems harder to be healthy. The reality is that it takes just as much effort to eat candy as it does to eat grass fed butter. You put either in your mouth and swallow. Eaten. The hard part is all the intangible stuff surrounding the butter. Fear. Accept and move through it. As a hack to get there faster, may I suggest meditation.

Second

You will need to adapt to fat. This means your body will need to physiologically learn to effectively absorb nutrition from fat. This takes several days to weeks for some people, maybe more if you are not in the habit of eating a lot of fat. Keep your regular meals at first. Have just a cup of this coffee beverage with breakfast, or an hour before training. Eat “normally” otherwise. Feel it out.

Do you feel dizzy? This is a sign that you had too much MCT oil and your brain is in overdrive. Reduce MCT oil.
Is your stool wetter or more sour than usual? This is a sign that you are not able to digest as much as you ate. Reduce butter until stool is solid and smooth.
Did you get “cold diarrhea”? This is the classic sign of too much MCT oil for your system. Your body is trying to rid itself of excess nutrition. You aren’t ready for however much you took. Reduce MCT oil.
Did you get hungry within the next few hours of drinking the coffee? This is a sign that you are not able to optimally utilize fat for energy. Eat other food with the coffee, enough to satiate, not to the point that you are bursting and too full. Adjust the amount of food as hunger levels change through time. Balance the amount of butter in your coffee with the amount of food you eat. More butter, less other food.
UNLESS you went through a lot of stress the previous day. If you trained strength or exercised, if you had an emotionally difficult episode like a high stakes meeting or a fight, if you did not sleep enough, or if you had some other taxing situation the previous day, you naturally need more nutrition the next morning. Go with your gut feeling in the morning – literally. If you are hungrier than usual, add more butter than usual. Test the degree and duration of satiety.
Did your cravings come back? Distinguish cravings from hunger. Cravings are mostly in the mind, but they stem from a lack of significant nutrients. There’s an interaction between brain and gut that tells you you’re hungry or full. This goes back to amount of butter, adapting to fat utilization, and slowly replacing “food” with good fats. Slowly reduce the instinct to reach for sugary, starchy, processed, “fake” foods. No candy, ever. Seek instead “real” foods, incorporating good fats, green leafy veggies, and rice over bread into your meals. Cravings only grow as much as you feed them. Remember, address your brain.

Third

You will spend a lot of time making this every day. It also takes a long time to clean up. One of the greatest hurdles in making butter coffee is making butter coffee. It usually takes me a full 15 to 20 minutes to finish making mine. This includes heating the water, adding all the ingredients, blending, and pouring it out. You will have to make time. This means that other things will get pushed or omitted from your start-of-day schedule. If it’s Candy Crush, good riddance. If it’s meditation, perhaps you’ll want to plan more carefully. Also, don’t forget cleaning time. You’ll have a dirty and greasy blender, knife, measuring spoons, and coffee-making gear to reckon with. If you don’t tolerate dirty dishes in the sink all day, you will have to figure in the cleaning time.

Fourth

You will need to adjust and test the ingredients of butter coffee to suit you. You must find the best possible quality of ingredients within your means. Cleanliness of the coffee, source of butter and MCT oil, and quality of water are examples of components that affect your wellness. Do not disregard any symptom, do not diminish the value of any single ingredient, and pay attention to adjustments that you make.

Obtaining quality ingredients is one of the most difficult things in the dip. It is both “expensive” and hard to find some of these things, depending on where you live and how much money you can use. But know that this cost can undermine the cost of breakfast, going out for lunch, snacks and candies, and “healthcare” from complications related to your body running primarily on sugar.

Do your best. Compromise on ingredient quality only with full expectation of compromised results. The beginning is often exciting, with the heightened capabilities you feel from the first cup. The dip will require you to make adjustments and will stop most people from getting past the initial highs.

