Now, realistically many of these diets will provide some initial fat loss for many people.  So you get some weight loss initially, but you could also lose some muscle on these programs too, and you know that losing muscle can spell disaster to your fat burning efforts.  But the bigger problem with these diets is that most who follow outlandish diets gain back the fat they lost, and then some!

On top of that, they often recommend focusing too much on one type of food, which can lead to unhealthy eating habits.  I’ve found they are too strict to be realistically followed, especially for a long period of time, and they’re no fun.  And anything you can’t follow as a lifestyle will not burn fat in the long run.

You see, the very concept of a diet is doomed to fail.  Why?  Diets are based in a temporary mindset.  The fact that someone goes on a diet means they will have to come off of the diet.  This is temporary…why force yourself to lose 10 pounds when you’re just going to gain it back and then some when you go off of the diet?  That may sound simple, but most people just don’t get it…they look to diets as the answer to their weight and health problems.  But they’re not the answer, and they actually create more problems for you.  People who are regular dieters don’t burn fat over the long haul.

If you seek life long fat burning, health and fitness in a lean body, you should take some advice from my mom, and probably your mom too.  When I think about it, probably the best base of nutritional knowledge I received was from my mom.  For the most part, my mom was right.  She didn’t know anything about fat burning, but she made sure I got nutritious foods growing up.

She especially made a point to make sure I ate my vegetables, especially the green ones.  She limited sugary stuff and other junk, but didn’t totally eliminate it, making it a special treat for me on occasion.  She tried to provide a balanced offering of the different food groups throughout the day.

Thanks, Mom!  Mom’s diet was actually quite sound, and I’ve found that heeding some of this advice in the pursuit of maximum fat burning and a lean healthy body for the rest of your life is a smart way to go.

You see, your body naturally craves foods rich in nutrients (antioxidants, phyto nutrients, fiber, vitamins, minerals, etc.)  When you eat most of your meals from foods rich in important nutrients, your body will body will be satisfied and overeating won’t be much of a problem.

You then begin to burn fat as a natural result of giving your body what it thrives on.  On top of that, you’re lowering your risk for disease by promoting a natural alkaline environment in your body with these types of foods.

If you do the opposite and eat most of your meals from foods lacking in nutrients, you’ll keep eating and eating and eating to satisfy your nutrient needs. This leads to too many calories and a person who will just keep getting fatter and more prone to develop increased risk for disease with an acidic environment in the body.  When this happens, you can just kiss fat burning goodbye.

So nutrition for fat loss, fitness, and health really all do go hand in hand.  Fat Burning Furnace students have changed their lives permanently, by simply altering what they put in their bodies…and you can do it to.

Focus on foods rich in nutrients.

[Click here to read the Fat Burning Furnace eBook]

Related posts:

• The Mass Confusion That Dominates in Fat Loss and Fitness Today
• Are You Caught Up in a Cycle of Fat Loss & Fitness Confusion
• Seeing Is Believing If You Want To Burn Fat – Or Is It?

A few years ago, I was spending a lot of time with aerobic exercise on an elliptical machine, trying to burn fat fast. I was doing the usual 30-45 minutes per session for about 3 times per week. I was getting in better cardiovascular shape, or so I thought, but I didn’t notice any difference in my physique. So I followed the “more is better” thinking that surrounds this type of exercise and added a fourth day.

After a few weeks I added a fifth day as I still didn’t see the results I wanted. I was watching my diet too, so I figured that was the only thing that would do it. Well, it wasn’t very long before I began to get worn out.

This might seem obvious, but I was so focused on my goals of burning maximum fat that I didn’t want that to get in the way, so I pressed onward. Not many more days passed by and I got a cold. What I realized later was that my immune system was so worn down that I was very susceptible to catching a virus, and I did.

Guess what? I didn’t stop. I continued with my sessions and ended up with a horrible sinus infection that put me out for about a week and a half. I was miserable, and I can tell you I hadn’t burned much fat either. I had to take several days off of work to recover. I learned an important lesson, however; one that you should never have to: listen to your body.

If you are feeling drained, take a day or two off until you’re really feeling ready to get back to it. I also learned that aerobic exercise just doesn’t cut it when trying to transform your body for the better or burn fat fast. If 5 days per week didn’t work, I certainly don’t think 6 or 7 days would. And even if it did, would spending that much time in the gym be worth it to you?

