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"I would rather be a little overweight and not smoking than underweight and dead."
This thought provoking sentiment was one panelist's opinion of the 10 pounds she gained when giving up cigarettes. While it is not inevitable, many people do gain weight when quitting smoking. The reason is quite easy to explain - they eat more. People eat more when quitting smoking for a variety of reasons. Food is often enjoyed more since the improved senses in ex-smokers make it smell and taste better. For some, cigarettes decrease the appetite. Others use cigarettes as their cue that the meal has ended. Take away the cigarette and they don't know it is time to stop eating. Social situations with food used to be easy as a smoker. When a smoker is done with their food, they can sit and smoke while conversing with others at the table. Without cigarettes, they feel awkward just sitting, so they often order extra coffee and dessert to last the duration of the conversation. All of these different behaviors add up to one result, extra calories eaten which result in gaining weight. Weight gain can be extremely dangerous to an ex-smoker. But this is not because of the strain on the heart. An average ex-smoker would have to gain 75 to 100 pounds to put a strain on their heart equal to the extra risk associated with smoking a pack a day. And then, the extra weight would not cause the lung destruction, cancer risk and many other conditions caused by smoking. The real danger of the extra weight is that many ex-smokers use it as an excuse to go back to smoking. They think that if they smoke again they will automatically lose weight. To their unpleasant surprise, many return to smoking and keep on the added pounds. One clinic participant told how after three months without smoking she gained 15 pounds. Her doctor told her that she must lose the weight. He said that if she had to, just smoke one or two cigarettes a day to help. If her doctor understood the addictive potential of cigarettes he would never have given her such advice. For, as soon as she took her first few cigarettes, she started smoking in excess of 3 packs per day. Her weight gain did not go away. When her doctor realized that she had returned to smoking, he warned her that it was imperative that she quit. In her condition smoking was extremely dangerous. So not only did she still have to lose 15 pounds, but once again she had to go through the withdrawal process of stopping smoking. Smokers, ex-smokers or never-smokers can all lose weight the same way. The three ways to lose weight are to decrease the amount of calories one eats, increase ones activities to burn extra calories, or, a combination of both techniques. While dieting may be more difficult for some after smoking cessation, it is possible, and in many ways ex-smokers have major advantages over smokers for controlling their weight. The most obvious advantage is that not smoking allows a person to do more physical activities, burning off fat in the process. When smoking, exercise is tiresome, painful and for some, impossible. But with the improvement in breathing and cardiovascular fitness accompanying smoking cessation, exercise can become a regular routine in the ex-smokers lifestyle. And while dieting may be difficult at first, ex-smokers should realize that if they had the capability of breaking free from cigarettes, they could also decrease the amount they eat. It is simply a matter of using the same determination initially used to quit smoking. So, the next time you look in the mirror or step on a scale and feel that you are unhappy with your weight, start taking some sensible steps to deal with it. Become active, eat lower calorie, nutritious foods, and pat yourself on the back for once again taking control of your life. Not only will you lose weight, look and feel better, but you would have done it all without smoking. With that knowledge you should be extra proud. Diet, exercise and - NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF! Patience in weight control issues Be patient with weight control efforts. Quitting smoking is harder than losing weight, initially. But weight control is a harder process in the long term. For once you quit smoking, not smoking eventually becomes a habit. And the battle line for successfully not smoking is clear and simple to understand. You are fighting a puff. You can't administer any nicotine. There is no gray area here. Eating is more complicated. You will have to eat the rest of your life. When are you eating a little more than you should? A little more is a difficult concept. If you eat a little more once, it is no big deal. If you eat a little more every day, there is a problem. An example, let's say as a "reward" for not smoking, you have one extra cookie, say about 100 calories. Weight yourself at the end of that day and nothing would have happened. Now lets say