Question for Ex-Smokers

senordingdong

I'd like to ask a question to anybody here that has quit smoking.

When you did, did you find yourself constantly eating....and eating and eating....?

Captain Trips

senordingdong wrote:

I'd like to ask a question to anybody here that has quit smoking.

When you did, did you find yourself constantly eating....and eating and eating....?

Yes very much.

I recommend eating apples or other fruit however.

When you hit 20 apples a day problems start as you cna no longer take a ****. BUT, avoid junk food. Stick to fruit to compensate and apples make you feel full and so put you off snacking.

Uthur

after giving up - she ate all around her. I think she just needed something
to do with her hands/mouth. She started chewing gum and that seemed
to work pretty well - she lost the weight again.

Banjo013

This one really confuses me .... I'm a smoker who used to be an ex-smoker !!!

When I gave up (2 years ago for 4 months) I don't think I started eating any more than normal. Generally I'm the type who doesn't particularly like food or the act of eating .... it's there to keep me from starving to death would be my opinion.

However I did gain about a stone .... can't really figure it out. Had to change all my shirts and trousers cause they didn't fit any more - went from being the 32" waist I was all my life to being a 36" waist.

However, when I went back on the fags, again my eating habits didn't change - however the stone dropped right back off again .... I've now moved back into all my old clothes again.

All a mystery to me - unless I was sleepwalking and eating all round me during the night while I was off them !

Uthur

Banjo013 wrote:

When I gave up (2 years ago for 4 months) I don't think I started eating any more than normal. Generally I'm the type who doesn't particularly like food or the act of eating .... it's there to keep me from starving to death would be my opinion.

However I did gain about a stone .... can't really figure it out. Had to change all my shirts and trousers cause they didn't fit any more - went from being the 32" waist I was all my life to being a 36" waist.

I think I know the answer. I read before that smoking speeds up your
metabolism. When you stop smoking it returns to normal and so really
you should eat less than you did when you were a smoker to compensate
for the fact that you are burning calories slower.

WhiteWashMan

yeah, ive quit twice now, and i put on a shed load of weight both times.
i am curently still trying to work it off.

nicotine is an appetite supressant, so you tend to eat a lot less when you smoke. im also not sure about it speeding up your metabolism, perhaps it does.

i think the problem is that instead of giving up smoking, what they do is they transfer the habit from smoking a cigarette, to eating something. its not really giving anything up, just transferal of a bad habit.
having said that, i didnt put on that much. probably a couple of pounds

but im now a happy non smoker again

The Clown Man

Haha yea I remember going from 1 meal a day to about 4! And I'd eat waaaaaay more than I thought I could actually physically fit just trying to suppress my insatiable appetite. And then eat everyone elses leftovers. I put on 3 stone but luckily i was 6'1 and 10 1/2 st before so I actually just went to a normal weight!

But it's OK now cause thanks to the smoking ban I'm back smoking again. And now I'm 12 st and reckon if I give up again, well, 15 st is too much ...

gobby

senordingdong wrote:

I'd like to ask a question to anybody here that has quit smoking.

When you did, did you find yourself constantly eating....and eating and eating....?

Not really. Dont have a huge appetite anyways. I started chewing a lot of chewing gum. Did the trick for me!

garthv

Hmm gum eh?
I quit about 3 weeks ago and im constantly eating. Goddamn ciggarettes!

windowgazer

As someone mentioned above... Metabolism is the culprit here. Smoking speeds it up and you can burn about 200 calroies per day just smoking.
So, when you stop, your metabolism remains steady and you don't burn off those extra calories. When I gave up I found that giving my metabolism a kick start in the morning helped combat this. Warm boiled water and juice of half a lemon with brekkie helped.
Taking up a sport/excercising also helped me to give up because I never liked to smoke before a session and never liked to have one after because it made me feel good.

Bottle_of_Smoke

One other thing is food tastes better because your taste buds aren't being burned,

Green tea also speeds up metabolism

DonkeyStyle \o/

http://quitsmoking.about.com/od/nicotine/a/nicotineeffects.htm wrote:

Nicotine and Insulin
It is thought that nicotine inhibits the release of the hormone insulin, which is responsible for removing excess sugar from a person's blood. The result can be that the smoker is slightly hyperglycemic, meaning they have more sugar in their blood than usual. High blood sugar acts as an appetite suppressant, which may be why smokers think their cigarettes reduce hunger. In the long run though, nicotine in the bloodstream increases the "bad" LDL cholesterol, which is thought to clog and harden arteries. That in turn will step up the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Lots more interesting stuff on that page... I also read that on howstuffworks.com.

Uthur

How long was it before you noticed you were hungrier? My sister just gave
up (two weeks in now) - but she isn't feeling unusually hungry yet.

doonothing

i didnt really feel hungrier...i just kept eating! i must've had 3 meals a day for about 2 weeks before i discovered gum....

senordingdong

I'm off about three weeks now...cold turkey. (I don't believe in all that 'cutting down' hype)

But I've been experiencing everyhting that everyone here has said.
After the first two days, I noticed I was snacking loads, aswell as eating all the meals.
The obivous end result is the weight gain and now I feel like throwing up every evening from eating so much through out the day.
The catch with me was, I didn't feel at all hungrier, I just feel like eating, and eating and eating.
It's just starting to concern me, but I'll try the fruit idea, thanks Capt. Tripps.

Captain Trips

senordingdong wrote:

The catch with me was, I didn't feel at all hungrier, I just feel like eating, and eating and eating.
It's just starting to concern me, but I'll try the fruit idea, thanks Capt. Tripps.

It's not that you're actually hungry as yeah people say smoking is an appetite suppressant, etc., but that's minimal as you can get nictoine from gum and patches and it doesn't suppress appetite.

What is far more likely is it feeds an oral fixation and you get the physical habit of putting something in your mouth regularly. Some people have no prob quitting and don't overeat and there is some new reserch showing how there is possibly a genetic marker for whether quitting is easy or hard for you and just how you are hooked.

I guess it's maybe identifying where and when and what situations you smoke and go at them one by one.

Chucky the tree

lolly pops where a big help for me.