How to quit smoking for good
Quitting smoking is one of the most important steps you can take for long term anti aging health and for your looks.
Of the 50 million smokers in the US – one in two will die early from a smoking related condition – many of these in middle age.
Your health isn’t the only thing at risk either – if you care about how you look and want to look younger for longer – smoking cigarettes is the last thing you should be doing.
So if you’ve just had an important mid life birthday – or are coming up to one – now is a good time to stop.
The truth is – you probably already know that you need to quit smoking – the question really is what can you do about it?
Chances are if you just try to go cold turkey you will fail. Current research indicates that 95% of people who try to quit smoking without any form of practical help fail to quit smoking for good. This isn’t proof of how many weak willed people there are in the world – it simply shows how addictive smoking is.
But don’t let that put you off quitting smoking. The good news is if you use some form of practical help to ease yourself off nicotine you have a very good chance of succeeding
Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) is now accepted as having a major impact on your chances of success – research has shown that it can double your chances of quitting smoking for good.
Experts all over the world have given Nicotine Replacement Theraphy the thumbs up. In the US – NRT is recommended by the American Lung Association – especially when used with a behavior change program to deal with the smoking habit.
In the UK – Nicotine Replacement Therapy is part of a government funded program to help everyone who wants to quit smoking – so NRT is available free as part of a special smoking cessation program.
In the US whilst there is no free NRT program – you will find that nicotine replacement therapy pays for itself.
As soon as you quit smoking you stop paying for cigarettes. As a result you will be better off even after you buy your patches, lozenges or gum! When you finish NRT (usually after around 8-10 weeks) you’ll have much more spare cash since no more of your hard earned money will be going up in smoke.
The most common NRT products are: nicotine patches, nicotine gum and nicotine lozenges. Products can be used separately or combined as part of a quitting smoking strategy. All deliver enough nicotine to help you quit smoking and come with free programs for you to follow.
All NRT products work in the same way by giving you small doses of nicotine in the early stages of quitting smoking – typically the first eight to ten weeks. As reported by the American Lung Association – NRT products products: “lessen the chances of suffering from several of the major smoking withdrawal symptoms such as tenseness, irritability, drowsiness and lack of concentration.”
Nicotine patches deliver between 7-14 mgs of nicotine through the layers in the skin. Patches have many benefits as they release the drug directly into the bloodstream without passing through the intestine or stomach. There is less risk of the nicotine being neutralized by stomach acids or causing nausea.
Nicotine is also released at a constant level throughout the day without you having to worry about taking any medication or waiting until you feel the first pangs of nicotine withdrawal kicking in. Nicotine patches can be worn where they aren’t visible and they won’t interrupt your normal daily routine or mealtimes.
A nicotine gum like Nicorette delivers nicotine more quickly to the brain than a patch and is a highly effective nicotine replacement therapy – provided you use it properly. The recommended method is to “chew and park”. You shouldn’t keep chewing it like you would an ordinary piece of gum or the nicotine will be released into your saliva resulting in a nasty taste in the mouth and a craving for a cigarette.
Chew it a few times to break down the gum and then ‘park’ it between your cheek and gum and leave it there for around 30 minutes. Nicotine will be released slowly and make its way into your bloodstream through the blood vessels under the lining in your mouth. Chewing nicotine gum in the wrong way is probably the main reason why this form of NRT fails for some people. Chew it right and it will work.
Nicotine lozenges are similar to a gum in their effect and in the way they are used. The lozenge should be allowed to dissolve in the mouth for about 20-30 minutes to enable the nicotine to get into the bloodstream in the same way as for gum.
Nicotine gum and lozenges have advantages over patches. With the gum or lozenge you can control when you take the nicotine. You may need a sudden ‘hit’ to help you over a time of the day or a situation when the cravings are at their worst – in the bar with friends or after dinner in the evening when you normally light up.
All forms of NRT work if used correctly and they can all be successfully combined in a quit smoking program that suits you.
The first and most important step you take on the road to being a non-smoker is to make a commitment to yourself to quit. Your commitment should be clear and determined – to quit smoking whatever it takes.
Write down your reasons for quitting in positive terms – for example: “when I quit smoking my skin will look younger”; “when I quit smoking I will be better off financially”; “when I quit I will feel better” and so on.
