Strophic

You will never experience long-term success unless you change your relationship with food. I know it's tempting to look for an easy way out, but do you really think it's healthy and sustainable to outsource your self control to a pill?

You will gain it all back unless you plan to take this medication for the rest of your life.

Welcome strophic, You have a good start hope you can make it to your goals.. What are you doing for your weight loss routine? Dieting, exercise drinking lots of water..We usually check in once a week as a new thread starts.. Everyone here has the same goal losing weight for improved health and to look good for our next cruise.. Wish you well. Rob

I'm using MyFitnessPal to track my calorie intake and sticking to a limit of 1200 calories per day. I am eating pretty much the same stuff I did before, just smaller portions and two or three discrete meals per day instead of being a constant food vacuum...which has always been a big problem for me.

No exercise yet since I'm a notorious couch potato, but with the weather getting warmer I'm thinking of busting out the roller blades I bought last year and actually learning how to use them. My problem last time was eating back my exercise calories and then some—you know, going for a 20 minute jog and then thinking I'd burned off enough to "reward" myself with a slice of pizza or sugary drink. Derp. So I'm keeping exercise and diet separate this time around.

I'm very motivated to lose weight because I was around 170 lbs when my boyfriend and I started dating, and then gradually ate my way up to 230. He's in shape, so I feel like it's not fair to him, especially since we both know I'm happier and more pleasant to be around when I'm not eating fast food every day.

One of my current challenges is cooking for my household when my boyfriend and I have very different diet needs. He's six inches taller than me and doesn't need to lose any weight, so he needs to eat a lot more. Our deal is he cleans and I cook, so it wouldn't be fair to make him responsible for his own food. He also has type 1 diabetes, so I can't just load his plate up with a big side of carbs to balance things out, at least not without wasting a lot of insulin.

Starting losing weight on March 23 as a 5'7 female weighing 230 lbs, currently sitting at 218—after I let myself have a "cheat day" with some pizza and gelato. I'm ahead of schedule for my weight loss, which makes me hopeful that I will reach my milestone goal of 165 lbs for my December 3rd cruise. My ultimate goal is 130lbs, which I hope to achieve by the end of next year.

I lost weight from 205 to 165 several years ago, although I fell off the wagon *hard*, especially after I moved from a very rural location to an urban one with easy access to a ton of fast food restaurants. So I am kicking myself for the re-gain, but happy that I am making progress in the right direction again.

Six pounds in one month is actually a perfectly respectable amount of weight loss! Maximum healthy weight loss is 2lbs per week (unless you are just starting out and/or obese) so you are doing just fine.

I don't use Nutrisystem myself, but I know a couple people who it has helped. Just make sure you don't rely too much on it—it works just fine, but if you use it as a crutch and don't learn how to eat within a certain calorie limit on your own, you are in danger of gaining the weight back once you are done and go off the system. I'd recommend making an account on MyFitnessPal and using their food diary feature as a supplement to Nutrisystem. Weigh and measure out the Nutrisystem portions just like you would normal food, so once you've lost all the weight you will have all the skills you need to keep it off.

I dislike having to expand each box

You'll live.

I don't consider packing two weeks out to be early. I wish my boyfriend packed that far in advance! He tried to pack everything the night of and ended up forgetting his dress pants :P

I honestly didn't notice others too much while we were on our cruise. I can't imagine the miserable person I would have to be to be actively seeking out things to annoy me while on vacation. Honestly, who cares? It only affects you because you are choosing to let it.

Maybe instead of spending precious hours of your life scoping out the dining room for people to cast judgment on, you should just chillax and enjoy the company of the friends and family who you have chosen to spend your limited vacation time with.

Some of the people in this thread come off like they are absolutely desperate to feel superior to others. Usually when someone has to try that hard to place others beneath them, it's because deep down inside they lack self esteem.

I duslike the full sugnatures not shown. I like to see everyone's cruise background from newbie to pro. Just lends authority to their posts

Seriously? Some peoples' signatures are so big that they will fill up your entire screen. They're there with just one click when you want to see them, but having every ENORMOUS signature displayed in full at all times is such a waste of space.

Man, some of you folks are SALTY.

I am very happy that they modernized the look of the cruise critic boards...it was very outdated, and the super wide format they used to have is actually harder to read for desktop users. If you're used to that format then the change might take a little bit of getting used to, but it's pretty much objectively better. I'm sure you guys don't read books as wide as your computer screens, right?

The new logo is also better. Maybe you could argue that you liked the old font more, but come on...the old blue ribbon graphic looks like Microsoft Word clipart.