Did you get the jitters or a headache? Low coffee bean quality, cheap stuff, and blends are more likely to contain mold contamination, be overcooked, or not fresh. Coffee is a naturally enhancing food. There are a lot of qualities that aren’t identified. Much of the benefits from coffee are lost through these subpar characteristics.
- Aim for single source or single estate or single origin. This means the beans are grown and processed in one place. The time and attention to the beans is more focused and you will get cleaner product.
- Dark roasts risk overcooking the beans. If you “like” uber smoky coffee, carefully examine your symptoms. Overcooking coffee can damage the fats and the beneficial elements within the beans. Big name brands usually are careless about this process. Look for brands who pay attention to the roasting process, who talk about it and highlight it.
Did you get acne? I am prone to acne. Any bad fats I eat result in different types of acne. Some cause the small bumpy skin on my forehead, others cause large zits deep in the skin, and still others cause the smaller white fat pustules. Now, assuming you are avoiding fried foods from outside home, sugar, and vegetable or subpar animal fats, check your ingredients for the following:
- Butter. Is it really grass fed cow butter? Research and get a clear answer. Grain fed cows produce fat that is not clean. You might as well be eating margarine. If you cannot find a clear answer, ditch and move on. I would avoid it altogether if I get noticeable acne.
- MCT oil. Where are the coconuts or palm oil from? Thailand is usually the best source from my experience. The processing also matters, and some companies do not have control over that. Does the product you are using have that level of quality guarantee?
- Powders. Chocolate, vanilla, cacao butter, cinnamon, collagen. Whatever it is, is it sourced from identifiable places? Or blended from multiple locations? Remember that blends involve extra storage and shipping times, unaccountable processes, and reduced integrity.
Is your coffee flat or greasy? Follow the instructions I laid out, verbatim, for making the beverage. Check your timing, making sure to keep things hot and blending fast and long enough for good emulsification.

Fifth

You will need to find the goldilocks amounts of nutrition, the golden timing, and fine tune the quality of your results.

Hunger will come sooner or later. The more fat-adapted you are, as they say, the more energy you can obtain from butter coffee and the longer you can perform without eating. Adjust amounts of butter to see how much you need for proper energy. You don’t want to be faint later in the day, and you don’t want to physically deteriorate. I can last ten or more hours on butter coffee if I must. Ideally, I eat around hour eight. Remember, I have been doing this for years. My body is adapted. In the beginning, and for a very long time, you will not be. Prepare to experiment!
Find the ideal time for this drink. I like to have my coffee first thing in the morning. Sometimes I can sit all morning and work and drink all my coffee within a couple hours. Other days I have to go somewhere far and will sip while I drive, over a longer period of time. Lately I’ve had to walk the dogs at my mom’s place, and I find that doing this first thing (yes, before my coffee) is most beneficial for every creature. It hasn’t killed me. I have plenty of energy first thing in the morning without any nutrition added, so I am sticking to this schedule. You are different from me. Find your ideal timing for coffee.

Sixth

You can’t avoid discipline. There is no way around this in the dip. You simply must stick to your goal. You must regularly work to make butter coffee right for you and to become fat adapted. Let me end this long article with a long quote by Jim Collins from his excellent book, Great By Choice:

“Discipline, in essence, is consistency of action – consistency with values, consistency with long-term goals, consistency with performance standards, consistency of method, consistency over time. Discipline is not the same as regimentation. Discipline is not the same as measurement. Discipline is not the same as hierarchical obedience or adherence to bureaucratic rules. True discipline requires the independence of mind to reject pressures to conform in ways incompatible with values, performance standards, and long-term aspirations… the only legitimate form of discipline is self-discipline, having the inner will to do whatever it takes to create a great outcome, no matter how difficult.”

I told you it was long. Now make a decision.

Live powerfully,

Steve

If you need more information or guidance from my experience, please contact me by email. I have limited availability for consultation. If you have questions or comments for other readers, please leave them in the comment section of this post.

