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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To most of the rest of the country, Sonic Drive-In restaurants are a common, everyday sight and experience. Perhaps, one hardly worth taking note. However, they are relatively new here in San Diego, with their first store appearing in Santee about a year ago. I still have not visited that location, but on my way to my Post Office Box in Carlsbad I was driving through Vista and found they had put in a Sonic Drive-In near the recently redeveloped Main Street area. In fact, it’s really close to the old Peppertree Frosty shop that has an amazing variety of milkshakes and other ice cream treats.

I decided to give Sonic a try as I haven’t done a “drive-in” experience in years and thought it might be fun. I pulled into an open stall, decided on what to have then pressed the button to call the store to let them know I was ready to order. Once the order was placed, I loved the fact I could just pay with my Debit card (using it as a Mastercard) right at the menu board right next to the speaker and within a few minutes a young girl on roller skates was out to deliver my order and receipt. It was really cool. I know once the drive-thru was introduced, the drive-in’s were pretty much existing on borrowed time and nearly disappeared permanently, fortunately Sonic has been able to revive the format and make it accessible to folks who might never know the concept ever existed.

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The other night I happened to be visiting the Bed Bath And Beyond store in the 4S Ranch Section of Rancho Bernardo. I left Bed Bath And Beyond empty handed and figured I was in the area, I should check out the Jimbo’s Naturally store which is the local health food store which happens to be in the same shopping complex. I happened to need some unsweetened almond milk, so I thought should just pop in.

While browsing through the store, I ended up over by the cooler that stocks bottles of water in a variety of sizes, everything from gallon size bottles on down to individual sizes. The display case had a big section filled with bottles of water that featured really brightly colored pictures of fruits and berries. While the photos of the fruits and berries caught my eye, it was the name of the product, “Hint” and it’s tag line, “Drink water, not sugar” that made me pick up a bottle to read the label. Just looking at the Nutrition Facts label, hint water is identical to ordinary water, no calories, no fat, no sodium, no carbohydrates, no proteins, and no sugar whatsoever. The only difference to be found on the label is in the ingredient list, where in addition to purified water, it has whatever it happens to be flavored with. Just pure and simple, water and the labeled ingredient that gives it flavor, no sugar, no sweeteners, and no preservatives.

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Now that 2009 has come to a close and 2010 has begun, I can safely say that it’s a year that has been very challenging and although I am not the least bit sad to see 2009 go, it certainly was not without some really incredible experiences for me that I would like to highlight before wipe the slate clean and start fresh with 2010.

This list was especially difficult to narrow down since 2009 was the year I kicked my blogging into high gear. I had started Ryan’s Incredible World in 2007 didn’t actually start blogging until 2008 and I would maybe make no more than five entries a month. So picking my highlights of 2008 was relatively easy since there wasn’t so many blog entries to go through to pick out the defining moments.

I had joined a couple of 30-Day blogging challenges which requires 30 blog entries in 30 days and it essentially got me into the habit of making almost daily blog entries. Now it’s pretty safe to say that each month sees about 25 new blog entries. The constant blogging has actually helped bring a bigger audience to my blog, so if your first time reading any of my writing has been in 2009, then no doubt something I wrote in 2009 caught your eye and is why you’re here reading this entry now. I am grateful for the many folks who’ve read my blog and left me comments, it’s been a pleasure to hear your feedback throughout the year. In any case, I looked through every post of 2009 to select what I feel were the 10 Most Incredible Things about 2009 that happened for me. You’ll note I combined a few complimentary things to narrow it down to 10.

I do hope you enjoy my reflection on 2009 and continue to join me on my quest to find the most incredible things of 2010. Without further ado, in no particular order.

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To get ready for tomorrow’s book launch of the Belly Fat Cure, Jorge Cruise has prepared a series of “Ask Jorge” videos on YouTube to answer the most common questions people have about health and wellness. Jorge also invites you to visit his YouTube Channel to submit your own questions on fitness, wellness, motivation, nutrition, and health.

Jorge will be drawing from the submitted questions for future Ask Jorge videos. So if you have a pressing question about the Belly Fat Cure or health in general, then just click here to visit Jorge’s YouTube page for “Ask Jorge” and click on the big red “Submit A Question” button. I personally find YouTube’s page for the Ask Jorge videos a little annoying to navigate so I’ve gone ahead and provided all of the Ask Jorge questions so far and put them in order and you can check them out below. If you’re interested in picking up Jorge Cruise’s “Belly Fat Cure” book from Amazon, just click here.

We’re starting with Video # 22 because of the way YouTube is set where the most recent video is the first video you see, so the Introductory video is labeled # 22, and Jorge’s first 21 Ask Jorge Questions appear below it.

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One of my favorite parts of the holidays is Egg Nog. And because I’ve been on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program all year and have eliminated high amounts of sugar from my diet, it meant it wasn’t looking good for having Egg Nog this year, well at least not the store bought variety. It didn’t help any when Jorge did a video with tips for surviving the holidays and his answer to Egg Nog was to just avoid it in general. Although it was meant as a tip for at holiday parties where it Egg Nog is being made by other people.

