Nobody can force a smoker to quit.  It’s something each person has to decide for himself, and will require a personal commitment by the smoker.  What kind of smoker are you?  What do you get out of smoking?  What does it do for you?  It is important to identify what you use smoking for and what kind of satisfaction you feel that you are getting from smoking.

Many smokers use the cigarette as a kind of crutch in moments of stress or discomfort, and on occasion it may work; the cigarette is sometimes used as a tranquilizer.  But the heavy smoker, the person who tries to handle severe personal problems by smoking heavily all day long, is apt to discover that cigarettes do not help him deal with his problems effectively.

When it comes to quitting, this kind of smoker may find it easy to stop when everything is going well, but may be tempted to start again in a time of crisis.  Physical exertion, eating, drinking, or social activity in moderation may serve as useful substitutes for cigarettes, even in times of tension.  The choice of a substitute depends on what will achieve the same effects without having any appreciable risk.

Once a smoker understands his own smoking behavior, he will be able to cope more successfully and select the best quitting approaches for himself and the type of life-style he leads.

Because smoking is a form of addiction, 80 percent of smoker who quit usually experience some withdrawal symptoms.  These may include headache, light-headedness, nausea, diarrhea, and chest pains.  Psychological symptoms, such as anxiety, short-term depression, and inability to concentrate, may also appear.  The main psychological symptom is increased irritability.  People become so irritable, in fact, that they say they feel “like killing somebody.”  Yet there is no evidence that quitting smoking leads to physical violence.

Some people seem to lose all their energy and drive, wanting only to sleep.  Others react in exactly the opposite way, becoming so over energized they can’t find enough activity to burn off their excess energy.  For instance, one woman said she cleaned out all her closets completely and was ready to go next door to start on her neighbor’s.  Both these extremes, however, eventually level off.  The symptoms may be intense for two or three days, but within 10 to 14 days after quitting, most subside.  The truth is that after people quit smoking, they have more energy, generally will need less sleep, and feel better about themselves.

1.    The fifty following tips will help you to have a better night’s sleep!
2.    Try to relax before bedtime; take a walk or read a newspaper; just do something that is not stressful.
3.    Do your paperwork or other work-related activities early in the evening.
4.    Make sure your bedroom is not noisy.
5.    If your bedroom is noisy and you can’t correct it, wear earplugs.
6.    Think of places you fell asleep easily and try to copy those places; set your room up the same way.
7.    Check the medicines you are taking to see that they aren’t nervous system stimulants.
8.    Make sure your bedroom is well ventilated but not too cold.
9.    Don’t use too many or too few blankets.
10.    Don’t tuck your sheets in too tight at the bottom of the bed; your feet should feel free and unrestricted.
11.    Your mattress should not sag.
12.    Have a big enough bed for yourself; if you’re 6’8″, don’t try sleeping in a single bed.
13.    Your pajamas or nightgown should be comfortable, not too tight.
14.    Use a pillow that suits you, soft or firm, whichever you prefer; or not at all, if that’s what you prefer.
15.    If you like a soft light on while you sleep, have one on.
16.    If you prefer to sleep in darkness make sure your blinds are thick.
17.    Rise at the same time seven days a week, no matter what.
18.    Do not linger in bed when you wake up; instead, get up right away and start moving on with your morning routine.
19.    Avoid napping in the afternoon.
20.    Do some sort of physical exercise each day that will tire you out.
21.    Cut down on smoking and drinking alcohol at least two hours before bedtime.
22.    Don’t drink coffee or soft drinks containing caffeine after dinner.
23.    If you like to watch TV before going to bed, keep it light; watch a comedy instead of a drama.
24.    If you like to read before going to bed, keep it light.  Read to a logical stopping point, so you won’t lie awake wondering what’s going to happen.
25.    Don’t socialize with friends with whom you are likely to argue in the evening.  Nighttime arguments are like poison to an insomniac.
26.    Establish a regular bedtime.
27.    Avoid eating too much salt with your dinner and in any after-dinner snacks.
28.    Try eating snacks high in calcium and protein before retiring; small amounts of cheese and nuts contain Tryptophan, an amino acid that promotes sleep.
29.    Take bone meal tablets or some other form of calcium regularly after dinner.
30.    Herbal teas such as camomile and valerian induce sleep.
31.    Try a teaspoon of brewer’s yeast and a tablespoon of molasses in a glass of milk.
32.    Don’t forget about a glass of warm milk before bed; it does work.
33.    A teaspoon of honey in a cup of hot water is said to induce sleep.
34.    Another old-fashioned remedy is to take two teaspoons of cider vinegar with two teaspoons honey in a glass of warm water.
35.    Ask your spouse which sleeping position you sleep most soundly in then try to assume that position upon retiring.
36.    Don’t go for 8 hours of sleep; you may only need 4 to 6 hours.
37.    Spend no more than 3 minutes thinking about the day’s problems when you are in bed.
38.    If you find it difficult to sleep with your spouse, try getting twin beds or separate bedrooms.
39.    The optimum temperature for sleep is 60 to 64 degrees F.
40.    Relax before bed in a warm bath.
41.    Buy a humidifier to keep your room warm in the winter without drying out the air too much.
42.    Add a tablespoon of dry mustard powder to your before-bed bath.
43.    Add baking soda to the bath water.
44.    Footbaths before bed help.
45.    Before bed, listen to relaxing music.
46.    When you are in bed, recall the happiest experiences of your life.
47.    Ask someone to read aloud to you in bed before you go to sleep.
48.    Lie on your back in bed and relax each muscle in your body. Visualize various parts of your body relaxing.
49.    Concentrate on doing some deep breathing as you lie in bed.
50.    If all else fails, try counting sheep; it’s an age-old cure and has helped many an insomniac get a good night’s sleep.