Collins, Jim. Great By Choice (2011)

The Brilliant Beast Blog Daily

Mobility At Work

Having worked in an office, I understand when most people say that sitting for hours at a time is required.

After all, what the hell else can you do? Even though there are some avant garde companies out there that have standing desks, most are not so progressive. And although more and more workplaces will get adjustable seating, it doesn’t make a difference if people have no understanding of what to do with the tools at their disposal. Simply standing is not going to solve your back pain.

Believe me, I know. I’ve dealt with low back pain for years, and standing in shoes with elevated heels and pointed toes hurt my back as much as sitting did (yes, men’s shoes also have heels). Not to say standing is bad. It’s a step in the right direction.

But what direction to go? Answering this, and visualizing how you want to be, will guide you through each day for the long term. For me, the goal was to be a standing, upright, limber human being. Not just as work but in life in general. I didn’t want tight hips. I didn’t want aching knees and back. I didn’t want knots in my shoulders. I didn’t want to be a slouching leaning tower of persona.

The workload, and the fact that most of it is at a computer, limits most people to think that they have to sit. Well, rethink it. Visualize yourself as mobile and embody it.

You don’t need a standing desk to be mobile at work. Allow me a bullet-pointed list of ways to not be sitting in a corporate office, doctor’s front desk, home office, wherever:

Go knock on office doors or cubicle walls instead of email or phoning. Your impact will be greater.
Get up and walk for phone calls. Use an earpiece. You will be more creative.
Meet people in the middle of halls and spaces for talks, rather than where they or you sit. This is called a standing meeting and it doesn’t have to be super deliberate. Make it subtle like, “Oh hey, I was just going to see you, so, what’s up?” Things will be easier.
Body language does wonders. Learn to Jedi-maneuver so you stay standing and avoid going to your or another person’s desk. This works with your bosses too. Beware, they are probably more practiced in body language than you. The first few times you may find yourself somehow sitting in their office. But it’s only a matter of time before you are both still standing at the end of your exchange.
Time your sitting-prone activities. Have some emails you need to respond to? Set a fifteen- to thirty-minute timer to get them done. Then get up to finish, face-to-face, the remaining interactions.
Schedule email responses. If you respond live, there’s high potential to get an immediate response. How do people do this? I don’t know. But it’s insane. Schedule your responses to go out in the next hour or two. Outlook does this, and so do others. You just have to find the setting (usually in the same place as “read receipt request” type stuff). You will be able to send your answers and be free of your “work box” without having to return volleys of mail in the moment.
Take your shoes off at your desk, and sit cross-legged or with at least one leg crossed under you. Lace-less shoes make this much easier. This will save you a world of back strain. It opens up the hips and stops the pull on your low back from your pelvic and abdominal connections. Smelly feet? With increased “air time”, this problem will diminish.
Elevate your screen to eye level and brighten it so that you can easily see it from a straight-postured position. Why cause yourself to lean forward because it’s too dark to see? Life hack!
Keep your keyboard close enough to reduce forward pull at your shoulders. It helped to have mine on my lap. With laptops, this is going to be difficult. Get a separate keyboard to plug in (I am still paranoid about wireless stuff).
Wear flat shoes with wide toe space. If you must wear shiny dress shoes, go as flat and wide as possible. And keep them off as much as possible at your desk. Do lunch barefoot if you can. Fancy shoes are meant to not be worn.
Take your breaks, take your lunch. Don’t be a ninny about break time. Get the hell out of your desk. Chances are you are not a coal miner. So why take fewer breaks than coal miners do? Effective, executive-level people take breaks. They breathe. They get out of their setting regularly. How often do you actually see your CEO, COO, or CFO in her office? Making a connection now?
Ditch your phone. When you step away from your desk, put it on silent and leave it at your desk. It will survive without you. That’s what VM and texts are for. Follow this rule for the next bullet too.
Remember that you have to pee, and sometimes poo. Do not neglect this urge. Follow it, and take forever walking back to your desk. If done correctly, you will find many chances for standing meetings, Jedi maneuvers, and creative, on-the-spot solutions.

