Today was the first full Low-Carb seminar day. For me, it got off to a less-than-desirable start when I went down to the guest services desk, and found that they would not allow me to use any of their pianos to practice. This is the first cruise that I have been on since I started taking piano lessons where there was no piano provided for the passengers to use for practice. I will be complaining to Carnival about this. I will also check to see if that is going to be a problem on the 2013 Low-Carb Cruise. That put a definite cloud over my morning.
I also encountered another problem, but one that I already knew about, and for which I had a fix. Georgene and I are early risers. We get up around 5 a.m., and the earliest breakfast available on Carnival ships is 7:30, which for us is almost lunch time. The fix was easy; we just got some minimal breakfast items from the Lido last night and stored them in our little room refrigerator (which we had the cabin attendant empty for us ahead of time). That way, we had a minimal breakfast (including at least two pats of butter) this morning when we got up.
At our 2nd breakfast (on cruises, we typically eat 4 or 5 meals a day — and still lose weight), we got to chat with several of the other Low-Carb group members. We went down to the convention center quite early in order to get seats right up front. We may have to go even earlier tomorrow, because I’m sure there were several others who noticed that we obviously got the best seats in the room.
As folks arrived, I noticed a couple of young ladies dressed in black that I didn’t recognize, sitting up front and signing in ASL. This year, there is a contingent of deaf participants, and the two young women were contractors for Carnival Cruise Lines hired to do deaf interpretation. The reason there were two was that they each did about a 20 minute shift and traded out over the entire session. I got a change to speak with one of them about their jobs, and she explained that after about 20 minutes, an ASL signer tends to get fatigued enough that it is difficult to do a good job, and a signer will slip into the ASL equivalent of slurred or stuttered speech. Trading out every 20 minutes keeps the signer fresh and able to work effectively.
Dr. Jack Kruse was not on the cruise (the reasons were not given, except that there had been some problem at boarding), so Jimmy Moore substituted several mini-presentations by various folks who had been on his podcasts, or had been presenters on prior Low-Carb cruises. The speakers included Valerie Berkowitz, Mary Vernon, Michael Fox, and Lauren Noel. I have some notes on each of these folks, but this post is already getting long (plus it’s past our bedtime already!), so I will try to write more about them on Wednesday (no seminars on Wednesday because it’s a port day).
The main speaker for the morning was Dr. Eric Westman, who spoke about debunking the main myths that persist about low-carb despite overwhelming contradicting scientific evidence.
The morning session ended with several door prizes. Georgene managed to land a baseball cap, with which she was not particularly thrilled, but she did wear it during our very short opportunity to get some sun.
The afternoon session started with a short presentation from each of several of the bloggers listed in the program, including yours truly. I spoke briefly about this blog. Of course, once I sat down, I immediately thought of several things I should have added.
The first major presentation was by Fred Hahn, the “slow-burn” guy. He gave a short lecture on the various different ways that people use to try to achieve fitness, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. He concluded by pointing out that simple slow-burn strength training gives you about 95% of what most people are really after, and in a much safer process.
The last major presentation was by Monique Forslund, a Zumba instructor from Sweden. She had a much broader background than I realized, and she only mentioned Zumba in passing. Her talk was about how to arrange a healthy diet for young children, and the various challenges she had to overcome while running her Montessori school.
The day ended with another bunch of door prizes. I still haven’t scored anything in the door prizes, but it’s not really all that likely that I will — after all, there are over 200 folks in this year’s group.
I have several photos, but since it’s getting late, & resizing the photos (for faster loading and less bandwidth) takes significant time, I will go ahead and get this posted, and add in the photos when I get time to process them.
