How To Eat on a Cruise Ship: Making it a Game

MAKE IT A GAME:

Who doesn't love a game? If your brain enjoys being tricked into accomplishing your goals - like mine does - maybe these will work for you:

1. You and your spouse can get each other's meals for the other. (Certainly by this point you know that they won't eat that okra, so don't even try.) It's always easy to be moderate when it's not your belly doing the selecting.


2. Get a calorie counting ap on your iPhone and stick to it - let yourself have a higher calorie cap than you would regularly. This would drive me nuts, but if you like to be in control of details this might turn you on.


3. Eat More Meals: But think of them as half-meals - smaller portions, smaller plates. Your body will be revved up all day long and you'll have energy for that snorkeling excursion. Be careful that you don't end up eating 6 full meals a day. And if you do, don't blame me.
   • Don't walk through the buffet on accident. You know it's not an accident, and you know darn well that cookie will jump into your mouth.


4. If you are really obsessed about staying at a particular weight, you can always visit the ship's gym and weigh yourself. (This is easier when the ship’s in port: At sea, it gives you a crazy reading because you're shifting all over the place.)

How To Eat on a Cruise Ship: Eating Off The Ship

OFF THE SHIP:

I'm in Nassau as I post this, eating a cookie. But I did follow my rule to eat breakfast before I got off the ship!

1. Opt for active excursions. Don't push yourself beyond your comfort zone - if you're not a hiker, don't sign up for a mountainous treck! But don't be afraid of walking tours, golf, snorkel excursions, or, if the area is safe, a little exploration on foot. Many people take it TOO easy on their vacation, and then they aren't tired enough to sleep at night, and subsequently don't have the energy to enjoy their next day. If you're naturally a high-energy person, then plan some physical fun.



2. Beware of excursions that come with a meal: Often the food is cheap and fatty. I try to limit my splurge to the ones that include an authentic local meal (chicken roti, conch fritters, that sort of thing.) I skip the desert and the sugary cool-aid. Unless it's cool-aid with rum, then I can't resist.



3. Eat a meal before getting off the ship. Many people do this out of shear cheapness. But it's also a way to control what you're eating and keep from going crazy on chips and dips with your pina colada at the beach.



4. Limit your pina coladas on the beach! It's never a great idea to get too drunk in a strange place anyway. Steer clear of activities that revolve around getting trashed. Not only do the drinks beget crazy salty snacking, but drunk tourists are easy picking for local con artists and thieves.

How To Eat On A Cruise Ship: At The Bar

AT THE BAR

• Watch out for blended drinks! If you're going to have a bushwacker, make it your desert for the day. If I'm in the mood for liquor, I try to stick to the straight stuff on ice - no calories beyond the booze, and I'm forced to sip it. Or something mixed with diet cola.


• You've heard it before, but it's worth repeating: Red Wine, Red Wine, Red Wine. If you're gonna put booze in your belly, it might as well have antioxidants in it.


• If you're a beer drinker, try to substitute a light beer - or at least trick yourself and make every other beer a light beer. Sometimes, the opposite works for me: I'll have one delicious dark beer in an evening, and feel satisfied (and kind of full) - rather than drinking three lighter beers.


• Splurge Big, in Small Portions: If I'm in a particularly festive mood, I'll go for one big, expensive martini. I'm forced to drink it slow (and I'm a fast drinker!), it feels like a treat, and I often find I don't need a lot of other drinks the rest of the evening. Even though I work on the cruise ship, I'm surrounded by the Vacation mentality, so I NEED to splurge from time to time.


• If you have good self-control, then you can dare to befriend your bartender and tip them in cash. You'll get stronger mixed drinks - and you'll need less of them before you're ready to retire to your stateroom.

How To Eat on a Cruise Ship: At The Restaurant

AT THE RESTAURANT:

• Tell yourself: It's OK to leave food on your plate. It really is. It isn't 1943. We aren't in a terrible depression. (OK, maybe we are.) If it bothers you that much, you won't order as much the next time. (Please Note: This is great in theory, but doesn't work for me. I can't stand to leave food on my plate...after college I lived in Hungary, where I lived on $40 a month and often went Hungary.)


