quitting smoking. how did you do manage to stay smoke free?

[kelemvor]

I quit 12 years ago "cold turkey". It was tough, and I still occasionally but rarely crave one. I know many ex smokers can't stand the smell of cigarettes but I don't dislike it. I do dislike the smell of clothes after they've been exposed to smoke. If I go out to a bar or some other establishment which has smoking, my clothes go straight into the washer when I get home.

When I first started trying to quit, I tried the gum and the patches. The gum tasted awful. The patches made me sick. Several months later I did the cold turkey thing. You've definitely got to find something to do when you're craving that will take your mind off things. I started drinking a lot of soda. Bad idea, gained a lot of weight. Find something with fewer empty calories to fill that craving. It might also help to change up your daily routine.


Maybe put the money you'd have spent on smokes into a jar. They're what $5 or so a pack these days? That's a almost two 2 tank trips a month in my area.

 

[MNJoe]

In 6 days I will have been smoke free for 15 years. I could quit for a day or two anytime, but to quit for good was tough, and I mean really tough. I used Zyban and the patch and then it still took 3 attempts. Once you give in, you have to start quitting all over again, realizing that kept me from giving in and enduring the Nic Fit. They will pass. The longer you have gone without a smoke, the less severe they get and the less often you have one. I am talking over a long time, like years, but the first month was the hardest, it continues to get easier as time passes. I had occasional cravings for years. I would get in my vehicle, start driving and my cigarette lighter would pop out, I wouldn't remember pushing it in, just habit. I would reach for my shirt pocket without thinking about it, find the pocket empty, no smokes. You have got to want to quit, it will not just happen. My best advice is to not give in to the addiction and find something that takes your mind off of it. (I don't think Zyban is used anymore, I felt really strange while on it, I knew a woman that used it and had to stop, she would just bust out crying at anything, I will say it did suppress the addiction though)

I feel great now. Lungs are clear. I exercise regularly. Of course save money.

Cigarettes do nothing positive for you. It is a stinky, inconvenient, expensive habit that will rob you of your good health!!

 

[fbk]

They're what $5 or so a pack these days? That's a almost two 2 tank trips a month in my area.

Try $20/pack here. Thats $600 a month for a pack a day smoker, you could buy your own boat!

 

[tracydr]

I quit 12 years ago "cold turkey". It was tough, and I still occasionally but rarely crave one. I know many ex smokers can't stand the smell of cigarettes but I don't dislike it. I do dislike the smell of clothes after they've been exposed to smoke. If I go out to a bar or some other establishment which has smoking, my clothes go straight into the washer when I get home.

When I first started trying to quit, I tried the gum and the patches. The gum tasted awful. The patches made me sick. Several months later I did the cold turkey thing. You've definitely got to find something to do when you're craving that will take your mind off things. I started drinking a lot of soda. Bad idea, gained a lot of weight. Find something with fewer empty calories to fill that craving. It might also help to change up your daily routine.


Maybe put the money you'd have spent on smokes into a jar. They're what $5 or so a pack these days? That's a almost two 2 tank trips a month in my area.

What I really want to know is how you lost your weight.

 

[Diver0001]

What I really want to know is how you lost your weight.

Are we still talking about addictions?

Losing weight is just as easy as gaining weight.

Every diet, every trick, every approach.... everything you have ever heard about losing weight can be summarized as follows:

1) limit caloric intake to slightly less than your daily need
2) exercise

Re: #1, the only thing that works and the only thing that is required is to actually keep track of what you're eating. You have to make a journal.

Keeping the weight off can be summarized as follows:

1) eat right (healthy foods, small portions, only when hungry)
2) exercise

I would write a book about it but nobody is going to buy a book that's only 2 paragraphs long. The simple fact is, however, that you only need 2 paragraphs to explain everything you ever need to know about achieving and maintaining a normal body weight.

At least the way I see it.

R..

 

[vladimir]

Are we still talking about addictions?

Losing weight is just as easy as gaining weight.

Every diet, every trick, every approach.... everything you have ever heard about losing weight can be summarized as follows:

1) limit caloric intake to slightly less than your daily need
2) exercise

Re: #1, the only thing that works and the only thing that is required is to actually keep track of what you're eating. You have to make a journal.

Keeping the weight off can be summarized as follows:

1) eat right (healthy foods, small portions, only when hungry)
2) exercise

I would write a book about it but nobody is going to buy a book that's only 2 paragraphs long. The simple fact is, however, that you only need 2 paragraphs to explain everything you ever need to know about achieving and maintaining a normal body weight.

At least the way I see it.

R..

Your book would inaccurate, if the best scientific understanding is to be believed. Losing weight is actually much more difficult than gaining weight for most people who have passed a certain threshold (about 10% overweight). This is difficult for people to accept.

The slim population clings to a sense of superiority and judges the fat and weak-willed. Those few who have successfully lost weight and kept it off are even worse. Just by suggesting that weight loss is difficult, I will be accused of making excuses (I am not fat, by the way). I have posted some of the scientific evidence in a thread I started--it's easy to find for anybody interested. What I found in that thread was that people were more interested in scolding fat people than in educating themselves.

You can lose weight by burning more calories than you consume, of course. It's just a lot harder for fat people. Their bodies are marvelously efficient at conserving energy (and fat).

