There are nearly 4.000 toxic substances in cigarettes. Enough to freak anyone out… especially smokers with hypercholesterolemia for some of the toxins exert a direct action on the blood and cardiovascular system.

For one thing, nicotine has an influence on the central nervous system. The consequences of this influence are : a raise of heartbeat, a raise of vasoconstrictor blood pressure… All of these increase the risk to block the arteries in case of excess of cholesterol. Moreover, Tobacco raises directly the synthesis of « bad cholesterol » and decreases the synthesis of good cholesterol.

Some facts :

Ø  The risk of coronary thrombosis is increased twofold and the risk of hemiplegia threefold for regular smokers.

Ø  After eight hours of quitting smoking, the level of nicotine and of carbon monoxide are already reduced by half in the blood.

Ø  After two days of quitting smoking, the nicotine and the carbon monoxide in the blood have been eliminated.

Ø  Three years after quitting smoking, the surplus of cardiovascular risks has completely disappear.

If you are a smoker and have an excess of cholesterol, it is time to quit smoking. You will have to be patient for it is not easy to quit. Several methods can help you in your effort to quit smoking :

Ø  Some herbal teas can make it easier to quit smoking by speeding up the elimination of toxins and by soothing your nervous tension.

Ø  Acupuncture gives also good results : it can  help to reduce the craving for smoking.

Ø  The o1world N-stop bioresonance card can also help you quit smoking and alleviate the withdrawal symptoms. Moreover, you can combine to it the o1world chorolex bioresonance card to help you balance your level of cholesterol.

1) Warn your family and friends: tell them that you are motivated and that you have decided to stop smoking. It will be easier for them to help and understand what you are going through when you will be nervous or tired.

2) Relax: learn to relax. In the first place, learn to “breathe” again. Sit somewhere quiet. Inspire deeply and expire deeply by being aware of what you are doing. Visualize that you are getting rid of all the smokes that you have stocked for years. This exercise should allow you to alleviate the anxiety and agressivity that you might feel when quitting smoking.

3) Exercise. When you feel you are craving for a cigarette, get out to walk, run… with a friend. Occupy yourself so that you don’t think of smoking. This kind of craving lasts between 3 and 5 minutes. Be prepared to live with cravings the first weeks of stopping smoking. Then it will disappear. Do better: exercise regularly, it will allow you to get back your breath.

4) Do the spring cleaning of your home, car, office… Get rid of everything that will remind you of the odor of smoke so that you won’t be tempted. Air all the rooms, the car… Clean the linen, curtains, carpets… in order to eliminate the tobacco smell. Get rid of the last cigarettes, ashtray, lighter… Quitting smoking is like going on diet. If you don’t have them in your house, cupboard… you will be less tempted.

5) Check your weight. It is usual to put on some weight when stopping smoking. Most men put on 8 pounds and women put on about 10 pounds. The nicotine helps to eliminate the fat. So, when quitting smoking, you are going back to your real weight. Therefore, to avoid putting on some weight, check what you are eating and exercise.

6) Drink water. Dehydratation prompts you to snack and it is also increasing your longing for smoking. So don’t forget to drink water.

7) Think of how much you are going to save if you quit smoking. What you will be able to get with what you have saved: a new TV, a travel, a cruise…?

8 ) Be motivated. Give yourself a pat on the back for each minutes, hours, days… you haven’t touched a cigarette. To stay motivated, think of the benefits of stopping smoking. For example, 48 hours after quitting smoking, your taste and smell improve: you don’t have anymore nicotine in your body and your lungs begin to eliminate the tobacco toxics. Therefore, you are feeling better, you are less tired and the coughing has decreased.

9) Think of all the triggers that make you want to smoke and change your habits, particularly all the habits that will remind you of the feeling of the cigarette between your fingers. For instance, if at breakfast, you used to smoke while drinking your coffee, review what you will be having at breakfast (instead of coffee, take tea, milk…) to break all the bad habits.

10) Have a little help. There are several methods to help you stop smoking. Choose the one that suits you better. It can be acupuncture, patch, electronic cigarette, alternative health product…

I know, as soon as you saw the words “easy” and “lose weight” in the headline, you were ready to write this off as another one of those gimmicks or programs sound too good to be true and usually are. But bear with me and you’ll learn 3 strategies that I guarantee will help you in your weight loss efforts.