I eventually discovered that the aerobics were training my body to actually store body fat to have available for the next workout…yikes! And I also found out that I was actually reducing my body’s ability handle work and stress. I was becoming more efficient and handling easy work, but it made me pant like a race horse when trying anything that was marginally more intense…even something like climbing a long flight of stairs. And I wasn’t burning any fat either.

The other concern I have with aerobic exercise is that of overuse injuries and muscle imbalances. These are common in competitive athletes that perform the same monotonous motion over and over and over again.

The muscles primarily involved in these activities also receive the brunt of the work while the rest of your body is neglected. This can be true for any of the aerobic movements recommended by many fitness professionals to burn fat because it is a repetitive motion continued for long time periods for several times each week, affecting the same muscle groups.

Runners are a prime example. The pounding that this activity gives the joints associated (knees, etc.) can lead to injury from overusing that area. And because the lower body receives the brunt of the work, you are creating severe imbalances with other areas of your body. You’ll have to add more exercise to make up for this, and before you know it, you’ll be spending too much of your time devoted to workouts that were supposed to burn fat fast.

The good news is that you can avoid these problems entirely, and spend an average of 15-20 minutes, 2-3 days per week performing properly conducted intense resistance training to burn fat like you want to.

Students of the Fat Burning Furnace system know this and simultaneously burn fat, build muscle, strength, and lasting health with their efforts. So get off of the treadmill and get intense with resistance training…your body will show you the difference in your fat burning success, and thank you for it down the road.

[Click here to read the Fat Burning Furnace eBook]

Related posts:

• Is Your Fat Burning Exercise Routine Keeping You Overweight?
• The Best Way To Fire Up Your Metabolism and Burn Fat Fast
• 3 Vital Principles You Must Know To Burn Body Fat Faster

In order to get a great high intensity fat burning workout, like students of Fat Burning Furnace system get…. one that stimulates the growth of lean muscle tissue, accelerates your metabolism and fat burning, and provides cardiovascular conditioning… you need to perform a variety of exercises that work all of your major muscle groups in the same workout.

You have a few choices in what equipment to use. But I am here to tell you that you don’t need fancy equipment or a membership at the hot fitness center in your area. All that is really required for your fat burning workout is good old-fashioned barbells and/or dumbbells… or less. In fact, you can work your entire body from head to toe with a good set of adjustable dumbbells and a simple bench.

Keep this in your home and it takes very little space and is always accessible for those fat burning workouts you’d have to skip otherwise. After all, the proper workout I’m talking about averages about 15-20 minutes…but if you factor in the transit time to and from the gym, it can become more difficult to stick to your routine.

I highly recommend getting a basic setup at home for those times, or you can even use this exclusively. I personally always workout at home and it has its advantages. You don’t have to wait for the next station or machine on your routine at home. This is very important in relation to pulling the maximum cardiovascular benefits out of the same muscle building and fat burning workout…keeping your time between exercises down to 60 seconds or less.

Home workouts are also great for those that might be a bit intimidated by working out with weights in public at the gym. If you feel this way, don’t fret, you’re not alone. This is especially true for some of the ladies, as weight training is traditionally thought of as the guy’s territory in the fitness center. Nothing could be further from the truth, but if you’d rather perform you fat burning workout at home, then do it!

Another excuse for skipping workouts that I hear a lot is related to travel. For busy people, this is a reality. You go on business trips. You go on vacation. You go to visit out of town friends and family. Now, when working out properly, like the way Fat Burning Furnace students do, you’re only exercising for 2-3 days per week, but if you’re workout day falls on a day when you’re out of town, what to do?

Yeah, you could try and find a local gym to go to, but that can be a hassle. There are actually several fat burning bodyweight exercises you can do without the use of any equipment.

Movements like the pushup, chin-ups, sit-ups, etc. can provide enough muscle stimulation to keep you conditioned until you get back home. You’re using your bodyweight as the resistance, rather than dumbbells, barbells, or machines.

So don’t let those standard excuses work their way into your vocabulary… you can get a great fat burning workout wherever you are, anytime!

