Eat pizza, eat pasta, lose weight. Go figure.

strawberries

I was in Italy for a couple of weeks last month, eating pizza and pasta every day. It was my first ever visit there and I expected to put on a few pounds. To my surprise, the opposite happened. I lost weight.

The food there is incredible. I haven’t tasted fruit or vegetables like that ever in my life before. We’re talking orally orgasmic strawberries. Peas so fresh from the pod that they ignite ecstatic sweet green taste explosions in your mouth. Gorgonzola that almost has a pulse. We bought everything we could find just to try it. I could go on and on.

And that’s just the food in its raw state, never mind the amazing things Italians do when they cook. The most memorable lunch we had was (on the house!) in the famous Ristorante Puny in Portafino, owned by an old friend of my husband’s. OMG. Simple food, just pasta and prawns, but cooked like they must serve in heaven. It brought new parts of my etheric alive that I never knew existed.

And that, I think, is the reason why Italian pizza and pasta is not fattening. Food in Italy is freshly made with such fresh ingredients that it’s energetically vital. It feeds the etheric rather than clogging it, and passes easily through the body in a matter of hours. Processed pizza and pasta, by comparison, is energetically dead. It lands in the stomach like a problem that needs to be dissolved and disposed of, putting a much greater burden on the digestive system and lingering there for a day or two.

I also suspect most Italian wheat is grown organically and eaten pretty quickly rather than being stored in repetitively pesticide-sprayed grain mountains for years as in other countries of the world. I say this because I didn’t experience the usual intestinal irritation I’ve come to expect from eating wheat products. It was cleaner, kinder and my body recognized it as food.

Italy, of course, is where the Slow Food Movement started in 1986, and continues to gather momentum. They take food very seriously there. Richard warned me the chef would probably come out of the kitchen and kill me if I put parmesan on my prawn linguine. Certain things you just don’t do there.

Italy does have some fast food restaurants and you can find a small selection of factory-made pizzas in supermarkets. But the majority of restaurants make everything to order, and even supermarkets have not really caught on there. From what I saw, people still prefer to visit their local baker, grocer and butcher to buy food at its freshest, and absolutely everyone you meet has a recommendation for THE best pizza restaurant in the whole of Italy.

Yes, there are signs of obesity now, as everywhere in the western world. But you know what? I really don’t think it’s pizza or pasta related. It’s more to do with the huge amounts of sugar many Italians consume now (think Italian ice creams), the vast quantities of bread (made mostly with refined white flour), and the coffee-hyped stressful lifestyle of those who live in cities (Italians drink way more coffee than Americans).

I’m now seriously considering teaching a workshop in Italy some day, probably for advanced students rather than beginners because they would feel the effects of the etheric vitality of the food more and be able to use it to access new levels of awareness and perception.

Copyright © Clear Space Living Ltd, 2010


About Karen Kingston

Karen Kingston is a leading expert in clutter clearing, space clearing, feng shui, and healthy homes. Her two international bestselling books have combined sales of over three million copies in 26 languages and have established themselves as "must-read" classics in their fields. Her best-known title, Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, is now in its fifth edition. She is best known for her perspective-changing insights and practical solutions that enable more conscious navigation of 21st-century living.
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2 Responses to Eat pizza, eat pasta, lose weight. Go figure.

  1. Karen!
    I so love your books. I’ve recommended it to so many of my clients and bought them as gifts for many of my relatives and friends. Lately I have been consulting them daily. My house is not too bad on the clutter side but it’s teeny tiny so it’s time for a deep purge.

    Anyway, I had the same experience in Italy. Every May I teach a martial arts seminar there and last year, expecting the need for a post-trip cleanse, found myself 5-7 pounds down. I started the cleanse anyway but had to stop two days in when I found myself dipping below what I consider to be my acceptable cutoff weight!

    I suspect, as you do, that it’s the food quality. They are fighting the introduction of GMO’s over there. I hope they win. The beef was all grass fed, which was why, I’m sure, it tasted unlike most of the beef here. Their wheat is what we call “00” flour, which is very low in gluten. Not like the flour we have here with super gluten added. I also find that I can tolerate Italian coffee much better there. In the US, unless it’s imported from France or Italy, coffee leaves me simultaneously wired and exhausted. Very uncomfortable!

    Anyway, thank you for posting this, so I know I’m not the only one! Back to decluttering my house. Thank you for all of your work!

    TT

  2. Love it. Yes fresh and organic is the way. America is catching on slowly but surely. Our bodies just love it.

    Blessings, Kim Caldwell, author of ‘How Green Smoothies Save My Life’

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