When I initially took advantage of a Woot daily deal on a Rival Food Vacuum Sealer, I thought maybe at best, I was going to be able to really take advantage of my Costco membership and actually start buying some of the bulk meat packages. I was looking forward to taking advantage of the discounts available for buying in bulk because now I’d have a way to actually save the meat in the freezer without getting freezer burn by the time I finally got around to using it all up. The last thing I expected that it was going to lead to two additional purchases and drastically change how I cook in my own home.

When the vacuum sealer from Woot showed up, I was hooked. I got a good deal on the unit, I spent a total of $24.99 for the sealer which was very reasonable for an entry level machine. The unit came with four bags, so I went to the store and bought some bags in the form of a FoodSaver roll that lets you custom make bags to your choice of size. And within a few days I was really enjoying the ability to vacuum seal food and finding the Rival unit to be decent but lacking in the ability to cut off the vacuum and move directly into sealing if I didn’t want to completely remove all the air. Also the Rival unit operated by applying pressure to the lid until the hands free operation light came on, at which point it would then take over and continue sucking out all the air until it could suck out no more then activate the sealing mechanism. The lid required quite a bit of pressure to activate it, which is fine, but I could see the complaint I later saw from a lot of people commenting on the unit in online reviews. But ultimately, I decided I was going to need a fancier vacuum sealing unit for my needs.

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Perhaps you’ve seen Morgan Spurlock’s documentary, “Super Size Me” where he takes McDonald’s to task with an experiment over 30 days to see how unhealthy McDonald’s food is. Well, filmmaker Tom Naughton, decides to do the same experiment but prove it’s possible to lose weight eating only fast food for 30 days and in the process takes not only Morgan Spurlock to task, but also the US Government, consumer action groups, and basically every diet and exercise guru who advocate low fat, high carb diets.

Naughton points out that in Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me”, Spurlock consumed over 5,000 calories a day, which by anyone’s standards, would be likely to make anyone fat. But Spurlock had three rules he was going to follow, he ate only three meals a day, would try everything on the menu at least once, and would super size the meal if asked by the clerk. Naughton pokes a hole in this because there’s no way he could put together three meals a day and hit that calorie level without adding extra food. Spurlock gained over 25 pounds during his experiment, and it’s Naughton’s claim that Spurlock intentionally “Mc-Stuffed” himself because had he only gained four or five pounds, it wouldn’t have been as dramatic a film. And repeated efforts to contact Morgan Spurlock to review his food log were refused.

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On May 1st, Jorge Cruise introduced a bunch of his clients former and present know about a brand new version of the Belly Fat Cure, which he is calling the “Fast Track” version of the program. While I can’t get into the specifics of the details of the program until he launches a more public announcement for the program, what I can say is that the program was developed to be as a super turbo charged version of the program that in the San Diego test case group he’s been trying it out with for the first last two weeks, the results have been astonishingly good.

Some of the benefits of the new Fast Track program is that it eliminates the need to use any specialty products, which a lot of people seemed to feel Jorge’s New York Times Bestselling book, “The Belly Fat Cure” mentions as options to use but doesn’t state they are required to be used. Also the having to track sugar and carbohydrates also gets eliminated in the program making it very easy to follow. Additionally, the menu plan is very simple as all the meals are designed to be put together very quickly and easily with little to no effort. No complicated recipes, no specialty products, and no tracking. Sound too good to be true? Well it’s not.

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When I was asked to be an evaluator of the first paid Belly Fat Cure coaching group as someone who’s been in the program and had great success with it, the last thing I expected to happen was to actually make some new friends in the process. I wasn’t really looking to have regular interaction with any of the folks in the program, just serve as an independent observer lurking in the shadows. However, one of those clients, Amber, who had started a blog entitled, “Me & Jorge” to document her journey through the Belly Fat Cure coaching program, reached out to me as a fellow blogger and the rest is as they say, history.

Amber initially was very shy about photographs, so I didn’t know what she looked like until well into the coaching program. This reminded me of my early days in my blogging as the program was at that point, still a work in progress and I wasn’t quite sure what I could share or not share on my blog about the program. I worked around it by always pointing people to the free report that was available on JorgeCruise.com at the time so that those who wanted more program specific details could download what Jorge was freely making available and just recap what had been working for me. I was very careful to leave out more specific details that were not yet available to the public.

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When I originally started on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure Program just about a year ago, the large majority of people weren’t yet aware how dangerous sugar can be to the human body. While it’s still arguable how well aware the public is now, it’s considerably more aware now than a year ago. Truvia and PureVia were just hitting the market and most people still unaware the Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola are the major backers behind the companies that make these Erythritol and Stevia combinations and helped push their rapid approval through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be used as a sweetener.

A year ago, you’d be just starting to see Truvia and PureVia hitting the shelves of the average supermarket, and now they’re pretty much a guarantee to be seen there. Both are starting to make their way into beverage products made by the respective cola giants although they’re yet to make their way into the cola giant’s diet versions of their signature products. Perhaps one of the signs that things are changing in a good way is that packets of PureVia are now available in the bulk purchasing giant warehouses of Costco. The super-sized boxes of packets which contain 300 packets are humongous compared to the 40 and 80 count boxes you can typically find in a regular supermarket.

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My previous roommates had a Magic Bullet, so I could kind of experiment with making shakes like the one in Jorge Cruise’s “Belly Fat Cure” book, but the Magic Bullet has a small capacity and really not a lot of power for some serious blending. Now that I’ve moved and got my own kitchen, I didn’t have a blender of any kind. And I really didn’t want to spend any money on one either.

