Survived cruise doing LCHF (primal style)

The hubby and I are following an eating plan I can embrace and we’re both doing really well on it and losing weight (yeah!). With the dreaded all you can eat cruise buffet looming about, I thought we would end up throwing caution to the wind on our vacation. But no – we made a deal to do our best to stay focused. My hubby, the bread lover, said one roll with dinner would be his cheat carb. My cheat would be an occasional dessert. Turns out we were both wrong, and the better for it.

Started our Holland America cruise with the welcome back mariner lunch. The waiter happily removed the bread basket upon request. Dessert was a cheese plate (not a cheat at all). Then dinner, the man had his roll and then asked the server to take it away. I had no sugar added ice cream for a treat, one scoop. So far so good.

The next day was a sea day, tea time rolled around. Mister wanted tea. I was skeptical about avoiding all the cakes. First tray is passed, I spotted a tartlet piled with fresh fruit. I’ll have one of those and my strategy began to unfold. I can eat the fruit and skip the tartlet crust. Next comes the canapés. Lovely meats, lox, cheese and cucumbers on bread rounds. No problem, load me up, I’ll leave behind the breads. I wish I had snapped a pic of my bread stack, we competed to see who erected the best tower!

I kept thinking about the nice couple who were gluten free because of celiac disease and would bring special cereal and bread to Bfast. Imagine if the canapés were served on rice crackers, or watermelon wedges, cucumber slices. etc.

We enjoyed the fancy Asian restaurant, ordered sans rice, no breading, etc. The servers asked if we had allergies or special diet needs. At every meal I asked for substitutions for the starches, no problem. I was never disappointed in a meal. Granted I probably ate more calories per day than I would have at home, but to offset that we walked our 10k steps or more every day.

That was first vacation I returned from not concerned about gaining weight, and the two pounds I put on didn’t set me back from my goal one iota. I’m loving the primal life!