Has anyone been to Italy? Any tips for eating healthy?

Italy have an amazing diet.

My boyfriend is Italian, the perfect weight neither exercises more than general walking and the odd bike ride it's all down to him still eating a general italian diet.

It's nothing like the italian restuarants here. Eat where the locals eat and you will be fine!!

Last time I went skiing in Italy we stayed in a nice hotel with great food and 4 course dinners every night. However that didn't mean you had to eat everything at all 4 courses:

1st course - fantastic salad buffet
2nd course - a pasta dish
3rd course - meat with some form of potato
4th course - dessert.

I usually found myself filling up on the salad buffet and having a pasta dish OR the meat course, not both (at the time I very rarely ate red meat and mostly ate chicken and fish, and the meat course was often beef,pork or veal, so I tended to go for the pasta more than the meat on that holiday).

Oh, and proper Italian pizza is amazing and not loaded up with cheese, so it's pretty healthy

Following for tips : )

I've been to Italy lots of times and I've always ended up doing a loads of walking (especially in Rome and Venice). The food is just wonderful!! Relax and enjoy your trip but don't go mad, eat like the locals plenty of fresh food eaten slowly with amazing wine and good company

Every time I've gone to Italy, I've done more than enough walking to offset any extra calories from the food. Just pay attention to portion sizes (don't let your eyes get bigger than your stomach) and you'll be fine. I don't log on vacations, and the last time I was there, I managed to lose 4 lbs over the two weeks (some of which was likely water, but still) just because I spent most of each day on my feet and moving. Don't worry about it too much.

You will find that Europeans don't supersize their portions which actually makes it a little easier to watch your weight while their. Just enjoy yourself, that's the main thing

I went to Rome in May, didn't count for the whole week, and maintained without trying! As other people have said, it did involve walking a lot - all day every day wandering about and looking at things offset the Panini for breakfast, gelato for lunch, and pizza for dinner (and wine, and pear and ricotta cake, and sexy pasta drenched in olive oil ... oh, now I'm hungry).

I wanted to just enjoy myself and eat all the luxury things I wanted, and it worked out OK, but you can be healthy very easily - so much fresh fish and seafood around! And they cook their vegetables so well that they're an absolute treat! there were a lot of beautiful looking salads around too. My advice would be to have salad and fish for a few meals, and eat the carb-fest-food for a few meals. You'll be moving around a lot more than normal, so it'll all average out! Have fun!

I'm just back after a week. I didn't bother logging and have gained 1lb (I'd consider this part of my normal fluctuations anyway). If you're doing a lot of walking and swimming it'll probably just cancel itself out. My biggest concern was that I definitely wasn't hitting my protein macro but it's only a week.

I just got back a few weeks ago. I ate pizza and gelato and and pasta and pastries for a week straight. It was amazing. I also walked 6-10 miles a day. I came back and had gained 3 lbs of carb weight that was gone 2 days later when I resumed my normal diet.

Like everyone else said, you'll probably do tons of walking. Pasta is considered a pre-entree course, so focus on the entrees (segundi--or second--I think they're called?), which are focused around meat.

From my observation, Italians eat a really light breakfast (often a small pastry and a cappuccino or espresso standing up at the coffee shop at the train station), a decent-sized lunch and dinner (I saw 2 20-something Italian women finish whole pizzas by themselves for lunch one day! And one waitress told us a single pizza split between my husband and me wouldn't be enough food ), and few to no snacks. Walk a lot and eat like the locals, and you should be fine!