2011 Low Carb Cruise Highlights by by Dana Carpender

I got back a week ago from the Low Carb Cruise, so I thought I’d pass on some info to you.

First, let me give you the low down on the cruise – and for those of you who complained I didn’t tell you about it early enough for you to come this year, I am telling you right this second, and will continue to tell you through the year: Next spring we are sailing on the Carnival Magic, one of the newest ships in the fleet, out of Galveston Texas. The sail date is tentatively set for May 6th but this far out that is subject to change. Keep an eye on www.lowcarbcruiseinfo.com for detail, and go join the Low Carb Cruise Facebook group right now; that’ll give you all the info as it happens. You so seriously want to be there!!

You especially want to be there because of some of the new speakers who have already been lined up: Gary Taubes, Denise Minger, Dr. Jeff Volek, Rob Wolff, and Chris Masterjohn have all said they’re coming. Those are some very big names in these circles, and I’m already counting the days. Only 11 months and three weeks to go…

I will confess that I gained weight on my low carb cruise. No, I did not eat anything obviously evil while I was gone. But I was somewhat out of control of my food. Who knows when they sneak a little sugar into a salad dressing, or some cornstarch into a soup? I can’t blame them, those are standard recipes, and they were feeding well over 2000 people – of whom just over 100 were hard core low carbers (though I’d bet there were low carbers among the general passenger list; we’re everywhere!) I also ate a half-grapefruit every morning, and a lot more vegetables than I do at home, since they were there for the eating, with no need to prepare them myself. Of course, the fact that I drank every night, and somewhat more than usual at that, didn’t help, either. I did a couple of days of all eggs and meat, but as I write this, it’s my 16th wedding anniversary. I won’t be eating starches or sugar, but I certainly plan to split a better-than-usual bottle of wine with That Nice Boy I Married.

Our panel of speakers this year started with Tom Naughton, a comedian. A comedian? You bet. Tom is both seriously funny and seriously smart, and his documentary Fathead is now the number one documentary at Hulu. You can also get it through Netflix or buy it at CarbSmart.com. If you haven’t watched Fathead yet, you need to – it’s the most fun you’ll ever have getting informed. Just as importantly, if you’re plagued by people telling you your low carb diet is going to kill you, people who are sure that Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me is some sort of brilliant revelation, get a copy of Fathead, keep it on hand, and plug it into the DVD player the next time they’re over. Let ’em see Tom losing 12 pounds in a month and improving his bloodwork on a steady diet of fast food – but lower carb fast food.

Tom’s presentation was called Science for Smart People, and was aimed at helping everyone understand the scientific double talk that too often lets biased researchers bamboozle people. He’s posted it at his blog, www.fathead-movie.com. In typical Tom Naughton style, it’s both highly informative and freakin’ hilarious. Go watch!

We heard from Dr. Mary Vernon, who is one of the most experienced diabetologists and bariatric – ie, weight loss – physicians in the county. She’s also co-author of The Atkins Diabetes Revolution. All patients who come into Dr. Vernon’s office are put on a low carb diet, and she showed us slide after slide of the stunning results they achieve, raising HDL, lowering triglycerides, lowering blood sugar, all that stuff – along with weight loss, of course. Dr. Vernon also spoke extensively about the biochemistry of low carbohydrate diets.

One of the really interesting terms introduced by Dr. Vernon was MONW – Metabolically Obese, Normal Weight. We’ve been told so often that our weight is causing our various illnesses, it is fascinating to know that that is simply not the case. There is a sizeable group of patients who have all of the metabolic consequences we associate with obesity – high triglycerides, low HDL, high blood sugar, all that stuff – while maintaining a normal weight. It’s not that obesity causes this stuff, but rather that all of these health consequences, including the obesity, come from the same underlying cause: high levels of insulin.

The most interesting thing I learned from Dr. Vernon, though, was that it has recently been discovered that we have taste buds in our guts. I mean, really, truly taste buds, the same sort of tissue we have on our tongues. The implications of this are not entirely clear, but it may be bad news when it comes to low carb sweeteners. It may be that when our guts tastes sweetness, they trigger chemicals that make us hungry. I asked about this, and it’s such new information that it’s not entirely understood yet, but Dr. Vernon did say that Splenda doesn’t seem to trigger problems. By the way, for those of you who favor stevia and other natural low carb sweeteners – if the sweet taste is the trigger, all the naturalness in the world ain’t gonna help. I will keep you posted as I learn more about this.

Jackie Eberstein, who was Dr. Atkins clinic manager for thirty years, spoke about plateaus, and how to break them. Very useful was an actual definition of a plateau: Six weeks with neither weight nor inch loss. Not a week, folks, six weeks. And not just no weight loss, but no inch loss. Often at the Atkins center they would see people’s weight stall, but they’d still lose inches, and the weight would catch up suddenly. Still, plateaus do happen.