Successful quitters get support from other people. Share your decision to quit smoking with someone who cares about you – your partner, a close friend or family member. This is very helpful – especially if the person you talk to has an interest in you giving up.
Maybe other members of your family don’t smoke or a close friend has been worried about the fact that you smoke. If you talk to people who care whether you smoke or not and want you to stop you’ll have powerful allies in your battle against smoking – right from the word go.
But be careful who you pick to help. Make sure you talk to someone who is capable of giving you positive encouragement as you deal with the ups and downs of quitting smoking. The last thing you want in your journey is a “back seat driver” constantly criticising or pointing out where you’ve gone wrong.
The right ally against smoking can make a huge difference to how quickly you overcome this aging and life threatening addiction.
If you’ve been thinking about quitting smoking for a while – stop thinking and take action now. You could be a non-smoker quicker than you think!
Weight loss tips – best ever list
Healthy weight loss over forty can seem like an uphill battle and the older you get the more difficult it can seem.
As middle age hits sometimes it seems impossible to lose the flab. The decline in metabolic rate means those pounds stay put, and it takes a lot of work to get them off even though you know very well that being over weight and over forty is not a good combination.
The secret to healthy weight loss at any age is really no secret at all, just a simple mathematical fact.
You have to use more energy than you take in to shed the pounds and you have to do it over the long term. Simple to say – but it can be hard to do.
What you need is some help and advice from people who have done it. There’s no shortage of diet and fitness sites on the web offering weight loss tips – so here’s my pick of the best:
1. Boost your activity levels – physical activity raises your metabolism, causing you to lose more weight, more quickly than dieting alone.
2. Drink green tea – Green tea is proven to boost metabolism and helps you shed excess fat around your middle. You need to around four cups of green tea a day or take a good green tea extract.
3. Go for permanent change - Temporary diets always fail. When you aim for permanent weight loss – you’ll change your long term habits for good.
4. Start reading food labels. You should know what’s in the food that you’re putting in your mouth. Check both the ingredients list and the nutritional facts, especially the serving sizes.
5. Tell your family – you need help and support and someone to share the highs and lows with.
6. Go public – tell everyone. It’s much more difficult to quit if everyone knows what you said you would do.
7. Find an exercise program that you like doing and look forward to. Exercise that you hate will be harder to do over the long term.
8. Use music – Music can help you zone out and get moving without concentrating or thinking about the repetitive nature of the exercise.
9. Eat half size first helpings. Put only half what you think you need to eat on your plate to start.
10. Wait 20 minutes before second helpings. Your body takes around this time to send messages to the brain that you’re full. Give your brain time to catch up!
11. Use a smaller plate. Self-deception – but it works! Using a small plate means that a full sized portion just looks gross – you’ll feel you’re eating more than you are and you’ll be able to make do with less more easily.
12. Drink more water – especially when you feel a hunger pang. It’s easy to mistake thirst for hunger and a glass of water can stop you feeling hungry. Start every meal with a glass.
13. Don’t compare with other people. Your body is different from anyone else’s and you will lose and gain weight in different ways. Two people following the same program won’t have the same results, so don’t get discouraged if you can’t lose weight as easily as a friend or other people in a weight watchers group.
14. Accept that men lose weight quicker than women – If you’re dieting with your male partner, he may shed weight more quickly. Women are biologically programmed to retain fat around areas like hips and thighs.
15. Avoid diet pills, crash diets, and gimmicks. There’s no such thing as a magic solution. These commercial products and plans are out to get your money. They only work when combined with a proper diet and exercise – which are what help you to lose weight anyway.
16. Take a multi-vitamin supplement – it can improve your health overall and help you to lose weight a little faster.
17. Don’t give up just because you have a relapse – one piece of cake or pizza doesn’t mean that you have ruined the diet. It’s your calorie intake over time that matters not on any one day.
18. Set yourself a target weight – Find out what your ideal weight is (based on your BMI) and target that as your end goal.
19. Go ‘cold turkey’ on junk food It’s bad for you, and it comes in portions that will make you gain, rather than drop pounds. Convenience is not worth the extra fat it makes you put on. Go for permanent weight loss and switch to healthier fresher food and you’ll look younger and feel fitter almost instantly.
