As many of us have found, stopping smoking is one of the hardest things you will ever do, there is no easy way to stop smoking!

For years I was a 40 plus a day man and not the fittest I had ever been, chasing my partner’s four year old son around for a few minutes with a football always left me breathless and if I tried to keep going I would end up feeling dizzy and needing a good long rest to catch my breath.  I had tried gum and patches in the past but at most had managed to keep away from cigarettes for a few days before my inherent weak willed nature took over and I started smoking again. I had even tried artificial cigarettes but just having one in my mouth made me crave a real cigarette and the nicotine craving would return and win.

Finally I decided that I had to do something and find a way to quit smoking to good. Not only was I missing out on having fun playing with my partner’s son, I was also missing out on other fun stuff too, I had always been into sports but couldn’t do much with my level of fitness. I also needed to think about my future health and the many illnesses caused from smoking cigarettes…

I started reading up on the Internet looking for an easy way to stop smoking and came across a web site called Quit Smoking Today. I was amazed, could it really be this simple to finally quit smoking for good!

After reading the information on the web site I was still a little unsure if this method would work for me or if this was just another Internet scam. Given the low cost of this course and the money back guarantee offered, I finally decided to give it a go and purchased the course.
This was the best money I have ever spent!

The course is a type of hypnotherapy called Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP. All I did was download and listen to the recording for 40 minutes a day for just over a week and that was it, I haven’t touched a cigarette since and that was nearly two years ago.

No cravings, no gum or patches, no special diets and no will power required, great in my case

According to the Quit Smoking Today web site, this method works on over 97% of people and they never return to smoking, so I am now looking forward getting the most out of life and playing a lot more sport, as well as having a lot more money in my pocket…

If I hadn’t made the decision to give the Quit Smoking Today Program a try, this would not be possible.

If you are like I was, struggling with quitting smoking and are looking for an easy way to stop smoking, improve your health and save loads of cash into the bargain, I recommend you take a look at Quit Smoking Today. It worked for me and I haven’t looked back since…

Here is the link to the web site Quit Smoking Today

So what if it is really that easy? What if all your beliefs about how hard it is going to be to quit are completely false? What if, after just one session of hypnotherapy or NLP you find it incredibly easy to become and remain a happy, confident non-smoker for life?

The reason why hypnotherapy & NLP are so successful is because both our beliefs about smoking and our habitual smoking behaviours reside within your unconscious mind. So whilst consciously we may wish to quit, all too often our all powerful unconscious mind simply would not let us.

You see when smokers first start; they buy into years of conditioning telling them that smoking made them feel somehow better, more confident and more relaxed. And as a result of lighting up those first few cigarettes, smokers permanently install these extremely unhelpful beliefs directly into their unconscious, beliefs that also included the concept that quitting was going to be really difficult.

At the same time, smokers make a conscious decision to choose those perceived benefits of feeling better, more relaxed and more confident, over the initial physical reactions of inhaling the poisonous fumes. So as time goes on and those uncomfortable physical reactions start to subside, as a result of their newly formed nicotine addiction, they started to mistake the relief of feeding that addiction with feelings of relaxation and confidence.

So many years later, after smoking tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of cigarettes, they have re-enforced those unhelpful beliefs about smoking and how hard it is to quit and, they have also trained their unconscious minds to wrongly associate the process of lighting and smoking a cigarette with feeling good, confident and relaxed.

Hypnotherapy and NLP allow us to retrain the unconscious mind of a smoker to disregard those false beliefs about smoking and how hard it is to quit, and to swap those unconscious benefits for something altogether more exciting and fulfilling – feeling absolutely great!

So as a result, the all too familiar withdrawal pangs of irritability, mood swings and cravings, the primary reasons why people fail to permanently quit smoking, will be replaced with feelings of relaxation, improved self confidence and overall happiness.

If you would like to Quit Smoking with the easiest most successful system then visit Quit Smoking Expert now!

The quickest way to lose fat, now!

Build muscle, BURN FAT

The vast majority of people are under the misconception that the best exercise method to burn excess fat and speed up their metabolism is to regularly do 30 to 40 minutes of low intensity aerobic exercise, at least 3 times a week. They also believe that more is definitely better and that if you can get to the gym every day of the week for a 40 minute jog on the treadmill you will be well on your way to your desired perfect physique.

Many fitness professionals continue to recommend that by doing moderately paced aerobic exercise, getting your heart rate to a target range and keeping it there for 40 minutes, several times a week, you will burn your excess fat, increase your metabolism and increase cardiovascular efficiency.