you do this every day for a week. Weigh yourself at the end of the week and you probably still won't notice any difference. You would have consumed 700 calories, but basically it's not noticeable. If you do it for a month, you may have increased the scale weight by almost a pound. Now you would have consumed about 3,000 calories, and 3,500 calories is about a pound of fat. But think about this too, if you step on a scale one-month to the next and had altered a pound, that would be no grounds for panic. A pound, that can be scale error. Heck, you can step on a scale a couple of times a day and seem to vary a pound. So the pattern of the extra cookie still seems unimportant. Now the catch. If you continue this pattern of one seemingly harmless cookie for a year, 10.4 pounds of fat will be the result and if you don't catch on after that and do it for 10 years, 104 pounds of fat is the outcome! 104 pounds from the addition of one cookie a day! Here is where substituting food becomes treacherous. You do it with the idea that it is only for the early days of quitting but it often is extended to it's own pattern. One cookie or 100 calories is probably minimal compared to the number of actual calories substituted by many people. If you eat a little more, you can exercise to offset the difference. But you must be realistic about how much exercise is needed to offset caloric intake. You have to exercise quite a bit to burn off a relatively small amount of food. An example, let's say you sit down at a feast. You start out with a drink before dinner. Next you have a dinner roll or two with a little butter. Followed by a salad, with croutons and a teaspoon of salad dressing. Now the main course, meats, potatoes, vegetable with cheese sauces, another helping of meat to top it off. You're pretty full now, better stop. Oh, but wait, dessert is being served. You have a pie ala mode. Boy you are stuffed now. Almost sick to your stomach in fact. You know what you decide to do? You are going out for a walk. You actually drag yourself outside and walk for 20 minutes. Your hope may be to burn off the meal. In fact, you will burn off the teaspoon salad dressing. You won't touch the calories of the appetizers, drinks, main course or dessert. You will burn the equivalent of the salad dressing. I am not saying don't go for the walk. I am saying don't eat food with a shovel, go for a short walk and expect to rectify the meal. OK, now what's the upside here. Basically, making a little change can cause a significant weight alteration. But this process works in reverse too. If you "deprive" yourself of a cookie daily, and go for a walk, weigh your self at the end of a week and see no change, you get discouraged. If you are patient and weigh yourself at the end of the month and lose a couple of pounds, you can be furious. A couple of pounds after all that deprivation and work, what's the point? Again, even a couple of pounds could be scale error. But if you stick with it even though it seems initially futile, over the year you could lose 20 pounds and likely keep it off. Again, a little change adds up to a big difference over a lifetime. Patience is crucial. You are not starving yourself or working yourself to exhaustion, just not taking one food item and a simple 20-minute walk. Slow, but constant. By making a small modification to daily eating patterns and sticking with it over the long term, you can lose significant weight. Take simple steps here to alter the daily patterns. A little less food, a little more activity. The reward is not immediately obvious but will be with time. Improved health, self-esteem, just overall feeling of well being. You can do this as an ex-smoker, but you must prove it to yourself. But again be patient. Quitting smoking had great benefits that are often immediately felt. Weight control efforts are a little harder to see and feel initially, but the rewards will be forth coming with time. So start today off right, watch what you eat and Never Take Another Puff! Joel Can smoking help people lose weight? You bet. Here is a personal testament from a person who lost lots of weight really fast just by smoking: "I'm too skinny. I can't fight anymore," he whispered to his mother at 9 a.m. June 3. He died that day at 11:56 a.m., just nine weeks after the diagnosis. From http://www.whyquit.com/whyquit/BryanLeeCurtis.html Patience in weight control issues Be patient with weight control efforts. Quitting smoking is harder than losing weight, initially. But weight control is a harder process in the long term. For once you quit smoking, not smoking eventually becomes a habit. And the battle line for successfully not smoking is clear and simple to understand. You are fighting a puff. You can't administer any nicotine. There is no gray area here. Eating is more complicated. You will have to eat the rest of your life. When are you eating a little more than you should? A little more