Instead of eating the forbidden piece of candy, brush your teeth.  If you’re about to cheat, allow yourself a treat, then eat only half a bite and throw the other half away.  When hunger hits, wait 10 minutes before eating and see if it passes.  Set attainable goals.  Don’t say, “I want to lose 50 pounds.”  Say, “I want to lose 5 pounds a month.”  Get enough sleep but not too much.  Try to avoid sugar.  Highly sweetened foods tend to make you crave more.

Drink six to eight glasses of water a day.  Water itself helps cut down on water retention because it acts as a diuretic.  Taken before meals, it dulls the appetite by giving you that “full feeling.”  Diet with a buddy.  Support groups are important, and caring people can help one another succeed.  Start your own, even with just one other person.

Substitute activity for eating.  When the cravings hit, go to the “Y” or health club if possible; or dust, or walk around the block.  This is especially helpful if you eat out of anger.

If the pie on the counter is just too great a temptation and you don’t want to throw it away, freeze it.  If you’re a late-night eater, have a carbohydrate, such as a slice of bread of a cracker, before bedtime to cut down on cravings.  Keep an orange slice or a glass of water by your bed to quiet the hunger pangs that wake you up.

If you use food as a reward, establish a new reward system.  Buy yourself a non-edible reward.  Write down everything you eat – - everything – including what you taste when you cook.  If you monitor what you eat, you can’t go off your diet.

Weigh yourself once a week at the same time.  Your weight fluctuates constantly and you can weigh more at night than you did in the morning, a downer if you stuck to your diet all day.  Make dining an event.  East from your own special plate, on your own special placemat, and borrow the Japanese art of food arranging to make your meal, no matter how meager, look lovely.  This is a trick that helps chronic over-eaters and bingers pay attention to their food instead of consuming it unconsciously.

Don’t shop when you’re hungry.  You’ll only buy more fattening food.  Avoid finger foods that are easy to eat in large amounts.  Avoid consuming large quantities of fattening liquids, which are so easy to overdo.  And this includes alcoholic beverages.    Keep plenty of crunchy foods like raw vegetables and air-popped fat-free popcorn on hand.  They’re high in fiber, satisfying and filling.  Leave something on your plate, even if you are a charter member of the Clean The Plate Club.  It’s a good sign that you can stop eating when you want to, not just when your plate is empty.