I personally think that, unless you are extremely dedicated by nature, this type of repetitive exercise is more likely to lead to a situation where you get bored, dread going to the gym and give up your weight loss efforts totally. I know I did when I tried this route to lose fat and gain my perfect physique!

Yes, if you have the dedication, looking at a wall while jogging and getting nowhere on a treadmill or stair climber will indeed burn some calories and improve your cardiovascular system. But just doing this type of low intensity exercise on its own won’t achieve the results you desire, and if you follow the advice given to do this as often as possible, who of us would have the time to complete any other type of exercise!!

While the benefits of burning calories and better cardiovascular system efficiency derived from low intensity aerobic exercise sound great, this form of exercise done in isolation can actually be counterproductive to your weight loss goals.

Doing repeated sessions of moderately paced aerobic exercise causes your body to use the fat you have stored to provide energy while you jog. This action fools your body into thinking it needs to store more fat ready for the next session…

Your cardiovascular efficiency will improve as your body gets used to doing frequent long duration easy workouts.  But as your heart and lungs get used to working at a low level sustained rate, they can also lose their capacity to handle any additional stresses as you never actually push or challenge them to go beyond what has become the norm. This can actually lead to a host of other health problems.

I am not saying that you should never do any low level aerobic exercises, you should of course, but only as part of a complete fitness program and not as your main exercise regime.

The fastest way to lose fat

The quickest, most efficient way to burn body fat, get your metabolism into top gear and improve overall health is to gain lean muscle and the easiest way to achieve this is through resistance training.

I’m not talking about working out to the extent where you end up looking like a pumped up Arnie, just proper resistance training to build and tone lean muscle and gain overall body strength.

Even if you don’t change your diet to aid with your weight loss efforts, which you should, you will need some of the calories you are eating to “feed” your new muscle and this will lead to a calorie deficit in your body and you will quickly start to burn your stored fat deposits.

With resistance training you will stimulate your body  into creating an ongoing muscle repair and growth process which will call upon your stored body fat for energy, not just while you are working-out, you will still get these fat burning benefits while you are sitting around and sleeping in your bed.

That’s what I call a result

As an additional benefit, resistance training gets your body used to handling intense demands at differing rates, increasing your heart and lung capacity for work and reducing your risk of cardiovascular health problems.

The thing I like the best about resistance training is that it doesn’t have to take over your whole life to gain the fat loss effects. Spend 20 to 30 minutes, 2 or 3 times a week and you will quickly start to see the fat loss benefits.

Weight loss, increased strength, toned physique and improved overall health can easily be achieved with resistance training without spending much time in the gym or working out at home. In fact, unless you are resistance training different muscle groups, you need to have at least a day between sessions to allow the repair and growth process to work. You could of course use your days off resistance training to do some low intensity aerobic exercise and increase the overall health benefits.

Get started, lose fat now

 Right, hopefully you are now feeling motivated and want to get started with a resistance training program, there are plenty of resistance training tips and exercises in the “workouts” section of this web site. Many of these tips and exercises have been adapted from FatBurningFurnace, a program that I bought and without which I doubt that I would have achieved the fat loss and muscle toning that have given me the self confidence and inspiration to create this web site (and put pictures of myself on it!) and hopefully inspire you to succeed as I have.

I recommend that you check out the FatBurningFurnace to see if its the right way for you, here’s the link to the web site – FatBurningFurnace.

You could also take a look at some of the Fat Burning Furnace SUCCESS STORIES

Ok so this article is about ab exercises for women, while stomach exercises are important in our bid to lose belly fat, we all need to remember that we need to concentrate on full body fitness and not just on “spot reduction” stomach exercises. You need to tone muscle on your total body which will speed up your metabolism and improve the fat burning process, all helping towards our goal – “lose belly fat”.

That said, if you want to do some extra ab exercises that’s fine, it is important to strengthen our core, trunk area. This will aid with posture as well as helping to avoid painful trunk related injuries.

Just remember, if you want to lose belly fat and get toned abs, doing only ab exercises and other “spot reduction” stomach exercises simply won’t work if that’s the only exercise you are doing.

You might gain a toned six pack, but you will still have a layer of belly fat hiding it…

As well as ensuring you do a full body workout and cardio, you also need to ensure you eat a healthy, nutritious diet, avoiding sugar and salt laden processed foods and of course limiting your alcohol intake.

All the ab exercises, cardio and full body workouts in the world won’t help you lose belly fat if you don’t watch what you eat.