Related posts:

• Is Your Fat Burning Exercise Routine Keeping You Overweight?
• 3 Vital Principles You Must Know To Burn Body Fat Faster
• The Best Way To Fire Up Your Metabolism and Burn Fat Fast

There are several reasons, but I’ll focus on the two main issues here.  When you exercise at a moderate pace for extended periods of time (as in the typically recommended percent of your target heart rate), your body is burning fat during the exercise. While this may sound good, it’s actually bad news.

This sends a signal to your body to keep a certain amount of stored fat available for your next workout.  You’re essentially telling it that it needs fat available to burn, because you’ll be doing this exercise again. So while we may be burning some calories during this exercise, after the exercise is over, our body begins storing up some fat for the next workout.  Obviously not what we’re looking for in terms of maximum ability to burn fat fast.

The other big concern with moderately paced aerobic exercise performed several times per week is that it trains your body (heart, lungs, muscles, etc.) to become efficient. Again, this may sound good, but what is actually happening is bad for long term health.  You are working only within your existing aerobic limits, without improving your aerobic capacity.

This is important because your aerobic capacity is what determines how your body responds in times of physical, emotional, and mental stress. If you reduce your capacity for work, as you do in this type of exercise, you’re reducing your long term health, no to mention a poor chance of burning fat.

The good news is, you can reverse these effects by instead focusing your workouts on high intensity resistance training, with workouts that last 15-20 minutes on average, and can only be performed 2-3 times per week.

These workouts will burn carbohydrates instead of fat during the workout, and will cause your body to use its fat stores to replenish the burned carbs over the next 24 hours, after the workout is done!  This type of work will also increase your reserve capacity and thus your ability to handle all types of stress, leading to lasting health and fitness…and 24/7 fat burning.  Nice!

But the exercise must be performed correctly to be effective, and that means using sufficient intensity, and keeping your rest periods between exercises and sets down to 60 seconds or less.

The students of the Fat Burning Furnace method know this, and are reaping the benefits. When you think about how little time you have to spend compared to the typically recommended methods to get these fat burning and health creating results, it’s almost magical.

Related posts:

• The Best Way To Fire Up Your Metabolism and Burn Fat Fast
• Get a Great Fat Burning Workout Anytime Wherever You Are
• Long Duration Cardio on the Treadmill Makes You GAIN Weight

Maybe it’s a fear of:

• a panic attack
• never being free of general anxiety
• a bodily sensation that worries you
• a fear of losing control to anxiety

Whatever your particular fear is, I want to share some tips and techniques with you I’ve learned from studying a program called Panic Away that will not only help you end these fears but also reduce your general anxiety level dramatically.

After many years having anxiety and panic attacks and having friends that also suffer from anxious thoughts and panic attacks, I have noticed that those who experience panic attacks or general anxiety almost always deal with the frequent occurrence of anxious thoughts.

Anxiety has a sneaky way of seeding doubt regardless of whether the fear is rational or irrational.

So what can be done for people who suffer from repetitive anxious thoughts?

To begin, lets look at how an anxious thought is powered and then I will demonstrate how to quickly eliminate the intensity of the thought.

Say for example you are going about your daily business when an anxious thought enters your mind. Whatever the nature of the thought, the pattern that follows is usually quite predictable.

The anxious thought flashes briefly in your awareness and as it does so you immediately react with fear as you contemplate the thought. The fearful reaction you have to the thought then sends a shock-wave through your nervous system. You feel the result of that fear most intensely in your stomach (due to the amount of nerve endings located there). Because of the intense bodily reaction to the thought you then get sucked into examining the anxious thought over and over. The continuous fearful reaction you have to the thought, increases the intensity of the experience. The more you react, the stronger the thought rebounds again in your awareness creating more anxious shock-waves throughout your body. This is the typical cycle of anxious thoughts.

For some it feels like the anxious thoughts are hijacking their peace of mind. Because of the reaction you are having, you may continue to spend the rest of your day thinking about the anxious thoughts you experienced.

“Why am I thinking these thoughts?” “Why can’t I shake off this eerie feeling?”

The harder you try not to think about it, the more upset you become. It is like telling someone ‘Whatever happens do not think of a pink elephant’. Naturally enough it’s all they can think about. That’s the way our brains our wired.

