Well I just got back from my very favorite vacation EVER! I went to Mexico on a seven day cruise with my husband. There was a lot of beaching, swimming, laughing, and FOOD! One of the very best (and worst for your waistline) things about a cruise is the endless amount of food you can eat at any given time. There are tons of buffets of many different kinds of food: burgers and fries, hot sandwiches, Chinese food, soft-serve ice cream, pizza, and of course the often neglected salad bar, among many others.

Then there are the delicious meals in the formal dining room where you can get hefty steaks and decadent desserts every day of the week.

There are so many opportunities to try new, strange foods if you are into that kind of thing. I guess I am not much of an adventurer when it comes to food, especially when it comes to seafood, but my husband really enjoyed trying some new interesting foods on our cruise. He had alligator fritters, lobster tail, weird kinds of sushi, and there were opportunities to try calamari, escargot, and a couple other strange and unique foods that we weren’t daring enough to try.

I did have wonderful cold fruit “soups” everyday which I had never had before. My favorite was the strawberry bisque. There are some things that just sound a little too strange for me to try when I could instead get a tried-and-true Caesar salad. One of these things was cold cucumber soup. That just sounds too much like the all-vegetable green smoothie I force myself to drink once in a while. It was not exactly something I was excited about eating in a bowl, one spoonful at a time on our vacation J

Anyway, while we all know everyone on a cruise or any other lengthy vacation is pretty susceptible to gain the dreaded five or ten unwanted pounds, there actually are a few select people who do work hard to keep it off. As far as I have been able to tell from all my reading, even if you do gain five pounds or so, you will most likely lose it pretty quickly after you get back due to the abnormally salty diet and for most people, a major uptake in alcohol. Here are a few really good tips I read from a person on a forum who has been on many cruises and has been successful at keeping off those extra pounds.

1. NEVER take the elevator. Always take the stairs. You burn tons of calories going up and down all day.
2. Work out every ship day (the days where you are only at sail that day).
3. Limit the number of fruity drinks (like margaritas) that you have. Beer and wine have a lot less calories.
4. Eat most of your meals in the formal dining room, because portions are small.
5. Avoid going to the buffet; if you must, eat only from the salad bar, and only take veggies.
6. Swing by the buffet to pick up apples and bananas to keep in your room for snacks.
7. If you get hungry late at night, have one small piece of pizza.
8. Do something active during port days, like swimming, scuba diving, or hiking.
9. Start your day with something healthy, like oatmeal with fruit and eggs or smoked salmon.
10. Bring a travel scale with you and weight yourself each day. You will gain some water weight, because the food is salty, but this gives you a rough idea of how you are doing.

I did let myself go on this vacation and ate whatever I wanted. In general, I am a pretty healthy eater, so I really thought it would be fun to enjoy yummy foods with my husband and not worry too much about it, but I feel like I might (keyword: might) try eating a little healthier on my next vacation. I think my body will be much happier and then I don’t have to work so hard to get it all off again.

So now I would love to know if you guys have been on a cruise (or any other kind of similar vacation). What did you think of the food? Were you daring enough to try any strange or new foods? Let me know in the comments below!