You’ve probably been conditioned to believe that weight loss had to be tied to countless hours at the gym, the latest supplement breakthroughs or eating nothing but celery stalks and tofu. Fortunately, dropping a couple dress sizes doesn’t take anything that drastic. What it does take is making some small changes in the behaviors that led to the addition of those unwanted pounds. Here are 3 lifestyle changes that will immediately help you lose that unwanted fat and get your body back.

1. Stop Eating Out. Think back to when you were growing up. Do you remember what the dinner plates looked like? Now compare that to what the “plates” look like at O’Charleys, Applebees or any of the other chain restaurants. It’s no wonder we’re gaining weight. There are dozens of studies about eating out and they all lead to one conclusion: if you eat out, you overeat! Not only is it almost impossible to exercise effective portion control when you eat out, but you’re also compelled to get you money’s worth so you eat everything you’re served rather than stopping when you should.

The bottom line is that those who eat out consume more calories than those that don’t. Take a break from eating out for the next six weeks and see how easily you can drop a dress size or even two. And you can use the money you saved eating at home to buy a couple of new outfits to showcase your improved body.

2. Eat Smaller Portions. You don’t have to avoid the foods that you enjoy – you just can’t eat big servings of them. An easy way to do this is to use smaller plates for your meals. This will help you fell like you’re not depriving yourself while still exercising good judgment. And don’t think that just because something is on your plate, you have to eat it. As opposed to what your mother told you, you don’t have to ‘clean your plate.’ In fact – you shouldn’t. Eat slowly and stop when you aren’t hungry any more. You’ll quickly find that you can enjoy your favorite foods and your skinny jeans at the same time.

3. Make Better Choices. I know I just said that you can eat the foods you enjoy and still lose weight, but that doesn’t mean overindulging on processed foods, candy, sodas and chips. The key is moderation. So when you go to the supermarket, do the bulk of your shopping around the perimeter of the store and spend less time in the isles. When you’re at work, keep health snacks handy so you don’t have to rely on the company’s vending machine for your energy boost. But most importantly, make good choices with the meals that don’t really matter. Your quality of life won’t dramatically improve if you choose a cheeseburger over a grilled chicken salad for lunch, so don’t do it. Save the times when you are going to choose foods that might be considered unsupportive for the meals that you really look forward to. Improving your choices will accelerate your weight loss and help you save unnecessary calories without really trying.

Obviously, there is nothing magic about any of these three strategies other than the results that they produce. So start applying these three simple ideas and prepare to get your body back.

About the Author

Holly Rigsby is a nationally recognized women’s fitness coach, certified personal trainer (CPT) and the author of the internationally popular e-book – Fit Yummy Mummy – Burn Your Baby Fat & Get Your Body Back. Click here to get your FREE copy of her special report: “The Five Ways To Boost Your Metabolism.”

Would you like to “jump start” your metabolism and lose your ‘mommy belly’ once and for all? If so, the following seven tips are exactly what you need to improve your workouts and ignite your metabolism. Try some or all of these tips, but beware, the result may be a number of admiring second glances and the need to pull your ‘skinny jeans’ out of the closet.

1. The majority of your workouts should be composed of free-weight, bodyweight or cable exercises.

Compared to machines, free-weight, bodyweight and cable movements often require more skill, create muscular balance, and have a greater metabolic cost. For example, it is more difficult to balance the weights, and to coordinate muscles when performing free-weight exercises. Although this may sound like a disadvantage, it is actually a benefit. By balancing and stabilizing free-weights or cables you are working more muscles through a greater range of motion resulting in more muscles developed and more calories burned.

2. Use exercises that work more than one muscle at a time.

When focusing on fat loss, you can’t worry about “shaping” exercises, instead you should use exercises that’ll get you the biggest bang for your buck and work as many muscles as possible. Isolation exercises can be used at the end of a workout to work on a specific target area, but they just serve to supplement your core movements.

Virtually every savvy fitness professional is privy to the fact that compound exercises recruit the most muscle groups for any given body part.