So how can you eliminate these unwanted anxious thoughts? To begin with:

When you start to experience anxious thoughts, it is very important not to force the thoughts away.

Let the thoughts in. The more comfortable you can become with them, the better. These thoughts will never go away fully but what you can learn is to change your reaction to them.

By changing your reaction to the anxious thoughts you become free of them.

Once you establish a new way of reacting to the thoughts it does not matter if you have them or not. Your reaction is what defines the whole experience (and that applies to almost everything).

Everybody experiences fleeting thoughts that many would consider scary or crazy. The difference between most people and somebody who gets caught up in them, is that the average person sees them for exactly what they are, fleeting anxious thoughts, and casually ignores them.

The anxious person is at a disadvantage as they already have a certain level of anxiety in their system. The thoughts easily spark feelings of further anxiety which builds into a cycle of fear. You break the cycle by changing how you react to the fearful thought.

Here is an example of how to approach this:

You are enjoying the way your day is going but then all of sudden a fearful thought comes to mind.

Before you would react with anxiety to the idea and then try to force that thought out of your mind.

This time, however, say:

“That’s a fear of X. I could worry and even obsess over that but this time I’m going to do something different. I’m not going to react to it. I’m also not going to try and stop it either. I’m just going to label the thought and not react.”

Then the thought comes again with more intensity and possibly with new ’scary’ angles you never considered. When this happens you do exactly the same. As if you were observing a cloud passing overhead, you simply

1. Observe it,
2. Label it (fear of whatever), then
3. Watch it as it passes by with no judgment.
4. Move your attention on to what you were doing.

Observe, Label, Watch, and then Move on.

See the anxious thought for what it really is:  one of the thousands of fleeting sane and insane thoughts every one of us experiences daily.

If you are a more indoors type of person then instead of thinking of the thoughts like clouds passing in the sky, you might try imagining a large cinema screen and the anxious thoughts are projected out onto the screen in front of you. Play around with this approach. Find what works for you.

The key thing to remember is to:

Observe, Label, Watch, and then Move on.

By practicing this approach you gradually stop reacting with fear to the thought and you learn to treat it as nothing more than an odd peculiarity.

When you are at a stage where you are comfortable doing the above exercise and you feel you are making good progress, then try this additional step:

Actually invite one of your more regular fearful thoughts in. Call the fear to you, say you just want it to come close so you can observe it.

It may seem like the last thing you would wish to bring upon yourself, as you don’t particularly enjoy these thoughts but this approach can be very empowering. You are now calling the shots. You actually invited the issue in.

By doing this you are discharging the dense vibration of fear surrounding the anxious thought. That fear was sustaining itself on your resistance, -the idea that you could not handle these thoughts.

The fear quickly evaporates when you turn around and say “yes of course I can handle these thoughts.”

Fear intensifies when we pull away from it. Anxious thoughts become a mental tug of war if we struggle with them.

It is the mental struggle of pulling against the anxious thoughts that creates the inner psychological tension.

The inner tension is fueled by thoughts like:

• “I can’t handle to think about this -please go away”
• “I don’t like that thought- I want it to stop!”

Take a different stance. Invite anxious thoughts in. Willingly sit with them, label them and do your very best not to react.

Yes, it does take practice but very soon you find yourself in a unique position of control. You are no longer a victim of fearful thinking but a decision maker in what you will or will not be concerned about.

As with every technique there is always a level of practice involved in the beginning. Initially you start observing but then suddenly get anxious about the fearful thought. That’s very normal in the beginning.

Keep at it. Practice and you will quickly see how less impacting those fearful thoughts become.

Do not let your mind trick you into believing that your anxiety is something you will always have to struggle with. That is simply not true.

Not alone is it possible to control the occurrence of anxious thoughts but you can learn how to end panic attacks and general anxiety if that is your goal.

You can have the life of your dreams. Anxiety does not have the right to steal that hope from you.

Some of this information forms a part of the Panic Away Program – which has been a godsend for my life. The full program eliminates panic attacks and general anxiety very quickly and has proved highly successful with both long and short term sufferers of anxiety. The results speak for themselves.

