Reply To: I Do Not Crunch Everything: The Onboard Diet Thread
I was thinking about this thread and the dining question one (which has turned into a discussion of introversion and when it’s okay to ask to sit with other sea monkeys at lunch/breakfast) over lunch, and I remembered something. From New Scientist, 24/31* December 2011:
Researchers at Georgia State University in Atlanta have shown that group size dramatically affects the number of calories consumed. If you are with one other person, you will eat 35 per cent more calories than if you dine alone. In a group of eight, you’re looking at a whopping 90 per cent increase.
Given that several people in the other thread have said that they either were less introverted than usual on the last cruise, or wish they had been, this might mean you’re all doomed to overeat. But it also suggests a strategy. If you need alone time (and every monkey needs alone time) then have it at breakfast and/or lunch (eating bananas in the sunshine, for example) and you will have the emotional energy to interact with sea monkeys for the rest of the day (it’s Holland America, it’s a fine Line!) without having overdosed on physical energy. Other sea monkeys will understand that it doesn’t mean sea monkeys do not love us.
* That’s a combined issue for the 24th and 31st of December, not 24 or 31 Decembers, or 0.774 Decembers.
ETA: I should probably say that of all the things you could voluntarily deprive yourself of on JoCo Cruise Crazy, contact with sea monkeys is the worst (to deprive yourself of. Not the worst thing to have.) Seriously, go without ice cream, Eggs Benedict, the chocolate bar, spas, shore excursions, swimming, concerts (okay; do not go without concerts), pants, but do not go without sea monkey socialising. You’ll have plenty of time for going without sea monkey socialising once the cruise is over. :/ So the advice above is not to be made the subject of a pledge. If you feel like eating with other sea monkeys, eat with other sea monkeys; the extra calories (or the less-delicious food you eat to try to avoid the extra calories) will be worth it. But if you do feel like being alone, and you also don’t want to overeat, then mealtime would be a strategic time to be alone.
I should also probably mention that I’m not interested in dieting either, so I have no place in this thread, and if I give any other dieting advice, that should not be made the subject of a pledge either. Just read the indented thing, because it’s science. Science!