Right, let’s get back to the reason for this article – ab exercises for women.

Many of us women have major trouble with lower ab fat as well as lower back fat, these stomach exercises will help train all of your core trunk area. The stomach exercises described here are not only safe, but are also extremely effective ab exercises for women who want to lose belly fat and achieve that toned up abdomen.
First of all, remember that before any exercise, strenuous or not, you need to do some aerobic warm-up exercises and stretches before you begin, if you don’t you may well end up injuring yourself and not be able to exercise at all, totally defeating the point of what you are trying to achieve, i.e. to lose your belly fat.  

The most excelent ab exercise for women – The Ab Plank.

This is one of the most effective stomach exercises and an extremely good ab exercise for women as it is an isometric stomach exercise, meaning that it is a static exercise where you are holding a position rather than doing repeated repetitions of a strenuous movement.

To perform the plank stomach exercise, lie flat on the floor or exercise mat on your belly. Next rise up on your hands and toes, keeping your back as straight as possible. Contract your tummy muscles and hold the position for 5 seconds and then lower yourself to the ground. Repeat this stomach exercise 5 times. As you become accustomed to completing this stomach exercise, you should increase the time you hold the position until you get to a point where you can no longer maintain a flat straight posture, but don’t increase the repetitions. With this exercise you need to ensure you keep your back straight and don’t point your bum to the sky or let your hips sag, this helps to work the most muscle groups and you will gain far more if you concentrate on this point.

Important note: Please please remember to breathe while doing this exercise and relax your neck.

Whatever you do, don’t cheat!

If you let you hips sag or point your bum to the sky, this stomach exercise will not work, you need to keep your back straight at all times, breathe and relax your neck. If you’re not sure if you’re doing the exercise correctly, either get a friend to guide you or do the exercise in front of a mirror.

Think you can’t do this ab exercise?

If you feel that your overall fitness level isn’t good enough for you to be able to hold the position on your hands with straight arms, no problem, start completing this stomach exercise on your elbows instead. This is so much easier to start with and as long as you focus on keeping your back straight it makes little difference, as you gain strength by completing the exercise you can work up to completing the full exercise and gain the additional benefits from working additional muscle groups.

Variations to this excellent ab exercise for women

First, as you gain strength, try lifting one leg, straighten backwards pointing your toes before returning to having both toes on the floor, then repeat with the other leg. The next stage is a continuation to the leg stretch above, once you have you leg stretched backwards, rather than returning your leg to the floor, bring your knee up to you chest, or as close as you can get, and then return to both feet on the ground. Again repeat with the other leg.

All these variation should be done slowly, count to 10 while straightening your leg and returning, the aim is to strengthen and tone muscles, doing these exercises quickly and without effort will not do anything to lose belly fat.

Another variation!
The Side Plank

I would advise everyone to incorporate this exercise as not only does this stomach exercise reinforce the straight ab plank stomach exercise, it also works additional muscle groups to help towards your total body workout.

Lie on your side with your right hand on the floor, lift yourself up to a point where your right arm is straight, keeping your left arm at your side and keeping your body straight. Hold this position as long as you can and then return to the floor. Repeat 5 repetitions.

Then turn over and repeat for your left side.

Again, if you prefer you can complete this stomach exercise on your elbows rather than on your hand; you can also alternate sides rather than completing all repetitions on one side before turning over.

The most important thing with all these stomach exercises is to keep you body straight, remember to breathe, relax your neck and complete the exercise slowly. This is an isometric exercise, not a speed trial, but that said we all need to complement these stomach exercises with some cardio exercises, sprint exercises, to get the metabolism going.

For more ab exercises for women, I recommend that you take a look at Mike Geary’s great book, The Truth About Abs. This best selling ebook is contains a full fitness program to help you lose belly fat and tone your abs.

Ab Exercises for Women – Stomach Workouts – How to Reduce Belly Fat

What’s the most effective way for losing fat – cardio workouts or weight training…
 
I would like you to think differently and try new things with regards to cardio workouts.

What’s the best way to get lean and in great shape – cardio training? I’m not an "anti-cardio" person as you will see later, just "anti traditional cardio".

Without question, most people who want to get in shape and lose body fat assume that “cardio” exercise is necessary to accomplish their goals.

This is not necessarily true!  Some of the slimmest, meanest and leanest people (of both sexes) NEVER do any traditional style cardio workouts.

It can be said that there is a time and a place where very overweight or ill-conditioned people would find low to medium level cardio exercise would find it beneficial, but even then there could be more effective methods.

Cardio – what is it?

