Jimmy Moore emceeing the Low-Carb Cruise
I’ve been home for over week now from The 3rd Annual Low-Carb Cruise to the Bahamas that took place March 6-11, 2010, but I’m still super-stoked about all that went on in just those few short days with some truly amazing people that encourages me to have great optimism about the future of the low-carb movement as we know it not just in the United States of America, but quite literally around the world. Several of the 94 low-carb cruisers who came with us this year have already blogged about their experience and I encourage you to check them all out:
TOM NAUGHTON: “Low-Carb Cruisin’”
RAMONA DENTON: “The 2010 Low Carb Cruise Has Sailed”
AMY DUNGAN: “Lots To Talk About”
DR. ANDREAS EENFELDT: “Super Cruise” (Google translate from Swedish)
And if you like pics, check out these sample Facebook photo albums:
KIM PALMER
DEBBIE CUSICK
DEBBIE HUBBS
CHRISTINE MOORE
TOM NAUGHTON
LISA CHAN-QUI
AMY DUNGAN
BECKY GANDY
LOW-CARB CRUISE PAGE
Don’t you dare ever let anyone tell you that the healthy low-carb lifestyle is dead. Sure, that crazy fad that produced all the nasty so-called “low-carb” products that happened in 2004 is a goner and good riddance! But if the growth we’ve seen over just the past few years with these annual low-carb cruises is any indication, we are now at a major turning point regarding low-carb becoming more mainstream in our culture and truly exceptional things lie ahead for us in the future. Exciting stuff!
For those of you who don’t know the story behind how the Low-Carb Cruise was birthed, I’d like to share that with you today because it is fortuitous how everything just sorta fell into place to make it happen.
Let’s go back in time a few years to 2007 for a moment when we held the very first low-carb cruise ever! It was just a select group of online friends in the low-carb world who wanted to get together on a cruise to meet, have some chit-chat time about what’s happening in each other’s lives and low-carb efforts, and enjoy each other’s company with a brief program on the first day of the cruise. The featured speakers that year included me and Christine, Christin Sherburne, and a couple of others. We didn’t really plan any kind of formal lectures or anything like that–the purpose was to get away for a few days and forge relationships with people who we’ve previously only known through our blogs, low-carb forums, and such.
I promoted that first cruise at my blog in October that year and we had a total of 18 people join us for a glorious time down to Cozumel and Progreso, Mexico. Christine and I had been on this exact same cruise ship (Carnival Ecstasy) for our honeymoon in 1995, so it was kinda neat go cruisin’ again on a vessel we were familiar with. That first low-carb cruise even gave me a chance to show that it is possible to eat low-carb on a cruise. The inaugural event was such a blast we just had to do another one the next year…but we knew this thing could be much bigger than a simple get-together.
Our official Low-Carb Cruise coordinator extraordinaire Becky Gandy
The lady who basically coordinated the entire first cruise for us was Becky Gandy. I gotta tell you something about Becky–her organization and passion for making this cruise happen is what made it work. And she enjoyed it so much that she decided to keep doing it with visions of making this an annual event with REAL guest speakers. Since I already had connections to a lot of the low-carb experts out there from my low-carb podcast show, I was the logical point person for trying to find people who would be willing to come.
But we had one MAJOR problem–no budget to pay for any speakers. However, I’d forged some quality relationships with various experts in the low-carb community over the years attending various scientific conferences and decided to just flat-out ask if they’d like to come. The first person I approached about joining us on The 2nd Annual Low-Carb Cruise to Mexico in January 2009 originally agreed to come, but then he realized we would not be paying for his cruise or a speaking fee. I explained to him about the lack of a budget and that we weren’t charging for the conference beyond the cost of the cruise and unfortunately he abruptly declined after saying he was coming. Bummer.
With that fresh in my mind, I wasn’t holding out hope that we’d be able to get any guests after this, but that’s when something amazing happened–everybody else I asked to come said YES YES YES! People like Dr. Eric Westman, Jackie Eberstein, Dana Carpender, Judy Barnes Baker, Dr. James Carlson all stepped up to the plate and said they wanted to be a part of this and they were willing to do it all at their own expense. WOW, this was amazing! Needless to say, we were ecstatic. I invited Becky Gandy on my podcast to talk about this cruise with all our awesome guest speakers we’d be having and once again promoted it on my blog and elsewhere online.
