I Love Pasta, But It Doesn't Like Me

It seems that every time I have pasta, especially with white sauce and little protien, I get very lethargic, unfocused, and sometimes irritable. Why is this?

I love pasta. Especially the saucey kinds. But after having a large serving of it I perform poorly at work, and just want to lay down. Looks like I may have to cut it out of my diet.

 

yeah, i'm the same. Only ever have it for a late dinner when I've got nothing to do later.

 

You're essentially carb loading which is only healthy if you work out a good deal. Maybe if you limited pasta consumption to after an intense work out?

Pasta never makes me feel bad, I have a very high metabolism and always feel fabulous after eating pasta but I used to drink carb supplements to gain weight and they gave me that crappy lethargic feeling every time.

 

Try switching to a whole grain pasta maybe? White pasta with white sauce has very little nutritional value and is a huge load of carbs for you to digest, so I can see why you would feel that way afterwards.

 

Thanks I figured it was carb related. I think my metabolism is dwindling with age. Plus I've been more mindful of my nutritional intake. I no longer take aderall and I'm beginning to notice how certain foods impact my energy level more clearly.

That's very true. I love my fettuccini Alfredo, but that's where it hits the hardest. I was in denial that pasta was making me lethargic for a long time. My parents cooked spaghetti with lots of red sauce and ground beef when I was younger, and I never felt a pasta hangover after that.

 

If it really hated you, the symptoms would be very different as the offending pasta would be ejected in a most hideous manner! Sounds like it just loves you and wants you to be comfortable. So take a nap, then get your fat ass up and exercise. Mel is right!

 

Pasta is a fast digesting carbohydrate which begins converting to glucose as soon as it hits your digestive tract. It therefore causes a sharp blood sugar spike which quickly drops off to create this lethargic feeling you describe.

I had some pasta last night with my steak, but I didn't get lethargic.

 

Some alternatives are pasta that use organic multi-whole grains, such as brown rice and the ancient grains such as amaranth. For people with a sensitivity to gluten, those ingredients also don't have the gluten of wheat, barley, and rye. The taste is different and can have a bit of the raisin bran taste because of the fiber.

Adding some chunks of whole vegetables adds more fiber and water and likely slows down the digestion compared with refined white flour pasta with no vegetables.

White sauce is usually refined white flour and milk, which has a large percentage of simple carbs and little fiber. A vegetable sauce is an alternative.

Eating a smaller portion of spaghetti as part of a mixed meal may help, as opposed to a sole large portion.

http://www.deboles.com/products/product.php?prod_id=2014

http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2010/05/alternatives_to_white_pasta_mi.html

 

i have it instead of bread or potatoes or other starches. and usually without thick sauces. more like asian style noodles. with mushrooms and veggies and meat.
i don't eat any kind of tomatoe sauces at all. i don't know if its the tomatoes themselves or the sodium, but they give me excruciating muscle tension back pains, which may even be my lower brain functions misinterpreting my heart, and the pain lasts the full 20 hours it takes for digestion to pass through. but the pasta itself has nothing to do with it. its all in the sauce. i've never had any kind of problem with clam sauce though, or the clam sauce cubes that are with the frozen linguini i sometimes use. but so always instead, in a light broth, with lemon/lime squeezinz, no thick sauce. only with mushroom ravioli or tortalini a mushroom alphrado sauce, sometimes. but mostly my pasta is in some kind of broth/soup. and its from my own bullion and limon, the bullion subtle and sparingly.

brown gravy on rice is good, especially with mushrooms and pulled beef. but pasta, which all kinds, i grew up calling noodles, other then ravioli and tortalini. and anyway, never that stuff in cans, though when i was young and hadn't developed my appearant alergy to cooked tomatoes, i could eat without cooking and never had a problem (and even uncooked with mayonaise, but that level of sodium would kill me now for sure). but after i was in my 50s i started having that problem, so now only the frozen or dry, and with my own thin broth instead of any thick sauces.

 

[SIZE=10.5pt]With the exception of beans, pasta is the only other food stuff I eat that’s a sure guarantee to cause flatulence, but never lethargy - So I’ve cut out pasta from my diet. [/SIZE]



[SIZE=10.5pt]Hotwater[/SIZE]

 

Thats not true, pasta has a much slower transit time than white bread, pastries, and potatoes. Though whole grain pasta is slower digesting in general than milled durum pasta, If your pasta was covered with a high-fat sauce, for example, that can slow digestion. How much pasta you eat also affects transit time, with larger volumes of pasta taking longer to digest.

Plus the idea that the pasta you ate ten minutes ago is making you sluggish due to blood-sugar spike and drop off is not very likely either..
http://www.livestrong.com/article/521931-how-long-to-digest-pasta/

( bold added Theprodu)

How you feel energy-wise has a lot more to do with what you ate yesterday.

 

Pasta is still a fast digesting carbohydrate. Whether it converts to sugar faster than white bread or bagels isn't the point here. Nor are we talking about what was consumed with the pasta. Of course fat will slow down the digestion process, but the point is that feeling sluggish after eating a fast digesting carb is more than likely due to issues pertaining to blood sugar.

 

alone, it triggers my hypoglycemia .. with meat sauce and garlic bread its ok

 

Maybe if you have insulin problems and are Hyperglycemic. It shouldn't be a problem for a normal healthy person.

Eating too much at one time, I don't care what kind of food, with make you sluggish and want to take a nap.

 

Not necessarily. Different people have different tolerances for starchy carbs. You can still be relatively healthy yet get sleepy after a carb-heavy meal, especially pasta.

Yes, simply eating a big meal can make you sleepy too.

 

Caffeine helps, lol

 

Glycemic load (GL) is a useful way of measuring the blood glucose post-meal response of a food. The higher the GL, the higher the blood glucose response.

See the GL table in the website.

http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-eating/glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods

As an example, in this table brown rice has a glycemic load of 16. White rice is 43, which is about 3 times higher than that of brown rice for the same serving size.

The inclusion of the native fiber of the food can have a large effect on the blood glucose response. Pasta that contains brown rice and other whole grains would be expected to have a lower GL compared with that of white pasta made of refined white flour because of the fiber.

The table of GL in the website lists a GL of 17 for whole meal spaghetti and 26 for white spaghetti. The GL of white is about 56% higher than that of whole.

 

The constituents of the pasta affect the glycemic load (GL) significantly. The following table shows a GL of 118 for Asian bean noodles and a GL of 260 for Gnocchi for a 5 oz. serving. It's likely that the fiber in bean noodles is part of the reason for its relatively low GL. Gnocchi is known to have ordinary white flour, white potatoes, and bread crumbs as part of its ingredients, which may be the reason for its relatively high GL.

http://www.lowglycemicload.com/glycemic_table.html

 

Notice how 3 figs have a higher glycemic load than a cup of spaghetti? And a cup of black bean soup is higher than a cup of instant noodles.

How about the index on that cup of frozen tofu....379! Might as well just go ahead and have a bagel at only 340

I feel sorry for those of you that have a problem with your insulin. Maybe see a doctor about that.

That list made me hungry, I think I have some leftover ravioli in the fridge. :-D