How Much Protein is in Pasta?

If you’re on a weight loss program or even a muscle building program you probably have some sort of protein guideline you’re following.

There is most likely a daily protein intake you’ve read about that is supposed to help you achieve or muscle building or weight loss goal. Knowing how much protein is in certain foods will go a long way to help you choose what to eat for dinner.

Many diets try to categorize foods as carbs or protein, but in reality this is too simplistic as there are many foods that have a significant amount of both. Pasta is a good example of just such a food.

As soon as you hear the word pasta you probably imagine that it is a high carb food mostly composed of starchy carbs. But that’s not all that is in pasta. Depending on the type of pasta you get there is a significant amount of protein in it too.

For example: 100 grams of plain cooked pasta has about 5 grams of protein and 25 grams of carbs. Add 50 grams of cooked ground beef (in a tomato sauce) and you’ll have added another 12 grams of protein to your pasta meal.

This example is a pretty small portion, in reality most people would be eating more than 100 grams of pasta per serving. A realistic serving might be more like 200 grams, which would have 10 grams of protein before adding any meat at all.

The point is that there is a significant amount of protein in foods that you would traditionally think of as a carb. Bread is another good example: 1 slice of regular whole wheat bread has almost 4 grams of protein (in a 28 gram slice).

If you made a regular sandwich with two slices of bread you would be getting around 8 grams of protein just from the bread slices alone. That same slice of bread would have about 12 grams of carbs so the ratio of protein to carbs is already in a pretty good balance.

Choosing foods and eating a diet based on hitting a specific protein content is fine if that is what you like to do. But you should be aware that this can quickly lead to overeating if you’re assuming that protein is a separate type of food from items like pasta that get mistaken as a carb only food.

It’s entirely possible to eat a high protein diet while not mass consuming eggs/chicken/meat if you don’t want to.

Check out the labels of your food items like pasta, bread, yogurt, dairy products and other things that seemed to be either protein or carb foods. You’ll find out that it’s not so black and white when it comes to protein and carbohydrate content with many of these food items.

Various forms of pasta and bread can have even more protein than I’ve described. You just have to read your labels and pay attention to the content of each.

Pasta and bread aren’t commonly viewed as food that you would choose to eat for weight loss, but they can easily be incorporated into an effective weight loss diet. Making sure you know how much you’re eating and paying attention to the protein and carb ratio in the pasts and bread can help you choose how much more food you can eat around the pasta without overdoing it.

Viewing pasta as part protein and part carbs will remind you that you don’t need to add an entire chicken breast to a pasta bowl just to get your protein for the day. This way you can enjoy ‘carb’ foods like pasta, get all the protein you want and still lose weight.

John Barban is the Author of the Adonis Index Workout, a specific method for building a guy’s body into its most attractive shape: the shape women find attractive and that creates social dominance with men.

What Does a Healthy Body Look Like?

You probably know many people who have tried to lose weight, are currently dieting, or at least say that they would like to drop a few pounds…one of these statements might even describe you right now.

If someone wants to lose weight, we don’t normally ask them why, we usually ask ‘how much’. But the question that most people don’t consider is why. Why do you want to lose weight? What do you think will happen when you get to your goal size?

For some people it might be a recommendation by their doctor and a matter of serious health problems. Any body image and aesthetic improvement would be secondary to the immediate health improvements.

But for most of the rest of us the health issues are not what drives us to want to lose weight. It is in fact the look of our body that we’re interested in changing and the health benefits are secondary to the look.

At first glance this seems a bit superficial and even vain. But if you dig a little deeper you’ll see that the look of your body is probably your best indicator of your health as well. After all we really only have two ways of telling if something is wrong with our bodies:

a)      It feels wrong – something hurts or we feel ‘sick’

b)      It looks wrong – a rash, bump, scratch, swelling, a joint or bone out of place, or too much fat!

The point is that we only have these two pieces of information to go on to tell if there is something wrong with our bodies. Once we’ve seen or felt that there is a problem we can go to a doctor and get even more information that is not possible to see or feel.

For example a doctor can tell you that you’re at a high risk for a heart attack even though this is not readily apparent in a mirror (although being overweight is a good indicator) and you cannot feel how close you are to having a heart attack…you only feel it once you finally have the heart attack…at which point it is too late to do anything about it.

The reason we have BMI charts and recommendations of a ‘healthy’ weight is so medical care providers can give you a visual cue that matches what their internal measurements like blood cholesterol and blood pressure are telling them about your relative risk of disease.

In other words, there is a specific body shape and look that also predicts healthiness.

Someone who is 100 pounds overweight almost assuredly has poor blood lipid profiles, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and many other problems associated with the extra weight and the high calorie intake required to get to that size.

Conversely someone who is at or close to their ideal bodyweight for their height most likely has much more favorable blood measurements and risk profile of many lifestyle related disorders.

In other words, they look healthy, and all measurements indicate that they are healthy. But there is a second level of health that cannot be measured, and that is emotional health and self image. For many of us this is linked to the look of our body.

It makes sense that wanting to ‘look’ good or look like you’re in shape is actually no different than saying that you want to look healthy.

I may be in the minority here, but I do not agree with the new found rhetoric of ‘being happy with your natural size’ (it’s ironic that this is only ever trumpeted by people who are overweight). This is a load of baloney and is just a sympathetic appeal to overweight people who cannot find the drive to eat less.

No matter how much you try to tell yourself you’re happy with your current size, you will always know you are lying to yourself and this is not good for both your physiological health or your emotional health.

Living in denial isn’t any more healthy than living overweight. Doing both just compounds the problems caused by each.

I think the most healthy way to approach weight loss is to admit to yourself that you want to lose weight for the purpose of improving the look of your body. And that this new thinner look will not only improve your physical health but also your emotional and psychological health. It is in fact a wholistic view of taking care of yourself.

There isn’t much disputing the fact that a healthy looking body, is almost always a healthy body.

John Barban is the Author of the Adonis Index Workout, a specific method for building a guy’s body into its most attractive shape: the shape women find attractive and that creates social dominance with men. Go to Adonis Index Workout  and get started on your road to a perfectly proportioned body so start building the body women want.