Related posts:

• What are the Causes of Panic Attacks: Anxiety & Effects
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The CD has performances by guitarists like Steve Morse, Jake Cinninger, Alex Skolnick, Jerry Garcia, Charlie Hitchcock, Fareed Haque, Charlie Hunter, Oz Noy, Mike Stern, Michael Lee Firkins, Will Bernard, Mark Karan, Ed Wynne, and Philip Upchurch.

The more I listen to the CD the more I realize that  it’s some of the most inventive and diverse music that the rock genre has seen in a long time.  I’m a big guitar fan and really, the guitar has been the instrument that all this musical abundance is built around. Hearing this CD illustrates the fact that it’s not about technique. It is about substance.

Make sure to check Jam on Guitars out and let me know what you think in the comments!

1. “Took The Words Right Outta My Mouth” – Michael Lee Firkins
2. “Free In The Park” – Steve Morse
3. “Scorch” – Alex Skolnick Trio – Alex Skolnick with Charlie Hunter
4. “Dance To The Music” – The Clinton Administration – Charlie Hitchcock, Fareed Haque, Michael Lee Firkins
5. “Gulab Jammin” – The Fareed Haque Group – Fareed Haque
6. “Downside Up” – Oz Noy with Mike Stern
7. “Lake Shore Drive” – OHMphrey – Chris Poland & Jake Cinninger
8. “Flashlight” – The Clinton Administration – Phil Upchurch
9. “Dump Truck” – Robert Walter’s 20th Congress – Will Bernard
10. “Rome” – Tishamingo – Cameron Williams and Jess Franklin
11. “Disdots” – Ozric Tentacles – Ed Wynne
12. “Starlite Jamboree” – Bill Cutler – Jerry Garcia and Mark Karan

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Mallory’s cell phone rang insistently. “See?!” she looked at me. “Those stupid boys have been doing that all day!”

Two of Mallory’s goofier classmates relentlessly had prank-called her all day long.

Now that she’s in high school, Mallory does not want me to fight her battles for her, but she doesn’t mind a few tools and pointers. When we got home that afternoon, I went directly to the reverse phone look-up service, typed-in the numbers from Mallory’s cell, and up came the boys’ names and addresses. “I knew it was them!” Mallory was mad as a wet cat.

How Using a Reverse Phone Service Saved the Day

I took a couple more steps for my daughter’s protection and my own peace of mind. First, I called and changed her cell number—easy enough. Then, I went back to the reverse phone look-up service, and I requested privacy protection for all of our information—house phone, cell phones, e-mails, everything. No access for anyone; all denied. That put a stop to the calls.

But I knew we weren’t quite finished.

Later that evening, as Mallory did her homework upstairs in her bedroom, I made a call of my own. Using the information from the reverse phone look-up service, I called those “stupid, stupid boys’” mothers.

The reverse telephone number look-up service helps keep my family safe.

Annoying Calls

Ya know, once—just once!—I would like to see a phone number on my caller ID that wasn’t some stranger trying to sell me something or some busybody little PTA mom trying to tell me the very best cupcake recipe for the bake sale. Sure, I know I can turn-off my phone, but people will just leave messages on the voicemail. Ugh, the messages! They go on and on and on and on. And recently someone has been calling and just hanging-up. Of course, caller ID gets the number, but if I don’t recognize it, what good does it do? When I call the number, it just rings and rings and rings. Just once, I would like to see that one of my friends had managed to squeeze in a call among all these other characters.

And ya know what really kills me about all these calls? Our number is unlisted!

Even if your number is unlisted, obviously people can find it. Lots of data collectors have used public information to build databases that contain all your information—not just your telephone numbers and address, but also your credit history, your employment, and other personal data. All kinds of marketers by this information from the data brokers, using it for all kinds of reasons.

A reverse telephone number look-up service can help.

For just a small fee, you can block access to these data bases. The reverse telephone number look-up services not only give information; they also can keep it confidential. Using the service’s privacy protection, you can make sure that no one ever can look at your records or use your personal data for any reason.

One of the best ones I’ve found after trying tons of these services is Reverse Mobile. Check it online today, because your privacy and peace of mind are just a few mouseclicks and keystrokes away.

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• Is There A Free Reverse Cell Phone Directory?
• Getting Organized in Your Business: Reverse Phone Directory
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Yes folks, he’s going to give you a new crap everyday.

