Nutrition on a Disney Cruise

Mar 07 2025

Do you get anxious going to a buffet? What about a week-long buffet on water, where you can’t escape? Also known as a cruise!

This blog is for you if you want to know how to eat healthy and not gain weight on a cruise (or at a resort). Specifically we were on a Disney Cruise (The Dream) in 2025. As with most vacations I didn’t gain weight. I’ll do a separate blog about exercise.

Levelling Down Your Nutrition on a Disney Cruise

This was, by far, the most difficult nutrition environment I’ve ever been in. And that’s saying a lot considering for two months in 2020 I lived with my buddy Randy. Stress-coping drinking, dock parties, and nacho nights. At least there I had control!

This cruise was way… WAY harder than that. For example:

set meal times
low protein and fibre
hyper-palatable (delicious) food
the free food value paradox
limited access to food
and more

Hyper-palatable food

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. Most of the food was great or at least novel. Resulting in making it hard to not overeat. Also, hyperpalatable food dulls our taste buds, so plain vegetables aren’t fun to eat. Thus leading to adding more sugar and fats to meals.

My main strategy to manage my nutrition on a Disney Cruise with hyper-palatable food was to eat slowly and avoid extra sauces and added sugars that I might normally add in my life. While also searching out bitter foods to balance my palate, like plain greens and black coffee.

More strategies for being surrounded Hyper-Palatable Food:

Ponder before picking. You want to make sure you enjoy your food. You’ll end up eating less overall because you’ll be “full” emotionally.

I would read the menus in advance if I could.

This one time, after a workout, I did four laps of the buffet before making my selection. While having some protein powder and OJ to start the recovery process (I was starving). Here’s what I eventually had:

I brought protein powder and a shaker. So I had orange juice and ice with that. AMAZING
Some club wraps
Enjoyed this. Random foods provide less satiety. Lots of hidden fats here.
Chicken fingers with honey mustard
Mashed potatoes
Fries
Sauteed mushrooms and onions
Broccoli
Pineapple chicken

One thing I did poorly here was I exposed myself to many tastes at a meal. Resulting in “sensory specific satiety” and it makes us eat less when each bite tastes the same. As opposed to the meal above where I tried 12 things, or a tapas meal. Leads to overeating.

High Calorie Food

Like most restaurants, the food had added fat and sugar. Which can literally double to calories in a meal!

My strategy to deal with this was to not feel full.

Simultaneously, I aimed to not even feel satisfied. Which was very difficult (to leave a meal while still kinda hungry) and I failed at some meals.

It’s hard because we are human, and humans are designed to eat until full. Which is even more difficult when exhausted, and wanting to try things. All while not knowing when our next meal would be. Arg.

So how do we deal with hyper-palatable and high calorie food?

NEVER eat food that you are not going to enjoy. It set ups overeating because the treat isn’t satisfying, we’re going to go and find the thing we really wanted in the first place.
Eat slowly. You’ll have a greater chance of feeling satisfied sooner. You can feel yourself pass through the different levels of hunger/satiety.
Don’t feel full. I said this already. The repetition is intentional.

A Note About Big Meals, Insulin, and Hunger

This was the first thing I learned in grad school at the diabetes clinic I was interning in:

A big meal causes high blood sugars (that are high for a long time). Let’s say they are a 10. (11.1 means you’re diabetic).
Our body gets used to the high blood sugar levels.
…so when our blood sugar comes down, Let’s say to a 7, which is still above the normal fasted range (4-6), we FEEL like it’s low, and we get huge hunger signals, even though we don’t need the calories!!!!!

And thus, overeating leads to overeating.

More Nutrition Challenges a Disney Cruise:

The Free Food Paradox:

I think we all experience this. A buffet costs $50 so we want to make sure we get the most out of it, and eat as much as possible. The paradox is the more we eat, the more tired, uncomfortable, and resentful we will feel. See above about hyperinsulemia leading to overeating.

The real value in a $50 is to have a lovely experience.

That being said, for whatever this cruise cost, it was a lot, and I felt the pressure to overeat to get my money’s worth. I didn’t, but I felt it. I had to fight it.

The Protein/Fat Problem

This can happen anywhere and it’s one of the major lessons I teach my fat loss clients. Hidden fats make calories go super-high.

Most proteins on a cruise are going to be high-fat. So there I was trying to eat 175 grams of protein a day and getting options like sausage, eggs, salmon, lunch meat, ground beef, rib steak, and so on (all high fat).

So I brought protein powder aboard. That was essential to get enough protein, and it helped me control calories. I trained hard on the cruise by the way.

Food Waste:

This was a new one for me.

