Quitting smoking without piling on the pounds

According to a survey conducted by Slimming World, smokers will often delay quitting for around seven years purely because they’re afraid of getting fat.

If this is what’s stopping you from quitting, it’s time to stop giving yourself excuses. Quitting smoking isn’t about replacing the habit, it’s about changing your mindset to your health. If you quit smoking, you will live for longer, it’s a simple as that and there are plenty of other options instead of eating to overcome your addiction.

Some Fast & Hard Facts:

• Smoking numbs your appetite, because of the nicotine. When you stop smoking, not only will you have a sharper sense of smell and taste again, especially to bitter flavours, but you’ll be hungrier. This new found hunger takes around a week to subside, it’s not long, so hang on in there.
• Due to the effects that nicotine has on your central nervous system, smoking tends to speed up your metabolism, helping you to digest food more efficiently and in theory, keep your weight down. When you stop, it’s thought that you need to either burn an extra 250 calories a day by being active or just cut your meals down slightly.
• When you quit smoking, just after two weeks you’ll feel like a new person. You will have more energy, fewer illnesses and feel more active. Because of this, you’re likely to want to move more, meaning you should get into a way better shape than you were as a smoker.
• Your tongue and nose will finally be clear of all those nasty chemicals when you quit smoking, get ready to find a whole new array of flavours in your food and notes in your wine.
• Smoking impairs your body’s ability to absorb key vitamins and nutrients. If you have poor quality hair and nails, it’s probably because you aren’t getting enough calcium, or vitamins C and D. When you quit, you’ll have glossy hair, stronger nails and bones and get that healthy glow back.
• The higher blood pressure that can be caused by smoking is due to the increased build-up of fatty deposits. This means that your blood vessels become narrower and even blocked causing you to have poor circulation. Within 20 minutes of quitting smoking, your blood pressure will become steadier and within just one year, the chance of you suffering from a heart attack is reduced by half.

So there you have it, it’s not quitting that makes you fat, it’s eating but the effect of stopping smoking work so quickly that if you just give yourself a week, you’re in the safety zone and onto a winner.