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What is the average weight gain on a cruise?


smellycruzer
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When I recently sailing on Emerald Princess I was a bit dismayed but an embarrassing but all-too-common problem - I gained 7 pounds over the course of the week. Does this ever happen to anyone else? Seems like a pound a day is on par for me for a seven day cruise. I like HC and Cafe Caribe and Sabatini's but IMHO I don't really overdo it! I usually go to the main dining room for dinner and if the food isn't great I hit the HC for a snack.

 

Is the ice cream/gelato that Princess serves what is killing me? The MUTS popcorn is another culprit.

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My wife and I seem to gain very little or no weight on cruises. Of course we don't pile up huge plates of food in HC and we use the stairs far more often than we use the elevators.

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Corroborating what actually happened to you, I've read that the actual figure IS roughly one pound a day in weight gain. However, I would bet you dollars to donuts that mostly applies to folks who don't challenge themselves physically on excursions, or separately and regularly exercise on the ship. And let's face it, that might be only 20% of the people at most.

 

I'm cruising in July for two weeks myself. Luckily, as a 6'2" man, I have a lot vertically to work with, but still at 224lbs I knew I needed to lose at least 10 and probably as much as 15 pounds. Happily, I've lost 14 pounds in a month and still have a full month to go. As much as I'd like to keep it off, I DO realize that I will probably gain half of that back. However, with the constant excursion walking on land and reasonably vigorous (at least every-other-day) treadmill workouts I'm hoping to keep any significant gains to a minimum.

 

Otherwise, during the first three or four, you're going to see me on the LIDO DECK, baby (and I'd BETTER be hearing, "Whoa! Who's that 58 y.o. male model?!")! :p

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On my recent CB Mediterranean cruise I lost five pounds on a two week cruise. Didn't do anything differently food wise. I attribute it to the port intensive itenary causing me to walk and climb stairs more often than my normal routine.

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Sometimes, I actually lose weight on a cruise. I don't want to be over-full, so I nibble until I'm not hungry and then stop. I do a lot more walking, swimming, etc while cruising. End result is I come home either the same weight I left or even a little lighter.

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I recently lost 6 pounds during the 28 days we were on the ship. I don't exercise and I don't do excursions that are physical as I have a neuromuscular auto-immune disease and can't. I find that with all the healthy choices it is actually easier to lose on a cruise than off.

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It's generally a pound each day, however you will lose a couple of pounds right away after you return home. This is due to the large amount of salt consumed in the food which makes you retain extra water.

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When I recently sailing on Emerald Princess I was a bit dismayed but an embarrassing but all-too-common problem - I gained 7 pounds over the course of the week. Does this ever happen to anyone else? Seems like a pound a day is on par for me for a seven day cruise. I like HC and Cafe Caribe and Sabatini's but IMHO I don't really overdo it! I usually go to the main dining room for dinner and if the food isn't great I hit the HC for a snack.

I can easily gain 5-7 pounds in a week on a cruise but some of it just drops right off when I get home because it's really water weight. I don't salt anything at home when I cook, and I hardly ever eat salty snacks. So when I hit all that extra sodium in the ship's food, I start retaining water like crazy. I don't even snack that much on a ship, but I do overindulge at dinner (of course, getting 2 desserts most nights doesn't help!)

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I usually gain 3-4 pounds and it's usually from the water! The desalination doesn't take out ALL the salt. I don't exercise and I don't skip desserts either. It usually goes away after 3-4 days back home. I had the worse problems on a recent Carnival cruise-pitting edema very bad but, again, it went away once back home. In defense of Carnival, it was on one of their older ships. Maybe the new ones have a better desalination process.

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I am usually able to maintain my weight on cruises. While I don't deny myself any treats (after all, it's a vacation), I do follow a few self imposed rules:

 

1. Get in a workout every day (usually a nice run either in port or on the promenade deck)

2. Always take the stairs. No elevators ever.

3. When eating in the buffet, I limit my trips through to 3: salad course, main course, and small dessert. I also only use the small plate for all courses rather than the serving platter that the staff tries to hand me when I enter the serving area.

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It's generally a pound each day, however you will lose a couple of pounds right away after you return home. This is due to the large amount of salt consumed in the food which makes you retain extra water.

 

I always see people posting about the large amount of salt in the food. I tend to find the food bland - especially in HC. I don't find a lot of extra salt in the food...

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I've tried to explain to people cruising to Alaska out of Seattle that the tightness they feel in their clothes toward the end of the cruise is not due to the food but for some reason they don't seem to believe me. I've explained more than once that Princess takes the calories out of the food and dumps the calories overboard which feeds the fish and helps them grow. The reason that their clothes feel tighter as the cruise goes on is not due to calories consumed but because of AGE. Now AGE is not something that is accumulated over time, but stands for the Alaskan Glacier Effect. The cold wind that comes off the glaciers in Alaska causes their clothes to shrink and that by the time they get back home, wherever home is, that within a week of their arrival their clothes will probably feel as comfortable as ever. In spite of this very honest explanation, they seem to not believe me. Some even laugh at me as if I were crazy.