The low-carb cruisers who went with us in January 2009 to Mexico
With the attraction of some top-notch guest low-carb speakers giving presentations on carbohydrate-restriction and even showing a hot new documentary film about low-carb at the time called “My Big Fat Diet,” we more than doubled our attendance to 38 in 2009 which was quite a memorable experience for all who attended. Who could forget Dr. Westman’s rendition of “I Wish They All Could Be Carbohydrate-Free?” It was refreshing to see these experts not just giving their speeches, but also engaging in conversation with those of us who attended.
All of this clued us in that we were on to something special with these cruises. If having 4-5 speakers, including doctors, nurses, bloggers, and advocates, talking about the low-carb way of life in a positive manner could attract such a diverse group of people literally from around the world to come together on a cruise, then we really should keep this going and find even more who would be willing to join us. And so we did.
Our 2010 low-carb cruise panel during the Q&A session on the final day
Flash forward to last year when we were planning the 2010 Low-Carb Cruise and I again started asking my expert friends if they’d like to come. We had a few logistical issues that prevented certain ones we invited from coming, but the line-up of brand new guest speakers we ended up with for this year’s cruise was absolutely stellar–Dr. Mary Vernon, Dr. William Davis, Fred Hahn, and Tom Naughton who showed his fabulous documentary film FAT HEAD which was a huge hit with the low-carb cruisers. Returning speakers Jackie Eberstein, Dana Carpender, and Judy Barnes Baker were again a fabulous addition to the line-up and I was grateful they were willing to come back with us again. But we had one surprise guest who contacted me just a couple of months before we set sail and little did I know what an impact he would have on the 2010 Low-Carb Cruise.
Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt and his girlfriend Kristin traveled from Sweden
If you are not already familiar with Swedish physician Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt and his uber-popular “Kostdoktorn” (Diet Doctor) blog, then you owe it to yourself to use theGoogle Translate tool to get a rough translation from Swedish to English to see what he’s writing about what they refer to in his country as LCHF (low-carb, high-fat). You can read his basic philosophy (using the translator from Google) about nutrition and health here. I’ve been telling you about the low-carb diet explosion happening in Sweden for the past couple of years and Dr. Eenfeldt wanted to come on this cruise to give an update on the happenings in his country in what would be his first-ever lecture in English. He did an AMAZING job and I’ll be sharing a YouTube video interview I conducted with him on the cruise very soon. He’s planning on coming back in 2011 and inviting readers from his blog to join him! AWESOME!
One other pleasant addition to the 2010 cruise was the presence of a camera guy capturing all the lectures and following us around for a TV pilot along the lines of “60 Minutes” focusing on the subject of diabetes. Fitness model Jason Maggard signed up to go on the cruise less than two weeks before we set sail because he was so passionate about bringing the low-carb message to the masses on television. It’s his dream to have this pilot picked up by a major network, so wish him well in this endeavor. He’s asked me to be a part of his investigative reporting team, so it should be fun. I’m working with Jason about making DVDs with the content of the guest speakers available for purchase once we get the permission of the speakers and production issues squared away. You’ll hear about it when it’s ready for sale!
So here we are finished with our best low-carb cruise to date (nearly tripling our numbers from 38 to 94) and we’re already planning the details for 2011. We will be announcing all the details about it within the next couple of months or so, but we are easily anticipating 200+ (maybe 300+) of your fellow low-carb enthusiasts as well as the top-rated experts on low-carb diets to join us. I’m busy working on getting guest speakers to join us and you’re gonna be in for a big surprise when we share with you the line-up. If you’ve always wanted to join us on the annual Low-Carb cruise, then don’t let this opportunity in 2011 pass you by. Here are some testimonies from people who came this year about the cruise and why you should come next time:
Keep your eyes peeled for where we will be sailing out from on The 4th Annual Low-Carb Cruise in 2011 coming soon! I sincerely appreciate everyone who has been a part of this cruise over the past three years and I am encouraged by the exceptional things to come very soon. We are a strong community of like-minded believers that livin’ la vida low-carb has changed our lives forever for the better. I’m so privileged to have met some superb people through my Internet work and I can’t wait to see many more of you in person on future cruises. You better believe we’re gonna keep this going because it’s a low-carb tradition originally borne out of a desire to meet our online friends. Now it’s so much more! Won’t you join us in 2011?
Comments
Yes it was a wonderful learning experience AND lots of fun too!!
You gotta come next year!! The group has more than doubled every year :-)
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