is a difficult concept. If you eat a little more once, it is no big deal. If you eat a little more every day, there is a problem. An example, let's say as a "reward" for not smoking, you have one extra cookie, say about 100 calories. Weight yourself at the end of that day and nothing would have happened. Now lets say you do this every day for a week. Weigh yourself at the end of the week and you probably still won't notice any difference. You would have consumed 700 calories, but basically it's not noticeable. If you do it for a month, you may have increased the scale weight by almost a pound. Now you would have consumed about 3,000 calories, and 3,500 calories is about a pound of fat. But think about this too, if you step on a scale one-month to the next and had altered a pound, that would be no grounds for panic. A pound, that can be scale error. Heck, you can step on a scale a couple of times a day and seem to vary a pound. So the pattern of the extra cookie still seems unimportant. Now the catch. If you continue this pattern of one seemingly harmless cookie for a year, 10.4 pounds of fat will be the result and if you don't catch on after that and do it for 10 years, 104 pounds of fat is the outcome! 104 pounds from the addition of one cookie a day! Here is where substituting food becomes treacherous. You do it with the idea that it is only for the early days of quitting but it often is extended to it's own pattern. One cookie or 100 calories is probably minimal compared to the number of actual calories substituted by many people. If you eat a little more, you can exercise to offset the difference. But you must be realistic about how much exercise is needed to offset caloric intake. You have to exercise quite a bit to burn off a relatively small amount of food. An example, let's say you sit down at a feast. You start out with a drink before dinner. Next you have a dinner roll or two with a little butter. Followed by a salad, with croutons and a teaspoon of salad dressing. Now the main course, meats, potatoes, vegetable with cheese sauces, another helping of meat to top it off. You're pretty full now, better stop. Oh, but wait, dessert is being served. You have a pie ala mode. Boy you are stuffed now. Almost sick to your stomach in fact. You know what you decide to do? You are going out for a walk. You actually drag yourself outside and walk for 20 minutes. Your hope may be to burn off the meal. In fact, you will burn off the teaspoon salad dressing. You won't touch the calories of the appetizers, drinks, main course or dessert. You will burn the equivalent of the salad dressing. I am not saying don't go for the walk. I am saying don't eat food with a shovel, go for a short walk and expect to rectify the meal. OK, now what's the upside here. Basically, making a little change can cause a significant weight alteration. But this process works in reverse too. If you "deprive" yourself of a cookie daily, and go for a walk, weigh your self at the end of a week and see no change, you get discouraged. If you are patient and weigh yourself at the end of the month and lose a couple of pounds, you can be furious. A couple of pounds after all that deprivation and work, what's the point? Again, even a couple of pounds could be scale error. But if you stick with it even though it seems initially futile, over the year you could lose 20 pounds and likely keep it off. Again, a little change adds up to a big difference over a lifetime. Patience is crucial. You are not starving yourself or working yourself to exhaustion, just not taking one food item and a simple 20-minute walk. Slow, but constant. By making a small modification to daily eating patterns and sticking with it over the long term, you can lose significant weight. Take simple steps here to alter the daily patterns. A little less food, a little more activity. The reward is not immediately obvious but will be with time. Improved health, self-esteem, just overall feeling of well being. You can do this as an ex-smoker, but you must prove it to yourself. But again be patient. Quitting smoking had great benefits that are often immediately felt. Weight control efforts are a little harder to see and feel initially, but the rewards will be forth coming with time. So start today off right, watch what you eat and Never Take Another Puff! Joel Can smoking help people lose weight? You bet. Here is a personal testament from a person who lost lots of weight really fast just by smoking: "I'm too skinny. I can't fight anymore," he whispered to his mother at 9 a.m. June 3. He died that day at 11:56 a.m., just nine weeks after the diagnosis. From http://www.whyquit.com/whyquit/BryanLeeCurtis.html
This thought provoking sentiment was one panelist's opinion of the 10 pounds she gained when giving up cigarettes. While it is not inevitable, many people do gain weight when quitting smoking. The reason is quite easy to explain - they eat more.
