In a KTLA interview, health coach and best‑selling author Jorge Cruise promotes his new book, The Cruise Control Diet, claiming it can help people lose up to 28 pounds in 28 days (roughly a pound a day). Drawing on 25 years of training experience and celebrity clientele—including Brooke Burke, Steve Harvey, Oprah, and former President Clinton—Cruise explains his version of intermittent fasting called “Cruise Control Fasting.” The protocol uses a 16‑hour daily fasting window that is “cheated” with coffee or tea blended with grass‑fed butter, MCT oil, or heavy cream, arguing that dietary fat does not raise insulin, allowing the body to stay in a fasted, fat‑burning state and trigger autophagy for cellular “housekeeping.” He debunks common myths about saturated fat and cholesterol, attributing heart‑disease risk more to sugar than to dietary cholesterol. Cruise also offers historical context for the modern concept of breakfast, noting its invention by Dr. Harvey Kellogg in 1906. Practical advice is given for social situations—adjusting the eating window to accommodate late‑night meals, alcohol, or pizza, with anti‑inflammatory recipe tweaks (e.g., cauliflower rice/pizza). The interview highlights the program’s appeal to emotional eaters and showcases a few recipe ideas, such as a heavy‑cream chocolate mousse. The segment ends with a call‑to‑action to visit his website and purchase the book.
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All right, I'm so excited. He is the go-to guy for celebrities looking to get in shape, but he doesn't just work with the rich and famous. Jorge Cruise has changed the lives of millions of people as a health coach, personal trainer, and best-selling author. He joins us to talk about his new book, The Cruise Control Diet, which is number one.
Number one in nutrition right now. 10 times. And it just came out last Tuesday. I was in New York in Times Square at one of the shows out there, and one show popped it, and I'm just so thrilled because, you know, today's world, 91% of us suffer with belly fat. Right. And it connects to diabetes, heart disease, aging, so it's an issue, and hopefully we can reveal some of the secrets.
Here's what you got me, you got me at hello when you said you can lose a pound a day.
Yeah.
Tell me about that.
Well, we talk on the COVID of the book how you can lose up to 28 pounds in 28 days, and so I've been a trainer now for 25 years. I started with Tony Robbins back in '93, '94.
And he's on the back of the book, right?
Yeah, no, he wrote the introduction to my very first book. I've written over 30, and in this crazy career of mine, I've been on shows, I've met everyone I've worked with everyone from Oprah, President Clinton. I've worked with everyone. Brooke Burke is one of my dearest clients in Malibu. Steve Harvey. And what I've discovered out of everything I've learned out of training and nutrition, intermittent fasting, the word fasting, it's kind of a term that people are talking about, is the most powerful way to transform health, lose weight. But here's the catch. Most of my clients, I remember Steve Harvey, he's like, Jorge, I'm gonna be hungry, you know? And you are, because, you know, and so what I had to do is take that, and this is a spin of intermittent fasting. I call it Cruise Control Fasting. It's a whole movement. We have a website, cruisecontrolfasting.com, and what it does is it helps people cheat the fast so you never feel hungry. And that way you can do it. It's a 16-hour window where you don't eat, but we cheat it. And you know, you can have your water to hydrate, but you can have coffees, lattes with healthy fats.
All right, you talked about this, and I've heard this before, and I've always been really confused about this, but one of the ways you cheat the system is coffee with butter.
It could be tea too, but yeah, basically what Brooke does— and she's one of my dearest friends and clients in Malibu, and she's 48, we're both 48— she's running around Brooke Albu, you guys know, in a bikini.
Right.
Mother of 4.
Yeah.
And I love Brooke. There we are. That's in Arizona. We do a lot of videos together. And she keeps this body rocking. She wrote the introduction to the book. But here's what she does. We do grass-fed butter in the morning.
Okay.
We sometimes will add a little MCT oil and sometimes heavy cream. Not half and half. It has half sugar. And not milk because it's all sugar.
Right.
And so if you can do that, guess what the fat does? It's the only macronutrient, because it's protein, carbs, that raise insulin.