20. Don’t obsess over the bathroom scales – Weigh yourself regularly but no more than once a week at the same time. Your weight will change throughout the day and you need to keep your eye on the overall trend, not a daily number.
21. Build up your muscles – do some resistance or load bearing exercise. Muscle mass raises your metabolic rate and helps you burn fat.
22. Set realistic weight loss goals – Achieving healthy weight loss means losing no more than about two pounds a week.
23. Record your success – take photos of your progress as you lose weight and share it with other people. Try buying a bag of sugar for every 2 pounds of weight you lose and sit it on your desk where you can see it. When you’ve lost quite a lot – fill up a rucksack or sportsbag and try carrying it around for a bit to remind yourself how life used to be.
24. Eat low GI Food – eat as many low glycemic index foods as possible. Foods that take time to convert to blood sugar help you feel full for longer.
Burn more calories with a pedometer
It may or may not have been invented by Thomas Jefferson as some claim but a pedometer is a great aid for healthy aging.
Carrying excess weight and not exercising enough is bad for your long term health and looks. More and more studies show us how important weight is to a long and healthy life.
Keeping your BMI within a healthy range is a simple matter of taking in less calories than you use up during the day.
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Have you inherited your response to stress?
Do stressed out parents produce stressed out kids? According to psychiatrists there is a link. Parental stress places the child at a great risk of becoming stressed as well.
Besides the genetic risk of becoming stressed, children of stressed parents also learn the tendency to get stressed out in reaction to life’s challenges and this is copied directly from our parents.
Since stress accelerates the aging process – inheriting a stress gene could be bad news for your anti aging health.
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Four core exercises to try for free
If you haven’t tried a core exercise program yet – here’s a few free core exercises you can have a go at without calling in a personal trainer.
One of the best things about a core exercise regimen is that you can do it for free in the comfort of your own home. All you need is a fitness ball and somewhere soft like a carpeted floor or a mat and you’re ready to go.
Core exercise can be one of the easiest forms of anti aging exercise to fit into your schedule – however busy you are. Even better – core exercises help strengthen your core and firm those stubborn areas of abdominal flab which settle as we get older.
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Why laughter is a great anti aging medicine
Stress has been shown to accelerate aging and disease – anything you can do to reduce stress has to be good. So how about laughing more?
Recent research has shown that laughter really does help us in managing stress. Adopting a humorous view of life’s difficulties can take the edge off everyday stressful situations.
Laughter prevents stress building up and stops the release of damaging stress hormones into the body.
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Ten ideas for a home gym on a budget
The cost of gym membership can seem like a luxury in these cash strapped times – especially if you don’t go as often as you should. But getting enough exercise – weight bearing and cardio – is important for anti aging health
Even the most committed gym bunny may want to top up at home between visits. Setting up a home exercise area can be a great way to stay fit without spending a fortune.
The key thing is not to try and reproduce what the best gyms offer. That’s really what a gym membership buys – use of expensive exercise equipment without the outlay.
But do you really need the high cost hardware to keep fit?
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Cardio exercise the fun way – dance fitness
Cardio workouts in t he gym can be a chore but doing regular cardio exercise is vital for healthy aging. Combining cardio exercise with the fun of dance is a great way to keep fit over 40.
As we all know heart pumping aerobic exercise is an essential part of any anti aging health strategy. But – for many of us – “workout boredom” can get in the way.
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Swim your way to core strength
Many of us now know the importance of core strength exercise as you get older to firm up abdominal flab, build flexibility and prevent back problems.
You may have looked for the best free core exercises on the web without realizing that the solution may lie in a familiar activity that you haven’t even considered as core exercise – swimming.
Swimming offers you something like a positive double whammy. For starters it’s an extremely good form of aerobic exercise – flooding your brain with oxygen and raising your pulse rate.
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Aging is not the cause of high blood pressure
Did you know that as a woman once you get into your mid 50’s you are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure than a man?
As a woman – though the risk of high blood pressure increases with age – getting older does not in itself cause high blood pressure – the root causes lie elsewhere.
High blood pressure is a serious condition because of its effects – it will likely ruin your chances of healthy aging. The worrying thing is that though you may have high blood pressure – the chances are you don’t even know it.
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