If you are new to cruising, you are probably not aware that every night, in the dining room, you will be treated to a four (or more) course meal. Generally, you select from an appetizer, a selection of soup and salads, an entree, and a desert. Factor in the basket of rolls on the table and the periodic appearance of a palate-cleansing sorbet and you are looking at a whole lotta calories.

Using popular calorie-counting sites like Fat Secret and Calorie King, I put together calorie content of a typical dining room meal using counts from restaurants. A typical dining room meal of a dinner roll with butter, escargot, side Caesar salad, prime rib, a baked potato, and cheesecake will set you back about 2300 calories.

Yikes. What can you do to stop the caloric insanity? In part three of our series “Avoid Gaining Weight on Your Cruise: The Dining Room” we give you our best advice for keeping those extra pounds away.

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In 2008, after struggling with my weight for most of my life, I finally found something that worked for me and lost 70 pounds.  Since maintaining weight loss can be just as hard, if not harder, than losing it, I have developed my own strategies to keep it off and still enjoy my cruise. And trust me, I am not one for deprivation and definitely love my food and drink.

Food is everywhere on a cruise, it’s unlimited, it’s free, and you are encouraged to overindulge so it’s not that surprising that the average cruiser gains about 8 pounds on a week-long cruise. That’s as much as the average adult gains over the entire course of the holiday season.

So, how can you avoid gaining weight on your cruise or at least minimize the damage?

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