In addition to seeing the Speak & Spell when I was browsing through the channels, I also came across an infomercial for a weight loss program called “The Food Lovers Fat Loss System” by some mysterious guy named Robert Ferguson. I stopped to watch the infomercial out of curiosity to what the gimmick of diet program is. And from what I saw, it looks to me that the program is very similar to what I’ve learned on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program.

The infomercial claims that its possible to still eat all your favorite foods and do so in a way that makes it so that it will speed up your metabolism and help you lose weight. It then has some older lady with lesbian-esque spikey hair proclaims she can eat chocolate, pastas with cream sauces, pancakes, and has kept the weight off for over four years. My first thoughts were, yeah, all of those can be done on the Belly Fat Cure, but how can this lady have kept the weight off for four years if this a program that looks pretty new? Robert Ferguson then says you’ll eat so you’ll never be hungry, never have food you don’t like, and never deprive yourself of the foods you love.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

If you were a child of the 1980′s like I was, then you probably either had one or had a friend who owned a Speak & Spell toy from Texas Instruments. It was probably most popular after it’s role in the film, “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” as one of the components used in the communicator built for E.T. to “phone home.”

In probably the first time I’ve actually turned my television to see anything being broadcast in over a year, I passed by either MTV or VH1 and caught sight of a Speak & Spell unit in the video for “Fireflies” by Owl City. This sparked a Google search and I read about the history of the device on the Wikipedia page for the Speak & Spell units. And probably a highlight of my search was an online emulator.

According to the website for the emulator, the flash program was inspired by an eBay purchase of an old Speak & Spell unit, which unfortunately wasn’t in a working state when he obtained it. So his emulator is able to recreate the sounds and some basic functionality but not all the various modes of the device. The Speak & Spell was a revolutionary toy at the time as it was the first time an educational toy utilized speech that was not recorded on a tape or phonograph, it was built into the solid state electronics of the device.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

If you pre-order three copies of Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure book, Jorge wants to send you a free Audio download you can put on your iPod or other MP3 players or even burn to CD that will explain the program and help you get started right away. The book doesn’t hit stores until right after Christmas, but you can get the download right away. There is no official Audiobook version being recorded for the book, so the only way to get this file is by buying three copies of the book.

When you buy three copies of the book, you get one for yourself and two that you can give a couple of friends or family members that may also be interested in losing some weight with the program. Trust me, when the weight starts to come off, people will be interested in what you’re doing and it’ll be handy to have an extra copy of the book to give away. It’s the one thing that frustrates me most about having done so well on the program is that when I get asked about what I’ve been doing, I can’t help people get the book right away. They have to wait until the end of December.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

I was recently asked what the nutritional breakdown of my Sugar Free Nanaimo Bar recipe was and I thought I’d see what Google would came up with for finding out how to do that. I ended up finding Recipes.SparkPeople.com which would not only allow me to find out the nutritional information for my recipe but would allow me to compile my recipes into a virtual cookbook.

I found the interface for entering ingredients a little clunky because I ended up having to manually enter nutritional information from a lot of the products I used in my recipe. And then I ended up having to do some funky calculations to determine how to translate that nutritional information into the quantities needed for the recipe. Take for example the Xylitol featured in the recipe, the nutritional information for it is based on a 2 teaspoon serving size and part of the recipe calls for 1 and 3/4 cups of it. So it was a little tricky, fortunately, the final recipe doesn’t show the weird quantities and sizes I had to enter to calculate the recipe.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

When I was asked to join Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure 12 week program, Kim, my main contact within Jorge Cruise’s group, asked me for an update on my progress and I put together this photo which merges a picture of me from a year ago, when I met Arrival, one of the world’s best ABBA tribute bands in Los Angeles, with this photo of me from my trip to New York last month, I felt the photos had similar enough poses to show the dramatic difference in how I looked then compared to how I look now.

I am really pleased to see the difference myself as sometimes I don’t always see it. I see myself daily in the mirror and so I don’t always notice the difference myself. The Belly Fat Cure has definitely been the best experience I’ve had this year. As I plan to continue the plan for life, I am sure I will continue to lose weight. I have a number of people ask what my final goal weight is and my answer is, I keep going until the weight stops coming off, then I’ll just maintain it.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

Today I received a phone call from Kim from Jorge Cruise’s office. I was being offered an invitation to take part in the 12 week Belly Fat Cure online coaching program that started last week. Thanks to the suggestion by Lynne who wrote has written some comments here on my blog she wrote into Jorge’s staff suggesting I should be part of the program. (Click here to see the blog entry Lynne commented on) According to Kim, Jorge agreed and was calling to give me the details.

I feel honored to be invited to participate. I strongly believe that the Belly Fat Cure program is one of the easiest to apply programs that really works. I feel the folks who have joined the 12 week program are in for a life changing experience. The original 10 week program for Costco members that I was part of ended quite a while ago and it was the trial model for the program Jorge is offering. I learned a lot and have changed my eating patterns for life as a direct result of that program. I am over 65 pounds lighter and 10 inches smaller around my waist because of that information. And I am still using the program to continue on my path.

