Swedish LCHF Cruise 2016

Wow, where do I even start?

After an amazingly interesting, fun and touching 24 hours on the Baltic Sea, there are so many impressions to take in.

All the fantastic people I’ve met and that have inspired me. The success stories. All the incredible speakers. The community. The energy. The happiness.

To attend the world’s largest LCHF cruise was a very intensive experience, filled with many emotions, meetings and laughter. New lessons were mixed with reminders of how things are  and how they should be.

The LCHF cruise of 2016 started with all of us checking in at the Tallink Silja Line terminal building in Stockholm, Sweden. We were heading to Turku, Finland, where we’d turn around and go back, meaning a total travel time of 23 hours.

As soon as we got onboard the “Galaxy” dinner was served in the form of a special LCHF buffet, where everyone could find great and healthy food that they liked. With 600 participants, this could not have been done in a better way.

With our stomachs full and our mood happy, we went to one of the ship’s bar areas, where we mingled with old and new friends, enjoying the company thoroughly. We didn’t stay all too long, because the following day was going to be very intense.

The lectures started promptly at 9am the following morning, just after we had left Turku, Finland, to head back to Stockholm, Sweden. After a lovely and inspiring welcome speech by the organisers Karin Eldh, Margareta Lundström and Bo Zackrisson, it was time for our first speaker, Sweden’s own DietDoctor, Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt.

He told us about the “Food revolution”, and the explosion of type 2 diabetes currently underway in the world. Even if you’ve heard Dr. Eenfeldt speak before, he has an amazing ability to update his presentations to the newest information available. He’s a great speaker and has a very easy way of speaking and teaching the world the information it needs to hear.

Ann Fernholm, author of “My Sweet Heart”, was next on stage, and brought with her an incredibly interesting topic; children and food. How can we change our children’s food habits so that fast food doesn’t become a usual part of their diet? What should babies eat? I’m certain there were many parents in the audience wishing they had known all of this when their children were really small! Ann also spoke about “Kostfonden”, which aims to coordinate impartial research into the effect of food on different illnesses. Their previous project was/is about IBS and food, and their next will be about type 1 diabetes and the role of food, something that touched me very deeply.

After a quick coffee break (with heavy cream and/or coconut oil!) it was time to hear Ralf Sundberg speak. His presentation was about sponsorships within research studies, and how the result of these are therefore often very biased. He also touched upon the cholesterol myths we’ve been told for the past few decades and how these are used to make us take more medications. It was interesting to see how the results of the studies that the cholesterol guidelines are based on came about.

It was time for lunch, which we ate at one of the ship’s restaurants. Instead of dessert we listened to the journalist Henrik Ennart, who spoke about the research behind his book called “The Blue Food”. He has visited so called “Blue Zones” in the world, where inhabitants live to be older than the average, often over 100 years. These zones can be found on Sardinia, or in Greece, for example. Mr. Ennart presented his findings in terms of commonalities between these places, as well as the differences. The food was not the same everywhere, for example, whereas the fact that they ate clean food that they had grown themselves, was.

The funniest speech of the cruise was held by Nisse Simonson. He has an amazing energy and ability to make serious facts into something funny. He spoke about the impact of sugar, the role of sugar and how to live a long, healthy life. After concluding his talk with Peggy Lee’s “Is that all there is?” he almost received standing ovations.

After Mr. Simonson we had to make a choice between a lecture bloc called “If I can do it, you can too!” or “We want to know more”.

The first one was 3 of Sweden’s biggest weight loss success stories. Lindha Vikström, Johan Falk and My Klasson shared their inspiring and touching personal stories of how low carb and LCHF has helped them half their weights that didn’t leave anyone unphased. These three are the definition of determined weightloss heroes!

The second set of lectures were Mats Humble and the duo Karl Hultén and Cecilia Nisbeth Nilsson who shared about their expertise. Mats Humble spoke about the most important, and most forgotten, vitamin of them all, vitamin D. He provided a lot of facts and insights, I think many left the lecture with an urgent notion of the need for vitamin D. Ms. Nilsson and Mr. Hultén presented their “Autoimmune Cookbook”, the first of its kind on the Swedish market, and showed us the theory and delicious recipes from their book.

After the last speakers had been applauded off the stage, we met at the BUffet restaurant where it was time for a snack, some coffee and lots of good byes, as well as trying to find and talk to the last few ones we hadn’t managed to find yet.

A HUGE thank you to the organizers of the Scandinavian LCHF Cruise, it was amazingly well organized and incredibly interesting. It was fantastic to meet all the great people and listen to enriching presentations. Next year I’ll definitely be there again!