Smoking and Weight Loss

Can Smoking help you to lose weight?

Smoking can reduce your appetite and therefore help you to lose weight. However, this is a hugely expensive and even suicidal way to lose weight. Cancer is even better at causing you to lose weight but is a slimmer figure worth dying for? If you know of anyone who has had cancer you should know what a horrible disease it is. It's a lousy way to die. Even if you don't care about yourself think about your family and friends.

How can you quit smoking without putting on more weight??

For most people the real question is how can I give up the cigarettes without putting on loads of weight. Firstly, it's about priorities. Smoking will almost certainly kill you and the longer you smoke the more likely it is. Being overweight is not great for your health but it is certainly the lessor of the two evils.

Give Smoking first then worry about my weight?

There is nothing wrong with this strategy if you know you have the strength of will to succeed at both. However, for most us this is a tall order. Giving up smoking for me was one of the hardest things I've ever done as I'm sure it is for most people. To be putting on significant amounts of weight at the same time makes it even harder. We need a strategy to keep our weight the same or at least minimise the weight increase.

Effects of withdraw from smoking

We are all different and the symptoms of nicotine cravings will be different from person to person but one common one is the desire to eat more and more often.

Chewing the gum

Nicotine gum can thus help in two ways in not only relieving the temptation to smoke but to also give your mouth something else to do other than eat.

Exercise

Within a relatively short space of time after giving up the smokes you should notice an improvement in your health. Exercise will not only help you to avoid eating, after all its hard to eat a cream bun whilst jogging, but will also help to offset any weight gain.

Patterns of Behavior

Think when you smoke e.g. with coffee and change the behaviour to something other than swapping the cigarettes for a cake or biscuit.

No more coffee??

If you drop the coffee all together you'll have caffeine withdrawal to deal with as well. So think of an alternative strategy such drinking your coffee whilst working, walking (carefully of course) or immediately after a meal.

Social situations

These are often the hardest to deal with when giving up smoking. If you swap beer nuts, crisps etc for cigarettes your weight will be under threat. Think of ways you can alleviate this. Rather than go out for a nights drinking maybe go out for a short drink and then go to the movies.

Friends that Smoke

If you are catching up with friends that smoke talk to them about your desire not to smoke. Ask them not to smoke around you. Unfortunately, you may find it necessary to avoid some of these situations. Try to find replacement recreational activities rather than lose your friends. Play a round of golf or tennis, go for a walk, go to the beach, swimming, anything that doesn't directly relate to smoking for you and, ideally, for your smoky friends.

It's your life

Remember, its your life. You have every right to expect your friends (and colleagues for that matter) to respect that you are attempting to do something that is extremely difficult. If they aren't very supportive perhaps they were not as good a friend as you thought.

Stick with it

It's not easy to give up smoking but the pay off if you do is huge. It will make your feel much much better than you do now, will give you more money to spend and the desire to spend it and enjoy yourself. Your life will be defined by a pre and post smoking period. This is not to say that, from time to time, you will miss it. My hand still sometimes comes up to face as if I was still smoking. Over time it will get easier and you will think about it less often. If you do put on a few pounds / kilos in the process of giving up smoking it is not the end the world. The trick is to to try to minimise how much you do put on to make it easier to lose that weight when you are ready for your next challenge.

More Information

"Most smokers gain a modest amount of weight when they quit smoking. The causes include the effect of nicotine on the body and the ex-smoker's inclination to eat more. However you can quit and keep weight gain low. A few extra kilograms are a much lower health risk than continuing to smoke." Victorian Government, Australia