 

[SeaHorse81]

If you think you can't quit smoking, you can immediately disprove yourself by asking yourself the following question:

At what price point would you simply refuse to keep buying cigarettes? Everybody has one. Yours might be quite high, but you still have one. That shows you that it is possible to make that cognitive shift that supports truly walking away from an addiction. It doesn't make it easy, but it makes it possible.

On the subject of weight loss, I have to disagree a bit with Diver0001. It turns out that for a great many people, overeating has all the characteristics of an addiction. "Just say no" doesn't work any better for those people than it did for the alcoholics and drug addicts, and those who think that should work just don't understand the reality of it. It's hard to find an overweight person that is perfectly happy with how they are; most are quite tormented. The fact that they remain out of control while hating themselves for it is enough to tell you there's something more complicated going on, because who would keep themselves in that miserable position by choice? We're also learning that once a person gets past a certain point in overweight (unknown exactly when this occurs -- probably different for each individual), they physically change such that weight management will for them be forever different and more difficult.

For example, say you and I are physically identical and each weigh 150#. I always weighed that while you weigh it now after having come down from 300#. For the rest of our lives, I will be able to eat more and exercise way less than you need to, in order to maintain the exact same weight. It's a bitter after effect of significant overweight that we didn't start understanding until fairly recently. For anyone who is noting the incremental increase in your weight, comforting yourself that you'll get it all off someday when you're ready, be forewarned. The further it goes, the harder it is to get it back, so don't wait. Don't do the dumb gimmicky diet thing either, because that just abuses your body more. Weight loss has to be undertaken with moderate means that care for the body every step of the way as you recalibrate your habits toward the patterns for which your body is designed. Until then, you'll just keep doing the maddening yo-yo thing.

I know these things because I work with overeaters for a living, on exactly these issues. If anyone wants a thread on it, please start one and let me know; I'd be happy to contribute anything I can.

 

[Diver0001]

Your book would inaccurate, if the best scientific understanding is to be believed. Losing weight is actually much more difficult than gaining weight for most people who have passed a certain threshold (about 10% overweight). This is difficult for people to accept.

The slim population clings to a sense of superiority and judges the fat and weak-willed. Those few who have successfully lost weight and kept it off are even worse. Just by suggesting that weight loss is difficult, I will be accused of making excuses (I am not fat, by the way). I have posted some of the scientific evidence in a thread I started--it's easy to find for anybody interested. What I found in that thread was that people were more interested in scolding fat people than in educating themselves.

You can lose weight by burning more calories than you consume, of course. It's just a lot harder for fat people. Their bodies are marvelously efficient at conserving energy (and fat).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's *easy*. If it were easy then the only people who would be fat would be those who couldn't care less...obviously that's not the case.

What I'm saying is that no matter who you are, the principle to losing weight is simply to reduce calories and exercise. All (effective) diets in the world say the same thing. All diets that do not include these things are simply bottled snake oil and not a single one of them works (or are too unhealthy to be adopted as a life style).

I know that not everyone's metabolism is the same. We're not machines. I know that some people's bodies are much more efficient at preserving and "storing" energy than others. Again, we are not machines. The principle is still identical, however. You need to find out what you need as a minimum amount of calories per day and to eat just less than that and to exercise. Getting it dialed in for YOUR body is part of the process initially, because you can't just look up on the internet how many calories you need. It's a bit like a buoyancy check. You have to "experience" the balancing point by starting with a rule of thumb and making incremental adjustments until you find the fulcrum. And like a buoyancy check you can't just do it once. As you lose weight you'll need to dial in again (and again) as you go.

The other universal truth is that exercise is essential. Calorie reduced diets can slow down your metabolism and exercise ensures that the oven stays hot enough. You can do one or the other (reduce calories or exercise more) but by themselves they are no where near as effective as when you do both.

Again, the mechanics of it are universal and quite easy to follow. The difficulty is in execution. People who are dieting have to view their bodies as athletes do. They have to measure and record everything they put into it and what the results are. Where most people fail at diets is that the amount of "administration" required, especially when trying to make it fit in a busy life style. My impression, moreover, is that if you are NOT keeping a detailed journal then you are not dieting. You are pretending to diet and kidding yourself.

Losing weight and keeping it off is all about accounting; simple, straight forward keeping of an accurate "cheque book" of what goes in and what the results were. People make it way more complicated than that in their minds, but it's just not.

R..

 

[kelemvor]

What I really want to know is how you lost your weight.

Eventually, lap band surgery. The result for sodas? Instant pain/nausea.

Diving helps to some degree. Having something you really want to do that benefits greatly from physical fitness is a major boon.

---------- Post added December 5th, 2013 at 03:53 PM ----------

Are we still talking about addictions?

Losing weight is just as easy as gaining weight.

Every diet, every trick, every approach.... everything you have ever heard about losing weight can be summarized as follows:

1) limit caloric intake to slightly less than your daily need
2) exercise

I'd liken that to saying all there is to diving is keep breathing and don't drown. Yes, that's true but it's a gross oversimplification.

 

[Diver0001]

that's true but it's a gross oversimplification.

Not at all. If you go and buy 10 books about losing weight and read them then the connecting thread through all of them is that you have to limit calories and exercise.

All 10 of those books will have different approaches to HOW they see you achieving that, but WHAT you need to do doesn't change one iota.

The whole weight-loss industry revolves around one big lie... and that's the lie that the HOW is the most important thing. It's not. If you want to keep your eyes on the prize then the WHAT is the thing you can't lose sight of.

R..