Pistachio Study

Matt suggested I tell you guys about the pistachio study in which I participated. I'll try to make it short, though it can be difficult for me. The nutrition department at PSU was doing a study to determine what effect eating pistachios regularly had on cholesterol. During this study, I ate nothing at all that wasn't given to me by the study kitchen, except Diet Coke. The first 4 weeks were just standard fare, although healthy. Then we did 6 weeks of getting 10 percent of my calories from pistachios, with the rest being the same stuff as the first part. The third phase, I got 20% of my calories from pistachios, all else remaining the same. That part was a lot of pistachios. I ate them ground up in every meal, and just plain between meals. The standard fare was following a "volumetric" plan, which means that most meals were very large in size or volume, but not high in calories. For example, every week I had a taco salad that was seriously huge. It was a whole bag of bagged lettuce, plus a cut up tomato, some chips, salsa, a pile of corn and a little cheese, plus turkey taco meat infused with chopped up pistachios, of course. I had to make it in our largest mixing bowl just to fit it in one container so I could mix it up well. In between each phase, as well as before we started, they took my blood and checked my BP and did some weird stuff with collapsing my veins and ultrasound, but that's not important. At the beginning and after the first phase, my BP was a fairly typical (for me) 125/80.

What is important is that by the time this study was over, still weighing in at over 260 pounds, and (this is key) doing absolutely NO exercise (I wasn't allowed), I had a BP of 105 over 65, and my "bad" cholesterol had dropped 30-40 points. I found that pretty incredible. So I am now a pistachio evangelist. And I am really excited to see what I can do by continuing to eat them but getting thinner and doing vigorous aerobic activity. I'm looking forward to putting this all together and getting fit again. I am also happy that we have created this project to help with that endeavor. Rock on, my peeps.

Pistachios in every pot!