THIS is what a serving of pasta looks like...

amusedmonkey wrote: »

yirara wrote: »

diannethegeek wrote: »

It's funny because we often tell people to weigh their pasta and that they'll likely be disappointed when they see serving sizes weighed, but when someone does just that and posts about their results it seems like everyone just wants to argue with the point of the post.

I remember the first time I cooked 2 ounces of pasta by dry weight and I was similarly disappointed. Did I find ways around it so that I still include pasta in my diet? Sure did. But not everyone is going to find it worth the calories and it was absolutely an eye opener for me the first time I did it. I'm glad @NCK96 posted and hopefully others who are just starting out will see it and recognize the importance of weighing their portions, too.

But that's the thing: don't go with servings but with what fits into your calories. You're allowed to eat 4 servings if it fits, or 2-7/12. If I have a pasta or rice dish (or anything else) I start cooking the sauce/main part, weigh all the ingredients and then see quickly how much pasta/rice/potato/couscous/freekeh/whatever I can use to stay within my calories.

Yesterday I made a Japanese dish with salmon, lots of veggies and sushi rice. I ended up using 75g rice, as it fitted my remaining calories perfectly.

That's exactly my point of disagreement. Pasta is not uniquely disappointing, the calories are on par with many diet staples per gram of weight, if not lower. Oats are often higher in calories per dry weight. Cooked chicken, even without fat, is often higher in calories per cooked weight, nuts are in a whole other realm of calorie density, and so on and so forth.

What's often disappointing is that the WAY we eat pasta sometimes (basically, things that are added to it) makes the dish higher in calories for the volume. Depending on what's important in the meal, pasta can easily fit into most people's diets if they find a way to prepare it that makes it fit. You start cooking the sauce then add whatever starch, I do the opposite, starch is important to my satiety, so I record the serving of starchy food I want to eat, then manipulate the sauce to fit and bulk it with vegetables. Both ways are valid, and neither requires you to rigidly stick to serving sizes (210 calories is not enough for a meal and I don't need 400 calories of sauce in order to stick to 210 calories of pasta). In all cases, weighing food allows creating dishes that both satisfy and fit into calories.

Nothing wrong with that! I think our approaches are actually pretty much the same as I know intuitively how much ingredients other than pasta or rice, or whatever I can use to have about 70-80gr dry pasta/rice, or about 100gr for veggie dishes. If I really mess up then I spead out my dish over 3 instead of two days and add more pasta (and fill up the rest of the calories with more veggies. I'd never eat only 50g of pasta as I love that stuff far too much.

xtrain321 wrote: »

Is it any wonder that people lose weight when they "cut carbs"? Besides shedding water initially, cutting carbs can mean cutting hundreds of calories. Some people really are less tolerant or carbs, but I think many people are convinced they can't eat carbs when they really just need to be mindful of calories.

Yes, simply reducing my portion sizes of rice and pasta (while upping veggies and protein) worked well for me.

I can eat loads of calories of pasta and butter, but if I have protein and veggies too I will be satisfied with my meal for far less calories.

dewd2 wrote: »

Pasta is the reason I'm a long distance runner.

Also Oreos
And Mt DEW
And Bacon
And...

and gummy bears

I'll tell you that the bacon someone had at mile 20 of my first ironman was like manna from heaven...as was the chicken soup on the rest of the run course

AnnPT77 wrote: »

NCK96 wrote: »

grinning_chick wrote: »

Maybe don't put it in a 3-4+ cup serving bowl? Then it won't look like quite so pathetically little.

I eat a 2 oz dry measured spaghetti portion ( ~5.65 oz or so cooked) with 6 oz of meat sauce and fresh grated Parmesan in a regular (i.e., not special or child sized) 7.5" diameter soup/cereal bowl (8 oz liquid capacity, 20 oz if impractically overflowed to the rim). It always looks like plenty to me when I make, serve, and eat it.

It’s a 19 oz. Fiesta bowl measuring 6.875” x 1.875”.

https://mcys.co/2USxMaW

It just cracks me up how much bigger average dishes are than was typical when I was a kid, or even young adult.

Recently, I had to replace some everyday bowls I got when first married (1977), ones that were considered normal soup or cereal bowls as part of a dishware set, not unusually small.

Now, I had to look all over to find some that didn't make (what I consider to be) a sensible portion look like a chihuahua in the bottom of an empty swimming pool. The ones I found were still a little bigger than the old ones, and labeled ”dessert bowls".

My old bowls (still have a couple) hold about 8 fl. oz. of soup comfortably. My new "dessert bowls" hold about 12, with about the same free zone for slosh management.

19 oz. would indeed be a normal general-use tableware bowl now.

