The debate about the best way to achieve a healthy weight always revolves around eating and movement. If you want to lose weight, the most common suggestion is "eat less and move more." But it's not that simple, or even accurate. Sometimes you want to eat less and move more, but it seems impossible to do so. And there might be a good reason: between living your life, working, and exercising, you're forgetting to sleep enough.

More than 35 percent of people are sleep deprived and when you consider that the statistic for obesity is nearly identical, it's easy to connect the dots and discover that the connection is not a coincidence.

Many people believe that hunger is related to willpower and learning to control the call of your stomach, but that's incorrect. Research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that sleeping less than six hours triggers the area of your brain that increases your need for food

When you don't sleep enough, your cortisol levels rise, this is the stress hormone that is frequently associated with fat gain. Cortisol also activates reward centers in your brain that make you want food.

Ever had a conversation like this?

"I really shouldn't have that extra piece of cake... then again, one slice won't really hurt, right?"

Turns out, sleep deprivation is a little like being drunk. You just don't have the mental clarity to make good complex decisions, specifically with regards to the foods you eat-or foods you want to avoid.

The bottom line: Not enough sleep means you're always hungry, reaching for bigger portions, and desiring every type of food that is bad for you-and you don't have the proper brain functioning to tell yourself, "No!"

If you feel that better sleep could be the key to acheivig your weight loss goals then improving your sleep can be pretty simple.

At The Insomnia Clinic we help people to understand and improve their poor sleep which in turn improves daytime functioning, physical and mental health. The programme of treatment we offer is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-i) so if you are still struggling to sleep then CBT-i is the NHS recommended approach to fix poor sleep. CBT-i works by looking at both the behavioural and cognitive (mental) factors which are maintaining sleep problems.