Exercise bike, treadmill, rowing machine (all while watching the TV screen) – this is what most people consider “Cardio” – and it isn’t really a surprise that most people get bored after a short space of time and give up with not perceptive change in their physique.

But if you think about it anything that strengthens the cardiovascular system can be considered to be “cardio” exercise i.e. if your heart is thumping away and you feel breathless it is cardio, regardless if it happens while you are pumping weights.

For example, various weights, clean press etc which involve lifting a barbell from the floor up to the shoulders and doing push pressing overhead – it may be seen to some as only strength and weight training exercise, however if you do a few reps of around 10 to 15 you will find that your heart rate is up and possibly 80-90% of the recommended maximum and that you feel that you’ve just run 100m sprint (but it is a quicker way than jogging).

Try lifting a stool twenty times in a row (like we did in biology all those years ago to prove lactic acid) and you will see that it raises your heartbeat and gives you arm burn as the muscle is building up.  Not to mention the running up and down the stairs with all the baby clothes / toys / plates etc that need clearing up.

Try and tell me you’re not conditioning your heart with this style of training! Conventional thinking says that these are weight training or strength training exercises. However, they are fulfilling your cardio workout needs as well (saving you time!).

Not only do you save time, but you strengthen and condition almost every muscle in your entire body with these full body exercises if you do them with enough intensity…something that can’t be said for that boring stationary bike ride or treadmill jaunt while reading or watching TV.

How can you take workouts seriously while reading or watching TV!

If you can watch TV or read while doing any exercise then you can surely see that you’re not concentrating enough on what you’re doing.  And this means that you’re probably not working out hard enough to see any real results.

Change the way you think and give the "traditional cardio" a rest for a month or two…

I found some great stomach workouts and ab exercises for women in Mike Geary’s internationally bestselling book – The Truth About Abs. There are some great tips on how to lose belly fat as well as getting all over fitness.  

Stuffed peppers with spicy vegetables.

This should take about an hour to put together, assuming you already have some cooked vegetables in your fridge.

This should be sufficient to serve 4 with a light snack or 2 as a main.

You will need…

• 2 Medium Onions
• 450g Mixed cooked Vegetables
• 225g Cooked potato
• 1tbsp Oil
• 25g Butter
• ½ tsp Turmeric
• ½ tsp Ground cumin
• ½ tsp Cayenne pepper
• ½ tsp Ground cloves
• 4 tbsp Desiccated Coconut
• 2 tbsp Lemon juice
• 1 tbsp Chopped parsley, chives or fresh coriander
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 4 Medium peppers

Ok so while your preparing the peppers, preheat you oven to 200° C or Gas mark 6
Peal and chop the onions into small pieces then chop the cooked vegetables into small pieces.

Heat the oil and butter in a large frying pan and fry the onions until golden then stir in the spices and cook for a further 1 or 2 minutes.

Add the cooked vegetables and the coconut and simmer gently for about 10 minutes, stirring now and again, then add the lemon juice, fresh herbs and seasoning.

Now cut off the tops of the peppers, remove the seeds and blanch them in salted boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes. Drain them well and add the chopped up pepper tops to the cooked filling mixture. Fill each pepper with the filling mixture and place into a baking dish along with a little oil.

Bake for approx 30 to 40 minutes, until the tops start to brown, and serve hot topped off with a tomato sauce, make it a chilly tomato sauce to add a little extra spice…

Enjoy

3 Vital Principles You Must Know To Burn Fat Faster

By Rob Poulos, Fat Loss & Fitness Expert & Creator of "Fat Burning Furnace"

By now, most people realize that adding lean muscle mass to your body does wonders for your metabolism and fat loss, as well as a host of other benefits that allow you to live out your life as healthy as possible. 

Unfortunately, most people I see performing weight training or resistance training at the gym are spending too much time with the exercise and not working hard enough.  They’re not going to burn very much fat this way. 

The secret I’ve found is that training for lean muscle and strength requires the proper application of three vital elements that are often ignored by those who attempt it.  Those three elements are:

-Intensity

-Volume & Frequency

-Progression

The intensity is how hard it is to perform for you, given your current condition.  The volume and frequency are how much and how often you perform the exercise.  The progression is related to how much the demands increase from workout to workout. 

Most times, weight training, is carried on for too long and performed too many times per week.  It is unfortunately treated much the same way as so-called fat burning aerobic exercise.  But they are vastly different forms of exercise.  In fact, they’re complete opposites.