Lose weight for yourself, not to please your husband, your parents or your friends.  Make the kitchen off-limits at any time other than mealtime.  Always eat at the table, never in front of the TV set or with the radio on.  Concentrate on eating every mouthful slowly and savoring each morsel.  Chew everything from 10 to 20 times and count!  Never skip meals.

DETOX can also include several traditional medicine techniques and natural sciences, products, from around the world, used complementary to or in place of medical science. It is oten referred to as CAM for short.

Nevertheless, what is DETOX exactly? GOOD QUESTION! There are numerous answer to and definitions of detoxification as well as many streams of thought on the topic. In some cases the jury still being out on its merits, nature and effectiveness.

Diet modifications, eating and nutritional lifestyle altering plans, supplements, herbals, rites and rituals, even processes like colon hydrotherapy, body cleansing juice fasting and sweat lodges fall under this umbrella terminology. Most of these practices and channels are seen as supporting and assisting with the natural detoxification processes you need for optimal functioning and peak performance.

Here are just some of these conceptual clarifications, descriptions and definitions of DETOXIFICATION:

• It is seen as a cleansing of the body for restorative purposes, getting equilibrium and balance back, and natural state to get harmful substances out of the system, like drug or alcohol rehabilitation due to substance abuse or addiction.
• Abstinence
• Clearing things from the body and human system.
• Support provided on all levels for all the demands and realities of the
  physiological and psychological changes
• Including shock and withdrawal, which are very real processes, effects and
  outcomes that can be risky or even fatal if not done correctly

There are numerous ways to detoxify your body, with or without medication and medical intervention, (DETOX and withdrawal again would require medical supervision as you wean your system off these levels and toxins to be safe and prudent) One such method is acupuncture detoxification for example that used your body’s biofeedback to restore balance to your system, parts and whole. More on this later.

A class of diets whose underlying assumption is that the body accumulates toxins that
must be purged, especially after unhealthy periods.

Toxic, harmful toxins, substances /waste of an undefined nature – from foods, the environment and the body’s own wastes can build up over time in your body, causing symptoms, illness, disease, discomfort even death.

Most modern detoxification processes utilize herbal, electrical or electromagnetic treatments and solutions to clean, clear and cleanse the body and system. The liver and kidneys for the most part take care of what the body needs, but there are ways to make these processes more effective.

For a real lay-definition of what these processes and dynamics bring to the table and can offer describes it as s process by which a substance is made less toxic or rendered harmless and excreted without any dire, lingering or side effects.

Keep in mind that the human body took shape millions of years ago, and at that time there were diets.  The only low-calorie event in people’s lives was starvation.  Those who could cope with a temporary lack of food were the ones who survived.  Our bodies, therefore, ahve developed this built-in mechanism to help us survive in the face of low food intake.

When researchers compare overweight and thin people, they find that they ear roughly the same number of calories.  What makes an overweight person different is the amount of fat that they eat.  Thin people tend to eat less fat and more complex carbohydrates.

Losing weight is not something one can do overnight.  A carefully planned weight loss program requires common sense and certain guidelines.  Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation floating around and lots of desperate people are easily duped and ripped off.

Every day one can open a magazine or newspaper and see advertisements touting some new product, pill or patch that will take excess weight off quickly.  Everyone seems to be looking for that “magic” weight loss pill.  Millions of Americans are trying to lose weight, spending billions of dollars every year on diet programs and products.  Often they do lose some weight.  But, if you check with the same people five years later, you will find that nearly all have regained whatever weight they lost.

A survey was done recently to try and determine if any commercial diet program could prove long-term success.  Not a single program could do so.  So rampant has the so-called diet industry become with new products and false claims that the FDA has now stepped in and started clamping down.