Oh, and there’s some gems when you read his blog. Take this excerpt of his blog post, for example, about his friend getting a needle in his butt and his experience with leeches:

He’s a married guy with several kids, very nice person and would talk to anyone t any time. One day, while few of us getting together chatting, one of my assistant took out a needle.

“Look what I found on my chair justnow, someone left this needle on my chair and almost poke on my butts!”.

All in a sudden, that colleague of mine stood up and ran some 10 feet away from the group. Seeing something amiss, I ask him whats going on?

“Emm.. I afraid of needle, would you mind keep that needle away,” he said.

“Man, you afraid of that tiny little needle? You’re a man and already a father and you tell me you afraid of this little needle? Good try but I’m not amused,” I said to him.

My assistant then chase him around the department holding the needle and that fella is running like there is no tomorrow. Somehow, I finally realise that he has phobia on needle. It really makes me wonder how a big man could be afraid of a tiny little needle?

As for myself, I think I do has phobia too. I was afraid of leech and those squirming little slug. Don’t know why but I felt they’re disgusting and I always tend to run away if I sees them. But my phobia was’t really so serious. During my secondary school period, I like to go fishing and it isn’t something odd to find leeches and occasionally would have a few of them stick on our feet sucking our blood. I was quite freak up at first but eventually got used to it.

Another quick gem:

What’s Bak Kut Teh without this-hot-shredded-cili-padi. Well, just don’t take too much or else at the end of the day you may end up squatting in the toilet holding the tap hose on your butts to cold off the Hot !

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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:

1. Intensity
2. Volume & Frequency
3. 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.

Did you like this article? I’ve been on a fitness craze the past few months One book that’s really helped me is called Fat Burning Furnace. If you’re looking for more weight loss advice like this article, you might want to check it out. Just go to the Fat Burning Furnace page and take a look.

Related posts:

• The Best Way To Fire Up Your Metabolism and Burn Fat Fast
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But, what exactly is anxiety? Understanding how anxiety crops up will help you defeat panic attacks.

Anxiety is probably the most basic of all emotions. While anxiety, by its nature, is an unpleasant sensation, it is not by any means dangerous.

One of the biggest myths surrounding anxiety is that it is harmful and can lead to a number of various life-threatening conditions.

Definition of Anxiety

Anxiety is defined as a state of apprehension or fear resulting from the anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event, or situation. It is one of the most common human emotions experienced by people at some point in their lives.

However, most people who have never experienced a panic attack, or extreme anxiety, fail to realize the terrifying nature of the experience. Extreme dizziness, blurred vision, tingling and feelings of breathlessness—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

When these sensations occur and people do not understand why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental condition. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and naturally very terrifying.

Fight/Flight Response: One of the root causes of panic attacks?

I am sure most of you have heard of the fight/flight response as an explanation for one of the root causes of panic attacks. Have you made the connection between this response and the unusual sensations you experience during and after a panic attack episode?

Anxiety is a response to a danger or threat. It is so named because all of its effects are aimed toward either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Thus, the sole purpose of anxiety is to protect the individual from harm. This may seem ironic given that you no doubt feel your anxiety is actually causing you great harm…perhaps the most significant of all the causes of panic attacks.

However, the anxiety that the fight/flight response created was vital in the daily survival of our ancient ancestors—when faced with some danger, an automatic response would take over that propelled them to take immediate action such as attack or run. Even in today’s hectic world, this is still a necessary mechanism. It comes in useful when you must respond to a real threat within a split second.

Anxiety is a built-in mechanism to protect us from danger. Interestingly, it is a mechanism that protects but does not harm—an important point that will be elaborated upon later.

Nervousness and Chemical Effects

When confronted with danger, the brain sends signals to a section of the nervous system. It is this system that is responsible for gearing the body up for action and also calms the body down and restores equilibrium. To carry out these two vital functions, the autonomic nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

Although I don’t want to become too “scientific,” having a basic understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system will help you understand the causes of panic attacks.

The sympathetic nervous system is the one we tend to know all too much about because it primes our body for action, readies us for the “fight or flight” response, while the parasympathetic nervous system is the one we love dearly as it serves as our restoring system, which returns the body to its normal state.