People eat more when quitting smoking for a variety of reasons. Food is often enjoyed more since the improved senses in ex-smokers make it smell and taste better. For some, cigarettes decrease the appetite. Others use cigarettes as their cue that the meal has ended. Take away the cigarette and they don't know it is time to stop eating. Social situations with food used to be easy as a smoker. When a smoker is done with their food, they can sit and smoke while conversing with others at the table. Without cigarettes, they feel awkward just sitting, so they often order extra coffee and dessert to last the duration of the conversation. All of these different behaviors add up to one result, extra calories eaten which result in gaining weight.
Weight gain can be extremely dangerous to an ex-smoker. But this is not because of the strain on the heart. An average ex-smoker would have to gain 75 to 100 pounds to put a strain on their heart equal to the extra risk associated with smoking a pack a day. And then, the extra weight would not cause the lung destruction, cancer risk and many other conditions caused by smoking. The real danger of the extra weight is that many ex-smokers use it as an excuse to go back to smoking. They think that if they smoke again they will automatically lose weight. To their unpleasant surprise, many return to smoking and keep on the added pounds.
One clinic participant told how after three months without smoking she gained 15 pounds. Her doctor told her that she must lose the weight. He said that if she had to, just smoke one or two cigarettes a day to help. If her doctor understood the addictive potential of cigarettes he would never have given her such advice. For, as soon as she took her first few cigarettes, she started smoking in excess of 3 packs per day. Her weight gain did not go away. When her doctor realized that she had returned to smoking, he warned her that it was imperative that she quit. In her condition smoking was extremely dangerous. So not only did she still have to lose 15 pounds, but once again she had to go through the withdrawal process of stopping smoking.
Smokers, ex-smokers or never-smokers can all lose weight the same way. The three ways to lose weight are to decrease the amount of calories one eats, increase ones activities to burn extra calories, or, a combination of both techniques. While dieting may be more difficult for some after smoking cessation, it is possible, and in many ways ex-smokers have major advantages over smokers for controlling their weight.
The most obvious advantage is that not smoking allows a person to do more physical activities, burning off fat in the process. When smoking, exercise is tiresome, painful and for some, impossible. But with the improvement in breathing and cardiovascular fitness accompanying smoking cessation, exercise can become a regular routine in the ex-smokers lifestyle. And while dieting may be difficult at first, ex-smokers should realize that if they had the capability of breaking free from cigarettes, they could also decrease the amount they eat. It is simply a matter of using the same determination initially used to quit smoking.
So, the next time you look in the mirror or step on a scale and feel that you are unhappy with your weight, start taking some sensible steps to deal with it. Become active, eat lower calorie, nutritious foods, and pat yourself on the back for once again taking control of your life. Not only will you lose weight, look and feel better, but you would have done it all without smoking. With that knowledge you should be extra proud. Diet, exercise and - NEVER TAKE ANOTHER PUFF!
Eating is more complicated. You will have to eat the rest of your life. When are you eating a little more than you should? A little more is a difficult concept. If you eat a little more once, it is no big deal. If you eat a little more every day, there is a problem. An example, let's say as a "reward" for not smoking, you have one extra cookie, say about 100 calories. Weight yourself at the end of that day and nothing would have happened. Now lets say you do this every day for a week. Weigh yourself at the end of the week and you probably still won't notice any difference. You would have consumed 700 calories, but basically it's not noticeable. If you do it for a month, you may have increased the scale weight by almost a pound. Now you would have consumed about 3,000 calories, and 3,500 calories is about a pound of fat. But think about this too, if you step on a scale one-month to the next and had altered a pound, that would be no grounds for panic. A pound, that can be scale error. Heck, you can step on a scale a couple of times a day and seem to vary a pound. So the pattern of the extra cookie still seems unimportant.
Now the catch. If you continue this pattern of one seemingly harmless cookie for a year, 10.4 pounds of fat will be the result and if you don't catch on after that and do it for 10 years, 104 pounds of fat is the outcome! 104 pounds from the addition of one cookie a day!
Here is where substituting food becomes treacherous. You do it with the idea that it is only for the early days of quitting but it often is extended to it's own pattern. One cookie or 100 calories is probably minimal compared to the number of actual calories substituted by many people.
