Since the holidays are now behind us, I am going to have some fun with this one. If it doesn’t fit your idea of a training or nutrition related article, get over it. And if you can’t, feel free to leave an anonymous, shitty message afterwards telling me how I should be fired and how badly I suck.
Every year around the holidays my wife and I take our rotten kids on a vacation and that usually means a cruise. We particularly like cruising with our kids because they want to go do their thing and that allows my wife and I to do our thing and we can all get along for one week out of the year. If you have not been on a cruise you may not understand the reference of a “white trash” vacation. If you have been on a cruise and you don’t get the reference, you are lying, offended by my reference, or both.
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There is quite a broad array of people on a cruise. You have expensive staterooms and suites in the front of the ship, nice restaurants above and beyond the all-inclusive meals and buffets, and you can always buy a TAG Heuer Carrera for under $4k, saving yourself an easy 1200-1500 bucks — I mean, you know, if that is your thing. On the other hand, there are incredibly inexpensive rooms on the bottom and rear of the ship, and in the middle of the ship with no windows. If you live close to a port you could cruise for a week in the Caribbean for two people under 800 bucks if you wanted to. The latter is the reference to white trash; let me elaborate.
I come from a very healthy state (Colorado) where people are always eating healthy, exercising, outside enjoying the outdoors, etc..It is a lot of times culture shock when I go to a different state because it becomes painfully obvious that the majority of the country is obese. I am not talking just about plain obese but “I need a walking cane” obese. I have never seen so many fat people and fat people with canes in my life. I didn’t even make mention of it and two of my kids, on separate occasions, noticed this and asked me about it.
The cool thing is that these people are incredibly comfortable in their skin. I presume they simply feel that they are normal and, at least on this vacation, they certainly were. I doubt I saw 10 people that were truly in good shape that you may have thought, “they workout and take care of themselves.” I did see one midget bodybuilder that had a national-level upper body (couldn’t see his legs because he was up further in the line getting back on the ship after being in port) and I didn’t get a look at his face to see if I recognized him. Otherwise, there may have been three people in the ship’s gym that looked like they worked out regularly.
The other thing I noticed was that not only were these people comfortable in their own skin, but they couldn’t have given a shit about the condition I was in. Sure, I had the occasional large, black-woman comment when I was ironing a shirt in the laundry room but for the most part, no one gave two shits if I or anyone else was in shape. I am not bringing this up because I was so terribly disappointed with the lack of attention as much as I get a LOT of questions about diet, training, etc., in situations like this, usually. It is much more enjoyable when you vacation and no one gives a shit to ask you anything about training or nutrition.
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I have cruised before but it didn’t hit me until about midway through this cruise that the main reason a lot of people cruise is that it can be very cheap and the food is very good and all-you-can-eat for the entire week. The dinners were incredible and you could order five dinners if you wanted to or three or four desserts. You know, hypothetically. They served everything from ox tongue to escargot and lobster, to braised short ribs and the best desserts ever. Breakfast was incredible and the buffets that ran all day were loaded with everything you could think of. Room service was included, as well, around the clock. I almost forgot, Guy Fieri had a burger buffet, as well. I think this pretty much proves my point about the fat people and the food and why someone like myself was, let’s say, in heaven.
I will admit that watching all of those porcelain-white skinned, fat and hairy people was, for a brief moment, appealing. I mean, they didn’t spend their time in the gym every day and they didn’t eat boring, nasty-tasting food and they just weren’t phased by being out of shape. Then it occurred to me that it may have seemed appealing while I was surrounded by fat people on a cruise in the middle of the ocean but…in a week I would be back on land where there actually WERE people in shape and healthy. Plus, hair just bogues me out. Just Sayin’.
=)