#$^& pasta & meatballs

LoseSyra

I've learned to be careful about my empty carbs and have mostly cut out white bread, egg noodles drenched in butter, etc. But I need some help with spaghetti (whole wheat - Wegmans brand Super pasta) & meatballs. First of all, all the pasta we buy has calories listed for dry pasta. We cook for a family so I have no idea how much dry pasta I eat. I realize cooking pasta for differing times affects the water absorbed and thus the weight, but is there a secret code on either cooking pasta el dante adds a certain amount of water or weight? I also usually weigh my portions but then on MFP it seems like people use measuring cups for pasta? Someone please bring me into the secret on pasta. I'm tempted to cut it out of my diet entirely, but I love it, and its an easy, kid-friendly meal for dear hubby to make, nothing like coming home to a cooked dinner. I'm also clueless on the meatballs, MFP listings usually have calories for one meatball, but don't sizes vary tremendously? I just weighed my meatball and used the calories for hamburger. Anyone have any thoughts. This is annoying me so much because, I'm trying to meet my personal 5 lb goal for April and I was .8lb away, then went up .5lb yesterday due in part to the pasta, and then a bit oflosing control after (maybe caused by glycemic rush and/ or lack-o-will power). Can anyone help?

Zichu

I find it easier to just weigh the pasta dry for myself and that's that. Because you most likely want to save on time and cook it all together, weigh it all. I usually have about 50g of wholewheat penne, so if you could maybe do 50g for each person and cook it all up. The best estimate would be to weigh it all after it's cooked and divide it by the amount of people that are eating it. So say if you have 3 people, 150g in total of dry pasta. After it's cooked, let's say it becomes 300g in total (I don't know really...), you could serve yourself 100g of it after it's cooked and it could add up to just 50g give or take a few grams.

With meatballs, if you are making your own, weigh the raw meat altogether and say if you make 8 meatballs from it. Weigh each meatball and maybe take bits off each meatball to make them all weigh the same, that way it doesn't matter which ones you pick, they are all going to be the same size and calories.