I’m writing this for several reasons. The first one being: I had an awesome vacation and I want to brag about it. The deeper reason here is that I had an awesome vacation BECAUSE I did just that: had a vacation. In the past, I’ve written posts in the realm of “how to survive a vacation”, and it dawns on me just how ridiculous and martyring that mentality is. A vacation is a time of celebration, relaxation, and reward for hard work, yet so many of us meatheads will develop immense anxiety around the topic of vacations: HOW will I get in my protein? HOW will I get in my workouts? HOW will I stick with my diet? And I’ve absolutely done the stupid things that we all do in those situations: signed up for 1 week memberships at a local gym, or paid the day pass rate each day, pack an entire kitchen full of food/cooking implements, I’ve had kettlebells shipped to where I was residing so I could get in workouts, purchased protein powder upon arrival, etc etc. It’s NOT a vacation if we just do what we do every day: this is just transplanting ourselves.
"This is no longer a vacation. It’s a quest. It’s a quest for fun. You’re gonna have fun, and I’m gonna have fun. We’re all gonna have so much f*cking fun we’re gonna need plastic surgery to remove our g*ddamn smiles! You’ll be whistling “Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah” out of your a**holes! "
No: this
time, I decided not to survive this vacation, but to THRIVE on it. And it worked: I had a wonderful time, I ate
my face off, regularly eating to the point of “Thanksgiving level”
fullness/discomfort, remained physically active without having to “make a
thing” out of it, and came back home bigger and still stupidly lean. So allow me to discuss the ins and outs of
that.
---
HOW I ATE ON A CRUISE:
I've never even seen this show, yet I know this quote
I know
I’ve alienated half of my readerbase with my current nutritional approach/drumbeating,
but the more I dig into this the more success I find, so I’m just going to keep
talking about it. For those of you that
have never BEEN on a cruise before, the best way I’ve heard it summed up is
“It’s like someone took the city of Reno Nevada and put it in the ocean”. You’re basically at a 24 hour a day buffet,
with some fine dinning options as well if you so choose. Since I was on a Disney Cruise, we didn’t have
the casino element that tends to be present on other cruises, but we DID have
Mickey Mouse waffles, so that’s a fair trade.
* Meat
and/or eggs, at every meal, FOR every meal.
No carbs, to include fruits, veggies, starches, grains, and INCREDIBLY
limited artificial sweeteners (like 1 diet coke a day). No plants either, so I was off coffee and tea
the entire time, sticking primarily with water, and occasionally
sparkling/fizzy/soda water. Already
people are reading that and think what I’m writing is martyrdom. “How can you pass up ALL those yummy
desserts, pastries, pastas, potatoes, ice cream, fresh fruits, vegetables, 24
hour pizza stations, etc etc” I could do
that easily, because alongside all that is literally EVERY kind of meat you
could ever dream of, readily available in unending amounts.
* For
breakfast, I would eat platefuls of scrambled eggs, and alongside that I would
have 3 full ribeye steaks, breakfast sausage, bacon, salmon and turkey, along
with some fried AND poached eggs, all topped with butter, with just a tiny bit
of real whipped cream for a “dessert”. I
always made at least 2 passes through the buffet line, and legit could NOT get
enough scrambled eggs. I was fitting in
with the Disney theme and trying to get my Gaston on.
There are honestly worse strategies
* When lunch
would roll around, I’d hit up the prime rib carving station like I was playing
Blackjack (hit me again), I’d gotten the drumsticks off the turkey at the
station, consumed copious amounts of lamb, every fish in the ocean, much pork,
beef (steak and ribs), chicken, shrimp, crab, lobster, etc. 2-3 passes through the line, always with a
plateful of meat.
* For
dinners, we’d go to the sit-down service rather than the buffet, where I was
absolutely not shy about ordering 2-4 appetizers and 2-3 entrees, nor was I
ashamed about eating only the meat and leaving the veggies to the side. I let them know ahead of time that I came
there with a big appetite, and they were more than pleased to accommodate. And, I knew that, if I ever felt “underfed”
when the meal was over, there was an all day to-order hamburger and
hotdog/sausage stand on deck I could hit up (which I DID take advantage of on
our final night).