I think since the demographic of this forum probably swings older than average people might be more averse to change. But the old format was not easy on the eyes and very difficult to navigate. New users to the site who have not become accustomed to working around the flaws of the old format will almost certainly prefer the new format.

I just did one yesterday and it was a 1-10 scale.

 

I've never heard of this idea of it being Pass/Fail (and I don't buy it), so I scored based on how I honestly feel about the level of service (mostly 9's).

 

It doesn't make any sense to me that anything less than a 10 is considered a failure. They must get thousands of these a week and most of them are not 10's. So do they assume they are failing across the board? Every single non-10 can't possible resort in a "bad thing".

You'd be surprised. I used to work in a fast food restaurant that did surveys, and anything less than five stars counted against you. People think it couldn't possibly be that bad for the employees because it makes no sense. It does make no sense—but it still is that bad.

No matter how hard you try to reason with the powers that be about how some people just don't give out prefect ratings, they will tell you "your job is to deliver service that earns those five stars." And the sad thing is that for a lot of people it's literally impossible to be good enough, some individuals will not give a perfect rating under any circumstances.

I think you're being a bit unrealistic. The average passenger doesn't read CC and has no idea that RCI's scoring system, as described by some people here, is essentially pass/fail. In the real world, when marking on a 1-5 scale, 1 would be poor, 3 average and 5 exceptional (or similar terms). There's not a lot of sense in trying to convince CC members to rate an average server as a 5 when the vast majority of passengers, lacking your insight, would score a 3 or 4.

I'm not talking about the average passenger, I'm talking about the people in this thread who *know* the system is pass/fail but are still arguing that they will give lower marks for good/great but not exemplary service.

Well, I have to disagree with you here. Aquahound said " So if its not truly deserving of a 5 (10, whatever), we're supposed to lie for the sake of those who failed to provide that level of service?" To me, if I feel a person deserves top marks I will give them top marks but if the service was not top notch then the rating should reflect that. I am not into giving false scores just so I don't hurt some one who's performance was less than i expected.

You should only give less than full marks if there was actually a problem that you were not able to have resolved, it was something within the control of the person you are rating, and it was severe enough that it actually had a real negative impact on your experience.

If you knowingly hurt someone's job by marking them down for stuff like "didn't go the extra mile" then you're just a jerk on a power trip.

So if its not truly deserving of a 5 (10, whatever), we're supposed to lie for the sake of those who failed to provide that level of service?

 

No. I don't think so.

Sorry but I can't stand your attitude in this comment. The problem is that the way you approach a rating scale is completely different from how RCI does it.

Imagine that you get great service on your cruise and you want to reflect that in your survey, but in your mind "great service" means 4 stars. When RCI reads that survey, they do not get the message of "great service." They read "failure." You have not gotten your intended message across at all, and in the process have actually hurt the people you wanted to commend.

Should it be that way? Absolutely not. But you have to work within the reality that exists, not the ideal that doesn't.

You now know from reading this thread that rating less than 5 stars hurts the careers of the people you rated. So from now on, the way you should approach the survey is not "What was my level of service from 1-5?" Because that is not the reality. The reality is "Does the level of service I received warrant my server being hurt (1-4 stars) or not? (5 stars)"

It's an absolutely stupid system. But you can't do anything to change it, so you have to work with it. If your intended outcome is not to hurt your server, you should be rating 5 stars regardless of your own arbitrary, individual "rating scale" that only exists inside your head.

It hurts you a lot less to "lie" and be generous than it would hurt your server if you didn't. You'll live.

I checked a forecast for my cruise a day or two beforehand and it predicted that it would rain in two of the ports, thunderstorming in one of them. There was clear, sunny weather the entire week with just a bit of a drizzle on one of the sea days. Don't sweat the forecasts too much, they're not infallible.

Just remember that there are other holidays than cruising. Cruises are great, but you are in a cocoon, and really only get a taste of the countries you visit.

That's true for sure, but ugh, you can't beat the value. I want to go to Japan for the eventual honeymoon and I was casually researching that this morning. $1700 per person just for the plane tickets! That's about how much we spent on the cruise—food, shopping, lodging, transportation, excursions and all.

I am going to see if we can swing a trip to DC during one of next year's holiday weekends. I love it and my boyfriend has never been, so it would be a ton of fun :)

You are fortunate. You are learning about you boyfriend before marriage. For the sake of any children you may have, you may want the rethink about your relationship.