Mm-hmm.
But fat doesn't have an effect on insulin. And if you don't raise insulin, guess what your body is, it's not dumb, but it doesn't know that you're eating. And so you turn off hunger and you're still fasting. So you're still burning belly fat and this thing in science called autophagy occurs where you also kind of do housekeeping in your body. So it removes old cells. So it disease-proofs your body too.
There are a lot of benefits, by the way. Look it up for intermittent fasting. But what about all that fat? Doesn't it go to your heart, all that saturated fat?
Well, so, you know, and I worked with President Clinton for many years after he had his quadruple bypass and he was a vegan for many years. For many years, and I was at a dinner party with him in New York City, and he finally started eating meat again because the science has shown that dietary cholesterol does not impact the blood serum cholesterol. That's more of a myth, and what the science shows now, it's more sugar, hate to say it, like orange juice in the morning, that can raise cholesterol more because it spikes your liver.
What are the biggest mistakes that you see people make? That they think they're doing something good and they're really—
And I wanna tell everyone watching, it's not our fault because in 1906, I talk about this in the book, the good old Dr. Harvey Kellogg, do you remember Sarah Jessica Parker Sarah Parker's husband, Matthew Broderick.
Yeah.
He played Harvey Kellogg 20 years ago in a movie where he invented the cornflake. And this is in 1906. So in 1906, to sell his cornflakes, he created a word that was never in existence in America. It was called breakfast. In 1905, that word didn't exist.
Break fast, by the way.
Breaking the fast.
Break fast.
And it is the most important meal of the day because back before 1905, most Americans, we were lucky to have one good meal. I mean, think of the disciples at the Last Supper. They had one meal a day. Think of the Romans. Think of throughout history. Right. We had one good meal because what did we have to do all day? We had to hunt and gather things.
Yeah, right.
And most people in Malibu that I work with, like celebrities, Brooke was one of them. She thought she couldn't even teach her booty burn class without passing out. Now, we fast through the workout. She doesn't have lunch till maybe 12 or 1 o'clock, and she'll have like cruise control coffee or tea, and then we have hacks at night. We have the recipe, the book has 50 recipes with chocolate mousse that you can make with heavy cream. Again, we're using heavy fat, but this is natural fat, you know, natural fat. Turns off like a switch, hunger. So you don't feel, it's like Thanksgiving. You're stuffed, and then your body taps into the stored belly fat, autophagy occurs, so you look gorgeous, age-proofs your body, diabetes, I mean, within the first week, most people lose 7 pounds.
Let me, a quick question. Yeah. If you were to do the intermittent fasting, and then you have a night where, like tonight, I'm going out with somebody.
Right, it's perfect.
And I would completely blow it, is that okay?
No, no, you won't blow it, because here's what you do. I teach people in the book on page 46 how to adjust your fasting window. So say you're gonna go out, and I have, you know, I'm a single dad, I have 2 beautiful kids, I'll do dinner sometimes 8 or 9 I'm not with my kids. And so if I'm going out late, and you can drink wine on this plan. Jorge and I drink tequila shots.
Excellent.
We do wine. You can. You just have to do it within an 8-hour window. So if you're going out, what time is dinner tonight? Like 9 or 10?
7:15.
And you may drink until maybe later.
Well, him, 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM.
2:00 AM.
They'll roll right in.
To be determined.
So then I would probably wait to have lunch till maybe 2:00 or 3:00, have a later lunch, and then you just do more of these coffees and beverages. And then if it's so long it's in your 8-hour window, you can drink alcohol. You can eat pizza. We have pasta. We have recipes in there how to modify it so it's more anti-inflammatory. Wow. It's like cauliflower rice and cauliflower pizza. But you can drink real wine. You can do tequila shots. You can still do that. You just have to adjust your eating window so by 2 AM you're stopped. You know, you gotta stop eating.
You gotta stop at some point.
Your show is really interesting. Thank you so much.
And it works brilliantly for emotional eaters too.
It really does. Okay.
The Cruise Control Diet is available now. For more information, head on over to JorgeCruise.com.
