Quit Smoking Now

Most smokers entertain the dream of quitting smoking, but all are afraid to commit to quit smoking. They are afraid of many things, but mostly afraid that they will fail at quitting smoking. To quit smoking, there are certain things that you should know that will enhance you chances of being successful at quitting smoking, but also make the whole quitting process easier.

You must know and believe that you, personally, are fully able to quit smoking, like millions of Americans do every year. There is nothing special about your personal addiction to nicotine that makes it so that it is impossible for you to quit smoking. Just knowing this irrefutable fact will make everything much easier.

When you finally decide to quit smoking, you must pick a quit smoking date and stick with it. No excuses, no exceptions. No matter which method you choose to quit smoking, and especially if you use nicotine replacement therapy, you must not smoke cigarettes after your quit smoking date.

You must know that you will experience nicotine cravings. These cravings are common to those who quit smoking, but they are not nearly as bad as you think, as long as your mind it made up that you are actually quitting smoking cigarettes! Just hang in there, change your mind by munching on a low-calorie snack or a drink of water, and it will be gone in a few minutes.

If you quit smoking intelligently, and do not gorge yourself with food at every occasion, you will not gain weight. The idea that you will gain weight when you quit smoking is ridiculous. Just stick to your low-calorie snacks and you will be a thin non-smoker.

When you quit smoking, be prepared to have a lot of energy to spend! You may find that you want to exercise more, perhaps walk or even practice a sport! Jump on these occasions while they pass, and you will exchange a soul-sucking and stamina-destroying habit for one that will enhance your quality of life more than you can possibly imagine!

Smoking has so many downfalls varying from the smell to deadly diseases. We know and understand the risk and even attempt quitting smoking because of them. Many ex-smokers fail to adapt to a smoke-free life. So many of us give in to the smoking cravings early on in order to avoid too much weight gain.

How does smoking cigarettes control one’s weight?

The number one reason why smoking tends to keep people thin is that it kills your taste buds. We get a lot of pleasure and enjoyment from smelling and tasting food. After the first cigarette, your taste buds start to die. This is often why you will see smokers over seasoning their food. Even then, it is not as enjoyable. Imagine eating plain tasteless oatmeal or some other bland food each and everyday. There is evidence to show that the taste buds do not all come back once you quit smoking. Some researchers suggest that the loss of taste has a physiological component where it may actually change the connections to your brain.

The second reason that smoking maintains weight is that when you inhale nicotine, it acts as an appetite suppressant. When you smoke, the chemicals (over 500 of them, by the way) you inhale tricks the pleasure center of the brain. Instead of filling your body with healthy nutrients that your body needs, you put in chemicals that alter your natural brain chemistry and make you feel satisfied and full.

Eating less is much easier when you cannot taste what you are eating. Imagine having a big plate of spaghetti or your favourite dish. It is a lot harder to walk away when you are full if you cannot fully appreciate all the different flavour in your mouth. After I quit smoking and realised all the real flavour as was missing out on, I never wanted to deny myself the pleasure of the flavours I rediscover after becoming smoke-free.

By now, everyone should know that smoking cigarettes, or any tobacco product, is very unhealthy and damaging to your body in the long run, and that looking to quit smoking is the only reasonable thing to do. But what does smoking cigarettes do to your body, really? You know cigarettes cause, or greatly aggravate heart disease, as well as a number of lung ailments, but what, and how?

Smoking cigarettes hardens the walls of the main arteries that bring blood to and from your heart. This makes them more fragile and likely to cause complications, and also heightens your risks of heart attack. Moreover, ingesting poisonous smoke, i.e. tobacco smoke, reduces the amount of oxygen that your red blood cells can carry to your muscles and organs, making them tire more quickly and contributing to a general sense of lack of fitness.

As far as your lungs go, every long term smoker knows that his or her lungs take the brunt of the assault of cigarettes. If you’ve been coughing up brown or black lung oysters (sorry about the image) then you know what cigarette smoke is doing to your lungs. Over time, your lung capacity will degrade, and eventually (a whopping 50% chance!) you will develop one or several deadly lung ailments, such as emphysema, lung cancer, throat cancer, and more.

None of this is good for you, and studies show that 50% of smokers will die from their habit. If you quit smoking now, your chances of developing any of these conditions drop dramatically, and you will practically be back to the odds of a non-smoker a short 10 years after quitting smoking.

If you’ve ever considered the option to quit smoking instead of continuing to poison yourself, I heartily encourage you to carry through, using whatever method works for you. Your life, and more importantly your quality of life are at stake.

Whatever anyone else says, the right time to quit smoking is now. There really is no alternative, although I know from personal experience that you will try to convince you of a million excuses why you should not quit smoking now, why some other time would be a better time to quit smoking.

If you are asking yourself whether now is the right time to quit smoking, then it is. It means that you have, in your mind, decided to make a positive change in your life, a change away from poison, loss of stamina, bad breath, disease and overall grossness.

When the decision is taken to quit smoking, you must pick a date and stick to it. It really doesn’t matter if your quit smoking date is tomorrow of three months from now. What counts is that once the decision is made, it is irrevocable. I can guarantee you that the closer you get to your quit smoking date, the more the little nicotine devil in your head will whisper to you that it is not the right time, maybe you should push off the date and put off your life-changing event.

If you let him decide the course of your life, there will never be a right time to quit smoking. Winter will be too cold, summer too hot and work too stressful to stop smoking. All those things will always be the case, and a thousand others. You must ignore the nico-demon in your head and do the logical thing: quit smoking as soon as possible, at the time of your choosing.

The right time to quit smoking is whenever you decide that you have had enough. Don’t let yourself be convinced otherwise, and you will live a longer, happier and more active life, free of the crushing shackles of cigarettes.