Kind of surprised that someone would jump from "My boyfriend and I disagree on something" to "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!" Disagreements happen and it's not a sign to torch the relationship to the ground. I managed to stick through it when he said that Forrest Gump was "just okay," so I think we're gonna be alright :P

Re: Everyone else, thanks for the responses! He has definitely caught the cruise bug. We're both really excited for the Royal Caribbean cruise next year—in fact the tables were turned this time around and I was actually slightly more apprehensive about booking than he was! He was super gung-ho about it.

The only thing we ended up disagreeing on was the cabin. He actually wanted to bring for a balcony next time, I was very happy with interior. Even with the raises we got at our jobs, balcony is quite a bit extra, so I think we'll probably compromise and do an oceanview.

We're back!

Sorry to disappoint those who predicted that our relationship would be torn apart at the atomic level—he got a lot more excited for the cruise as it drew closer and was very enthusiastic about it by the time we left for Florida. It helps that we both got a raise at our respective jobs, which alleviated a lot of the financial stress.

We both had a fantastic time and he begged me to book another one as soon as we got home. So...Oasis of the Seas, 10/3/18!

I really appreciate the advice from this thread. I did what a lot of you recommended and showed him a bunch of YouTube videos of cruises and shore excursions; it really helped. Now the only buyer's remorse we have is from our ill-fated adventure into the casino—

Well, I am back from my cruise and I had a good experience with them. It took a while to get on the ship, but it was quite crowded at the port and not really their fault. My philosophy was "as long as I end up on the ship, I'm happy." We got on with plenty of time to spare and it was pretty painless to get off as well. The car was fine when we got back.

I'd use them again. Maybe it wasn't as smooth and quick as using the cruise port parking, but it was $160 cheaper and I got on and off the ship with myself and my luggage intact. So I call that a success!

Carnival Serendipity

Carnival Flourish

Carnival Enterprise

Carnival Reknown

Isn't that what creates children?

Thankfully not with today's technology. Or at least you can romance responsibly and not be taken by surprise. Nexplanon's failure rate is only .05% :D

I like the idea of a small cruise but I feel like I'd miss out on all of the fun things that the bigger ships offer.

It's absolutely impossible to lose 50lbs in one month. If you set more reasonable goals you will have a lot easier time losing weight and avoiding burnout. You can safely lose up to 2lbs per week, so there is still time to lose 5-10 lbs depending on how much time there is exactly in your cruise :)

Every aspect of life is more difficult when you are overweight or obese. If you are too heavy to ride horses I'd imagine that you are facing health issues either now or in the future because of your weight. It doesn't mean that you can't have fun on your cruise, but maybe this can be the wakeup call you seem to need. Instead of worrying primarily about having the most fun on your cruise, you could use this as a catalyst to motivate you to turn things around once and for all, so that in a year's time you won't be looking back on the time you almost did something about your weight.

I actually disagree that you should completely let loose food-wise while on the cruise and worry about weight loss after. If you put it off for another month, or do well for a month and then let loose for the four day cruise, you probably won't get back on the wagon as easily as you think you will once vacation time is over. I let myself eat like I used to for a week of vacation after losing 35lbs and it triggered a year-long backslide. Ultimately, making a change and being healthy is going to be much more worth it than eating some midnight pizza. And you can still enjoy the cruise food without overindulging!

I'd sign up for MyFitnessPal and check out the forums. There are a lot of people who've been through what you are going through and they can offer you invaluable advice. If you haven't started losing weight, start today. Even if you can't lose 50lbs in a month, you can lose some weight and that month is going to pass regardless. If you don't lose anything, you are just going to be looking back on this day and thinking "wow, if I had started in August I could be X lbs by now."

3. What does the abbreviations DW, DH mean?

Don't forget other ridiculous mommy blog acronyms like DD (daughter) DS (son), and LO. Don't know why people feel the need to say DS or LO when "son" and "kid" are both only three letters, but there you go.

Zika is no big deal unless you are pregnant or trying to become pregnant, so I'm not too surprised. One of the perks of being childfree is not having to worry about Zika...personally there are diseases that worry me more, but you can't live your whole life in a plastic bubble either.

I think it's a good idea to start with an interior cabin and then move up to OV/balcony on subsequent cruises if you felt like you were missing something on your first cruise. Better, in my opinion, than splurging on your first cruise and then feeling like you can't "downgrade" from that.

One thing I was going to suggest is make sure he tries snorkeling, as I will guarantee one or both will love it. You seemed to have picked a good spot for that. Know you may not have been asking but in Cozumel we do Nachi Cocom. With cab and all is like $75 per person.

Our excursions in Roatan and Cozumel include snorkeling :) I am really excited because I've never done it before, even considering getting a GoPro camera for the trip.