I had exercised people on land …now it was time for me to exercise people at sea My team and I got in touch with Rosenbluth vacations…a major travel agency. I discussed an idea called a Cruise to Lose.
The gentleman I was speaking to said he had never heard of anything like this before and I have just the lady to help you put this together. I met with Linda Williams… A statuesque red-head with Bambi eyes and the cutest southern accent that you ever heard.
She was a beauty pageant winner and very active in the pageant world. She was married to an attorney named Brad. Picture Prince Charming with dimples…he was a quiet man and when I would say something funny he would look down and turn several shades of red. I told everybody at the studio about the cruise. Linda talked about it on Rosenbluths webpage.
I would call her every week to see how many people signed up for the seven day cruise to lose. First there were 50 then 100 then 250 and then 300 . A good friend of mine, Mary Graves helped me with the program. I met Mary and she was one of my dancers in Sweatin to the oldies one. Matter of fact she worked on all of my videos.
She was the female Richard Simmons. She also managed my studio Slimmons. Mary had shiny brown hair and a wicked sense of humor. As the dates approached, I got a little nervous about the whole thing.
Before I knew it I was headed to San Pedro to get on the Carnival ship. I had never seen anything like this ship before. There were between three and four thousand people that were vacationing on this cruise. All of my cruisers were together in one of the larger rooms. Linda would take me down for our first orientation.
We were all so excited about this voyage. I didn’t know hardly anybody in the room but things were about to change. Everyone was handed a tote bag with a binder with our schedules and some freebie items. I had different artists design logos for the cruise bag and tee shirts.
We would have lunch together then head to another meeting room where we went over the schedule in detail. Then it was dinner time. Each night the menu for dinner was different ….and fattening. You could order roast beef…short ribs..and fried items.
On the table was a little card with my suggestions. You could always order red beans and rice, pasta with marinara sauce, grilled fish and chicken breast…And an array of vegetables. Everyone was so exhausted we went right to bed to get ready for the next morning.
There was a large showroom on the ship. It was like a showroom from Vegas. I began their day with a six minute wake-up workout. Then we would all sit and go over that day’s schedule. Breakfast followed. Then into another meeting room to get to know each other.
People were invited up to the microphone to talk about themselves. One lady named Lorraine shared that she sold her blood every two weeks to make money to come on the cruise. Many of these ladies came with their husbands. They were there to support their wives.
A widow told the group that her husband was dying and he left her money so she could come with me and enjoy the cruise. By this time everyone was weeping. There were boxes upon boxes of Kleenex passed around.
There was a gentleman who was thin and tall. When I went to shake his hand I noticed he had long nails polished silver. I didn’t think much about it. I just thought it was his thing.
After lunch we would go into to this two story showroom and work out. The couches and chairs in this room were permanently fixed to the floor. That meant everyone exercised in the aisles between the couches and on the main stage.
Exercising on a ship was quite different. If the weather was a little rocky….the ship would rock and all of us moved along with it. When the ship went left all of us went left. When the ship went right we all flew to the right. One lady fell off the stage she laughed and got back on the stage with me.
I took Lenny and Cathy on a cruise once and brought them on stage during a workout. Cathy could really dance. My brother….that was a different story. Lenny didn’t have any rhythm. He would laugh all during his time on stage. His eyes said to me, “Can I get down now?”…Lol.
We had cooking demonstrations a couple times during the week. I taught them how to make lower calorie dishes…like chicken rollatini. That was a flattened chicken breast with chopped vegetables inside…you would roll it …stick a toothpick in and then bake.
I also taught them about spaghetti squash. It is a large yellow squash that you would cut in half. Then place the half squashes face down in a pan with a little bit of water. Once they baked you could take a fork and scoop out the inside which resembles golden spaghetti. We also included many recipes that could be made at home. To be continued….