If you eat a little more, you can exercise to offset the difference. But you must be realistic about how much exercise is needed to offset caloric intake. You have to exercise quite a bit to burn off a relatively small amount of food.
An example, let's say you sit down at a feast. You start out with a drink before dinner. Next you have a dinner roll or two with a little butter. Followed by a salad, with croutons and a teaspoon of salad dressing. Now the main course, meats, potatoes, vegetable with cheese sauces, another helping of meat to top it off. You're pretty full now, better stop. Oh, but wait, dessert is being served. You have a pie ala mode. Boy you are stuffed now. Almost sick to your stomach in fact. You know what you decide to do? You are going out for a walk. You actually drag yourself outside and walk for 20 minutes. Your hope may be to burn off the meal. In fact, you will burn off the teaspoon salad dressing. You won't touch the calories of the appetizers, drinks, main course or dessert. You will burn the equivalent of the salad dressing. I am not saying don't go for the walk. I am saying don't eat food with a shovel, go for a short walk and expect to rectify the meal.
OK, now what's the upside here. Basically, making a little change can cause a significant weight alteration. But this process works in reverse too. If you "deprive" yourself of a cookie daily, and go for a walk, weigh your self at the end of a week and see no change, you get discouraged. If you are patient and weigh yourself at the end of the month and lose a couple of pounds, you can be furious. A couple of pounds after all that deprivation and work, what's the point? Again, even a couple of pounds could be scale error. But if you stick with it even though it seems initially futile, over the year you could lose 20 pounds and likely keep it off. Again, a little change adds up to a big difference over a lifetime. Patience is crucial. You are not starving yourself or working yourself to exhaustion, just not taking one food item and a simple 20-minute walk. Slow, but constant. By making a small modification to daily eating patterns and sticking with it over the long term, you can lose significant weight.
Take simple steps here to alter the daily patterns. A little less food, a little more activity. The reward is not immediately obvious but will be with time. Improved health, self-esteem, just overall feeling of well being. You can do this as an ex-smoker, but you must prove it to yourself. But again be patient. Quitting smoking had great benefits that are often immediately felt. Weight control efforts are a little harder to see and feel initially, but the rewards will be forth coming with time. So start today off right, watch what you eat and Never Take Another Puff!
Joel
From http://www.whyquit.com/whyquit/BryanLeeCurtis.html
Oct 21 07 4:30 PM
From the string Life goes on without smoking:
It is important for all people who quit smoking to recognize that life goes on without smoking. Over time after a person quits smoking there will be changes: medical, psychological, professional, economic, life roles, relationships, etc. What is important to recognize though is that most of these changes would have occurred whether you had quit smoking or not or even whether or not you ever smoked. As many of my friends are now in their mid-forties and fifties, it is amazing how we share stories of new ailments and new medications being introduced into our lives. Some of these people had quit smoking decades ago, some of them never smoked. None of the ex-smokers bring up a new disorder and say or think to themselves that it must be happening now because they quit smoking ten or twenty years ago. It would be like a person who never smoked who finds out they now have high blood pressure and then thinks to him or herself that it must be because he or she stopped using some product twenty years ago. As we age things happen-it is just the way things go.
If a person gets diagnosed with a smoking related ailment like emphysema or lung cancer years or decades after quitting it is likely that their mind is shifted to think about their past smoking. But medical and psychological conditions that are experienced by smokers and non-smokers alike, the concept of smoking or quitting should not be considered a primary focus anymore.
Smoking did not cause everything. It causes a whole lot of things though and many things that it does not cause, it makes worse. On the same token, quitting does not cause everything. Quitting is usually accompanied with many repairs, but there are also some adjustments (see Medication adjustments) that go on that may need a partnership with your physicians to get worked out.
My general rule of advice is whatever happens the first few days of a quit, whether it is physical or psychological reactions, blame it on not smoking. It is probably the cause of most early quit reactions. If it is a symptom to a condition that could be life threatening, such as severe chest pains or signs or symptoms of a stroke-contact your doctor immediately. While it is probably nothing and just a side effect of quitting, in the long shot that it is something else coincidentally happening the week you are quitting, you need to get it checked out.