Wow. I saw lots of food waste. It bothered me. It influenced me. I found myself inclined to eat the last few bites on my plate that I didn’t need, and also eat some of my kids’ uneaten food. It was like trying to clean up a landslide with a spoon. Literally.

I dealt with this by accepting that it was what it was and I wasn’t going to make a difference. Also giving the girls less food until they finished what they had. Also getting less for myself, knowing there would be kid leftovers to eat.

Set Meal Times:

My most difficult challenge. Set mealtimes forced me to eat sometimes when I wasn’t hungry. That’s a good way to gain weight. If I didn’t eat, I’d end up starving between meals, and I didn’t want that. So this was a lose-lose.

Set meal times also encouraged me to eat more at a sitting, out of fear that I would be hungry later and without access to food. This is a good way to gain weight. This is called “proactive eating”. It can also trigger the insulin problem discussed above.

I’m a huge proponent of intuitive eating and appetite awareness. So I don’t “do” set meal times at home. Instead I eat 3-5x a day.

What I saw some people doing, was taking food from the buffet back to their rooms for a snack, like milk and fruit. But we didn’t always go to the buffet. I suppose you could go on the first day and raid the place. I’ll do this next time.

Here are the pressures to overeat on a Disney Cruise or at a resort:

Novelty, wanting to try new things
High-calorie and hidden calorie food
Hyper-palatable food
Meals with a lot of variety (a lack of sensory specific satiety)
Hyperinsulemia (large meals make us feel more hungry)
Trying to eat enough protein
Trying to get my money’s worth
Worried about food waste
Set meal times (to be discussed below)
Alcohol
And some that I haven’t gone into:
- Trying to get enough veg for health and bowel health
- Ordering something and getting something totally different than I expected
- Servers not coming back to check if I needed anything
- Long drawn-out meal times when we could be doing something else

Stuff I brought:

Unflavoured Whey Protein Isolate and shaker cups
High-fibre cereal
Supplements
- Creatine
- Multivitamin
- Magnesium
- probiotic
- Fish oil pills
- collagen

What I Ate:

Meal Time	What	Why

Upon waking	Water, protein powder, creatine, supplements. Sometimes some fibre cereal and water and milk	To stop the protein deficit as soon as possible, to hit my daily protein goal, to hydrate. Bowel health. Or dealing with a blood sugar crash.
Breakfast	Eggs or egg whites, some veg, fruit, maybe a bit of starchy carbs, sometimes extra protein, but got scared about too much fat	Just trying to get a balanced meal
Lunch: post workout	This was easy. And sandwich or pasta with protein. Maybe some fruit or juice	Goal here is 30-60 g protein and 50-100 g carbs.
Lunch: not post workout	Usually something quick. There was a burrito place and I got sautéed peppers and onions and chicken, salsa. Looked perfect but was too high in fat.	Wanted protein and veg but controlling calories. And I wanted to enjoy it.
Pm snack	Nothing.	Was never convenient
Dinner	Usually a treat meal just given the options. Too much fat from some deep fried stuff or fatty meats. Not enough veg despite trying	I’m not a total freak and wanted to just be a normal human and go with the flow. Tried my best to not complain and just order something interesting
Bedtime snack	Bran cereal or salad and protein from room service	I usually have bran cereal before bed b/c I like that routine and it is good for my guts

Example of a the challenges on this cruise:

Ordered an egg white omelette with mushrooms and onions

- - This was a joke. 1-2 egg whites and you couldn’t see or taste the veg. WTF!

Turkey sausage
- Long and skinny. Decent
Fruit bowl

Now I’m in a situation where I have to order more or I will starve, but get it and finish it before my kids get bored and lose their shit.

Plus there is constant pressure to experience the boat. Meal times suffer from this pressure.

“I need more food. What’s fast?” I ask the server.

“French toast” he replies.

“Make it so, please” I say

Fancy restaurant Lamb with what I assume is a very high-fat sauce adding about 300 calories

So what should have been a perfectly compliant healthy meal, turned into a low protein, high fat, high carb treat meal, that I didn’t enjoy. Arg!!

Moving forward I did order two mains or several appetizers. In fact the service was so slow, the last day I ordered two glasses of wine at once, b/c they kept taking the wine list after the appetizer wine.

Experiences like these really show me how alone I am in this. Other than my wife and kids. Most places we go, we are fighting the obesogenic ways of the normal world. The older I get, the harder it is to stay in shape. I’m too injured now to train like a gorilla and fight off any excess calories.

The food experience really detracted from the trip. I would do a Disney cruise again if the kids really wanted it. They loved it, and thank god.

See my next blog about my training on the cruise. I absolutely crushed a few workouts!

Reach out to me if you need help! [email protected]

Want to work with us? Book a session from this page on my website: www.kylebyronnutrition.janeapp.com

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Nutrition on a Disney Cruise