As someone who works in the middle of the night and am subjected to whatever is on the televisions in the breakroom at work, I am often subject to some of the more annoying commercials and informercials that plague the television landscape during those late night hours. One of the most annoying commercials as of late is for the “Smart For Life” diet program where all the people in the commercial proclaim according to the old children’s song that they have stolen a cookie from the cookie jar and have lost a lot of weight in the process. Which of course begs the question, is it really possible to eat cookies and lose weight?

The answer is definitely yes, as I have been doing exactly that, but NOT with the Smart For Life program. The commercials alone as annoying as they are have pretty much guaranteed I’ll never try the product. Upon further inspection of the program it seems that you are supposed to eat six of these cookies as meal replacements during the day and have a meal with a lot of protein and about 5 cups worth of vegetables. Not quite sure how well the program works for maintaining your weight once you reach your goal weight and come off the cookies, since programs with special food are inherently flawed by the fact you eventually come off the program and have to replace the special foods. But it does seem the testimonial cases in the commercial have done well with the program.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

My good friend Liesbeth was very kind to bring me back a tube of Nestlé Smarties from the Netherlands when she attended the International ABBA Fan Club’s Annual ABBA Day in Roosendaal back in April. I was unable to attend myself this year, and I had asked if she would be so kind as to bring me back some Smarties from her trip. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, sometimes it’s good to get a little bit of the goodies you grew up on, but aren’t available in the area you currently live. In this case, a tube of Smarties candies which are available in several countries, just not the United States.

As Liesbeth returned and presented me with the tube of Smarties, I was within my first couple of weeks on the Belly Fat Cure program by Jorge Cruise. So I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the whole tube in a single sitting or even spreading it out to two or three sittings. I wasn’t sure of the exact sugar content as the Dutch nutrition labeling didn’t quite give me the information I was looking for, so I peeked at Nestlé’s website in Canada to see what the Canadian version of Smarties had for sugar content and basically, in order to enjoy this tube of Smarties, I was going to have to limit myself to about five pieces a day. Which I was perfectly willing to do in order to enjoy my Smarties and be compliant with the Belly Fat Cure program.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

One of the things that I suppose is both good and bad about growing up in one place and moving to another is that you get to experience different things, but you also get nostalgic for the things that you can’t get in the new place that were readily available where you used to live. So as a Canadian living in San Diego, I tend to miss some of the things that were readily available in Canada that aren’t readily available here in San Diego. Fortunately, there are some great Canadians who are helping make sure former Canadians can get their fix for Canadian items, such as Rob and Elena Peters.

In what is becoming a more common way of meeting people, I met Elena Peters through Twitter. Somehow she found one of my twitter accounts and started following me. I occasionally peek at who is following me on my twitter accounts I was certainly curious about this “GoCanuck” that was following me, so I clicked over to read some of the tweets made on Twitter as well as follow the link to her site. It looks like Elena spends some time in San Diego every year and I had unfortunately just missed her most recent visit which included a Canada Day celebration that sounded like a fun event to be at. I certainly would have gone to celebrate Canada Day with other Canadians here in San Diego if I had known about the event beforehand.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

On Wednesday morning I received an early morning call from Jorge Cruise who wanted to know if I’d be willing to participate in a little experiment for his documentary that’s tentatively being called “Death By Sugar.” After he explained what he was looking to achieve, I was definitely willing to participate, albeit a little hesitant about consuming a high quantity of sugar for the experiment.

The tests were going to involve some blood draws and in order to get a pure sample Jorge called me early to ensure he caught before I had any food for the day. So I agreed to have nothing but water between then and the noon meeting time at the office of Dr. James Novak in Pacific Beach. When I got to Dr. Novak’s clinic, Jorge was already there waiting for me. I was introduced to Jared Davis who was here to film the experiment and Kelly Wiggin, a nurse in Dr. Novak’s office, who like me had been through Jorge’s Belly Fat Cure Program and lost weight. Kelly had been in an earlier test case group and she will be featured in the final version of the Belly Fat Cure book so be sure to look for her testimonial when the book comes out! Kelly was going to be in charge of taking my blood draws.

The initial experiment was going to consist of a blood draw to show what my blood looks like with no food in my system for over 14 hours. So basically blood in a fasted state. Then I was to consume approximately 300 grams of sugar, and then we would do three additional blood draws, one at ten minutes following the sugar, one at thirty minutes following the sugar, and then again at one hour following the sugar. Now keep in mind, I’ve been on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program for the last 12 weeks and I’ve had no more than 15 grams of sugar per day in those 12 week, most of the time I’ve averaged about 7 to 10 grams of sugar per day. So a meal consisting of 300 grams of sugar was going to be more sugar in one sitting than I’ve had in the last 30 days combined.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

Earlier today I attended a company picnic that was being held at the Bates Nut Farm in Valley Center, California. The locally infamous venue often due to the name “Bates” and seemingly endless jokes in reference to the movie Psycho or local DJs referring to it as “Nate’s Butt Farm” is actually a really nice place. They have a lot of land that they often rent out for company parties and the sort, but what they’re most known for is being a purveyor of nuts from around the world. Their “General Store” that’s located on the farm is like an old time candy shop where they make their own chocolates and fudge as well as offer the opportunity to purchase nuts from around the world often in several varieties such as roasted, raw, salted, unsalted, and more. The store also has a section that’s like a craft store with a variety of items for home decor that would fit into a country theme.

For my visit, I enjoyed browsing through the shop. They had several interesting variety of nuts from around the world, but ultimately all I bought from the nuts section was a 7 ounce bag of raw Macadamia nuts as I love to chop those up and add them to my sugar free cookies. I also decided to purchase a small box of their deluxe sugar free candies. They had a variety of them from truffles, to cream filled ones, to some very good peanut butter cup ones as well. The best part is they had some in milk chocolate kind as well. It seems a lot of places if they have sugar free its all dark chocolate and I just don’t like as much. Definitely will have to be stopping back here on occasion for some really delicious sugar free candies.

(more…)

Share on Facebook

(more…)

Share on Facebook