Sticking to a diet is no easy feat, and if you're prone to snacking, the wait between meals can feel like an eternity.
However, it isn't necessarily snacking that's bad, it's more a case of what you are snacking on. According to Michael Mosley, swapping out crisps and chocolate for nuts could offer a whole range of health benefits while keeping cravings at bay.
He spoke about these benefits - including how nuts can potentially help people with weight loss - on the most recent episode of his BBC podcast Just One Thing.
In the podcast, the diet guru said: "Nuts often get bad press because they are high in fat and cause life-threatening allergies."
Even so, the health journalist went on to explain that nuts are actually more beneficial than people might think.
He said: "But if like me you‘re able to eat nuts, this is definitely one thing you should start doing today."
Michael states: "Eating nuts may reduce your risk of a whole range of diseases, including cancer, diabetes and heart disease."
Mosley spoke to Dr Sze-Yen Tan from Deakin University in Australia, who shared some of the reasons why eating nuts has a minimal impact on your waistline - and may even help you slim down.
The doctor explained: "Including nuts into the diet doesn't really have much effect on your body weight. In fact those with a higher nut intake tend to have a lower body weight or lower body fat."
He then shared why this may be the case with Michael, citing three main reasons that nuts can help with slimming.
Dr Sze-Yen said: "We don't absorb all the fat or all the energy from nuts when we consume them, that's the first reason. The second reason is that when we eat nuts, we feel fuller and consequently will adjust our diets in the next meal.
"The third reason being, there are some studies showing that nut consumption can actually increase how much energy is burned in the body."
The doctor also revealed how eating nuts can benefit the brain, citing a study which saw those who consumed more nuts testing better for short-term memory, fluency and processing speeds among other things.
He added: "In one study they found that including nuts into the diet can actually improve the brain reactivity. They also found that the small blood vessels in the brain have higher elasticity, so meaning that there's better blood flow into the brain."
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