When snacking is made difficult, that’s good for your diet AND your health

Here’s a novel way to help you lose weight: Make your snacks hard to get to.

For instance, you could hang a bag of chips from the top branch of a large tree, requiring a difficult climb.

Or you could do it Indiana Jones-style and hide pastries in a secret pyramid guarded by snakes.

Or you could snack on pistachios. Specifically, in-shell pistachios.

The pistachio is naturally low in calories, high in fiber, and provides a variety of minerals and B vitamins. That’s a pretty good start for any snack.

New research shows that eating pistachios in-shell helps limit calorie intake in two ways…

1) They’re hard to get to.

A study in the journal Appetite shows that people who snack on in-shell pistachios consume about 40 percent fewer calories than snackers who choose shelled pistachios. (Slackers!)

And 2) The empty shells send a message.

Another study, also in Appetite, reveals that a growing pile of pistachio shells provides snackers with a visual clue that they’ve had enough.

So if your computer keyboard is no longer visible — stop.

Sources:
“In-shell pistachios: The original ‘slow food?'” Press release, 7/15/11, eurekalert.org