At work, when we meet our customer service goals, they award us a bonus. The bonus used to be a quarterly cash bonus that maxed out at $200 but once taxed at the rate the government taxes bonuses, it was barely more than half the value. As part of a cost cutting measure last year due to the economy, the quarterly bonus opportunity was transitioned into a point program where the points could be saved and redeemed through an awards catalog online. The points can be redeemed for a wide variety of products and if that’s not quite enough for you, they even have a partnership with Amazon.com for supplying Music and DVD options to be redeemed for points.

When I logged in to look at what was available, I really wasn’t looking to purchase yet with the point I had available. But I just happened to look and not only did they have a variety of blenders available, they also had KitchenAid Blenders. I’m already familiar with KitchenAid quality thanks to my grandmother’s mixer being passed down to me. And I love a great deal, the mixers are normally 7,176 points, and they were on special for 3,915 points, essentially 45% off the usual “price” only thing was there’s only one choice of color, the “Willow Blue” model. Fortunately, it’s a nice color and since buying the blender for real money would be about $100, I felt it was a great deal and placed the order. Within in a couple days the blender arrived. (more…)

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Recently, I got a blender and have finally been able to try out Jorge Cruise’s recipe from the Belly Fat Cure book for the Sugar Free Chocolate Shake. The recipe is on Page 83 under the title “Chocolate Lover’s Shake.”

When buying the ingredients, I opted to get Vanilla flavored Whey Powder instead of the Chocolate flavor the recipe calls for. I figure if I want to experiment with other flavors then it’s easier to use Vanilla as the base flavor. I initially had some of Clemmy’s Chocolate flavored Ice Cream and opted to use it and the chocolate flavored unsweetened almond milk to add the chocolate flavor. I didn’t bother adding any of the Truvia as I wanted to see how sweet it would taste without it and I threw all the ingredients into the blender and let it do it’s thing and poured the shake into a hurricane glass and topped it with whipped cream.

The shake tasted amazing. I’ve since made a few more shakes and have tried some other variations, everything from Clemmy’s Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and Vanilla almond milk and adding cocoa powder to give it chocolate flavor and even adding a few ice cubes to the blender to help it stay colder longer and it’s been fun experimenting with various ways to make the shake. I’ve even thrown in Psyllium Husks to add more fiber to the shake and they’ve all come out delicious and completely guilt free and sugar free.

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In March Jorge Cruise did an online coaching program targeting Women over the age of 40 for a specialized coaching program and the response they got overwhelmed the support staff available to handle the email support for the program. Looking for a way to help supplement their support staff, I was called by Jorge Cruise and asked to join the support staff for the course of the program as someone who’s had a lot of success with the Belly Fat Cure program and would be able to help handle the flow of emails from the clients who joined the program.

In a way the experience was like a hyper version of my own “Ask Ryan” page for Belly Fat Cure questions here on my own blog. I was helping several ladies with their questions regarding the Belly Fat Cure program and got some very interesting questions that I had to research to be able to answer them. Some questions were easy ones to answer and others were a bit more of a challenge. As a result of the experience I’ve developed a whole new level of appreciation for Kim, who was the support person when I originally went through the program and she fielded all the questions from me and the other members of the group I was a part of. Here I was a colleague for Kim and helping get those questions sent in answered as quickly as possible.

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In my time on the Belly Fat Cure, one of the earliest things recommended was very dark chocolate, first Jorge Cruise was recommending the Green & Black’s‘s 85% Dark Chocolate, and more recently the Ghirardelli Midnight Reverie 85% Cacao dark chocolate. Both offer dark chocolate with only 5 grams of sugar per serving. I’ve never been a big fan of dark chocolate in my life so I’ve resisted trying either brand…until now.

Pretty much my indulgences in Chocolate on the Belly Fat Cure have been in the form of sugar free chocolates such as the line of sugar free chocolates from Hershey’s which includes miniature sized candies of several Hershey owned brands like Hershey’s (Chocolate Bars), Reese’s (Peanut Butter Cups), and York (Peppermint Patties), which have been fine, but sometimes not quite as indulgent as I would like. I’ve also just allowed myself to have the chocolates I do like but only in very small tiny portions, such as a single Dove square, or my favorites imported from Canada such as mini Aero bars and mini Coffee Crisp bars. I’ve actually done quite well with those, I ordered some from Canada in July and I still have a sizable number of the mini bars left and it’s now February. In the old days they wouldn’t have lasted a week, much less 7 months so far.

So I happened to be in the store and saw the Ghirardelli chocolate, and thought I’ll give it a try as I can have four squares of it for a single serving. So I got it out to the car, and opened up the package and broke off a small piece and bit into it, and let’s just say, I quickly posted on Twitter that not only was it my first ever purchase of the 86% Cacao chocolate, but also my last purchase and that my opinion of it was that it was “Fucking Disgusting.”

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Following my visit to the Sonic Drive-In in Vista, I stopped at the nearby Frazier Farms Market mainly to see they had any Ginger Ale Zevia, which they did have, but I was intrigued by what I saw next to the Zevia. With so few beverage manufacturers realizing that there is a market for sugar free drinks that don’t use artificial sweeteners, it’s always a nice surprise when a new comes to market that is able to be naturally sugar free, and today, I discovered a new product that I just had to bring home to try out.

That new product is Steaz Zero Calorie Sparking Green Tea. Essentially it’s a flavored tea product made with sparking water so it looks and tastes more like an exotic flavored soda instead of a tea product. The tea is sweetened with Erythritol and Stevia extract thereby making it a great option for people following Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program. The teas are also organically grown with special mention on the bottles about how its sustainably sourced for a natural and organically based beverage. There’s also several logos on the bottle to indicate it’s compliance with several programs such as certifications for being organic, vegan, fair trade, and a low carbon footprint during manufacturing. Essentially indicating the company is as environmentally focused as it is profit driven, definitely an admirable quality.

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