When either of these systems is activated, they stimulate the whole body, which has an “all or nothing” effect. This explains why when a panic attack occurs, the individual often feels a number of different sensations throughout the body.

The sympathetic system is responsible for releasing the adrenaline from the adrenal glands on the kidneys. These are small glands located just above the kidneys. Less known, however, is that the adrenal glands also release adrenaline, which functions as the body’s chemical messengers to keep the activity going. When a panic attack begins, it does not switch off as easily as it is turned on. There is always a period of what would seem increased or continued anxiety, as these messengers travel throughout the body. Think of them as one of the physiological causes of panic attacks, if you will.

After a period of time, the parasympathetic nervous system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to normal functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic system is the system we all know and love, because it returns us to a calm relaxed state.

When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, for example, a relaxation technique, we are in fact willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to remember is that this system will be brought into action at some stage whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an ever-increasing spiral of anxiety. It reaches a point where it simply must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in protection systems our bodies have for survival.

You can do your best with worrying thoughts, keeping the sympathetic nervous system going, but eventually it stops. In time, it becomes a little smarter than us, and realizes that there really is no danger. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent—modern science is always discovering amazing patterns of intelligence that run throughout the cells of our body. Our body seems to have infinite ways of dealing with the most complicated array of functions we take for granted. Rest assured that your body’s primary goal is to keep you alive and well.

Not so convinced?

Try holding your breath for as long as you can. No matter how strong your mental will is, it can never override the will of the body. This is good news—no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you are gong to die from a panic attack, you won’t. Your body will override that fear and search for a state of balance. There has never been a reported incident of someone dying from a panic attack.

Remember this next time you have a panic attack; the symptoms of panic attacks cannot do you any physical harm. Your mind may make the sensations continue longer than the body intended, but eventually everything will return to a state of balance. In fact, balance (homeostasis) is what our body continually strives for.

The interference for your body is nothing more than the sensations of doing rigorous exercise. Our body is not alarmed by these symptoms. Why should it be? It knows its own capability. It’s our thinking minds that panic, which overreact and scream in sheer terror! We tend to fear the worst and exaggerate our own sensations. A quickened heart beat becomes a heart attack. An overactive mind seems like a close shave with schizophrenia. Is it our fault? Not really—we are simply diagnosing from poor information.

Symptoms of Panic Attacks: Cardiovascular Effects

Activity in the sympathetic nervous system increases our heartbeat rate, speeds up the blood flow throughout the body, ensures all areas are well supplied with oxygen and that waste products are removed. This happens in order to prime the body for action.

A fascinating feature of the “fight or flight” mechanism is that blood (which is channelled from areas where it is currently not needed by a tightening of the blood vessels) is brought to areas where it is urgently needed.

For example, should there be a physical attack, blood drains from the skin, fingers, and toes so that less blood is lost, and is moved to “active areas” such as the thighs and biceps to help the body prepare for action.

This is why many feel numbness and tingling during a panic attack – often misinterpreted as some serious health risk – such as a precursor to a heart attack. Interestingly, most people who suffer from anxiety often feel they have heart problems. If you are really worried that such is the case with your situation, visit your doctor and have it checked out. At least then you can put your mind at rest.

Symptoms of Panic Attacks: Respiratory Effects

One of the scariest effects of a panic attack is the fear of suffocating or smothering. It is very common during a panic attack to feel tightness in the chest and throat. I’m sure everyone can relate to some fear of losing control of your breathing. From personal experience, anxiety grows from the fear that your breathing itself would cease and you would be unable to recover. Can a panic attack stop our breathing? No.

A panic attack is associated with an increase in the speed and depth of breathing. This has obvious importance for the defense of the body since the tissues need to get more oxygen to prepare for action. The feelings produced by this increase in breathing, however, can include breathlessness, hyperventilation, sensations of choking or smothering, and even pains or tightness in the chest. The real problem is that these sensations are alien to us, and they feel unnatural.

Having experienced extreme panic attacks myself, I remember that on many occasions, I would have this feeling that I couldn’t trust my body to do the breathing for me, so I would have to manually take over and tell myself when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Of course, this didn’t suit my body’s requirement of oxygen and so the sensations would intensify—along with the anxiety. It was only when I employed the technique I will describe for you later, did I let the body continue doing what it does best—running the whole show.