 

I just don't understand it! :rolleyes:

 

Tom

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Corroborating what actually happened to you, I've read that the actual figure IS roughly one pound a day in weight gain. However, I would bet you dollars to donuts that mostly applies to folks who don't challenge themselves physically on excursions, or separately and regularly exercise on the ship. And let's face it, that might be only 20% of the people at most.

 

I'm cruising in July for two weeks myself. Luckily, as a 6'2" man, I have a lot vertically to work with, but still at 224lbs I knew I needed to lose at least 10 and probably as much as 15 pounds. Happily, I've lost 14 pounds in a month and still have a full month to go. As much as I'd like to keep it off, I DO realize that I will probably gain half of that back. However, with the constant excursion walking on land and reasonably vigorous (at least every-other-day) treadmill workouts I'm hoping to keep any significant gains to a minimum.

 

Otherwise, during the first three or four, you're going to see me on the LIDO DECK, baby (and I'd BETTER be hearing, "Whoa! Who's that 58 y.o. male model?!")! :p

 

:D:D LOL

 

On cruises with LOTS of at sea days, when we don't get much walking, it's about 10 lbs/week gained. However, on European cruises with tons of city walking, now and then we luck out and lose a few pounds. :):)

 

It's hard to resist with so many options. The week or 2 downtime between cruises is filled with heavy exercising to prepare for the next!

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I always see people posting about the large amount of salt in the food. I tend to find the food bland - especially in HC. I don't find a lot of extra salt in the food...

 

We're with you, food is quite bland to our tastes, we end up salting most everything, except desserts. We're the ones sprinkling salt on our buttered rolls as the butter is unsalted, and so on.....Got to get some flavor somewhere.

And nope, neither ofbus gains any weight on a cruise, not even water weight/sweeling. We go home weighing the same or less.

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I lost 2 lbs last cruise. I didn't diet but I never ate at the buffet and usually used the stairs. I also love cabins in the stern so we had to walk everywhere.

 

Good tip! Sometimes the 'vators can be quite busy before/after floor shows and D/E.

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:D:D LOL

It's hard to resist with so many options. The week or 2 downtime between cruises is filled with heavy exercising to prepare for the next!

 

You speak the Gospel Brother (or Sister) Smelly (er, 'ceptin' that this is my first cruise in 11 years)! I just hope I'm really not a BL (Binge Loser); I'd really like to be a simple Loser. Oh. Yeah, I see that now... ;)

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Following is part of my post to a recent thread:

 

"I'm a long time runner (12 marathons) and work out just about every day. I use to be a personal trainer and Yoga instructor working mostly with seniors. I just finished 20 days on the Emerald Princess followed by 7 days on the Ruby. In 21 Princess cruises I have only taken an elevator three times.

 

I'm a vegetarian, don't drink sodas, and generally pay attention to what I eat. On a cruise, I don't hold back, enjoy desserts, have a bigger breakfast than usual with eggs and potatoes, enjoy a croissant and a mocha, and so forth.

 

When I got on the scale on return home I was 10 pounds heavier than when i left. As I was able to drop 5 pounds in about a week, I attributed it to increased water weight probably due to increased sodium intake. I am currently losing about a pound a week and expect to be back to my normal weight and fat % in about a month.

 

I guess I just have a different metabolism than those who can go on a cruise, eat and drink what they want, don't exercise and still don't gain any weight."

 

But, I do have a few theories about what happens to a person's weight on a cruise:

 

I believe the weight gain is a combination of water and fat. The water comes off fairly quickly, the fat not so quickly.

 

Using stairs, walking the decks, exercise really has little effect on weight gain. For example, the average person will burn 60-90 calories walking/jogging a mile. So, to walk briskly around the Promenade Deck for an hour might burn 200-250 calories. What is involved in eating 200-250 calories? Not a whole lot.

 

Our cabin was on the Emerald Deck. We made several trips to Horizon Court during the day. A liberal guess might be 200 calories per day burned off going up and down the stairs. But, a whole lot more than that was consumed when I got to Horizon Court, not to mention International Cafe and all those desserts in the MDR.

 

These thoughts are just my personal opinion generated from many years of training and attention to fitness (I'm 73) and 21 Princess cruises. A cruise is one place I let myself go a bit, but I can do that because I know my body, what it takes to get myself back to where I want to be and I lead a healthy lifestyle when I am not cruising.

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If I only gain 7 pounds I count that as a victory. I generally take the stairs all the time and workout each day in the gym. But a dinner without 2 appetizers, a salad, an entree and 1-2 desserts just isn't a dinner on a cruise. Plus dont get me started on the chocolate mousse from the IC.........

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