PRINCIPLES
 |
| I consume way too many pork ribs for this to work |
* I DID
abide by a few principles to make this “work”.
Yes: I was there to enjoy myself, and eating as much as I wanted
definitely met that goal, but in order to eat ALL that I wanted and not suffer
catastrophic effects for having done so, I still held myself to a few
standards.
* One was to
minimize my cheese intake. There’s a few
reasons there. One is that I KNOW I can
easily overeat cheese. And yes: “eat
when hungry until not”, so how is it possible to “overeat” something? In the instance of cheese, it’s a question of
nutritional “opportunity cost”, in that the stomach space occupied by cheese is
space that could be occupied by meat, and meat will tend to have more
beneficial qualities to it compared to cheese (in terms of protein to fat
ratio, specific amino acids present, omega 3 vs 6 vs 9 fatty acids and other
micronutrient concerns). Cheese doesn’t
really have the satiating effect that meat does (for me at least), and so I can
keep on eating it and never really feel satisfied, whereas when eating flesh
I’ll eventually reach a point where I’m no longer hungry/interested in having
more food. And I’m writing “cheese”
here, but I’m sure this is true with all dairy: I just genuinely don’t consume
much dairy ASIDE from cheese.
* Avoid
sauces and be wary of seasonings. Once
again: I was shameless about this. One
day, the buffet line had my most absolute favorite meat in the world: bone in
beef short ribs. However, they were BBQ
bone in beef short ribs. So I grabbed a
goodly amount of them, and took my napkin and de-sauced the ribs with some
liberal covering and squeezing of the ribs until they were sufficiently
dry. It’s like “blotting the grease off
pizza” taken to the nth degree. Sauces
tend to contain sugars, as do many seasonings, and these increase the
palatability of food, which is going to interfere with correctly interpreting
hunger signals. When the food tastes
like food, the body will say “I’ve had enough food”. When the food tastes like dopamine, the body
will say “let’s keep eating this until we die from it”. All that said, it was vacation, and if
something had a trace amount of seasonings or sauces on it I wasn’t going to
freak out, but whenever given the choice between something just straight up
grilled/baked/broiled vs something that was dusted and caked in seasonings and
sauces, I opted to fill up on the former and have a taste of the latter.
* Seriously:
eat until “Thanksgiving Stuffed”. I
don’t write “full” because I’m a very particular person when it comes to words,
and I’ve only been “full” 4 times in my life, one of which times was when I
took down the “Stellanator” cheeseburger (4.5lbs of food in 30 minutes). To me, “full” means when you reach the point
of discomfort and then keep eating for another 15-20 minutes. But I think we (Americans/Canadians)
understand “Thanksgiving Stuffed”: you’ve absolutely eaten more than you
normally would at a meal and are teetering on the very between happily satiated
and potentially uncomfortable. Eating to
this point, when combined with WHAT I was eating, had the fantastic effect of
making me NOT HUNGRY in between my 3 giant meals a day. Carbs tend to have an insulin spiking effect,
which can cause us to feel satisfied with a meal and then hungry shortly
after. And, of course, simply not eating
enough will ALSO cause us to be hungry after eating. But gorging on meat and eggs? Now I have fuel to carry me through until the
next time I sit down for a big meal. And
we had some packed days on the cruise where the delta between breakfast and
lunch would have seemed significant back in the day, but I was so satiated from
my massive breakfast that I could let lunch fade back for an hour or so without
concern. This was a big win for me; not
needing to pack snacks while I traveled.
And along with that, there was never any “food guilt” from eating this
way. I wasn’t “overeating” junk: all of
this was animal fat and protein: absolutely outstanding fuel and nutrition,
while at the same time STILL eating like a king.
HOW I TRAINED:
I DID steal from this...
Most cruise ships DO have some sort of
fitness center, and if one were so inclined they could absolutely go there and
get in a workout. There’s enough
dumbbell WODS and other things out there that there’s no shortage of ways to
get in a pump or blow out your lungs.
However, in my case, I wanted to simply be on vacation and enjoy myself,
so here is what “training” boiled down to.