Want happier, more mobile coworkers? Forward this to them. Oh, and don’t be a ninny. Send to your boss.

Live powerfully,

Steve

Stay Close to the Center

Time is funny. I still think of it as a line, with dots along it. And those dots are the times to do things, or the times that things happen.

But then I think that a line is made up of infinite dots. Time is made of infinite moments. Depending on the context, the number of dots varies. I would see a few dots when trying to remember what I ate for dinner two days ago. Or twenty dots if I’m trying to remember where I last left my phone.

The string of time spirals, too. I’m moving through a life made of days. Each day begins with a sunrise and ends with a sunset. Each morning I am different from myself the morning before, yet very similar. I move through the cycle of the day, experiencing, learning, growing, moving with my mindset and goal and dream. To the close observer, I appear very much the same as I was yesterday. And I probably am.

But in a wider perspective, although I move in cycles, I move forward. Each day I am slightly different. Each day I am one step forward from the propulsion of my mind. I may not notice day to day, but if I suddenly step back and look, I’ve come a long way. Each day looked like the last, but really it was in a new place.

It’s exciting to see how far we’ve gone. It’s thrilling, if we haven’t looked for a long amount of time. We see our academic and career accomplishments, family building, and the money and things we’ve obtained. We see how we’ve changed the world. We’ve gone so far toward our dreams. And it’s important to remember that we’ve gone there along a spiraling path.

As we move forward, we are ever close to our origin. Who we were yesterday is very close to who we are today and will be tomorrow. If we ignore that, if we keep a perspective that’s too broad, we’re only going to see a straight line from past to present to future. Too focused on stepping forward linearly, we’re going to lose track of ourselves.

Thus we embrace ourselves, and trust our will and heart to bring us step by step toward the future. We decide to remain close to the core of our being, and thereby take a more direct route to our dreams.

Live powerfully,

Steve

The Brilliant Beast Blog Daily

Breathe Your World Into Dust

He’s been in a world in his head, a world ingeniously designed to the specs of his limited view of the universe. A landscape of fears, should be’s, and can’t’s. And then he gives attention to his breath again. And he realizes that he hasn’t been with himself.

With incoming breath to calibrate to, his mind comes back to him. And he is all of a sudden able, seeing, and unafraid. The skyscrapers stretching into clouds of doubt, the unending streets, and the maze-like city blocks of his thought world are vanquished. They crumble in the quake of mindfulness and evaporate, thin as mist.

And in possession of his consciousness the beast moves forward to create the world. The world that does not disappear with a breath, but takes millions of breaths to make. He works with his mind. His body translates the blueprint of his mind into the world. Mind, body, and creation are one.

The solemn beast briefly remembers a different reality in the past. He gently thinks of the days in which his body worked separately from his mind. The days when his mind did not control the work of his body. The days when his mind wandered in the world of thoughts, staring up at the skyscrapers, turning down countless alleys, treading along endless streets. All the while his body worked for the minds of others, for the creation of a world in which he did not believe.

What is it for a beast to create what he does not see? Is it not a spending of his life, something that comes once, so precious and irreplaceable, irretrievable, for finite benefits? Doesn’t that reduce his life down to meaningless currency? As cold, forgettable, and pitiful as a bag of coins.

With another breath, the beast returned with joy to his creation. He allowed himself to be happy. For who else but his own self could give happiness to him? He took a moment to breathe in the atmosphere of happiness. The path would be long, he knew. The skyscrapers would be tall, taller than he could ever imagine. And the possibilities would be more convoluted than ever. Rest, and enjoyment of his happiness, was good to have.

He marveled at the parallel worlds of his past unpossessed self and his present conscious self. Both would look similar to any other beast who could have the chance to gaze in upon them. But one, he thought, is fundamentally different from the other. One he creates. This one he chooses.

