Eating Healthy While Cruising: A Guide

Hello everyone! As many of you know, Matt and I had the fantastic opportunity to enjoy a cruise over New Year’s as part of my collaboration with Dinogo. I’ll be sharing two health-oriented recaps from our cruising experiences. First, here’s a post about maintaining a healthy diet on a cruise. Stay tuned for Thursday when I’ll reveal how we kept active while onboard!

Aside from a smoothie and a refreshing iced latte in the afternoon, we enjoyed all our meals and snacks aboard the cruise ship. Cruises are often associated with indulgence when it comes to food – it’s available around the clock, in endless quantities, and not all of it is nutritious. However, it is entirely possible to make healthy choices while cruising – and still have a great time! Here’s how I managed it.

Morning Meal

Breakfast isn't typically a time when I crave indulgence, so I take the opportunity to keep my morning meal on the healthier side. This doesn’t mean cutting calories or limiting portions—doing so could lead to failure later in the day. Instead, I focus on achieving a good balance of whole grains, protein, and healthy fats, prioritizing whole foods over processed or greasy options.

Embracing intuitive eating, I varied my breakfast choices each morning based on what I felt like having.

Generally, my breakfasts consisted of a combination of:

• Eggs (either scrambled with tomatoes or hard-boiled) or in a vegetable omelette
• Oatmeal (topped with nuts and fruit and/or cottage cheese) or whole grain toast
• Fresh fruit (the grapefruit was particularly tasty – I don’t often eat grapefruit at home because I’m too lazy to cut it, so I made the most of it)
• On the first day, I also enjoyed bacon for good measure 😉

During the second half of the trip, I stumbled upon this amazing “Norlander” European-style bread. I need to try making this at home – I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed it with peanut butter quite a bit.

On days when I didn’t have the bread for breakfast, I packed it to enjoy as a late morning or afternoon snack with peanut butter, and sometimes with banana as well.

The inner bag of a cereal box turned out to be the perfect size for storing it for later!

Midday Meal

I generally kept my lunches on the healthier side as well, but I followed my cravings. If I wanted something less healthy, I didn’t hold back. Ignoring those cravings often leads to regret later!

Dinogo offered a fantastic, expansive salad bar every day for lunch with plenty of nutritious options, so my lunches typically consisted of either a large salad as my main course or a salad as a side to whatever else I felt like having.

One day, I enjoyed a salad paired with a bean/chicken/veggie burrito:

On another day, I had a craving for a German-style sausage with sauerkraut, so I paired that with a large salad:

I also treated myself to pizza for lunch once – they had a fantastic made-to-order Italian-style pizza bar (thin crust, with just a light touch of cheese) that was open around the clock. I particularly enjoyed their mushroom pizza topped with fresh arugula!

Snacks

I won’t lie – I absolutely enjoyed pizza twice as afternoon snacks! It was just too good – and honestly, there’s no need to eat perfectly all the time, especially while on vacation. I satisfied my veggie cravings when I felt like it, and indulged in pizza when that craving hit, too.

I also snacked on bread with peanut butter and fresh fruit leftover from breakfast, along with some nuts and dried fruit I had brought from home.

A key principle of intuitive eating is to indulge only when it truly feels worthwhile – not just because it’s available. For me, afternoon fruity cocktails don’t feel worth it – I usually only take a few sips before the sweetness makes me feel unwell. Plus, I’m not a fan of drinking in the afternoon sun – it doesn’t leave me feeling great. However, I did enjoy some Prosecco and wine for happy hour before dinner on a few evenings once the sun had set! After all, it was vacation. 🙂

Dinner

Dinner was the time I allowed myself to indulge the most – although I still prioritized eating slowly and mindfully, savoring each bite. I didn’t treat myself to dessert every night just because it was available – only when I truly felt like having it (I think I enjoyed dessert about 3 or 4 out of the 7 nights – on the other evenings, I opted for herbal tea instead). Our favorite dessert was the chocolate melting cake – absolutely divine!

Most nights on the ship, we enjoyed dinner in the dining room with our wonderful friends Melli and Mortiz. When I was in Switzerland this summer with Melli (my German friend I met while teaching English in Prague, and we’ve kept in touch ever since), I learned that she had booked a cruise with her husband around the same time we were looking to go. I was thrilled that we could be on the same cruise! Spending time with them was such a joy and a lovely bonus.

We had a wonderful waiter named Rolie from the Philippines who took excellent care of us. We felt sad to say farewell to him on our last night! (And yes, my face is very red – my rosacea doesn’t appreciate the sun as much as I do.)

One great feature of the dining room menus was that they marked “healthy options” with a heart symbol next to them. I chose a few of those options on nights when I craved something lighter!

The only aspect I didn’t appreciate was that the “healthy” dessert options contained artificial sweeteners – no thanks! I’d prefer either a real dessert or none at all!

My favorite meal in the dining room was the broiled lobster and shrimp they served one night – it was absolutely delicious.

However, this lamb dish was a close second:

We also dined at the steakhouse (which requires a special reservation and an additional fee) one night, just the two of us – the food was PHENOMENAL. Honestly, it was among the best dinners I’ve ever had. The atmosphere was both fancy and fun! I enjoyed the tuna tartare and the surf and turf – absolutely delicious. We skipped dessert and opted for tea instead – we were completely satisfied after such a wonderful meal!

So there you have it! I firmly believe that being healthy doesn’t mean you have to be healthy all the time, so this post about healthy eating naturally needed to include some indulgence as well. I’ll wrap up with a few key takeaways that apply not only while cruising but in everyday life, too:

• Indulge when it truly feels worth it and you genuinely want to, not just because it’s available
• Relish what you’re eating or drinking – take your time and savor each bite or sip
• Listen to your body’s fullness signals, stopping when you feel satisfied, not overly full
• Load up on vegetables whenever you can
• Don’t feel guilty about indulging if you’ve decided it’s worth it

Have you ever been on a cruise? How did you maintain healthy eating while sailing the high seas?

This post was created as part of my collaboration with Dinogo. As always, all opinions, thoughts, and ideas in this post are entirely my own.