When it comes to elimination diets, processed foods containing gluten, dairy and sugar are usually the first to go.
But one woman, eschewing conventional dieting wisdom, decided to embark on an elimination diet of a very different kind this January to see if her favorite food – pasta – really is the dieting demon people make it out to be.
After seeing one too many posts about detoxes and cleanses popping up on her Instagram feed, 30-year-old Charlotte Palermino decided to side-step the likes of Whole30 and the ketogenic eating plan in favor of the carb-laden Italian favorite for one whole week.
Cleanse: Charlotte Palermino, a writer living in New York has detailed what it was like to go on an elimination diet where she only ate pasta for a week
Inspiration: The 30-year-old once suffered from an eating disorder, but has since learned to enjoy food and appreciate it, rather than worrying about how many calories are in a dish
Revealing her main motivation on Elle.com, she explained: ‘Food, to me, is about community and celebration, not anxiety and calorie counting.
‘Having first-hand experience with an eating disorder in my teenage years, it comes as no surprise that women are besieged by eating disorders.’
Adding that she also didn’t want to cut out the foods she eats everyday, Charlotte decided to experiment with eating only pasta to test the theory that ‘gluten, carbs, and dairy were clogging up my insides’.
Her other reasons were more practical – she had just bought a pasta maker and ‘pasta is delicious’.
As with most elimination diets, she did however impose some rules upon herself, including no alcohol or caffeine, no calories counting, no working out, and no cheating by eating other foods.
New beginnings: Charlotte experimented with a breakfast style pasta dish – wilted kale pesto and yogurt orecchiette – on the first day of her cleanse
Big and beautiful: Charlotte decided on a pasta ‘cleanse’ as she didn’t want to eliminate one of her favorite foods, pictured bucatini from Gramercy restaurant Maialino
Day one:
On her first morning, Charlotte experimented with a breakfast style pasta dish – wilted kale pesto and yogurt orecchiette.
Suffering from extreme caffeine withdrawals (she usually drinks up to six espressos per day), she then headed to lunch at Spaghetti Incident in New York’s Lower East Side where she ate a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs.
For dinner she went to Scampi, located in the Flatiron district where she had more pasta.
Day two:
Despite waking up feeling like ‘a pile of New York City trash that’s been left to cook on a steamy July afternoon’, Charlotte had lots of energy when she went to the gym and ran for 60 minutes on the treadmill, something she has never been able to do before.
She then went to Gaia Italian Cafe where she ate Genoese pasta and felt inspired by the owner’s declaration that ‘Food is life. It impacts your mood, how you treat other people, your skin, your biology, food feeds your soul! You shouldn’t feel bad about good food.’
However, Charlotte also admitted that several people told her she looked tired.
She ate rigatoni and offal for lunch and ravioli from Lighthouse in Brooklyn.
Experiment: She wanted to see if ‘carbs and dairy’ would ‘clog’ her arteries, pictured spaghetti and meatballs from Spaghetti Incident (left) and cacio e pepe from Vic’s (right)
Energized: Charlotte felt she had more energy from eating only pasta, pictured Osteria Morini’s ‘killer’ bolognese ragu
DIY: Charlotte bought a box of chitarrina, pictured left, from Un Posto Italiano and also ate meatballs from Vic’s (right)
Day three:
Charlotte shared that her coffee withdrawals were so severe on day three that she ‘caved’ and drank three cups with her breakfast of avocado pasta.
She then ate cacio e pepe for lunch at Vic’s and finished off her day with ravioli at Williamsburg hotspot, Lilia’s.
Day four:
High on carbs but dehydrated from all the salt she was consuming, Charlotte revealed that by day four she woke up feeling ‘parched’.
Forgetting to eat her breakfast carbonara, she attempted to prepare a shakshuka style pasta in the microwave at her office kitchen which didn’t well.
However, she did experience boundless energy that left her feeling like she wanted to run instead of walk so settled for ‘speed walking’ to her next dinner destination – celebrity hot spot Carbone.
There she shared rigatoni with vongole with a friend.
