A Dying Breed

*The first part of this blog was supposed to be posted last year in December, so some information is talking about events in the past while the later half of this blog is about the present*

I’ve been in search for an ingredient for quite sometime now, it’s called Cocoa Butter (Cacao Butter). It’s the main ingredient in chocolate and I saw online that I could make White Chocolate Fat Bombs with it. 

Mmmmmmm white chocolate. Plus it’s good for you because it’s high in fat. 

I tried Trader Joe's and Sprouts, but to no avail did I find what I was looking for. They sent me to Whole Foods. So I went to Whole foods in Torrance and found out that they didn’t have Cocoa butter, I asked them to call another location and see if they had it. So they sent me to their Rolling Hills location and I drove down there and one of the employees walks me to an aisle and hands me coconut oil.

I was like, “no, no, not coconut oil, cocoa butter.” The employee apologized and once again, I am left empty handed. So I went to the customer service desk and asked one of the  employees to call around and see if another branch had it. I specifically told them, “not coconut oil, but cocoa butter.” They found one, but it was all the way down in Hermosa Beach. So I took a journey there and this is what they gave me.

I was like......

I walked around the store in desperation and one of the stock employees came and asked if I needed help. I told him what I was looking for and he knew exactly what I was talking about.

Employee: “Oh cocoa butter, so you want to make chocolate, right?” 

Me: “Yes! Oh you know what I’m talking about!” 

Employee: “Yeah, we use to sell it, but not anymore.”

Me: “Awwwhhhh”

Me: “Why don’t you guys carry it anymore?”

Employee: “Because people that shop nowadays don’t really cook from scratch. They want things instant.”

Me: “Instant, but doesn’t that defeat the purpose of being organic?”

Employee: “Yup.”

Me: “That sucks.”

Employee: “Yup, you’re a dying breed. People don’t cook like that anymore and it’s really sad, because that’s where originality comes from.”

Me: “So, where would I be able to find something like that?”

Employee: “Online, I guess.”

Me: “Okay,”

As much as I didn’t want to buy it online, it looked like I had too. But before I gave up I got a text from my sister and she actually found one near her house at some place called Mother’s market. I was so happy. So I finally was able to make my fat bombs.

My weight fluctuated throughout the weeks and it would be a gain of 2 lbs one week, and a loss of 3 lbs the next week. 

It gets frustrating but remembering the goal (long term goal of being healthy) helps which is just a loss of 1 lb (which is still weight loss). I had to endure much hardships through these past few months. Here are a few key points I’ve learned that helped me understand more about this diet and how it works. First I found out that my fat intake was lower than my protein, which is bad because one it could damage my internal organs and two is that I wasn’t losing anymore weight. So I increased my intake by simply eating 2 tablespoons of coconut oil by itself.

Yes I know, it sounds disgusting, but if it’s healthy, then why not do it? I’ll admit, it is kind of hard to eat it by itself because it has no taste to it. So what I do is I buy a can of coconut water (which has 22 grams of carbs per can) and drink a quarter of the amount of the can with the spoonful of coconut oil, just so that I can eat the coconut oil. 

Secondly I learned that discipline had to be lived out. I often find myself out with some of my Church friends eating out and then being tempted to have a “cheat” day. While cheat days are perfectly fine, what often happens is that those cheat days become cheat weekends, then cheat weeks and so on. I had to pick and choose my battles, often finding myself either eating only certain things when I go out with them or even opting to not go out. It may seem extreme but I believe that it has helped me lose weight and save some money. 

As I mentioned earlier, I went through some frustrations with this diet. A lot had to do with what was going on personally with my life and I had to deal with it. I have a tendency to turn to food when I am depressed. It has been a bad habit for quite sometime, especially if I’m stressed and depressed, then that means double trouble. Which brings me to my third point, motivation. Motivation is a big part of keeping to this way of eating. And I’ll be honest, I had no motivation at the beginning, in fact I haven’t had any motivation to keep to a diet and workout for the past 7 years. Want to know my secret? It’s a lot different than what you are thinking. You see, back in November before I started this diet, I actually was going through some tough times (spiritually and emotionally) and I came to a point in my life where I gave up on the idea of losing weight. For the past 7 years I’ve tried juicing, eating smaller portions throughout the day, not eating passed 6pm, eating a big breakfast and a small dinner, cutting fatty foods, eating a lot of bananas, drinking lots of water, etc, and nothing worked. Sure I may have lost like 5 pounds, maybe 10 pounds the most, but I always ended up on giving up. So after 7 years, I was done. You see, in my closet I had kept my skinny clothes neatly folded in there, just waiting for me to lose the weight so that I could once again wear them, but alas, I finally gave in. I opened my closet and started grabbing all my skinny clothes. I looked at each garment and reminisced about the last time I wore them. After taking a final look I grabbed all of them and put them into four trash bags and dropped them off to Goodwill. As I drove off, I was saddened because not only did I say goodbye to my would be return to skinny clothes, I was also accepting the fact that I would be overweight and unhealthy for the rest of my life. But two weeks later, I would end up having breakfast with Fred, Jason and Vincent and the rest is history.