Things happening weeks, months, years or decades after your quits though should not ever be assumed to be a quit smoking reaction. It is life going on without smoking. Some of these things may trigger smoking thoughts-especially if they are similar to conditions you did have in the past when you were a smoker. The situation now is a first time experience with a prior feeling where smoking was integrates thus creating smoking thoughts. But even in this case, the condition is creating a smoking thought, it is not that your smoking memories or your smoking past is creating the condition.
Life goes on without smoking. It is likely to go on longer and it is likely that you will be healthier at each and every stage than you would have been if you had continued smoking. Your life will continue to stay better and likely last long longer as long as you always remember to never take another puff!
Oct 21 07 4:34 PM
This concept doesn't only apply to physical symptoms. There are times where people have emotional issues stemming from family problems, work problems, actual organically based mental illnesses, etc, who will write on the board that they are having overwhelming emotional feelings. Then other people will weigh in saying that they had problems at one time or another when quitting but it got better.
While it may be true that the person offering the advice was just having a reaction to smoking cessation, it may not be true for the person writing now as to his or her mental anguish. Giving the person the idea that it is automatically going to get better when the problem may not be simply from not smoking may be doing the person a real disservice. It may prevent the individual from seeking the real professional help he or she may in fact need for problems that were not in fact quit related.
As it says in the string How do I deal with....
A quit smoking site is not the place to solve major life traumas. A quit smoking site may be the best site to deal with smoking, depending on the site, and there may be some other specialized sites that are helpful in dealing with other traumas too, but often people on an Internet sites may not have the best training or understanding or be the best prepared for dealing with the specific problem at hand. You may find people who really want to help but who may not in fact be the best people to deal with the problem you are facing.
If a member encounters real life tragedies they should seek help from professionals. Who would you call if your car breaks down? Would you call a friend who has no particular knowledge of car repairs and whose own car is currently broken down too. This person cannot help you fix your car and cannot even at this point in time offer you a ride. If your car breaks down you call a mechanic. If your computer suddenly dies you don't call a friend whose computer also died and has not been able to get it going again. If your home plumbing explodes you don't get right on the Internet and waste time chatting on a bulletin board about how bad everything smells without first calling a plumber to actually fix the problem. If your house all of sudden starts on fire you don't go to the Internet and compare notes with others who may have lived through a fire experience--you call the fire department. If someone breaks into your home while you are still there you don't go to the Internet to talk out your fears. You either call the police or try to escape from your home. If you are experiencing sudden chest pains or maybe all of a sudden lose vision in one eye you shouldn't spend time looking up symptoms on the Internet or chatting with others who may have had a similar experience at one time, you call for paramedics.
If something emotionally big is happening in your life and you find yourself spinning out or control you need to seek professional help too. It may mean calling your doctor, a professionally sanctioned crisis hotline in your town who can offer real live support, going to a local emergency room, calling 911 or what ever emergency number is set up in your area by local authorities, depending on the severity of the problem and how fast you can get action.
This list could have gone on but hopefully everyone gets the point here. If you ever find yourself in a medical or psychological crisis seek professional assistance, meaning, seek a professional in the arena of the specific problem you are encountering.
Again, depending on the problem you are facing there are professionals who can help. There are professional mechanics, plumbers, firemen, police, paramedics, crisis counselors, psychologists and physicians. Deal with emergencies head on when they occur. At the same time stay focused on the fact that whatever the problem, taking a cigarette will not help it.
Once you have dealt with the crisis, and your full attention is not needed to get out of the immediate danger, then is the time to come to a quit smoking site and reinforce your resolve to stay smoke free, either by reading or maybe even posting. Hopefully if you come back in to post, the essence of the post will be saying how you have proved to yourself once again that even under the most extreme of circumstances that you are able to stay smoke free by just sticking to your commitment that no matter what else is going on around you that you still know to never take another puff!
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