What's the deal with pasta?

Of course! I eat pasta a couple times per week.

It's

About

Calories.

Regular pasta is not a "no go" unless you have a gluten allergy or a medical reason to limit your carb intake.

Weight loss is about calories, and ONLY calories. If pasta fits into your day, there is no reason you shouldn't enjoy it. I eat pasta all the time, so do many people here who have successfully lost weight.

I really wish people would stop needlessly eliminating "bad" food from their diets.....
Losing weight is already hard enough ..... EAT. THE. FOODS. YOU LIKE.

Isn't there some diet plan that brags about you getting to eat plates of pasta on it?

To be clear, I agree with everyone above that weight loss is about calories, and between Atkins, keto, etc. I think carbs have been very unfairly demonized. That said, I think there's a reason why pasta, bread, and other starches tend to be very limited while you're eating in a calorie deficit. To break it down:

You need a certain amount of protein to support your muscle. It's going to vary based on your stats, but 100g/400 calories of protein per day is a good ballpark for the average woman. You need a certain amount of fat to keep all your body processes functioning correctly, so let's once again estimate 40g/360 calories. On a 1200 calorie diet, that leaves you 440 calories for carbs. If you're eating a varied diet with enough fruit and veg to get your micronutrients in, you might only have ~200 calories left over for other carbs, which is about one serving of pasta or 2 slices of lower-cal bread. How have you felt the rest of your day? Is pasta the best thing for you to eat, or do you need higher-fiber grains or more veg so you don't feel hungry?

It's not that pasta is bad, it's just that 1200 calories is not a lot, and many people find they need to choose foods that are more nutrient-dense and satiating. Also diet plans gain traction if they have a "magic bullet," and eliminating starches is a popular magic bullet. But if you have the calories for it and you feel full enough to not overeat later, go for it and enjoy.

Just like you don't need to eat special foods to gain weight you also don't need to eat special diet foods or exclude foods you enjoy to lose weight.

Learning to eat food you enjoy in the appropriate quantities is a great life lesson for losing weight and also long term maintenance at goal weight.

Pasta is one the best vehicles in the whole world. It goes with almost everything.

Italians have a 3-4 oz serving and it's the first course. When I was out of high school, I lived with an Italian family in Venice during the summer. They showed me how to live and eat. I traveled all around but those people had a beautiful way of living and eating. Talk about a relationship with food. I should've stayed there.

Find the best quality you can afford and just love the smithereens right out of it.

The best pasta sauce in the world only contains 3 ingredients.

Canned plum tomatoes
Butter
Onion

Marcella Hazan, Mar-chella Huh-zahn, was on born on April 15, 1924. She grew up in the village of Censenatico, Italy, 120 miles south of Venice, Italy.

In 1969, she began teaching Italian cooking classes, wrote best selling books, The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating. She had a doctorate in natural sciences and biology.


Serves: 6
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 45 minutes

2 cups canned plum preferably Italian tomatoes, cut up with their juice
5 tablespoons butter
1 medium yellow onion cut in half
salt to taste

Put canned tomatoes in saucepan, add the butter, and onion
Cook uncovered at a very slow steady simmer for 45 minutes
Stir from time to time, mash larger pieces tomatoes with wooden spoon
Gently stir butter fat back into the sauce
Taste for salt

Before you add to your pasta, throw the onion halves away
Serve with meatballs or not. Add freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Marcella was a genius when it came to taste. She said, why chop or saute an onion. 'I'm going to put the onion, tomatoes and butter together and forget about it

Written by me.
I used to have a blog.
Who cares.
Blogging went by the way of the dodo.

Pasta is not a "no-go." Getting a family-sized baked ziti chicken alfredo with extra cheese and mushrooms from my favorite place and eating it in one sitting is a "no-go." Instead, I get one of their delicious wraps. I can still eat a whole take-out item without going so far over on calories. I just change what I order. That's not to say I will never get the baked ziti again. Some day I will. And I will eat all of it in one sitting. And I will have a bump of weight gain in my report but it will go back down again because I won't do it a time or two a week interspersed with lots of crackers and dip.

The equation for making choices has changed for me. At first, choosing to order a wrap instead of a calzone or pasta was an unmitigated sacrifice. I like the wraps but in the past I always ordered for maximum fullness and greasy satisfaction since the prices were not far apart. Now, ordering the heavier food feels a bit more sacrificial because I know I will feel uncomfortably full and I'll back track on weight loss. Yeah, I ate a whole chicken Cordon Bleu calzone with all the honey mustard sauce last week and paid the price in immediate over-full-ness, a bump on the scale, and a few days of increased appetite. But my new discipline and habits kicked back in and I will remember the calculations of the zero sum game I sometimes need to play.