“Try going off carbs cold turkey”
Actually, I recently did. I went on a low calorie, carb free, pretty restrictive diet. I must be odd because I started to feel better almost immediately. Each day that passed, the better I felt as well. It may be how my metabolism works vs other people. For example, if I eat something in high carbs (spaghetti, for example), I won’t lose weight. Even if the spaghetti is carefully measure and I only eat 500 calories the entire day. I noticed that I won’t lose any weight for several days after that as if my body stored something from it. I was the same way when I was younger as well. Sometimes I wonder if ethnicity/heredity has something to do with it. Either way, I know carbs make me feel less energetic and sluggish.
Most pasta is what I’d consider junk food. That’s not to say I don’t eat it; I eat it recognizing it for what it is.
Ever wonder about “enriched” pasta? “Enriched” bread? “Enriched” flour? The reason it’s been enriched is because it was impoverished during processing.
Flour from nature is ground whole wheat. Not wheat from which the bran has been stripped in order to sell that back to you as bran flakes to keep you regular when you get constipated from eating highly-processed pasta and bread and so forth.
Wheat also loses a vast amount of its nutrition value (i.e. vitamins and minerals) within a couple days of being ground into flour. If it’s not used within that time, therefore, much of its wholesomeness is lost. That’s clearly impractical in our modern food industry, so manufacturers attempt to compensate by “enriching” it (replacing the natural nutritiousness with artificial). But can that really make up for the loss? I’m not convinced. (This is the same debate as whether vitamin supplements can substitute for actual food, nutritionally.)
I’ve been grinding my own flour for several years now. and eat lots of bread, muffins, waffles, cornbread, etc., getting the fiber and nutrients the body needs to function properly. Yes, I still eat the “junk-food” pasta, but I do so seeing it for what it is.