But you may be asking, “where did the motivation come from?” Well I’m glad that you asked, you see, before I gave away all my skinny clothes, I had reached a point in my life where I cried out to God. I prayed this prayer, “Lord, I beg You….. please make me healthy, I have tried everything and nothing works and I fear I will end up with diabetes or maybe something worse. This year already sucks as it is, God please……..have mercy on me.” I also want to mention that a reoccurring prayer in my life is that God would sanctify me and make me more like Christ. Now you may be thinking, “prayer, really?” And I would respond, “yes, prayer.” If I could be honest, if it weren’t for God I wouldn’t stick with this diet. Also the fact that God answered a prayer really brought my spirits up. The fact it was an answered prayer provided me with the motivation I needed to keep going. My secret is that God had answered a prayer, one where I truly believed that He would not answer. I thought to myself at the time that it was stupid of me to ask God of this. But how great is it that God would hear and answer my prayer? I’m not saying that there is power in prayer, but more so that there is a Powerful God who answers prayers according to His will. I never expected Him to answer this prayer but at that breakfast with Jason, Fred and Vincent, hearing Jason tell us about the diet, I was very skeptical at first to believe that God had answered my prayer. But to be four months in this diet and to see these results just reminded me of my gracious Lord and Savior, I am reminded that He hears His children. I deserve none of this, yet He was gracious to bring it about. I know, I know, this isn’t a blog about Christianity, but all who are part of this blog is a Christian. And we can’t dichotomies the physical and spiritual. We go through both at the same time. There are many times where we need to be reminded that God is in control, He is sovereign and He provides. I submit to you if you are having problems perhaps look no further than to God. If you are abiding in Christ, He will abide in you. He says, “ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7) No I don’t mean to turn God into a genie, and I’m certainly not trying to turn this into a works righteousness thing, what I simply am trying to say is that if it is God’s will, He will allow it to happen. You see, I’ve prayed this before in the past and nothing has come to fruition and I believe the reason is because I was not abiding in the Lord. My prayer to be skinny became more of an idol rather than anything else and it became my focus, that's why I believe that God did not answer that prayer back then. So what made Him want to answer it now? I believe it was the work of the Holy Spirit. Throughout the past 7 years (I guess you could call it my 7 years of tribulation :0 ) I have been sanctified time and time again and brought to this point in my life where God had brought me to my knees about this idol and finally freed me from it. I believe the Spirit had convicted me that day when I gave away my clothes and caused in my repentance that brought my attention back towards Christ and my heart was renewed and since that day I look back and thank God and I pray continually to honor and glorify Him. Don’t lose hope, hope in Christ to be more and more like Christ.

So to sum up, I believe that even in losing weight and living healthy should be encompassed in our prayers, because perhaps even prayer may be a dying breed in our culture today for the little things, far too often we may become too self-reliant and even in this small matter we could turn to God and His grace and mercy to help us endure and persevere through this, but always remembering that God is in control and that my heart should first and foremost be focused on Him, so that we may become Christ-reliant. 

My Praise Report

By God’s grace He has sustained me and Lord willing that I will stick to this way of eating for a lifetime. He has shown His power and mercy on me through this and He has kept me focused on the cross. I never thought that this could be achieved on my own, and I was right! This was only by the hand of God. Call me charismatic, I don’t care. I see God’s hand in this and I will use it too honor and glorify Him.

Before.                           After

Nov. 15, 2015.               March 1, 2016

Waist 50".                      Waist - 45 1/2"

Hips 42"                         Hips - 36 1/2"

Thighs 28"                     Thighs - 24 1/2"

Neck 17 1/2"                  Neck - 15 1/8"

And what about my weight?

Before.                           After

Nov. 15, 2015.              March 1, 2016

Weight 235 lbs.             Weight - 199.1 lbs

PRAISE GOD ! ! !

FOOD PREPS

A few things that I have been making these past few months.

Keto bread

Korean Fried Chicken (with pork rinds for breading) <---  Look it's KFC ! ! !  ahahahahaaha

Poke

And Kalua pork

I am so happy that I am finally under 200 pounds again. It's the same feeling as you would get, when you just finished a game level on an old Nintendo game! 

All Glory be to Christ!