My Food and Movement While Cruising with Type 2 Diabetes

On this episode… I discuss my food and movement choices while cruising with Type 2 Diabetes. As part of my Week in Review, I share my movement and food while onboard my current cruise, Royal Caribbean’s cruise ship, Enchantment of the Seas. I also provide an update on my progress using Mounjaro, and review Type 2 Diabetes related news articles.

Links from the show:

New Way to Calculate an A1C estimate from a CGM

Glucose Management Indicator (GMI): A New Term for Estimating A1C From Continuous Glucose Monitoring

NEWS

Why Walking is Your Most Powerful De-Stressing Tool

The 4 Best Low-Sugar Dunkin’ Drinks for Diabetes

This Is the One Spice You Should Add to Your Diet if You’re Insulin-Resistant

Patients with ‘blinding’ headaches could be treated with weight loss jab used for type 2 diabetes

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Click here to access the full episode transcript

Okay, so the main topic for today, and as I mentioned last week that I’d be talking about was my food and movement while cruising. So I do spend some time cruising and I can’t treat it as a vacation because, if you’re on a vacation for three or four days and maybe your next vacation isn’t for six or eight months you can “go hog wild” for those three days, and it honestly would not have a major effect over your long-term health.

But if you’re doing something frequently, I don’t call that a vacation anymore. I do say I’m traveling, but I have to maintain and conduct my everyday life while I’m on a cruise ship. So what that means, since I’m dealing with my type two diabetes, is that my food and my movement have to continue in a way that’s helpful to me while I’m cruising.

So let’s talk about it. What do I eat on a cruise ship? There is food everywhere. There’s never a shortage of food. I think on this cruise ship, they don’t have 24-hour food available, but I think food is available between the hours of 6 am and 1 am.

So what do I do in the morning? I always have my cappuccino. I like coffee. And up in the diamond lounge where I go, they have an espresso machine.

It’s there, you can use it yourself. It’s included with your diamond-level loyalty benefits. And I usually have a cappuccino made by this machine and then I add a shot of espresso. Then I do one of two things. If I feel like eating, if I’m hungry, which honestly hasn’t happened lately, I’ll go to the breakfast buffet and I’ll have eggs and bacon, something like that along with my cappuccino.

What I’ve been doing lately is just having a protein shake. So I have my cappuccino, and then also sometime before lunch, I’ll have a protein shake. And it’s almost lunchtime now. and I just finished my protein shake here about an hour ago, so that’s my breakfast for lunch. I generally like to go to the buffet and I am a buffet person at heart, I think because especially when I’m cruising by myself, I like to,get in and get out and I spend maybe 20 minutes eating. And when I’m with my wife, we will go to the buffet for breakfast and lunch, but then for dinner, we do go to the main dining room. But when I’m by myself, I pretty much stick with a buffet, because the main dining room can easily take an hour and a half, to get through a meal.

And when I’m by myself, I just don’t wanna invest that much time sitting there and waiting for the next course to come out. So like today, when I go grab lunch, it’ll probably be a small chef salad from the buffet, and then I will also add in a protein shake. And that’s about as much as I can eat. My salad will have, greens of course, usually, some spinach, and some romaine, and then I like to put on chickpeas.

I think people call them garbanzo. and then some kind of meat. They’ll either have chopped-up ham or tuna, or they’ll have maybe diced eggs. I’ll put that on, and also some cheese. I’ll put on some seeds. I like some sunflower seeds if they have those. Put those on and then finish it off with some blue cheese dressing.

And that’s usually my lunch. Now for dinner, it depends again if I’m eating in the main dining room with my wife, I’ll get, a small appetizer, usually soup, and then my entree. I’ll have meat and veg. If it has mashed potatoes or something like that, I’ll either have some of that or not, and that’s my meal.

I don’t get dessert when I’m in the main dining room. haven’t gotten a dessert in the main dining room for ages. And, especially now, I’m just not hungry at all for that. And once in a while, I have a dinner roll, with my dinner in the main dining room, most often not, maybe 50-50. When I’m by myself, I’m back to the buffet.

I do like the buffet and I’ll either get, a little bit of meat they have there, some vegetables they have there, or sometimes a burger. sometimes I like a burger at the buffet. So that’s dinner. Now my snack and if I’m trying to get in my protein, I’ll either have one of those, quest bars, now they’re the lemon cake protein bars.

Those are my favorites. Or the Quest peanut butter cups. So I’ll have one of those. usually before bed, in the evening. it is easier now with the Mounjaro to not overeat on a cruise ship. But honestly, I keep myself busy. We have various activities. sometimes when, if we’re in a port, I’m out walking, or if we’re on the cruise ship, if I’m with my wife, sometimes we’ll go to trivia or we’ll sit up in the solarium and hang out there, but we try to be busy with activities and so I’m really not thinking about eating all the time.

For movement, as I said earlier, it’s a lot of stairs, just unintentionally taking stairs. sometimes the elevators are maybe a little crowded or a little slow, or sometimes they’re not working, but sometimes it’s just a lot easier to take the stairs.

So if I’m going down 1, 2, or 3 flights of stairs, I don’t even think about it. I go right down the stairs. Don’t even think about the elevator. And if I’m going up one or two flights, I never take the elevator. usually never. But even sometimes if I’m going up to three flights, I’ll usually take the stairs. Now, if it starts getting four or more flights, then yes, sometimes I’ll wait for an elevator, but not always.

On these ships that I cruise with Royal Caribbean, they usually have a walking jogging track up in the very, very top deck, but that’s usually in the full wind if we’re sailing or the full sun regardless. And sometimes I don’t want that. So where I most often walk on the cruise ship is on the deck that goes around lower, maybe around deck five.

And that is fully in the shade, or maybe 90% in the shade, and on some ships, it does not go the whole way around. So I make a very long u sometimes in the bow of the ship, you cannot fully go around. Other times you can. But on the ship I’m on right now, the enchantment of the seas, I can walk about 90% away around the ship, but I can’t connect.

So it’s back and forth, but that one deck is three-tenths of a mile. when I walk that 90% of the way around and then walk all the way back to where I started, that’s three-tenths of a mile. So it’s 10 loops for three miles. And that’s what I’ve been doing lately. And like I said before, if I am in port and it’s nice outside, I will get out and just walk in the local town.

I’ve never found a place where I couldn’t walk. Feel safe and enjoy the locale, they usually have shops and they usually have various things. Now, I don’t take a lot of time in the shops. I walk by them, a lot of things to see. Now when the weather is bad. I sometimes have been known to walk stairs and interior hallways, so I walk down the length of an interior hallway, sometimes down in the cabin area or sometimes up in the public areas. And then I’ll go up one or two flights of stairs and down one or two flights of stairs and then back down the other hallway and I’ll keep doing that and, spend an hour doing that. Usually cover just about three miles either way.

And that way I can stay out of the bad weather if we have maybe a very windy day while sailing or rain, something like that. And I also found that if the ship is rocking, I can go down on deck two, as it’s as far down as passengers are allowed to go, and it’s much more stable way down there.

Sometimes I still have to hold onto a railing, I can still get my walk in. It’s rare that it’s been so rough that I didn’t feel like walking. Now they do have a fully equipped gym and they even offer classes. As I think you know, it’s very rare for me to go to the ship’s gym. I don’t know, I just like my walking, but if I ever change my mind and I have done it before, I have used a rower in the various cruise ship gyms.

I’ve lifted some weights in the various cruise ship gyms, but not recently. And, that’s okay. So that’s my food and movement while cruising.