This weekend marks the beginning of the Fifth Annual Low Carb Cruise, sailing on the Carnival Magic from my favorite port – Galveston. Howard and I joined the Fourth Annual Low Carb Cruise last year, and I quickly regretted the fact that I had missed cruises 1, 2, and 3, although this series of cruises grew like many genuinely successful endeavors do…it started with a group of friends having fun.
Image credit: Debbie Hubbs
If you are one of my JUDDD BUDDS**, welcome! Also, if you have been steered here from Jimmy Moore’s recent listing of new low carb, paleo and health blogs, welcome to you too! We hope we can provide enough value for you to stick around! I firmly believe that not enough attention is paid to health and diet. The more people talking about low carb, the merrier!
Our plans for the upcoming week are to provide our readers with some “instant” updates and analysis from the cruise. The reason I put “instant” in quotes is because nothing happens instantaneously with regards to internet connections on a cruise. Access is slow, unreliable, and worst of all, very expensive. Nevertheless, we will try our darndest to get up some daily news on the low carb seminars and conferences. So you’ll know what to expect, here is the schedule:
Saturday night: Tom Naughton of Fat Head fame will be “roasting” all the seminar presenters. This, in itself, is going to be worth the price of admission. Tom is a professional comedian, along with many other wonderful things, including a very nice guy. He was so nice, he pretended not to be startled last year when I nearly ran and jumped in his arms (figuratively, of course) when I recognized him outside the Fort Lauderdale air terminal waiting in line for transportation to his hotel. I am sure the sight of a wild-eyed, crazed fan (me) running full tilt to greet him nearly sent him and his wife, the lovely and sweet Chareva, running back to the relative safety of the terminal. I am certain that the only thing that kept them both from running away was the fear they’d miss their ride! Nevertheless, Tom was brave and kind, and we had many nice conversations during the week that followed.
Sunday: Time to board the ship and sail. No special activities scheduled for this day – just getting going is a challenge in itself, what with boarding along with 4,000 other cruisers, cabin luggage deliveries, unpacking, and the all-important muster drill. However, we’ll be meeting new members who weren’t able to attend the roast for one reason or another. From my experience last year, I can say that our end of the dining room (and it will be a large group – last estimate is some 275 people) will be hopping! Our poor waiters! I am hoping it will be a bit of a consolation to them that the necessity for bringing bread around to each diner at each meal will be greatly reduced (we will have some non-LC spouses and others who will be eating “normally”).
Monday: This is a sea day and our first conference day. Our speakers for Monday will be Dr. Jack Kruse (this should be an interesting presentation in view of all the controversy surrounding his recent Tedx presentation), Dr. Eric Westman, Fred Hahn and Monique Forslund. Jimmy Moore will be herding all the low carb “cats” with welcomes, intros and closing remarks today as well as all the other Conference days.
Tuesday: Another sea and conference day as we make our way south through the Gulf of Mexico. Our speakers for today are Denise Minger of China Study-debunking fame and the sweetheart of all geek men (if my husband is any indication), Dr. John Briffa, Dr. Jeff Volek, Andrew DiMino, Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, and Jackie Eberstein. Obviously, I’ll say more about all the speakers as they make their presentations, but I want you guys to know what a great panel of presenters we have (and to hope you’re just a teensy bit jealous)!
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are port days, and we’ll all pretty much go in our own directions. Wednesday is Jamaica, Thursday is Grand Cayman, my husband’s favorite port, and Friday, Cozumel. Of course, the Low Carb Cruisers will be having dinner together these nights, so there will be plenty to catch up on. Other non-seminar activities are also scheduled – I’ll mention them as they occur.
Saturday: Saturday is our final seminar day, and the day things start to get a little sad, since it’s the last full day of the cruise. Scheduled speakers for Saturday are Dr. William Davis, Chris Masterjohn, Dr. Ron Rosedale, and finally, a Q&A session with all the speakers, moderated by Jimmy Moore.
Sunday is goodbye day, with tearful promises to meet again in another year (in case you are wondering, the next Low Carb Cruise will be out of New Orleans on Carnival’s Conquest – time to PLAN, folks)!
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**JUDDD BUDDS: Johnson’s Up Day Down Day diet is a form of intermittent fasting that has become quite popular at Low Carb Friends, a message board sponsored by Netrition. JUDDD can be done either as a low carb-type diet, or not. I was initially attracted to the members of the JUDDD community because they all seemed to be having trouble keeping their weight UP to the minimum they were satisfied with. They also seem to be the happiest bunch of people I have ever known on a community bulletin board of any sort. So, welcome JUDDD BUDDS! Low Carb Friends is a wonderful place to have low carb discussions; however, they don’t allow links of any sort on the message board, so I am happy to return the favor and not include a link to the site. (/snark).
