An easy, healthy way to lose weight. Really.

Dieters have long been advised to eat more fiber. Now there's a bit of evidence that increasing your fiber consumption can indeed help you lose weight.

The Eating Well blog is reporting on a study that has refined that advice into a formula: Add 8 grams of fiber for every 1000 calories you consume. In the study, women who did that lost an average of 4 1/2 lbs in less than 2 years.

I know, I know, it ain't all that much. But adding fiber is pretty painless and often pleasant--and fiber, as we know, is also very healthful for, ahem, other reasons.

Eating Well appends a short list of fiber-rich foods. I see that a cup of raspberries has 8 grams of fiber. Yum yum.

So if I just turn that hot fudge sundae into a hot-fudge-and-raspberry sundae, I should come out even, right? And yet somehow I don't think it would work that way.....