You can be doing everything right with your diet, but if you’re skating through every day on 5 hours of sack time and three cups of coffee, you’re sabotaging yourself. For anyone trying to lose weight or just get healthier, a chronic sleep debt is a giant eraser scrubbing away at all those healthy choices you’re making with your diet.

You probably already know that, though – and you’re probably also tired of people just telling you to “sleep more:” wouldn’t we all, if we could? So here’s a quick reminder of why sleep is so important for weight loss, and some practical tips to help you actually make it happen.

In clinical settings, cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) has a 70-80 percent success rate for helping those who suffer from chronic insomnia. Almost one third of people with insomnia achieve normal sleep and most reduce their symptoms by 50 percent and sleep an extra 45-60 minutes a night. When insomnia exists along with other psychological disorders like depression, say the experts, the initial treatment should address the underlying condition.

We tend to think of sleep as a time when the mind and body shut down. But this is not the case; sleep is an active period in which a lot of important processing, restoration, and strengthening occurs.

Oh, the sound of rain on a tin roof, or the rustling of leaves on a crisp fall afternoon. Both of these things may prompt you to want to sit and relax with a warm cup of tea.  Sipping tea is not a new art and countless cultures have been doing so for centuries. The history of tea spans back to its birthplace, China. An old legend states that an Emperor, Shen Nung, an avid herbalist was sitting under a tree while his servant boiled some drinking water. 

When the leaves from the tree blew into the water, the Emperor decided to try the mixture and was pleasantly surprised by the taste. The tree, Camellia sinensis is what we now call tea.