Live powerfully,

Steve

The Brilliant Beast Blog Daily

Let Grow And Shape With Intention

The best shaves happen after letting hair grow.

The effect is more pronounced. Closer to the skin. Smoother. More hair cut off. You make a bigger difference, a bigger contrast. You feel a higher level of appreciation for the shave. The before and after is great. Plus, if you shave too often, your skin starts to get irritated. The excessive grooming is abrasive rather than satisfying.

Same goes for creating. Write, draw, let it come out, then edit. The finished work is more pronounced when you cut the full flamboyant bush. Snipping at developing art limits the final vibrancy.

Same goes for planning life. Brainstorm like crazy. Pour it all out. Don’t be afraid to explore with your mind every impossibility. Leave reality checks, trimming, and logic to the end. Let your mind print it first. Be amazed by what comes.

Same goes for physical training. Take long breaks in between strong improvements in strength. Rest. I let myself unravel from the stress of training for four months, and its seems to have spurred a new itch for training.

Same goes for relationships. Not every interaction with a new acquaintance needs a beginning, middle, and end. Movies set that in my head. So did the corporate workplace. It just felt awkward when people didn’t introduce themselves, get to know a little about each other, and then say a nifty phrase to get themselves out of the situation.

I realized a lot of this is due to ridiculous time constraints. When you have two minutes to meet someone before you end up working on a high stakes project with them the next week, you try to dig down into the relationship.

Traveling with time taught me these things don’t have to be so concise. Just like a beard, new relationships should be allowed to slowly flourish before any major efforts are made to shape them. Trying to squeeze all the essentials in at the beginning can squelch a natural interaction.

Even at hostels and guesthouses, where it’s important to get to know the host and other guests to some degree, I’ve realized that there’s no need to rush it. Some of our first interactions with hosts have been simple, heartfelt hello’s. There’s not a lot to say with fourteen kilos on your sweat-drenched back.

And having stayed in over fifteen places in the last couple of months, I find that there’s plenty of time for learning about each other. Where we are from, what personality types we have, and how much of the local language and customs we understand are all eventually seen. What time we wake up, when we leave and when we return, and what our room looks like are little things that say a lot too.

A short stay of one night can be ample for a deep connection with the host. But over the course of a week at one place, people can get very close. We have developed fond relationships with many of our hosts. Usually not more than a few sentences are exchanged at each interaction. But trust builds, respect solidifies, and love grows amongst people who share good intentions and a common philosophy.

That philosophy is one of camaraderie between travelers and hosts. It is one that believes in the good of travel. The mindset that the world belongs to no one, that we are at the mercy of our own and each other’s actions, and that sharing leads to fortune. The belief that money represents a fair transaction, and that trust and love earn more than what is paid.

It’s not base to feel that payment is necessary to begin a relationship between host and guest. Payment is healthy. It is the established form of beginning a relationship beyond one’s own family. It’s the language we can speak with strangers before opening our mouths. It tells the recipient that you have earned, through your own creation of value, the means to stay at their place. After money, the rest is art.

People exchange performances of communication that express and request respect, dignity, beauty, mastery, and ultimately, love. This isn’t in the form of a dance or painting, although it could be. It’s in the subtleties of interaction. The words, the facial and bodily expressions, the presence, and all of the actions that communicate are designed to establish a relationship. They may be intentional, and they may not. The difference can mean the divergence between a lasting connection and a sorry waste of life.

No one wants to waste life. But so few of us act to build on life. So the key is, from my observation of myself, that I have intention. Because when I consciously tell myself that I’m doing something, it is almost always something good. Not to say I’m a saint, but that most evil actions come from my lack of initiative or motive or creativity. If I intend to be a good guest and build a positive relationship with my host, I avoid the haphazard experience of oops’s, maybe’s and sure’s.

Let relationships develop naturally, give them time. And be intentional when it’s your turn to assert your beauty into the world.

Live powerfully,

Steve

The Brilliant Beast Blog Daily