Among the causes of plateaus, Jackie mentioned carb creep – the five grams here and five grams there that sneak in over time – and the need to go back to induction. Jackie is also no fan of most low carb specialty products, and warns that if you’re stalled, you need to axe the products entirely, and may even need to limit vegetables. Too, she had a list of medications that can slow or stall weight loss – I can’t remember them all, but they included steroids, NSAIDS (including ibuprofen, yikes), and a fair number of antidepressants. Her feeling is that if you need one of the drugs that limits weight loss, you really need to adjust your expectations, and not beat yourself up about it. Still, you might want to talk to your doctor and pharmacist, and see if something you’re taking can affect weight, and if an adjustment is possible.

Another cause of plateaus can be stress. We all know about job stress, family stress, money stress, but there’s another source of stress that was mentioned, not only by Jackie but by the panel in general, that I’ll tell you about in a minute.

Fred Hahn, who I’ve interviewed for my podcast, spoke about exercise, and, of course, particularly about Slow Burn, the insanely efficient way to work out. Think I’m exaggerating? Twenty minutes per week of Slow Burn will change your body, with no other exercise. No fooling. Indeed, while Fred says twenty minutes twice a week is better, for most people, than twenty minutes once a week, he specifically says that you should not do Slow Burn more oftehn than that Since I recently read a comment on Facebook from a woman who is working out TWO HOURS A DAY, just twenty minutes per week sounds like a huge improvement.

That Nice Boy I Married and I Slow Burn on our Total Gym, and can testify that it works. Indeed, the husband is pretty darned excited to have a better body at 46 than he did at 24, and I can’t say as I object, either.

A new presenter this year was Dr. Michael Fox, a reproductive endocrinologist, who walked us through the effects of nutrition, and especially of carbs and insulin, on the female reproductive system, through all the stages and changes of life, from childhood, through menarche, the childbearing years and pregnancy, perimenopause, and menopause. In particular, Dr. Fox sees many, many women with PCOS (which he calls PCOD, polycystic ovarian disease), and often finds that a low carbohydrate diet is sufficient to allow a previously infertile woman to get pregnant. This was fascinating stuff, and I very much hope Dr. Fox speaks again next year.

I came after Dr. Fox, with a presentation called “Behind the Low Carb Headlines,” which fit neatly with Tom Naughton’s presentation earlier in the week. Andrew will be posting my video here at CarbSmart; I hope you’ll watch!

Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt came all the way from Sweden, where the low carb/high fat diet is booming, and gave a terrific presentation. Perhaps his most arresting information was a map of the United States, showing the obesity rate, starting at the beginning of the low fat boom, and updating every two years, with colors changing on the map as the obesity rate in each state increases. Watching the colors change on that map was frightening. (I found the map, the Centers for Disease Control has it: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html) He also had a graph of the decline in butter consumption in Sweden, and the increase of obesity – the lines were almost exactly inverse, including a little increase in butter consumption in the past couple of years as low carb high fat has caught on, and the corresponding drop in the obesity rate.

There was then a panel Q&A, and some important points came out:

• Our medical experts, plus Fred Hahn, our exercise genius, all disdain intermittent fasting. Indeed, they generally feel that it’s better not to wait till you’re hungry to eat, though becomes less important, they say, the more ketoadapted you become. The reason for eating preventively, as Jackie Eberstein called it, is that as your blood sugar crashes, you go into an adrenal fight-or-flight reaction, and it’s way harder to pull out of it than it is to prevent it.
• The consensus is that the more you can learn to live without sweeteners, the better.
• Remember I said I’d tell you about another source of stress that can cause plateaus? You’ll be surprised: All of our experts, the medicos and Fred alike, feel that aerobic exercise, far from being beneficial, is simply a source of stress. We’re not talking about a pleasant stroll in the sunshine, that’s fine. But if you’re doing serious cardio – running, elliptical, spinning, that sort of thing – because you think it’s good for you, our panel would disagree. Heavy weight lifting will give you all the possible benefits of exercise, but between sessions your body needs rest.
• A question was asked about “detox diets.” Dr. Fox said succinctly that if you were toxic enough to need detoxing, you’d be in the ER. And humble me made the point that way too often detox diets are heavy on the fruit and juice – when there’s almost nothing harder on your liver than fructose. Just don’t eat junk, okay?

How about the food on the cruise? There was ample low carb food available at every meal. Indeed, there was such a variety available that I couldn’t sample it all!

Every day I had breakfast on the deck, with the gentle sea breeze and the warm Caribbean sun caressing me. One of the great joys of cruising is unlimited bacon, with no need to clean up the grease. There was also some sort of sausage every morning, though some days it was combined with a little onion or other vegetables. I mentioned the grapefruit – I’m very fond of pink grapefruit, which runs around 10 or 11 grams of usable carb per half. There’s also melon available; cantaloupe would be the lower carb choice, but I’m not a big fan.

