If you’re thinking of giving up smoking, suddenly you discover that there are probably as many tips to quit smoking as there are ex-smokers. It’s very definitely a case of information overload. These tips on stopping smoking get discolored and misinterpreted through Chinese whispers.

With so much “helpful advice”, it’s difficult to know where to turn and what to try, and with the feeling of information overload, it’s not hard to see why so many people simply give up on giving up smoking. Which is really sad, because with the right advice and some simple directions, you really can quit smoking.

You are no doubt well aware of the health benefits to be gained when you quit smoking for good. But that doesn’t make it any easier to give up, or more importantly to find a suitable stop smoking program of method that will work for you. Unfortunately the failure rate is unnecessarily high, so here are some tips to help get you started:

Tip #1 You must have a very good reason to quit smoking. The health benefits of quitting smoking are obvious, but you need your own personal desire for giving up, otherwise you’ll be relying on will power alone.

Tip #2 Look for small rewards that you can give yourself as you make progress. You are not likely to just quit cold turkey with no complications. Set up small rewards that will help you to want to make progress towards ultimately quitting. This can be a great motivation to keep you on target.

Tip #3 Plan out your quitting strategy. Decide how you want to try to quit and stick to it. Set a specific amount of time for your plan. If after a time, say six weeks you have not quit, work on a new plan. This will allow ample time to try each method, while still giving yourself flexibility to try something else.

Tip #4 Is there anything else making you smoke apart from the addiction to the drugs? If so, you need to work it out and find an alternative therapy. If you smoke to ease stress, find a better solution to reduce your stress levels like exercise or kick boxing!

Tip #5 Set up a punishment for yourself. For example, if you generally stop at Starbucks each day for a coffee you might consider skipping that on days when you have fallen short of your goals for smoking. Whatever punishment you select, make sure it is something that you care about.

Tip #6 Seek out help from your friends and family. You need support as you are trying to quit, and this will help you to ensure that you are not alone in the entire process.

Tip #7 Look for someone to quit with you. If you are entirely on your own, you are going to be much more likely to slip back into smoking. If someone is working with you and holding you accountable, you are more likely to struggle to succeed. Working to quit smoking is not easy, but hard tasks are much easier to accomplish with a partner.

Tip #8 Ensure you are getting plenty of sleep. The job of quitting smoking is quite difficult. If you are not getting the rest you need, you are much more likely to be cranky, upset and angry with the world. This is very counterproductive to your goal of quitting smoking for good.

Tip #9 Aim to quit for good. This might seem a bit strange, but if you are just planning to quit for a weekend you are not going to put much effort into the process. If you are planning to quit for good, a lot more time and effort is going to go into the process as well as your plan to quit.

Tip #10 You will undoubtedly have cravings and urges, so make a list of things you can do to take you mind of smoking when these situations arise. Forewarned is forearmed.

Tags: kidney and heart disease, heart valve disease, heart disease prevention

We all know that losing weight isn’t easy, but hopefully, by the end of this article, you will have a better idea of just how far reaching the effects of obesity can be on your entire body and internal systems.

Check out below the ways in which losing those inches can improve your health:

Lose the weight to lessen your chances of heart disease, high blood pressure and strokes.

These alone make up three very good reasons to get that excess weight off. It has been shown by research from across the USA and the UK, that the most prevalent cause of high blood pressure, heart disease and strokes are caused by problems directly associated with obesity. Being overweight can mean that the level of fat being carried around your body in your blood can be massively increased. The fat gets deposited and can cause clogging of the major arteries of the body, including the heart and brain. This in turn can bring on heart attacks and strokes.

Sudden death also occurs from heart disease and strokes, and these can strike with very little warning, signs or symptoms.

You can improve matters dramatically by simply reducing your weight, even by only 5 to 10 percent. This would improve you blood pressure, and general heart function, which could add years to your life.

Diabetes can be caused by being overweight.

