The pasta pass is back for 2016! As a little appetizer to this year's blog, let's have some fun. In honor of my favorite seven weeks, here's a look back at my seven favorite - and least favorite - pastas from the past two years.

Hall of Fame

Hall of Shame

Really looking forward to 2016's Never Ending Pasta Bowl! Watch this space. :)

If you're new to the world of All of Garden, please click here.

Thank you all for reading through my blog! It was a labor of love, and while I looked forward to each date and each bowl of pasta, I am very glad to be done. If you're wondering what I'm eating these days, it's mostly homemade food, supplemented with regular trips to my local Del Taco. I have not yet gotten a craving for pasta.

A very special thanks to all 50 of my dates, as well as two dates that didn't make it onto the blog proper due to poor photography on my part. Isai and Zoo, I hope that the free food was compensation enough for your time. I enjoyed my meal with each of you.

This will be my final post for 2015. If the Neverending Pasta Bowl returns next year, I may as well. Not sure what sort of blog it'll be then. I'm thinking something travel-related; going to new cities and exploring the regional cuisine was a fun part of this year's outing.

Until then - stay hungry, my friends.

(one last bad selfie for the road)

The question I am asked second-most (after the first) is if I'm getting my "money's worth out of that pass, haha!!"

Yes and no.

I received the Pasta Pass Family edition, which covered my meal and the meal of up to three additional guests. Dinners were always a one-on-one affair, but for lunches I'd usually treat three (sometimes fewer) friends or coworkers. On average, I'd estimate the number of Neverending Pasta Bowls procured per day at around five.

Average Olive Garden Meal:
Entree: $9.99
Drink: $2.80*
Topping: $3.00
Ravioli: $0.40**
Pre-Tax Total: $16.19
Grand Total: $17.49
*Coca Cola products are $2.99, and are comped by the pass. Almost everyone got one, but not everybody
**Ravioli is an additional $2.99. Most people didn't get it - I'm averaging

That $9.99 NEPB you saw advertised added up quick, eh?

So! With 49 days and roughly 5 of these meals comped per day, the total amount of money saved was $4,285.05. The Pasta Pass Family edition retailed this year for $300, so I definitely did get my money's worth! But that's not the whole story...

While I did get an enormous amount of free food, the pass doesn't cover everything. Sometimes, my date would order something that wasn't a Never Ending Pasta Bowl (I know, I know, that should've been a red flag). Dipping sauces, desserts, alcoholic beverages, flavored teas, other entrees - none of these are covered by the pass. Being a gentleman, I'd usually pay for them out of pocket with only the slightest of passive-aggressive remarks. I'd estimate these incidentals cost me around $75 over the course of the seven weeks.

Far more significant were the tips. I tipped $5, per person, per meal. I occasionally paid for the tips of my lunchtime friends/coworkers, and always paid for my dates. Here are some numbers!

$75 of assorted incidentals
49 lunches at $7.50 tip each (average based off tipping for myself and occasionally friends) : $367.50
53 dinners at $10 tip each : $530
Total: $972.50

It's true what they say: there ain't no free lunch!

For those of you who like facts and figures, here are some rough calculations I did about my pasta adventure this year. I'll be splitting this over a few days, because it's a lot of info, and I need to be gently weaned off my blogging habit lest I go cold turkey and get "blogger's shakes".

Today, I'll present some stats about my nutrition! What happens when a (physically) normal 27-year-old eats nothing but Olive Garden food for 49 days in a row?

Weight
One of the most frequent things people asked me on my dates was how much weight I gained. The answer is: some, but probably not as much as you'd think. Let's do the numbers!

Weight on October 5, 2015: 56.0 kg (~123 pounds)
Weight on November 23, 2015: 57.2 kg (~126 pounds)

Gaining three pounds over two months isn't exactly something to strive for, but if you're on a reverse-Atkins diet, I think you're doing alright.

The Never Ending Pasta Bowl Diet
Over the 49 days, I ate 102 meals at Olive Garden - 49 lunches, and 53 dinners. Occasionally I'd double-book an evening to work with my dates' schedules, or just because I was particularly hungry. The numbers following are all averages, and not exact.

My lunches were with coworkers, friends, acquaintances, etc, and were not blogged about. Consequently, I typically ate the same thing every time:

Lunch Calories

Item	Calories
Two breadsticks	280
Three salads with croutons, no dressing	300
Four Coke Zeroes	0
Entree: Penee, Marinara, Chicken Meatball	820

For a grand total of 1,400 calories per lunch. Again, these are averages and estimates. OG portion size is not perfectly consistent, and some days I ate more or less.

Dinner Calories

Item	Calories
One breadstick	140
Four Coke Zeroes	0
Three salads with croutons, no dressing	300
Entree: Random pasta, Random Sauce, Random Topping	1160

For an average of rougly 1,600 calories per dinner.

Dinners are trickier to calculate, because each entree was different. The only significant change from a calorie perspective was removal of one breadstick (-140 calories) and the replacement of the Marinara sauce with alfredo-based sauces (2/3 of the time) and Chicken Pomodoro (1/3 of the time). This simple change averages out to be an increase of about 340 calories a day (!) and I suspect is the cause of my weight gain.

Total Calories Consumed
So, using those numbers, we'll do some quick math.

49 lunches at 1,400 calories each: 68,600 lunch calories
53 dinners at 1,600 calories each: 84,800 dinner calories
no snacks, desserts, breakfasts, or non-OG food of any sort
153,400 calories (~3,130 per day)

That might seem like a lot, since the nutrition guidelines on the back of most food advise you to stick to around 2000 calories a day. It seems like much less when you realize this would actually be a restrictive diet for most of us Americans.

I want to stress this point: I never exercised solely for the purpose of exercising. I find exercise extremely boring and avoid it whenever possible, as is evident by my puny girl arms. However, I have a fairly active job and I biked to and from the Olive Garden regularly, so it balanced out, mostly.

Let's wrap this up. Why didn't I get gross and super fat like that asshole from Super Size Me?

Calories In, Calories Out
"Health" as a general category is really complicated! I definitely don't fully understand it, and don't claim to. But weight gain and loss is simple physics - matter/energy can't be created or destroyed. Fat doesn't magically appear on your body, and if you do work (in a physics sense, that is; exerting force on other objects) the energy that you expend likewise must come from somewhere.

Simply put, if you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. The reverse is, of course, also true. It really is that simple: the laws of physics do not allow any other way. It doesn't matter if you eat big macs, neverending pasta bowls, boiled broccoli and lean chicken, or cabbage soup. Calories in and calories out is the only thing that matters in the context of simple weight change.

Thanks for reading this long as heck post! Tomorrow I'll write about the financial side of the Pasta Pass.