It took five months to lose six pounds. I would like to drop another five.
The dilemma: We leave for vacation tomorrow and part of it is an Alaskan cruise. Oh great! For those of you familiar with cruises, you know exactly what I’m thinking and feeling right now. For those of you who have never cruised, it is believed that we gain about 10 pounds on average from a one week cruise.
Yes, it is much easier to gain than to lose. Think about it. We need a 3,500 calorie deficit to lose one stinking pound. The average person consumes about 2,000 calories in a day so do the math. In order to lose weight, we need to carry a deficit of 3,500 calories.
We don’t even eat that much in a day (at least we are not supposed to), let alone cut that much out of our diets so go figure how long it would take you to cut 3,500 calories.
About a week if you eat 500 less per day right? That’s only one pound. For people who don’t need to eat too many calories per day to maintain their weight to begin with, it gets even tougher.
However, not so if you want to GAIN weight. I could easily eat an extra 3,500 calories a day. That would equate to about a pound of weight gained PER DAY.
But why would anyone do that? Unless, that is, you are on a cruise.
Food is everywhere. It’s in the restaurants at meal time, it’s set up in halls for buffets at all other times.
Buffet, buffet, buffet. You can wake up to an early morning buffet, followed by your breakfast seating in the main restaurant, shortly followed by the mid-morning buffet, followed by the ‘just before lunch’ buffet before you go to your lunch seating in the main restaurant.
After that you can look forward to an early afternoon buffet. Miss that, no problem, just proceed to the mid- afternoon buffet followed by a late afternoon buffet followed by both early and late dinner seating in the main restaurant. If you’re still hungry you can hit the evening buffet followed by the midnight buffet.
Wake up and it starts all over. Seven days of it. Geez, I’m praying for sea-sickness.
If ? The waiter will bring you ANYTHING you want on the menu. One entrée, two entrees, what the heck, you’re on a cruise, it’s prepaid.
Don’t forget the cocktails. Ignore that voice in your head (it’s called a conscience but it fades with the drinking) telling you to watch it, you won’t fit in that outfit. Shushing the conscience by validating your actions on the fact that it’s the vacation you worked hard for and deserve.
The buffets include all the great goodies you never have time to find or make at home. You promise to wake up early the next day and go work it off.
You get up early, squeeze into your workout clothes you brought…yes, they are already too tight. On your way to the gym you are greeted by the early morning buffet. You realize you are starving because you’ve stretched out your stomach too by now, so you rationalize that it makes no sense to work out without energy.
This is my challenge. I’ll let you know if my conscience wins. Maybe I’ll run into a grizzly on our planned three and a half hour Alaskan wilderness hike that will help me burn off more than I could imagine.
Not funny at all. Neither is the thought of gaining this weight back.
