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Is the combination of Bulletproof coffee and green tea a good one?

I currently fast and have green tea supplements as a morning supplement and maybe a cup or two of breakfast tea during the day, on workout days I use BCAA pre workout. I have read about the benefits of Bulletproof coffee pre workout but think it may be overdoing it on the caffeine.

I have recently just recovered from a tonsillectomy with a two week recovery of no physical exertion and I have come back firing on all cylinders but have noticed I have lost strength on mostly my presses [BP and OHP]

The green tea is indeed used used for fat burning [taken in tablet form of a morning] whilst fasting and I have a couple of cups of breakfast tea leading up to breaking my fast

Thanks to Berin Loritsch for the great reply it looks like it may not affect my sleep with the amounts I'm taking but it's still a concern regarding recovery post w/o

If there are any alternatives that I could use instead of Bulletproof Coffee I'm welcome to suggestions

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  • There doesn't seem to be a nutrition StackExchange site, it was my understanding that the two went hand in hand in any case – spences10 Feb 5 '14 at 15:27
  • @JohnP while I do not disagree with you, this is going to become more troubling the larger Fitness.SE gets as nutrition is THE foundation of fitness. – Dan Andrews Feb 5 '14 at 18:14
  • Its directly relating to my workout not like some posts here fitness.stackexchange.com/q/15296/7755 – spences10 Feb 5 '14 at 18:22
  • HOW is it relating to your workout? Other than the vague reference to BCAA, there is no workout detail. What makes you think you are overdoing it on caffeine? What impact is it having or not having on your workouts? You've got a vaguely worded question with tenuous references to fitness. And you will note that the question you linked has already been downvoted and flagged. Yes, nutrition is one of the foundations of good fitness, but we expect the questions to reflect that, not just "Hey, I work out occasionally, is this good to eat?" – JohnP♦ Feb 5 '14 at 19:49
  • I was really happy with Berin's answer in any case which i appreciate. Dan Andrews makes a good point there will be more questions like this one. I do a stronglifts 5x5 routine three times a week and use bcaa pre workout. @JohnP your hostility isn't wanted chap. I'm a total n00b when it come to both fitness and nutrition i have always been treated with respect when asking noob questions on other sites and other SE sites. – spences10 Feb 5 '14 at 20:36
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Bulletproof coffee has an appreciable amount of fat from the butter or ghee, so make sure you count the macros from this cup of coffee for your daily food. 23g of fat per oz of ghee (2 tbsp).

Green Tea, and more specifically the catechins, have a minor effect on fat burning and oxidation. While there are numerous benefits, the affects are all minor with a range of studies backing up that claim (available in the links).

Caffeine can be good when used appropriately

Nate Winkler had a good article on PR Smashing Nutrition which covered the use of caffeine.

  • Caffeine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system (the fight or flight instinct)
  • Making use of the stimulant when you are training is good, however when you are not it can be bad
  • Caffeine abuse reduces your sensitivity to the caffeine. This means higher doses are required for the same effect.

Based on that article, I cut my caffeine down to one 16 oz of coffee per day. I find that I'm plenty stimulated by that one cup now, where before I would need several cups throughout the day. When I get within a month competition I'll drop even that amount of coffee and not have any until the day of competition.

The combination of Bulletproof Coffee and Green Tea

I couldn't find any stats on how much caffeine was in the Bulletproof Upgraded coffee, but I did find some general stats on coffee and tea.

  • 8oz drip coffee has 90-200mg caffeine
  • 8oz green tea has 24-40mg caffeine

Green tea does have caffeine, but not so much as to be particularly worrisome. However coffee does have a lot of caffeine. If we use the 16oz threshold from my personal experience, we'd be looking at 180-400mg caffeine daily.

The equivalent mix would be 3-4 cups of green tea and one cup of bulletproof coffee. I would save the coffee as a pre-workout, and use the green tea throughout the day as you see fit. The important thing is that you don't overdo it, and scale back when you need to. I'm in excess of 250 lbs at the moment, so you may have to scale the total caffeine intake to account for differences in body mass.

Long story short, you should be fine.

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