any of you guys suppliment with MCT's or coconut oil?

Just been reading around, and may be a fat suppliment i'm interested in. I have a fairly low fat intake if I don't "supplement" (I use peanut butter) and I was thinking about adding 1-3 tablespoons of MCT oil/coconut oil to my daily diet.

Just curious about some testimonials. I've read some of the peer reviewed literature and everything sounds pretty legit with it.

If you are going to think about doing something like this you should ask a professional:

First things first:
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Medium-chain Triglycerides (MCT) - There are medical reasons to use MCT in certain conditions -

MCTs contain fatty acids with 6 to 10 carbon atoms. They are quickly emptied from the stomach and rapidly absorbed and transported to mitochondria giving them a theoretical advantage over long-chain triglycerides as a readily available energy souce.

As the intensity of exercise increases, the body shifts its fuel usage from fat to carbohydrate. One of the "adaptations" that the body makes to endurance training is the increased ability to oxidize fat during moderate to high-intensity training. Atheletes have considered many stratagies to increase fat availability oxidation in an effort to spare glycogen and prolong performance - especially in ENDURANCE and ULTRA-endurance sports. The ingestion of supplemental MCT oil is one of them.

Studies on well-trained cyclists FAILED to demonstrate and enhanced performance. MCT DID NOT significantly alter fat oxidation during exercise and did NOT spare muscle glycogen. There seems to be NO ERGOGENIC benefit for endurance athletes.

MCT is cleverly advertised to bodybuilders as "the oil for the well-tuned human machine". However, there have been NO research studies of MCT use in strength athletes and NO PLAUSIBLE THEORY for how such a supplement would enhance performance.

While the data is still being accumulated on this subject there is a POTENTIAL PROBLEM:

MCT was studied in endurance runners (30 g MCT twice a day) and resulted (as suspected) in alteration of blood lipid levels. Total cholesterol, Low-density Lipoprotein (LDL), and triacylglycerol were all increased - Not a good thing. MCT supplementation can also result in mild to severe gastrointestinal stress and diarrhea.

COCONUT OIL: Is a saturated fat. Although there are some reports on improvement in memory, this has the same bad side as the saturated fat group. It raises LDL and in fact may lower HDL creating a double edged sword.

The Harvard School of Public Health (Harvard has done many leading studies on fat metabolism) - that the types of fat we ingest have more to do what our LDL/HDL numbers are than the cholesterol we consume in our diets. Coconut Oil is very heart unfriendly fat and I can not find any literature that responsiblely supports it's use in sports

Therefore, short answer is both of these items at the current time have NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIER USE in Endurance or Resistance training.

I can give you the articles/studies from the above studies sited. Much of this information comes from the recently released book
Sports Nutrition: A Manual for Professionals, 5th Edition - written by world leading RDs and SNs from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and is supported by Sports Nutritionists (that work with professional teams) that I work with.

From a health perspective, MCT increase fat oxidation and energy expenditure as well as reduce food intake and beneficially alter body composition. Results indicate that MCT feeding is ineffective in improving exercise performance and future work should focus on the health benefits and applications of MCT.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that MCT oil can be incorporated into a weight loss program without fear of adversely affecting metabolic risk factors. Distinction should be made regarding chain length when it comes to discussing the effects of saturated fats on metabolic risk factors.

Collectively, our results suggest a link between moderate consumption of MCT and improved risk factors in moderately overweight humans in a low-cost, free-living setting

Significant decreases of body weight, the amount of body fat, subcutaneous and visceral fat were noted in the MLCT group as compared with those of the LCT group for 12 weeks (P<0.05). Furthermore, a significant decrease in serum total cholesterol was noted in the MLCT group as compared with that of the LCT group at 8 weeks (P<0.05). However, other serum parameters were not different between the MLCT and LCT groups. The results suggest that the daily intake of MLCT diet could result in a reduction in body weight and in accumulation of body fat, and, moreover, it could reduce serum total cholesterol.

And anyone that links the saturated fat to cholesterol levels and then links THAT to heart risks is living in the dark ages nutritionally.