Day five:
Despite feeling ‘great on carbs, cheese, and carbs’, Charlotte shared she couldn’t quench her thirst, despite drinking lots of water.
When she went to Maialino, located just off Gramercy Park for bucatini all’amatriciana, her colleague who was there to photograph her remarked on how good her skin looked.
Another positive side effect? She had enough energy to do two back-to-back workout classes, ‘breezing’ through them and feeling ‘like an athlete’.
‘Typically, I’ll flop out of a class but I was bouncing off the walls ready to take on more pasta,’ she added.
For dinner she went to Lil’ Frankie and ordered three dishes with her friend – penne pomodoro, broccoli spaghetti, and gorgonzola spinach gnocchi.
However upon seeing her friend eat salad, she realized she missed vegetables and also red wine.
Experimental: Genovese pasta with pesto from Gaia’s Italian Kitchen (left) and smoked noodles from LaRina (right)
Brunch: Charlotte ate this delicious looking egg-stuffed raviolo at Osteria Morini on the last day of her cleanse but did admit she was looking forward to eating other food by that point
Result: At the end of the experiment, Charlotte had lost five pounds, thanks to dishes including the rigatoni with vongole at celeb hot spot Carbone (left) and gnocci at Lilia (right)
Day six:
After a breakfast of linguini with butter, garlic, basil, and lemon, Charlotte went to Un Posto Italiano and bought a box of chitarrina – ‘a thin, squared off noodle made with re-milled semolina flour and organic egg’.
She then went to LaRina in Brooklyn for smoked pasta before heading to Barano in Williamsburg where she and two friends managed to ‘polish off’ nine plates of pasta including Saffron Gigli with Calabrian Honey, Pecorino, Black Pepper.
Day seven:
Despite eating delicious pasta at some of the best restaurants New York has to offer, Charlotte admitted that by day seven she was ready to eat ‘anything but pasta’.
However, an egg-stuffed raviolo and ‘killer’ bolognese ragu at Osteria Morini helped ease Charlotte into her final day of pasta feasting, and she then went for dinner at Rucola.
However, by midnight, deeming the cleanse over, she ate four chocolate chip amaretti cookies.
Her main takeaway from the experiment? After speaking with a registered dietitian, Charlotte was advised that eating just one type of food for a prolonged period of time is never a good idea.
However, she did manage to lose five pounds as she wasn’t snacking or eating alcohol.
‘Stop listening to social media and focus more on how you feel after eating. Just because your friend feels bloated after a baguette doesn’t mean you do,’ she added.
‘If negative feelings around food crop up because of someone’s post or comment, maybe it’s time to put the internet away, go for a walk, and pick up a bowl of pasta.’
Carb lover: In October 2015, Charlotte did a similar kind of elimination diet that saw her eat nothing but pizza for a whole week
Delicious: Again, Charlotte lost five pounds from the diet, although a dietician told her that the weight loss was likely due to the fact that she also cut out alcohol and sugar
This is not the first time that Charlotte has tried this kind of diet, however. In October 2015, the writer spent a week eating nothing but pizza – and once again lost five pounds while on the elimination diet.
‘You wouldn’t need to torture yourself by subsiding off sugar kale water or spicy limeade for 10 days – you could eat pizza and it would have the same effect,’ she explained in an essay for Cosmopolitan.com. ‘It certainly would be more pleasant. And cheaper.’
Charlotte maintained that although there had been moments where she wanted to get in shape or eat better, she had never successfully gone on a diet or done a traditional cleanse because she can’t stand feeling hungry.
And so, in an attempt to try and shed some pounds, without giving up one of her favorite foods, she modeled an experimental diet on a ‘typical-seven day juice cleanse’ – but with pizza instead.
At the end of the experiment, Charlotte lost five pounds, however, Isabel Smith, a registered dietitian and fitness expert, said that her weight loss was mostly likely due to the fact that she cut out wine and sugar.
‘But I do not recommend eating only pizza for a week,’ Charlotte noted. ‘You might lose five pounds, but like with all crash diets, it’s not sustainable. Pizza without wine is a special kind of torture, one I never want to experience again.’