SMOKING WEIGHT MANAGEMENT

One of the most frequently used excuses for starting smoking again goes something like this: “Oh, I was doing ever so well, but my weight just soared and I had to start smoking again before I looked like a beached whale.”

Rubbish! As you now know, there is never any valid reason to resume smoking. Weight gain may occasionally be an issue, but it is certainly a resolvable issue.

Just because you stop smoking, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you will put on weight. There are two factors to be considered here. First of all your metabolism. It has been reported that a for a minority of individuals, stopping smoking can lead to a small change in their metabolic rate. What this means in layman’s terms is that a little more of the food you eat is converted into fat and stored on your body. This is obviously not good news for you if you are concerned about weight gain, but it is not as bad as it might at first appear. For a start, this phenomenon only occurs in a minority of individuals, and furthermore the changed metabolic rate is normally quite small. Here is the main reason that some people put on weight when they stop smoking:

NICOTINE WITHDRAWAL PRODUCES FEELINGS SIMILAR TO HUNGER!

Hunger is another of those feelings that is under the control of your little ‘voice’ and it knows, of course, that the solution to the pain of hunger is to eat. Lets look at another conscious / unconscious dialogue:

U: (having felt the pain of withdrawal) “Have a smoke”

C: “No I have stopped smoking.”

U: “Look, I am absolutely gasping, have a smoke for goodness sake!”

C: “No chance, I am staying stopped”

U: (realising that for the time being it is not going to win, starts to look for alternative pain relieving strategies.)

“Mmmm… this feels very like being hungry, perhaps food will take away the discomfort - I’ll have something to eat.”

C: (Not having made any resolutions at all with regards to eating, agrees immediately) “OK.”

Off you go to the fridge, only to find that after stuffing yourself you still have the feeling of withdrawal, which as you know, feels

very similar to hunger. Your unconscious is still not happy of course and so the whole process starts over again:

Pain
Eat
Still pain
Eat again
Still pain
Eat again

And that’s the way it goes, on and on, until you find yourself the size of a baby elephant.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a simple three part formula that determines whether or not you put on weight and it is this:

1 If you consume more calories than you burn off, then you will put on weight.

2 If you consume the same amount of calories that you burn off then your weight will remain constant.

3 If you consume less calories than you burn off you will lose weight. Now with this knowledge to hand it becomes easy to formulate a plan that will allow you to indulge (if you want to) in filling your stomach when you feel the pain of withdrawal, without having to suffer the end result of putting on more weight.

This strategy can take one of two basic forms:

1 Eat more food but without consuming additional calories, or:

2 Increase the amount of calories that you burn off each day.

Let’s look at strategy 1 first.

You are going to want to eat a lot more, particularly in the early days, so in order to do this without putting on any weight you have to increase the amount of food you eat in terms of volume, yet still maintain roughly the same calorific intake. This is not as difficult to achieve as it sounds. If you agree to modify your diet from the moment you stop smoking, not only will you find it possible to maintain your normal weight, but you are almost certainly going to be benefiting nutritionally. This is because, (unless you are already particularly fussy about eating healthily) you are going to improve your diet enormously by introducing plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and by cutting down significantly on your fat intake.

Below you will find a list of common foods and their fat and calorific values. All you have to do is to swap foods that you now eat regularly with a high calorific / fat content for those with a low (or at least lower) value.

Before looking at the food lists, bear in mind these few simple rules. Adherence to them will make a significant difference to your overall fat, and subsequently calorie, consumption.

Don’t eat any fried foods. (Deep or shallow fried.) Boil, poach, bake or grill instead.

Don’t eat out for a few weeks. (A typical Indian or Chinese take away for example, can easily contain over 2,000 calories!)

Avoid sweets and sugar based treats. (cakes, buns, soft drinks etc.
Check the nutritional labels on all packaged foods and avoid any that are high in fat (i.e. 10 per cent or more) Use your favourite fruits and vegetables as comfort foods, as most fruit and vegetables are OK in terms of fat and calories. (Check them against the following lists).
Drink plenty of water. This is important for two reasons - first, it helps to detoxify you by flushing the poisons from your system. This will include the removal of nicotine from your body. Second, drinking plenty of water will take away some of your feelings of hunger and therefore make it easier for you to eat less, and still feel full up.

Study this list of common foods and choose an assortment that you like. Substitute some of your usual higher fat foods for the foods that you have selected from the list below. Check that you are making a significant calorie difference by ensuring that your new choices of food have a lower calorific value than the ones you have swapped them for.

Remember, this food watching business is only necessary if you are one of those people who find themselves constantly at the fridge door when stopping smoking!