Being seriously overweight and particularly obesity can develop into a number of diseases and serious health problems, and it is now a known fact that when caloric intake is excessive, some of the excess frequently is saturated fat.

The myth is that people get heavy by eating too many calories.  Calories are a consideration it’s true, but overall they are not the cause of obesity in America today.  Americans actually take in fewer calories each day than they did at the beginning of the century.  If calories alone were the reason we become overweight, we should all be thin.  But we are not.  Collectively, we are heavier than ever.  Partly, it is because we are more sedentary now.  But equally, as important is the fact that the fat content of the American diet has changed dramatically.

People who diet without exercising often get fatter with time.  Although your weight may initially drop while dieting, such weight loss consists mostly of water and muscle.  When the weight returns, it comes back as fat.  To avoid getting fatter over time, increase your metabolism by exercising regularly.

Select an exercise routine that you are comfortable with and remember that walking is one of the best and easiest exercises for strengthening your bones, controlling your weight and toning your muscles.

These studies have also indicated that the governments current recommended daily allowance for calories does not correlate with the body’s actual energy needs.  For example, although 2400 calories have been calculated for older men, they in fact burned an average of 2800 calories daily.

The leading experts now recommend that people who want to lose weight start increasing their physical activity.  Just being more active in general (such as climbing the stairs instead of taking the elevator, moving around instead of sitting still, sitting up instead of lying down as well as showing some excitement and enthusiasm instead of boredom), are things that more effectively burns calories and reduces body fat.  Everyone seems to have lost sight of the value of being active.  Consider this, a half-hour aerobic workout accounts for far less energy expenditure than our minute-to-minute movement in the office or at home.

Millions of Americans are trying to lose weight, spending approximately $30 billion a year on diet programs and products, often they do lose some weight.  But, if you check with the same people five years later, you will find that nearly all have regained whatever weight they lost.  A national panel recently sought data to determine if any commercial diet program could prove long-term success.  Not a single program could do so. Being seriously overweight and particularly obesity predisposes individuals to a number of diseases and serious health problems, and it’s now a known fact that when caloric intake is excessive, some of the excess frequently is saturated fat.

People who diet without exercising often get fatter with time.  Although your weight may initially drop while dieting, such weight loss consists mostly of water and muscle.   When the weight returns, it comes back as fat.  To avoid getting fatter over time, increase your metabolism by exercising regularly.

Walking is one of the best exercises for strengthening bones, controlling weight, toning the leg muscles, maintaining good posture and improving positive self-concept.    To lose weight, it’s more important to walk for time than speed.  Walking at a moderate pace yields longer workouts with less soreness – leading t more miles and more fat worked off on a regular basis.  High intensity walks on alternate days help condition one’s system.  But in a walking, weight-loss program, you are not required to walk an hour every day as some people would have you believe.

When it comes to good health and weight loss, exercise and diet are inter-related.  Exercising without maintaining a balanced diet is no more beneficial than dieting while remaining inactive.

Think like a winner, and not a loser – - remember that emotions are like muscles and the ones you use most grow the strongest.  If you always look at the negative side of things, you’ll become a downbeat, pessimistic person.  Even slightly negative thoughts have a greater impact on you and last longer than powerful positive thoughts.

Negative thinking doesn’t do you any good, it just holds you back from accomplishing the things you want to do.  When a negative thought creeps into your mind, replace it reminding yourself that you’re somebody, you have self-worth and you possess unique strengths and talents. Contemplate what lies ahead of you.  Losing weight is not just about diets.  It’s about a whole new you and the possibility of creating a new life for yourself.  Investigate the weight loss programs that appeal to you and that you feel will teach you the behavioral skills you need to stick with throughout the weight-loss process.    First you should look for support among family and friends.  It can be an enormous help to discuss obstacles and share skills and tactics with others on the same path.  You might look for this support from others you know who are in weight loss programs and you can seek guidance from someone you know who has lost weight and kept it off.