The omelet station is my favorite; they make the omelet fresh in front of you, though I wish they’d widen the choice of fillings – they had peppers, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, ham and cheddar cheese; I generally got them all. I’d love to see jalapenos, some other cheeses, maybe salsa for topping, avocado slices, but the omelets are great. The omelet station can also fry eggs for you, if you prefer. Scrambled eggs are out on the buffet in a chafing dish, since they can easily be made ahead and held.

Oh, there’s plenty of carby garbage, too – cold cereal, muffins, sweet rolls, pancakes, waffles, etc, etc, etc. But why would I bother? Bacon and eggs, baby.

For lunch, the options were vast, and differed depending on which buffet line you got in! The grill line had burgers and dogs; That Nice Boy I Married would get a couple of cheeseburger patties, then go to the salad bar and douse them with blue cheese dressing. The food at the buffets varied day to day. There was always a salad bar and cole slaw, but the other dishes differed. One day I had chicken souvlaki without the pita, plus a big pile of Greek salad . Another day I had lovely rare roast beef, while another day I had a couple of slabs of roast pork. There were all sorts of cold cuts out if you wanted them, too, and the deli line had a very nice tuna salad; I had a couple of scoops of that without the bread as a snack one evening. I completely missed the Tandoori bar, serving Indian food; I’m hoping they have that on the next cruise!

Dinners were sumptuous, with the menu changing nightly: Chateaubriand with Bearnaise sauce, braised short ribs, salmon steaks, lobster tail, ribs, flat iron steak, all sorts of stuff like that. Always a choice of soups and salads, plus other “friendly” appetizers, including escargot and shrimp cocktail. Again, plenty of carby stuff, too, but our choices were excellent.

I wouldn’t have minded a little more imagination, though; some more international flavors, something a little more cutting edge. And this was the first cruise I’ve been on where they never serve lamb chops; I kept waiting for them and was disappointed. Everything was very well prepared, however, and very tasty. Carnival also saw to it that we had low carb cheesecake and sugar free ice cream for desserts. There’s also a cheese plate available – not sweet, of course, but a very nice end to the meal.

In between meals – and the buffet lines are literally open for a couple-few hours, so mealtimes stretch out quite a lot – you can still get stuff from the deli, from the pizza place (and since there’s no extra charge, why not get three or four pieces of pepperoni pizza, eat the toppings, and toss the crust?), and some other places that slip my mind. And room service, of course.

One of the great luxuries of cruising, by the way, is that you can order all the food you like at no extra cost. Can’t choose between the soup and the escargot? Get ’em both. Really like shrimp cocktail? Have two. Feeling particularly peckish? Have the steak and the salmon. Or two lobster tails. Or three. Or, like Fred Hahn, five. No extra charge.

I fear we tax them a bit, actually. Most restaurants make quite a lot of their money filling people up with inexpensive carbs, but we eat none of that. Ah, well, we also brought over 100 people on to their ship!

Oh, beverages. Coffee, tea, milk, water, lemonade, iced tea, and fruit punch are always available, no charge. Soda, however, is $2 per 12 ounce can, which can add up if you’re a Diet Coke addict. You can, however, buy a “soda package,” which runs $6 per day. I did this so I could drink unlimited club soda in the bars at night; it helps keep me hydrated and prevents my drinking alcohol just because I’m thirsty. I trust I don’t have to tell you that alcohol is one of the ship’s main profit centers?

They did give us a cocktail party the last night; drinks were on the house for an hour. Unfortunately, no one had explained the whole “low carb” concept to the bartenders. They were bringing around trays of fruity tropical drinks – you know, the kind of thing that’s full of sugar – and were terribly confused as to why very few people were taking them. We asked for dry red wine, which they were happy to bring us, some people had light beer, and CarbSmart.com had provided sugar free Baja Bob’s margarita mix, which was popular, but I hate to think of how much money they wasted on the unconsumed beverages. Ah, well.

Add to all of that Jimmy Moore and Tom Naughton singing “Elvira” in the karaoke lounge, nights of tropical breezes under a velvety black sky, swimming with stingrays in the indescribably blue waters off Grand Cayman, tubing down the White River through a Jamaican jungle, and, best of all, the people, the people, the people, and this cruise was – once again – the highlight of my year. I do not get paid to say that. Heck, I don’t get paid to go. I pay my way, as do the other speakers. We all go because we’re passionate about this – and because, quite frankly, it’s the best fun going.

So start planning and saving your pennies now! We hope to see you on the 2012 Low Carb Cruise.

© 2011 by Dana Carpender. Used by permission of the author. What do you think? Please send Dana your comments to Dana Carpender.