Importantly, a side-effect of increased breathing, (especially if no actual activity occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is actually decreased. While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all dangerous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but harmless symptoms that include dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, sense of unreality, and hot flushes.

Symptoms of Panic Attacks: Physical Effects

Now that we’ve discussed some of the primary physiological causes of panic attacks, there are a number of other effects that are produced by the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, none of which are in any way harmful.

For example, the pupils widen to let in more light, which may result in blurred vision, or “seeing” stars, etc. There is a decrease in salivation, resulting in dry mouth. There is decreased activity in the digestive system, which often produces nausea, a heavy feeling in the stomach, and even constipation. Finally, many of the muscle groups tense up in preparation for “fight or flight” and this results in subjective feelings of tension, sometimes extending to actual aches and pains, as well as trembling and shaking.

Overall, the fight/flight response results in a general activation of the whole bodily metabolism. Thus, one often feels hot and flushed and, because this process takes a lot of energy, the person generally feels tired and drained.

Causes of Panic Attacks: Mental Manifestations

“Are the causes of panic attacks all in my head?” is a question many people wonder to themselves.

The goal of the fight/flight response is making the individual aware of the potential danger that may be present. Therefore, when activated, the mental priority is placed upon searching the surroundings for potential threats. In this state one is highly-strung, so to speak. It is very difficult to concentrate on any one activity, as the mind has been trained to seek all potential threats and not to give up until the threat has been identified. As soon as the panic hits, many people look for the quick and easiest exit from their current surroundings, such as by simply leaving the bank queue and walking outside. Sometimes the anxiety can heighten, if we perceive that leaving will cause some sort of social embarrassment.

If you have a panic attack while at the workplace but feel you must press on with whatever task it is you are doing, it is quite understandable that you would find it very hard to concentrate. It is quite common to become agitated and generally restless in such a situation. Many individuals who have suffered from panic attacks over the years indicated that artificial light—such as that which comes from computer monitors and televisions screens—can can be one of the causes of panic attacks by triggering them or worsen a panic attack, particularly if the person is feeling tired or run down.

This is worth bearing in mind if you work for long periods of time on a computer. Regular break reminders should be set up on your computer to remind you to get up from the desk and get some fresh air when possible.

In other situations, when during a panic attack an outside threat cannot normally be found, the mind turns inwards and begins to contemplate the possible illness the body or mind could be suffering from. This ranges from thinking it might have been something you ate at lunch, to the possibility of an oncoming cardiac arrest.

The burning question is: Why is the fight/flight response activated during a panic attack even when there is apparently nothing to be frightened of?

Upon closer examination of the causes of panic attacks, it would appear that what we are afraid of are the sensations themselves—we are afraid of the body losing control. These unexpected physical symptoms create the fear or panic that something is terribly wrong. Why do you experience the physical symptoms of the fight/flight response if you are not frightened to begin with? There are many ways these symptoms can manifest themselves, not just through fear.

For example, it may be that you have become generally stressed for some reason in your life, and this stress results in an increase in the production of adrenaline and other chemicals, which from time to time, would produce symptoms….and which you perceive as the causes of panic attacks.

This increased adrenaline can be maintained chemically in the body, even after the stress has long gone. Another possibility is diet, which directly affects our level of stress. Excess caffeine, alcohol, or sugar is known for causing stress in the body, and is believed to be one of the contributing factors of the causes of panic attacks.

Unresolved emotions are often pointed to as possible trigger of panic attacks, but it is important to point out that eliminating panic attacks from your life does not necessarily mean analyzing your psyche and digging into your subconscious. The “One Move” technique will teach you to deal with the present moment and defuse the attack along with removing the underlying anxiety that sparks the initial anxiety.

Recommendation

I learned a lot about panic attacks from reading this ebook called Panic Away. I was pretty desperate at the time so I was looking for anything I could get my hands on – that ebook really helped out. Another good resource that I’ve read is When Panic Attacks. If you’ve read any other good books on panic attacks, let us all know in the comments section!

Related posts:

• 4 Easy Steps to Stop Panic Attacks & Anxious Thoughts