There are success stories across the country today.  On television and in newspapers, magazines and tabloids about people who have miraculously lost untold pounds and kept it off.  In all instances they say their mental attitude as well as their outlook on life has totally changed.

Diets and weight loss programs are more flexible now than they once were and there are many prepared foods already portioned out.  They are made attractive and can be prepared in a matter of minutes.  Low-fat and low-calorie foods are on shelves everywhere.

You will probably need to learn new, wiser eating skills.  You will want a weight loss regimen that gives you some control, rather than imposing one rigid system.  Look for one that offers a variety of different eating plans, so you can choose the one that’s best for you.

Keep in mind, too, that your weight loss program will most likely include some physical exercises.  Look at the exercising aspect of your program as fun and recreation and not as a form of grueling and sweaty work.  The fact is that physical fitness is linked inseparable to all personal effectiveness in every field.  Anyone willing to take the few simple steps that lie between them and fitness will shortly begin to feel better, and the improvement will reflect itself in every facet of their existence.

Doctors now say that walking is one of the best exercises.  It helps the total circulation of blood throughout the body, and thus has a direct effect on your overall feeling of health.  There are things such as aerobics, jogging, swimming and many other exercises that will benefit a weight loss program.  Discuss the options with your doctor and take his advice in planning your exercise and weight loss program.

·    Make up and follow a detailed, daily schedule.
·    Get up earlier.
·    Do less passive reading, TV watching and the like.
·    Avoid allowing others to waste your time.
·    If you commute to work, use the time to study or plan.
·    Organize your work; do it systematically.
·    Make creative use of lunchtime.
·    Delegate authority if possible.
·    Spend less time on unimportant phone calls.
·    Think first; then do the job.
·    Do instead of dream.
·    Work hardest when you’re mentally most alert.
·    Eliminate activities, which make little contribution to the best results for your life.
·    Always do the toughest jobs first.
·    Before each major act, ask: Is this REALLY necessary?
·    Choose interesting and constructive literature for spare-moment reading.
·    Learn how to sleep. Sleep soundly, then work refreshed.
·    Skip desserts.
·    Stop smoking.
·    Write notes or letters while waiting for others.
·    Always carry an envelope with paper in it, stamps and a few postcards.
·    Combine tasks that are done in the same area.
·    Be prompt for all appointments.
·    Lay out your clothes the night before.
·    Relax. Ready yourself for the important jobs in life.
·    Concentrate on the specific task you’re doing.
·    Make constructive use of those five- or ten-minute waiting periods.  Carry with you magazine article clippings on helpful subjects.
·    Always carry a pencil and paper to capture important-to-you ideas.
·    Learn to do other “unnecessary things” while watching TV or listening to the radio.
·    Call on specialists to accomplish work you cannot do efficiently.
·    Learn to read more rapidly.
·    Nap an hour after dinner. Then take a shower. Begin the evening hours relaxed and refreshed.
·    Avoid making a “production” out of small tasks.
·    Avoid interruptions.
·    Tackle only one job at a time.
·    Search out job short-cuts.
·    Know your limitations.
·    Work to your top capacity.

MAKE YOUR DAYS HAPPIER

Here are some tested ways to make your days fuller and happier.

·    Mend a quarrel
·    Search out a forgotten friend
·    Dismiss suspicion
·    Write an overdue letter
·    Share some treasure
·    Give a soft answer
·    Encourage youth
·    Keep a promise
·    Find the time
·    Forego a grudge
·    Forgive an enemy
·    L-I-S-T-E-N
·    Apologize if wrong
·    Think first of someone else
·    Appreciate
·    Be kind
·    Be gentle
·    Laugh a little more
·    Express your thanks
·    Worship your God
·    Gladden a child’s heart
·    Enjoy earth’s beauty
·    Speak your love for mankind

And here’s another tip for peace-of-mind living – Tomorrow, say this short prayer as you start your day: “Lord, please help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today that you and I together cannot handle.”