I really appreciate being invited to participate in the 12 week program especially due to the fact that a number of the participants who have joined the 12 week program have taken the time to write in comments and questions here on my blog. I am definitely happy to help out answering any and all questions about the program that I get here to the best of my ability as a successful student of the program. Having access to the 12 week program makes it easier for me to be able to answer specific program related questions from program participants. (Just a reminder to the folks on the program, I do not work for Jorge Cruise and my responses are not officially sanctioned by Jorge Cruise or his group, but I will answer the questions to the best of my ability.) I am more than happy to share my experiences on the program so that you too can have success with the program. Please do continue to use my blog as a resource and anything I can help you with, submit a comment in response to any blog entry and I will respond as soon as I have opportunity to do so.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

While this is technically old news, I just heard about it for the first time today through an article relating to advertising considered to be offensive. The commercial in question here that I am writing about is what I found to be a hilarious commercial for Snickers candy bars that uses Mr. T to poke fun at the supposed lack of masculinity when it comes to speed walking.

The commercial was widely regarded in the humorous spirit the ad was intended to be viewed. According to the Advertising Standards Authority of the UK the ad barely ruffled feathers and a spokesperson for Mars, the parent company of Snickers candy bars, the ad was meant to be funny and was positively received in the UK. If the commercial is designed to be funny and the intended audience of the commercial does find it funny, what is the controversy?

The controversy is that some American organizations took great offense to the commercial and have caused such a ruckus about it that Mars has opted to permanently retire the ad and no longer show it anywhere in the world. Keep in mind the commercial was made for the UK market, it wasn’t shown in the United States at all prior to the controversy. The parent company of the advertising agency responsible for the ad received an open letter challenging the ad in a US advertising industry title and the Human Rights Campaign declared the commercial offensive to the gay, lesbian, bi, transgender community by implying that the speedwalker was a homosexual and the attack on the speedwalker both verbally and with Snickers Bars being shot out of a machine gun, is essentially a hate crime.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

Last night I got together with some friends for what we call “Economy DVD Night” where we get together at the host’s home in order to view a DVD of a preselected movie. It essentially serves as an excuse to get together more often by not always choosing to meet out at restaurants and having to spend a bunch of money just for the sake of getting together.

The rules of Economy DVD night are simple:
1. Everyone eats on their own beforehand… don’t bring anything.
2. Come as you are, even if you’re in work clothes or sweats.
3. The host will provide the basics: movie, drinks and a snack.
4. After the movie, everyone cleans-up after themselves (then gets out of the hosts’ hair!)

Last night’s host, my friend Jason Murillo, decided to feature the movie “Election” featuring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. I had never seen the movie before. To be honest, when it was originally released, I thought the trailer looked the kind of movie I wouldn’t enjoy. Reese wasn’t yet the major star she is today, and it just looked like retreading high school memories which I certainly didn’t want to do at the time. And I don’t consider myself enough of a Matthew Broderick fan for his presence in a movie to get me to see it. But since Jason stated the movie is one of his all time favorite movies and it is a black comedy, I thought why not come check it out.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

I recently decided to try the Sirius XM iPhone application with their free seven day trial, and I quite liked being able to use my iPhone as an additional Sirius radio in addition to the Stiletto 100 I already use for Sirius. So naturally when the free trial expired, I decided to give Sirius a call to add on the Premium Internet access which is required to take advantage of the iPhone application.

I didn’t really want to pay more money, so I asked the customer service agent if she could just cancel the added on Best of XM package I had added on. I mainly got to hear Oprah Radio from the XM lineup of channels, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t like the channel very much. I wasn’t listening to any of the programs and none of the other XM stations that were added were of any interest to me, so it was kind of silly to be paying $4.04 a month extra for worthless stations. As the premium Internet add on is only $2.99 a month, it essentially means it should be no problem “downgrading” my account. Since it was all prepaid I wasn’t expecting a refund on the extra already paid.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

When I was in New York, I went to a Junior’s restaurant specifically to try a slice of their sugar free cheesecake. It was absolutely incredible as I detailed previously on my blog. (Click here to see my entry about the Junior’s Sugar Free Cheesecake. So needless to say, I decided it was time to order a whole cheesecake and it was definitely good enough to justify a price tag of $29.95 plus $11.00 for shipping.

I placed the order for the cheesecake a week ago and picked to have it shipped on Monday, October 19th, for delivery today, October 21st. I had actually forgotten I had ordered it by the time the email from Junior’s showed up in my e-mail box to indicate the cheesecake had shipped and the e-mail also provided the UPS tracking number so I could monitor it’s progress on its way across the country to me here in San Diego.

I watched the cheesecake progress from it’s arrival at the Lawnside, New Jersey UPS center, it’s transfer to the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania processing center, where it was loaded onto a airplane and arrived at the Ontario, California processing center. As soon as it arrived there, I even reported to co-workers I told about the cheesecake that my cheesecake had landed in California. And soon after the cheesecake was sent to the UPS center in San Diego where it was loaded into a truck and arrived at my door in a brightly colored box in the Junior’s colors.

(more…)

Share on Facebook