I'm not an expert, but I've found it easiest to just get used to not having pasta for a while. Not because it is necessarily bad for you, but because it just seems too calorically dense for how un-filling it is (not to mention, it just makes me crave more carbs).
I think that if you cut out some of the carbier items such as the pasta or the rice, and upped the amount of meat/protein you have in your meal instead, you'd probably end up lowering your overall daily calories and find yourself MUCH more satisfied at the end of the day.
This is usually my pattern of eating, and it seems to work pretty well:
-Breakfast (this is where I eat most of my carbs, usually a big bowl of fiber cereal, sometimes a multigrain english muffin, but I usually add eggwhites or some sort of protein)
-Lower carb snack like roasted cocoa/cinnamon nuts/veggie sticks with a little hummus/etc
-Lunch is almost always only protein and veggies, and I usually make lunch my biggest meal of the day
-Another lower carb snack
-Dinner is protein and veggies, and if I want dessert, I try and really limit the carbiness because it's horribly addicting for me. So, some plain greek yogurt with some berries, or chopped almonds in it (nomnomnom), or sugar free jello...anything to get the sweet fix without triggering my inner cookie monster.
There are many ways to diet, and this just happens to work for me, but I feel it is overall a pretty sound approach to calorie counting. Breakfast is always very satisfying
Carb question
Good Luck!!
