This is the story of how I lost a lot of weight this April without forcibly changing a single item in my fridge or ever putting my trainers on.

From an ancient tradition to an hourly addiction (in my case), tea is a life necessity. One gentleman stated that he would occasionally consider business deals depending on the quality of the cuppa provided. Milk and teabags are about the only motivation for my Sunday odyssey to the corner shop. Do you still remember your first? Mine was with two sugars, dainty porcelain and my aunt’s conservatory.

Unfortunately there began a degenerative affair that has lasted a decade. My mug gave me a  wake-up call, a meditative moment; I gave her more and more of my thighs each year on which to settle her sugar granules. If you have ‘tea additions’- biscuits, sugar lumps even semi-skimmed milk- it is a habit that needs to be broken, now. If you had just one chocolate, wheat biscuit per working day you would be eating 1849 calories extra per week.

But you can have your tea and drink it; you just need to go green. If you were to drink green tea daily it would do the following: improve your skin, clear your mind, reduce water retention, keep you hydrated, keep you awake (there is as much caffeine as in builders’ tea). Green tea has also been proven to speed up your metabolic rate. Particularly jasmine tea, used to give me a constant buzz of energy.

So here is what happened to me: one slightly incompetent waitress gave me the wrong teabag, I discovered green tea wasn’t so bad and began to switch habits. I never had sugar because the mixture was sickly and ruined the pungent woody taste. No sugar= cha ching! Having suffered black-head outbursts my entire young life and tried every drying up cream the supermarket offered including toothpaste, I suddenly noticed that my skin was glowing. A friend that studied biology said that the antioxidants were clearing out all the rubbish that I was eating because don’t get me wrong, I was still gobbling chocolate in this new phase. I was also- I don’t know how to describe it but- buzzing all the time: buzzing with energy, with positivity; probably another effect of the toxin clear out. The best result of all was that with the constant consumption of this hot drink I lost my appetite so I fridge visits were reduced naturally. However if you have builders tea with sugar, it is more likely that you will get a sugar crash and then hunger.

The tea was also a great help medicinally. During long periods of work stress, instead of succumbing to the family problem of post-midnight chocolate hunts I would drink chamomile tea and it was very calming. I also drank lots of Echinacea to steer clear of a cold last winter. Although a lot of these things didn’t directly cause weight loss, the decrease in stress and in illness definitely contributed to a lifestyle of weight-loss without having to make any dramatic improvements! So go green!