AS ITALIAN AS IT GETS

Wednesday Evening


"Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction." -William James from Born to Run

Our entrance to the gym was all torn up and I had no idea how to get in for a full two minutes. This was a very disconcerting start to my workout, but otherwise all was well :) Did 37 minutes on the treadmill. For the first 30 minutes I alternated sprint intervals at an 8.0 (!) with walking and then did a 15 incline for the last 7 minutes (355 calories burned).

So tonight Kaitlyn wanted to go for Italian, so I of course listed all the amazing Italian places in Muncie to choose from threw Olive Garden and Johnny Carinos out there. That's as Italian as it gets around here ;) We actually used to have a nice, little local place called Bella Avanti's but as with all local places that we learn to love around here- it closed.

So Olive Garden it was! It had been quite a long time since I had been there- so being the nut person that I am I checked out the menu's nutrition facts online. Imagine my happiness when I found out the following:
1) You can get lunch portions of pasta at dinner
2) You can substitute whole wheat linguine in any pasta dish!!
3) The lunch portion of their linguine alla marinara is only 310 cal with relatively low sodium for a restaurant dish! (and that's the facts for the NON ww pasta) (Did I mention only 4 grams of fat?!)

I had been going into this thinking I was going to need to get a boring non-pasta dish in order to stay on track for Hawaii and here a pasta is one of THE lowest calorie options on the menu :) So of course I ordered the lunch portion of linguine marinara with ww pasta. Still a big portion for the lunch size! Brought home some in a box.

Side of pasta e fagioli soup to accompany! (Which was 130 cal. and lower sodium as well)

Now I am by no means a calorie counter at home, but I also am familiar with my foods and have a general idea. At a restaurant all that you think you know gets blown out of the water. Salads having an average of 1,300 calories. "Healthier" choice soups having over 2,000 grams of sodium.

It's unfortunate because oftentimes people will order a salad thinking they are making a better choice when they would have been better off getting the chicken dish they really wanted. (And a lot of the time end up eating more later anyway because the salad was mentally not that satisfying to them even if they had plenty of calories). This is why for the most part we avoid chain restaurants- enormous portions, sodium overload, completely unnatural ingredients and food that is not fresh. I must say that tonight though I was very pleased with my Olive Garden dinner!! Not to mention Kaitlyn and I had a lovely time :)