* Each
morning, upon waking, I’d do 50 prisoner squats and 50 push ups. I’d do this with Dan John’s “2-3-5-10”
protocol, doing 2 squats, then 2 push ups, then 3 and 3, etc. Once I got to 10, I’d start over. One round is 20 reps, so I’d do 2.5 rounds of
that. The constant getting up off the
floor is an added stressor. This was,
ultimately, a way to just limber up and get ready for the day AND “make” some
hunger for the upcoming breakfast. This
takes all of 5 minutes to do, if not less.
We spoiled ourselves and had a veranda that I could do these exercises
on, taking in the fresh sea air in the morning, but it can just as easily be
done in the room.
* In that
regard of “done in the room”, if I found myself with some downtime while
hanging out in our cabin, I’d knock out a set of 5-20 squats or push ups, with
a goal of reaching 300 in the day. That
number comes from Jamie Lewis, and is an excellent benchmark for “baseline
physical activity for the day”. This
allowed me to be active, keep blood flowing through my muscles, get in a decent pump WITHOUT
having to change into gym clothes, go to the fitness center, shower afterwards,
etc. I was just on vacation thriving.
Jamie and I have the same taste in comic books it seems
* I did have
ONE day where the Mrs wanted to get in a quick power nap while I wasn’t feeling
tired, so I allotted myself 30 minutes of actual focused training, and
performed the following workout. EMOM
for 20 minutes: do 5 prisoner squats, then 5 push ups, then 5 FULL ROM Burpees,
then do 2-3-5-10 for 5 rounds. The
distinction of a full ROM burpee is that I would do a full prisoner squat, THEN
drop down into a push up, from the push up jump straight up in the air and then
land into the prisoner squat to start over again. In general, this whole week I focused on rep
QUALITY, and I feel like that was incredibly helpful in actually getting some
sort of result from the training. I
actually found myself with a little more time at the end of that, so I did a
few pull-ups off the beam on our veranda and some ab work.
* NEVER use
the elevator. Ever. Forcing yourself to take the stairs wherever
you go on the cruise ship will get you a LOT of non-exercise general activity,
especially if you’re on one of the lower decks, since the food tends to be on
the upper deck. Plus, being on an
elevator means being with a lot of people who have been eating the WRONG kind
of foods in a confined space: you can imagine how fun that is.
* But
probably the most beneficial thing I did was WALK. We got in 15-20+k steps a day every day. And we didn’t walk for exercise: we walked
because we enjoyed each other’s company and enjoyed exploring the ship and the
ports off of it. On the days we were at
sea, we’d walk around the jogging track for fresh air, then get inside the ship
and walk around the shops, look at art, check out the lobbies and lounges,
listen to music being played over the speakers, go on scavenger hunts (people
hide plastic/rubber ducks on cruise ships, and looking for them can be fun) and
just have time wondering around doing nothing, which, when combined with “never
taking the stairs”, can add up real quick for steps and activity.
 |
| It felt like this |
* My wife
flat out asked me on day 3 of the cruise, after I returned to our lunch table
with a plateful of lamb, steaks, ribs, turkey and salmon “How have you been
able to eat so much and still be ripped?”
And it actually seemed like I was getting MORE defined as time went on,
while my muscles filled out and I looked the fullest and healthies I’d been in
a LONG time. I genuinely think I’ve been
undereating for a bit now, and I was finally giving myself the nutrients I
needed which, when paired with reduced training, low stress and opportunities
to catch up on a massive sleep debt, gave me an opportunity to heal and
ultimately THRIVE on vacation. I ate and
lived like a king, and I’ve now returned fully recharged and ready to take on
some SERIOUS training until my next cruise…in 9 weeks. This is an awesome season.
*BONUS
MATERIAL: EATING WHILE TRAVELING*
* This
wasn’t on the cruise, but I still managed to abide by the nutritional
principles when I was getting ready to board/returning home from the
cruise. We were ported in New York City,
where I lived off of street kabobs and lamb gyro slices
* and while
at the airport, we had a Wendy’s, where I got 2 plain “Dave’s Doubles” with no
cheese, and just tossed the bun and ate the patties with a fork and knife. It’s honestly simple stuff, and it still
worked: I ate enough that I didn’t need more food.
No comments:
Post a Comment