If you seek lean, toned muscles and the increase in metabolism that comes with them, you must choose exercises that work as many different muscles as possible. One of the main reasons why squats are superior to leg extensions for improving your body is that they also work your butt, hamstrings and inner thighs in addition to toning your quadriceps while leg extensions focus on just the front of your thigh and don’t really offer any other benefit. That same rationale hold true for arm exercises too. That’s why dumbell presses and dips will are more valuable for your arms than triceps kickbacks and pushdowns.

A good rule of thumb is to use movements that will allow you to use the most weight. These will have a systemic effect on your body that’ll help maintain or increase your lean muscle, and in turn ignite your metabolism.

3. Pair exercises.

Pair your exercises together so that you alternate between upper-body exercises and lower-body exercises or between exercises that target opposing muscle groups (e.g. chest and back).

This type of approach will keep your workouts short and efficient by eliminating much of the downtime that comes between sets of a single exercise since you are working on one movement while resting from another. This approach can also yield huge benefits in your mission to burn fat. Since you’ll constantly be moving and keeping your heart rate elevated, you’ll be burning far more calories than you would during a typical workout.

4. Keep your reps between 8 and 12.

Through research, it has been determined that the best range for building lean muscle is roughly between 8-12 reps. Since the main focus of your resistance training efforts is to gain lean body mass and stimulate your metabolism, this rep range fills the bill perfectly. “High reps for tone and fat loss” is one of the biggest (and most unproductive) training myths! Somehow the aerobics, yoga and Pilates’ community have convinced us that when we perform bodyweight exercises or light resistance training for high reps, our muscles magically take on a beautiful shape without growing or bulging. On the other hand, if you challenge yourself with moderately heavy weights, your body will take on a bulky, unflattering appearance. If you believe this, you probably still believe in the Tooth Fairy!

5. Rest only 30 to 60 seconds between sets.

When you keep the rest periods under one minute, it’s easier to stay focused on the task at hand and keeps your heart rate elevated. In addition, it forces your muscles to recover more quickly between sets, along with keeping your nervous system revved up.

If your first movement in an upper/lower body pair is squats, you might want to rest 60 seconds before attempting your second movement. However, if your first exercise is a fairly “easy” exercise, like lat pull downs, you might only wish to wait 30 seconds before doing the second part of the pair.

6. Perform total body workouts.

You must drop the notion that muscle groups work independently of one another. Muscles work together and should be trained that way. Besides, not only does this approach mean less time in the gym, but by working the whole body three times per week, you’ll be maximizing the fat burning effect of your program.

7. Cardio is not the cure-all for fat loss.

Cardiovascular exercise aids in the creation of a caloric deficit, but the caloric expenditure during cardio is temporary. Strength training addresses the core of the problem by permanently increasing the rate at which the body burns calories by adding muscle. The best programs will include both strength training and cardiovascular training, but the core or the programs effectiveness is resistance training.

Take these strategies and incorporate them into your workout routine. Not only will you save a lot of time, but you’ll also soon see a leaner and more toned body. Not to mention a few more turned heads and the re-emergence of your skinny jeans.

About the Author

Holly Rigsby is a nationally recognized women’s fitness coach, certified personal trainer (CPT) and the author of the internationally popular e-book – Fit Yummy Mummy – Burn Your Baby Fat & Get Your Body Back. Click here to get your FREE copy of her special report: “The Five Ways To Boost Your Metabolism.”

Cellulite Remedy # 1: Desinfiltrating bath

• Ingredients: 3 tablespoons of milk, 10 drops of lemon essential oil, 5 drops of juniper essential oil and 5 drops of cypress essential oil.

• Preparation: Mix well all the ingredients together. Pour the preparation in your bath. Scrub the cellulitic areas with a loofah or a massage glove in circular motion to help the desinfiltrating action of the essential oils and to activate circulation.

Cellulite Remedy # 2: Coffee Scrub

• Ingredients: Freshly used coffee grounds, a little bit of olive oil
• Preparation: Mix the warm coffee grounds with the olive oil. Scrub the coffee / olive oil mixture on all the cellulitic areas with a loofah. Then rinse. This will help to reduce the appearance of cellulite and will give you a firmer and more toned skin.