Nowadays diabetes is very common, which generally is an unfortunate testimony to our unhealthy lifestyles. It is, however, a serious illness which can affect many organs of the body, leading to blindness and loss of limbs (due to bad circulation) in the more extreme cases. Both type one and type two diabetes can be caused by being overweight.

To those who already have diabetes, getting some regular exercise and losing some of that excess weight could help in controlling your blood sugar levels, as well as continuing with the medication you may be currently taking.

Try a daily walk or jog which will get your cardio-vascular system working. That will exercise your heart and lungs as well as burn off calories to lose some excess weight.

Weight loss helps reduce your risk for cancer.

For women, there are a number of cancers that are particularly affected by obesity. Being overweight can increase your chance of getting cancer of the overy, breast, uterus, gallbladder and colon. This has been proven by scientists and should be taken very seriously.

Men are also at risk from developing cancer if they are overweight. These cancers include cancer of the colon, prostate and rectum.

Sleep apnoea can be improved with weight loss.

Sleep apnoea is a condition where you can temporarily stop breathing during the night and then continue to snore heavily. The condition can cause drowsiness or sleepiness during the day and, because of being overweight, can eventually result in heart failure. Shedding those excess pounds can help in eliminating this problem too.

Help the pain from osteoarthritis, lose that weight!

If you are overweight, the joints of your knees, hips and lower back have to exert double, or even triple, effort to carry you throughout your waking, walking and moving life. This can cause tension and stress on these joints. Weight loss decreases the load your joints carry thus decreasing the pain if you are someone who has osteoarthritis.

I’m sure you already knew that losing weight is not an easy task, but the long term effects, as shown, are more than worth it, so the trade-off is right there; you must lose weight to live longer.

Tags: heart disease, heart disease prevention, obesity and heart disease

Hilton and Lisa Johnson are founders of Hilton Johnson Productions, Inc., HealthCoachTraining and HealthCoachingU, and they have been pioneers in the health coaching industry. Back in 1990, they began offering coaching programs through web-based technology, and now they’ve ventured into the health arena by offering a 12-month certification training program. The program combines coaching and health training.

The new certification program is more than just health and coaching, though. It also focuses on marketing and sales techniques because even the best coach has to know how to find and keep clients. Hilton has worked with many of the industry’s top leaders including Bob Proctor, Brian Tracy, T. Harv Eker, Zig Ziglar, Marcia Wieder, Loral Langemeier and Vic Johnson.

Hilton Johnson didn?t start out with a passion for health. His passions were those of many young men: music and women. Meeting his wife caused him to quit chasing women, but it took something traumatic to pull him away from his rock star dreams. Hilton?s brother died suddenly of a heart attack only a few years ago.

After his brother’s death, Hilton knew he needed to save his own life. He started seeing a cardiologist and found that he would need a five-way bypass surgery. He had no symptoms and had no idea anything was wrong. People just like him are dropping dead every day. Many common diseases like heart disease or diabetes have no symptoms until it’s too late.

Health coaching isn?t for everyone. Like anything, it?s almost impossible to succeed without first having a passion for what you?re pursuing. Even if you have a passion for health, you?ll also need to have or develop other skills. Presentation skills, marketing skills, and business sense all play vital roles in the business.

You might be surprised to know that Hilton Johnson puts a passion for money at the top of his must-have list when telling others what is necessary for success. Why? Money isn’t really all that important to people who already have it, but for those who don’t, they’ll work extra hard to get it. Only after you have personal success can you achieve global success.

What does a health coach DO, exactly? They help their clients find balance. Even people who feel okay are many times not healthy. They?re not exercising or eating right, they have stress and/or bad habits like smoking, and they may even have serious underlying health problems that have not been diagnosed yet, like diabetes or heart disease.

As a health coach, you can help people create an action plan in their lives. Coaching long term helps people avoid the New Year’s Resolution pit into which so many people fall. Losing 30 pounds by February isn’t realistic, but living a healthy lifestyle for the rest of your life is quite attainable!

Tags: heart disease in woman, heart valve disease, heart disease risk factor