• Co-order: If you have a taste for several of the appetizers, work with your spouse or people at your table to share some of the dishes rather than ordering a full serving. This works great with desert, too. I go one step further: I make my boyfriend order a desert and then eat off of his.


• Don't be afraid to substitute from other entrees. The ship I'm on has multiple meal options, and I often pick and choose between them: Hold the fries and get a side-salad; hold the pasta and get the vegetable of the day. In the Mexican restaurant, a salad that I love comes with one of those crispy bowl-shells - delicious, but hardly necessary. I always ask for the salad in a regular (inedible) bowl. If there are fries on my plate, I'll eat them - so I try to cut them off at the pass.


• Ask for water if it's not served.


• Ask the waiter to take away the bread basket once everybody has had some bread; or put it out of reach. Put it in front of the other couple at the table. Bread is an easy way to add tons of calories to your meal! (When I have bread, which isn't very often anymore since I suspect I'm allergic to gluten, I always butter it: It's delicious and lavish and the butter makes one piece feels more substantial. And I could die tomorrow, so I'm gonna butter my bread.)

How to Eat on a Cruist Ship: At the Buffet

AT THE BUFFET:

• Cruise through the buffet to see everything that's available first. I will hate you because you are that dubious New Yorker floating in front of me at the salad bar, slowing me down...but you will be less likely to get the schnitzel and the bacon and the muffin if you scout out your favorite Croissant ahead of time.


• Limit yourself to one plate...at a time! I allow myself just one plate. THen I sit as far away from the buffet as possible. If I'm still hungry after that one plate, I can go back for another one...I figure the walk back will burn it off, right? For extra credit, grab a smaller plate. One of the acappella singers on our ship goes as far as to put a small bowl upside down on his plate for less surface area; that would only inspire me to create mount vesuvius on mine - piling it as high as physics would allow before a pea avalanche. (Heh heh - I said pea avalanche.) Don't forget this mantra: It's a buffet - I can always come back for more.


• Hit the salad bar first. Everybody likes some vegetable or another - and they usually take up a lot of space on your plate. After the salad bar, hit up the grilled or steamed vegetables. Then, after you have delicious veggies on your plate, you can hit up the dirty delicious things...


• Limit yourself to one serving of meat per meal. One serving is as big as a deck of cards. I know - that's not much! But don't forget you can always use the serving spoon to muscle that fish fillet in half so that you can have it AND part of a chicken breast. Be careful of saucy dishes with meat and goo, like Lamb Curry or Cheesy Chicken Delight. These often have the fattiest cuts of meat in them - the stuff they want to hide among the goo. My boyfriend practices this clever tactic: He gets a turkey burger or a chicken breast, and then spoons a bit of the delicious goo from the curry or buttery delight over it. That way he has some flavor on his leaner bit of meat. With the calories he saves, he gets an ice cream.


• These are dirty delicious things: Cheesy Casseroles, Fried meats, Greasy Pastas, pizza, buttery saucy things, bacon, sausage, white bread. Give yourself tiny portions of these - I often find that a tiny bit of cheesy deliciousness satisfies my craving for it. If the urge is overwhelming, use the mantra: I can always come back for more.


• Deserts: Don't grab your desert with your meal. Make yourself go back for it afterward. Most buffet deserts come in reasonably small portions...as long as you don't grab three of them! If you get soft serve ice cream, get it in a tiny container rather than a cone - the container usually limits the size by the mere physics. You don't want a tall skinny tower of chocolate soft serve falling over on your hand at the pool deck, do you?


• Drink a lot of water. I set down my plate and then use both hands to get my water - two to three glasses of it, with ice and lemon which makes it feel special. (And the lemon is there, why not?) If I'm getting coffee, I try to force myself to use 2% milk in it...or at the very least put my cream in before the coffee so I'm forced to see how much cream I'm giving myself.