Aerobic exercise typically is characterized by low to moderate intensity, high volume and frequency, and little progression.  Anaerobic exercise, or weight training, must be performed at a high intensity, lower volume and frequency, and with progression to be as effective as possible. 

No amount of weight training performed at a low or moderate intensity will provide significant muscle or strength building benefit beyond the first few weeks.  On a high level view, it is simply the combination of sufficient intensity, coupled with attempting to increase either the number of repetitions of a weight training exercise or the amount of weight used each and every workout that will keep your body evolving into the ultimate fat burning machine!

You also have to pay attention to other details when creating an effective and efficient routine to maximize your workout and minimize your time spent in the gym.  Why?  Because perhaps even more important that the workout itself is the rest period that follows.  You’re not going to get stronger or more muscular if you don’t rest.

You see, when you strength train properly, you are creating tiny injuries to your muscles.  You then have to let the body repair itself, and then overcompensate and build upon the already existing amount of muscle mass you have.  If you workout again before that process in completed, you’ll experience lackluster, if any, muscle building or fat burning results. 

So make sure to get proper rest between workouts, which typically means a minimum of 1 to 3 full days of rest between properly executed resistance workouts.

Now upon hearing the idea that you’ve got add muscle to your body to ensure the maximum fat burning environment, a lot of people, women especially, start thinking, “But I don’t want to get bigger, I want to lose weight!”  But this is such a shame, because it’s very unlikely to happen, and countless women are losing out on these fat burning benefits because of it.

You see, most men and almost all women simply lack the necessary genetic traits required to produce such muscle gains that would cause them to look bulky or overly-developed to most people.  These traits include testosterone levels, muscle fiber makeup, muscle belly length, and others.

Those competitive bodybuilders you’ve seen on TV and in the magazines are the genetic cream of the crop for muscle development and they are typically on heavy doses of anabolic steroids, growth hormone, and other bodybuilding drugs.  Don’t be fooled by these images, or those that scare you into thinking this way.  Also, lean muscle is more compact that fat, as it takes up less space in your body, so you will actually be getting smaller when replacing the fat on your body with lean muscle.

Please understand that you’re putting yourself in the best position to succeed with your fat loss and fitness goals when you perform properly conducted intense resistance training, no matter who you are. 

But make sure you understand and apply the three critical principles I discussed above.  If you don’t, you’ll ultimately be unhappy with your results, both in your ability to burn fat and realize the lean, strong, and healthy body you deserve.

I have read many books on how to get a flat stomach and well defined abs and have to say that many are a waste of money, just repeating the things that all the others say. Generally I wouldn’t buy them unless it came highly recommended.

After reading The Truth About Six Pack Abs I have changed my mind, to put it simply, this is the best book on ab training I have ever read and followed closely, you will get results.

The author Mike Geary is a  Certified Personal Trainer  and Nutrition Specialist and regularly contributes to top health and fitness publications.

The Truth About Six Pack Abs begins by explaining the various sections of the abdominal regions before diving into the exercise program. While this section takes a bit of studying, it really is important that you understand this because many people end up trying to work the wrong areas when they exercise.

This program is based on the idea of intense full body workout that will not only help you get six pack abs but improve your overall body shape and speed up your metabolic rate as well. The best part of the book for me was where Mike covered the best exercises for your abs, there are over 20 of them all with pictures so you can easily follow how to do them.

The range and variety of exercises provided makes the program great fun, Mike points out that simply doing crunches will do little, and may have adverse effects, when trying to build great abs as they are only focused on small areas of the body. Also just doing repeated ab crunches will become very boring, quickly leading to a lack of motivation and hold you back from getting a flat stomach and well shaped six pack abs.
Some of the exercises mentioned are probably best performed in a gym, but if you have some weights, you can also do most of them in your home. He also shows you some great exercises to do with a fitness ball – another fantastic tool to give your abs a proper workout..

Not only does Truth About Abs recommend the proper exercises that will help you form six pack abs, there is also detailed instructions on what types of food you should eat and what types you should avoid at all cost. You would also find tips on how to control your junk food cravings and learn to eat more healthily in just weeks.

Another great thing about The Truth About Abs is that, unlike many other programs, this one is complete. It doesn’t just cover exercise in detail, but also goes into great depth covering what types of food you should eat and why diet should be combined with exercise. Mike has done a lot of detailed research and spent a good deal of time to put this excellent program together.

The Truth About Six Pack Abs covers everything from the best abs exercises to diet and sample meals. If you are intent on loosing that belly fat, getting a toned, flat stomach and need a book to help, I recommend you make it this one…