Heh. Eye of the beholder.

To be fair, I have several of those 19 oz. Fiesta bowls bought at various times over the past few decades, and I'm sure they were always sold as serving dishes, not place-setting dishes (that doesn't stop me from using them for an individual salad or one serving of microwaved hot cereal or anything else where a roomy dish might be helpful).

To be fair on the other side, I still have the last unbroken Fiesta bowl my mother bought sometime in the 20 years after the end of WW II. I suspect it might have been sold as a soup bowl, but she generally used it to serve vegetables (e.g., asparagus, broccoli, etc.) to feed as many as 8 people (which may say more about her realism when it came to how little veg her husband and most of the kids would eat). That bowl will hold 16 fl. oz. before overflowing -- maybe 12 fl. oz. of soup if you don't want to risk it slopping over the edge.

I need at least 3 oz.. 2 oz. is just a joke!

AnnPT77 wrote: »

lemurcat2 wrote: »

See, I just don't get the appeal of pasta plain. That's why I never want a giant serving -- would rather have lots of tasty sauce (or whatever other toppings involving more vegetables, protein, sources of fat like olives, nuts, or cheese).

You and me both. I wouldn't eat it plain, unless I was recovering from stomach flu, maybe, and wanted something very bland. I definitely wouldn't eat a vast mountain of it without much on it (and not balsamic vinegar alone, tasty though the stuff is in some contexts): More of a punishment to me, than an indulgence.

Agreed. Interestingly, my craving when recovering from stomach flu seems to be plain steel cut oats, so similarly bland and easy cals, I suppose.

One of my easy changes when first starting calorie counting (and refining nutrition) was to reduce pasta, and eat more of the stuff I'd usually put on it.

Yeah, same here, which is why when I tried the 2 oz serving I was satisfied with it (I also cut added fat some). It's funny since growing up I always preferred sauce (with protein, lots of veg, not just tomato or whatnot) to the pasta, although I liked both. I got accused of drowning my pasta -- bad American habit, I was told. May be true, but works for me now. (I often have less sauce-y sauce, however.)

IIRC, you (lemur) affirmatively like pasta? To me, it's OK, but not all that satisfying, so optional. As a consequence, in this sub-thread

I do, and find it satisfying, although I don't care for it alone. But a meal with pasta I find an easy dinner choice and very satisfying without a lot of cals.

I get that some others don't care about it -- someone else said she'd pick bread over pasta, and I'm the opposite. I don't care about (most) bread or find it satisfying, and I tend to prefer many things that could be put in a sandwich to sandwiches, so will save cals that way. I'm take or leave it with rice too, find it tasty with some foods, but more often than not consider it optional and am happy with smaller servings. But having pasta in my diet and -- even more so -- tubers, is very helpful and enjoyable for me, and I don't need to spend lots of cals on them.

. . . that's why I do eat the chickpea, pea, soy pastas. It's pretty neutral tasting, pleasant as an ingredient, somewhat filling, but not vital to my enjoyment. But, to me as a vegetarian, it's a useful additional protein source that's pleasant enough to include in the rotation. I almost never eat regular pasta anymore (except in restaurants where it's pretty much the only desirable vegetarian option). To me, regular pasta is one of those things that isn't tasty, satiating or nutritious enough to be worth the calories.

Oh, I totally see that. Like I said, I don't care about bread, and so don't eat it and never miss it when I don't. I'm more talking to those who are saying they are sad pasta is so impossible to fit in or what not. Similarly, if I were vegetarian (rather than just occasionally eating vegetarian for a while), I'd probably rely more on those higher protein pastas. I've actually never tried them although I have a few in my pantry and plan to -- I suspect I will like them as a base for my pasta sauces/toppings. (I like occasional meals based on spaghetti squash or other winter squash instead of pasta too, and a variety of types of noodles, although the super low cal ones sound nasty to me.) I was just saying that switching the amount of pasta I eat for some other option because "pasta is not worth it" so that I could have 62 g of protein in my dinner was unnecessary given that the pasta I normally eat has the same cals, and I'd never need 62 g of protein at dinner (I feel better having protein spread over my meals).

Not saying anyone should like pasta or eat it or share my preferences. Just objecting to what seemed to be the kneejerk "2 oz of pasta is never sufficient or satisfying" or "pasta is not worth it for anyone" kinds of statements I understood some of the prior posts (not yours!) to be suggesting.

It's also why I object when people suggest that pasta is an example of how high cal carbs are. PP aside, I've never wanted to eat pasta plain, as noted. If I have high cal pasta, it's because I've added high cal ingredients (typically with lots of fat) to the sauce.