Cellulite Remedy # 3: Anti-cellulite oil

• Ingredients: one cup of olive oil, 5 drops of each of the following essential oils: lemon, grapefruit, juniper and cypress.
• Preparation: Mix all the ingredients together. Shake well before each use. After having your desinfiltrating bath or coffee scrub, dry yourself well and rub your belly, thighs and hips with this anti-cellulite oil.

Cellulite Remedy # 4: Toning Cream

• Ingredients: 2 cups of olive oil, 30 drops of geranium essential oil, 20 drops of vetiver essential oil, 2 tablespoons of marigold (calendula) flowers, 2 tablespoons of dried lemon peel, 2 tablespoons of common horsetail.
• Preparation: Mix in the olive oil the calendula flowers, the dried lemon peel and the common horsetail. Then heat gently  the oil in a double boiler for about an hour. Then pour the oil and the plants in a glass bottle. Close it well and leave the plants to macerate during 10 days in a hot place (i.e: heater). Shake the bottle everyday. After 10 days, filter and add the essential oils. Massage the areas affected by cellulite with this preparation every day after your bath or shower.

Cellulite Remedy # 5: Essential oils massage

• Ingredients: 2 cups of sweet almond oil, 20 drops of lemon essential oil, 20 drops of cypress essential oil, 10 drops of juniper essential oil.
• Preparation: Mix all the ingredients together and shake well before using. Rub the oil on the cellulitic areas every day after your bath. Massage by rolling your skin under your fingers.

To learn more on how to reduce cellulite, click here.

• the tensing of the calf muscles
• the presence of valves inside the veins that prevent the blood from going down again,
• and the action of the arch and of the sole of the foot while walking

These three mecanisms are sometimes insufficient and the blood stagnates in the legs. That is what causes the syndrome of tired, swollen legs and feet. This phenomenon is due to venous insufficiency and varicose veins or spider veins can also appear. Most people who experiences this phenomenon will tell you that they feel a “heaviness” in their legs and sometimes they can also feel pins and needles in their legs. As the blood stagnates in the lower part of the legs, an amount of it spreads in the calf to constitute an oedema (that we can see by the mark of the socks that remains on the ankles).

There are several factors that favor the appearance of venous insufficiency (such as swollen legs, spider veins, varicose veins…):

• a settled way of life,
• being overweight,
• a job that requires you to remain on your feet all days (hairdresser, salesperson..)
• number of pregnancies
• and, it can be hereditary

Respecting some basic hygiene and dietetic rules is sometimes enough to reduce the feeling of tired, swollen legs and feet and to get rid of spider veins and varicose veins. You will have to avoid:

• the heat (sunbathing, sauna, wax, hot bath…) for the heat dilates the vessels,
• wearing tight clothes,
• sitting or standing too long,
• being overweight

Getting rid of spider veins and varicose veins can be done naturally by following these steps:

• exercise (walk, swim, ride a bike)
• sleep with your feet up on a pillow,
• take cold showers,
• wear support stockings,
• eat less fat and less simple sugars,
• eat wheatgerm, green vegetables and citrus fruits, that are full of vitamins. Eat foods that are rich vitamin E and C (antioxidants) can help fight against free radicals which are ageing factors of the venous walls.

Finally, you can use some alternative health products to ease your swollen legs and feet and to get rid of spider veins and varicose veins:

• Tonic feet bath: mix in a tablespoon of powder milk 5 drops of lemon essential oil and 10 drops of cypress essential oil. Pour this in a basin of warm water. Put your feet in the water and stay in it for 15 minutes.
• Soothing massage oil: to fight the heat so that your feet and legs won’t be swollen, massage your legs from the ankle to the thigh every night with this preparation:mix in 1 cup of vegetal oil 5 drops of rosemary essential oil and 20 drops of juniper essential oil.
• Stimulating clay to get rid of spider veins / varicose veins: dissolve 10 tablespoons of clay in some lukewarm water to obtain a paste. Then mix to the paste 20 drops of cypress essential oil, 10 drops of vetiver essential oil and 10 drops of lemon essential oil. Apply the paste on the varicose veins / spider veins and leave it to stand half an hour before rinsing with fresh water.
• drink veinotonic herbal tea. There are several veinotonic plants at your disposal: cypress, ginko biloba, witch hazel, horse chestnut…
• Bioresonance card : an innovative product that helps correct and support the regulation systems body which are influenced on the electromagnetic level.