Day 5 is here, and it’s lunch time. Today is also the last (work) day of the government fiscal year, so I had to make it a quick visit for lunch time in case something pops up during my lunch break. Since I’ve exhausted all original Pasta, Sauce and Topping options, I need to start with the combinations. What better way than altering my current top choice, which consists of Cavatappi, Five Cheese Marinara and Crispy Shrimp Fritta, so I swapped out the sauce for some Asiago Garlic Alfredo and this is the result:

One thing that always impresses me is the presentation of these dishes. The food just always looks very appetizing. I don’t know how they are always consistent with their cooking and plating, but they always look great!

This was very good, and with the first bite I remembered just how much I loved the Cavatappi and the Crispy Shrimp Fritta from the other meal.. With that said, this combination for me personally does not match as well vs. being paired with the Five Cheese Marinara. Especially since that sauce is only 330 calories, and the Asiago Garlic Alfredo is a whopping 720, which is the highest calorie sauce offered on the Never Ending Pasta Bowl menu. It’s very good, but it’s not twice as good as the Five Cheese Marinara, so if you are calorie counting, keep this in mind. Also, I will certainly revisit this sauce again with another combination, as I really enjoyed it with the Fettuccine and Grilled Chicken from Meal 1. I would rate this a 7/10, despite a sauce difference making the other meal a 10/10!

Here is a picture of the receipt with the Pasta Pass, showing a savings of $15.88 with tax:

Now the REALLY REALLY bad news from this meal:

…So if you remember from my blog post, Who, What, When, Where, Why & How? I had included several rules I would follow to avoid gaining weight. Some of the rules were just arbitrary but had some logic at least.  Here are my 4 rules from that post:

1. Stay within daily allotted Lose It calories, which is approximately 2600 a day before exercise.
2. No meal can exceed 1300 calories.
3. Can eat all exercise calories.
4. Exercise often, including strength training and cardio.

As you can probably tell from the above image, I ate 1360 calories for this meal! Now you may be asking yourself why I did that.. Well simply put, this was the first meal I didn’t plan ahead and just ordered what I wanted and logged the calories AFTER my meal. This goes to show the importance of knowing how many calories are in your meal ahead of time (or at least when ordering) and perhaps using a food tracking app like Lose It or MyFitnessPal. I personally use Lose It but the latter is just as good.

Now realistically, it’s not a huge deal to go over 60 calories, but since it’s the first time since February I’ve went over my meal calories, I am indeed slightly disappointed. No worries, extra few minutes at the gym tonight LOL.

See you all at dinner!