Not to let the season pass by without any Egg Nog, I went on the hunt for a recipe and came across several, but some seemed more complicated than I wanted to make it. Some called for Egg Nog flavored syrups that are sweetened with Splenda which is simply not an acceptable option for me. I tried a couple of recipes on a small one serving batches to try them out, but wasn’t really pleased with any of them. I did find one that seems to work the best. I found it on About.com. It also has a variation for those who don’t want to use eggs. The recipe calls for alcohol which I don’t always like in my Egg Nog and I decided to borrow Cinnamon from another recipe for Egg Nog I found and have liked this one the best.

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The Internet has certainly made the world a more interesting place for people to connect with one another. Recently I was contacted by Kirsten Sherlock. Kirsten found me on YouTube through Jorge Cruise’s “Death By Sugar” video that showcases the sugar experiment I assisted Jorge with. (Click here to see the video on YouTube and click here to read more about the experiment.) I had left a comment on YouTube identifying myself as the Ryan in the video, and Kristen found the comment and got in touch with me.

Kristen is a distributor for a brand new product called Yoli. It’s a new beverage product that employs a brand new technology called “Blast Cap Technology.” This innovative technology is designed to counteract three problems with the current beverage industry. Those problems are heat pasteurization, plastic leaching, and loss of nutrient potency.

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The big news in town this week with a lot of my friends, especially the ones from the Midwest and East Coast, is that a Five Guys Burger And Fries shop has opened in San Diego. It apparently opened about three weeks ago, but the reason why it was not really discovered until this week with my friends is because this first location in San Diego is tucked away in the food court of Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado. They aren’t advertising to the public because it’s on a military base and as a member of the general public you can’t just go on to a military base just because you want to try their new burger joint. You need someone with a Department of Defense sticker on their vehicle to get access to the base.

I wasn’t originally planning on heading out yesterday, but needed to head down to the county courthouse for some information and saw that one of my local friends, Dan Baggett, was planning on going and was looking to see if anyone wanted to join him. He said his friend Jack was going to join him and I decided I would meet up with them so that we could ride over to the base and check it out. It definitely sounded like a must try event since my other friend Joe Gray has posted to his Facebook account that he’s already been there twice in less than 48 hours and that in June when he was in Tennessee he went to a Five Guys three days in a row for lunch. So with that kind of recommendation, I had to check it out.

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I was introduced to Aunt Gussie’s Sugar Free Cookies when I was in New York in September. There was a huge display of them at the Whole Foods Market on 7th Avenue. I decided to buy a package of the cookies and I opted for the Spelt Sugar Free Chocolate Chip ones and found them to be quite good. Spelt is a wheat alternative that’s high in fiber and allows nutrients to be absorbed more quickly than traditional wheat.

Before heading home from New York, I looked up Aunt Gussie’s website and used the store locater option to see if there were any stores in the San Diego area that carried the cookies. According to the website, both Whole Foods Markets in San Diego carry them, so I figured it would be easy to find some more at home. Not quite the case, I visited both San Diego locations, I spent an hour at the Hillcrest location trying to find the cookies, no luck at all. The La Jolla location carried a couple of varieties, but not ones I wanted, certainly no match for the large section of them the New York location had, no doubt due to the fact the company is based in New Jersey, so it’s pretty much local to New York.

I ended up finding them at my local Jimbo’s Naturally. The local 4S Ranch location in Rancho Bernardo had two spots on the shelf for them, one was sold out which I’m guessing was the sugar free chocolate chip cookies and the other was the sugar free biscotti style cookies. I didn’t but those. I was told the Escondido location definitely had the sugar free chocolate chip cookies and I had to stop in Escondido today so I stopped by there. Sure enough they had the Sugar Free chocolate chip cookies, except these were the Sugar Free Chocolate Chip cookies with Almonds. Not exactly what I wanted, but I’m okay with Almonds so I bought a package. Very good!!

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When McDonald’s started selling Angus One-Third Pound Burgers, it took a page from West Coast burger chain, Carl’s Jr, which introduced sit-down restaurant style burgers a few years ago under the name “The Six Dollar Burger” which they were selling for $3.99. So in response to McDonald’s introduction of similar premium burgers, Carl’s Jr decided to take on McDonald’s head on by introducing their own version of the Big Mac called “The Big Carl.”

The Big Carl takes on the Big Mac, blatantly with a lot of the advertising for it offering side by side comparisons to the Big Mac, some done humorously as if the burgers were talking to each other (think the Apple commercials with Mac vs. Windows except instead of two actors, it’s just closeups of the burgers with voiceovers.) And others use Carl’s Jr.’s more signature sarcastically toned humor as seen in the commercial below which compares the burgers with a take on the old Big Mac song. I particularly like Carl’s more sarcastically toned commercials ever since they introduced a campaign showcasing a guy looking clueless in a supermarket with the slogan, “Without us, some guys would starve.”

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