Is Carbonara Healthy? (3 Tips For Weight Loss) 

If you’re a fan of Carbonara but aren’t sure if this dish is healthy and fits into your health-conscious lifestyle, this article is for you. Find out what goes into making this popular Italian dish and see whether, or not you can lose weight and stay in shape, eating Carbonara.

Carbonara is an Italian pasta dish, originated in Rome and is served with freshly made pasta, Italian bacon, egg, and Italian cheese. 

Although Carbonara is delicious, is it healthy? 

Carbonara is not necessarily the healthiest dish but if consumed in moderation and only one serving in one sitting, it won’t get you off track. It does offer a suitable range of macronutrients. 

Here are three steps that explain the calorie amount in Carbonara, as well as the ingredients that go into making Carbonara, and how to stay fit and healthy while eating this classic Italian dish. 

1. What Goes Into Making Carbonara? 

2. How Many Calories Are in One Serving of Carbonara?

3. How to lose weight, or maintain weight, eating Carbonara.

Now that we know our three steps, let’s check out what goes into making Carbonara, how many calories it contains, how to lose weight and stay in shape while enjoying this delicious Italian dish.

Tip 1. What Goes Into Making Carbonara? 

Traditionally, Carbonara is a creamy sauce made with pancetta, raw egg, pecorino cheese, black pepper, and a little pasta water. The best-suited pasta is either spaghetti or fettuccine. With the heat of the cooked spaghetti and a little pasta water, and the stirring of the raw egg with the cheese, the egg is being cooked, and a creamy sauce is being created. However, you want to make sure to turn the heat off to avoid the egg curdling.

Carbonara is a simple, yet flavorful and satisfying dish since it gives you fats, proteins, and carbs. 

It is also versatile and easy to be customized to your liking or diet restrictions.

There are different variations of Carbonara, some include bacon and only the egg yolk, as well as parmesan cheese instead of pecorino. 

Since it’s a classic dish in Italian cuisine, you can find it in many Italian or American restaurants all over Los Angeles and nationwide.

Now that we know what Carbonara is, let’s take a look at the nutritional facts and see how many calories go inside one cup of Carbonara. 

Tip 2. How Many Calories Are in One Serving of Carbonara?

Whether you live a sedentary lifestyle or an active lifestyle, it’s important to understand how many calories you need to consume daily.

Let’s take a look at the nutrition facts. As you can see, one cup of Carbonara has 380 calories with a macronutrient ratio of 52 grams of carbs, 17 grams of protein, and 11 grams of fat. 

Although, Carbonara is relatively high in carbs it still has a good ratio of all three macronutrients. 

If you burn more calories than you consume, then you will find yourself in a “caloric deficit” which is the only way fat loss can occur. 

Staying healthy and fit is all about calorie or energy balance, which means that you can still eat your fats and carbs, and stay in shape. The calories are actually not too bad in this dish and can be easily incorporated into your daily calorie intake, as long as you are not overeating and are working out. 

A good rule of thumb for dieting is keeping a nice balance of macronutrients. A great ratio is sticking to 30% carbs, 40% protein, and 30% fats. 

The key aspect is to understand how many calories you need to eat in a day and to make sure not to overeat on your total accounted calories for the day. 

Now that we know a little bit more about the nutrition facts of traditional Carbonara, let’s take a look at how you can, stay in shape, lose weight while eating Carbonara. 

Tip 3. How to lose weight, or maintain weight, eating Carbonara.

You can easily overeat unhealthy, processed foods that are high in fats and carbs, especially when something is as delicious as Carbonara. Overeating is usually the quickest way to get out of shape. 

As we have mentioned in section two of this article, it’s important to understand how many calories you need to eat to lose weight and stay in shape.

To stay healthy and in shape, we need to first go over your daily caloric needs and figure out how many calories you need in a day, as well as figure out how much of each macronutrient you should be consuming.

It’s acceptable to be eating Carbonara once in a while but since it’s high in carbs and sodium you want to make sure to not eat it too often and stick to one serving. Keep in mind that if you’re ordering this dish at a restaurant, the portion size might be two servings, so it might be a good idea to split it with a friend or take the other portion to-go.

There are a few factors that determine your daily calorie intake. Such as weight management, weight loss, or weight gain. Other factors that play a big role, are your gender and your height. 

So, how do you know how many calories you should be eating in a day?

The answer is through trial and error and finding a calorie range that allows you to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week. 

However, a good place to start is to multiply your body weight by 12 or to use an online TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculator.

Your TDEE relies heavily on how active you are and how much movement you see in your day.

Be mindful that these methods will give you rather rough estimates that are not specific for your body type per se but you’ll see that they can get pretty close. 

Once you know your calorie intake based on your weight and height, you can then decide how much you want to decrease it. If you want to lose 1 to 2 pounds per week, we suggest you start with 100 calories less than what you are currently consuming and see if you notice a difference within a week. 

For example, if either method tells you to consume 1600 calories a day, maintain that for a week and see what happens. 

If you don’t see any changes in your weight, decrease your calorie intake by another 100 calories and see how that works. 

It is suggested, however, to not decrease the calorie intake below 1,200 per day for women, or below 1,500 calories per day for men.

So, how do you lose weight while eating Carbonara?

Pretty simple. 

After you’ve figured out how many calories you need to consume daily, you need to make sure that you are exercising regularly and are building muscle throughout every week. 

Building muscles, allow us to burn calories at rest, which means we can eat more and still lose fat.

This is really the goal of working out and is what keeps us healthy as our metabolisms increase.

The fastest and most efficient way to build muscle is to learn how to do some resistance training.

You need to use weights and build muscle by doing a variety of workouts that isolate each muscle group specifically. 

Although it can be intimidating to get in shape, as it will be hard to learn and might be discouraging at the beginning, it’s definitely worth it in the long run for both your health and fitness. 

We recommend working out at least three times per week in the beginning, since the resting days in between are important to build muscle. 

Working out and building muscle takes priority. Such as having a consistent cardio schedule which can help with expediting the fat loss process, as it raises the energy expended throughout your week.

You can also do a combination of resistance training and LISS (Low-Intensity Steady State) cardio or HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) cardio, to improve your heart health and maximize fat burn. 

LISS is cardio that comes from walking or a brisk walk, you should be able to have a conversation while still building up a sweat.

HIIT cardio is intervals of a very high-intensity movement such as sprints, battle ropes, or kickboxing movements that aim to raise the heart rate quickly.

The benefit of HIIT is allowing yourself to burn calories in a shorter amount of time. 

We recommend having 80% of cardio coming from LISS while 20% comes from HIIT for optimal fat loss throughout the week.

The reason for this is because HIIT is very hard to consistently track as many of the calorie tracking devices are inaccurate. 

LISS is a much more reliable source of consistent movement and does not require rest as it does not shock the Central Nervous System the way HIIT can.

Building muscle will happen relatively fast if you are new to working out, so this is great news for anyone looking to get in shape.

Just keep in mind to have a balance and to eat whole, fresh ingredients and save the bad stuff for your cheats days, or social events with friends. 

THERE IT IS! 

Our three tips will help you stay fit while eating Carbonara.

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