Smoking for Weightloss

Smoking for weightloss is a dumb idea. I have met a few grossly overweight women who tell me that they are smoking to keep their weight down. Well, it obviously wasn't working, so why continue adding to their risk of an early death?

Smoking may actually help reduce these folks' weight, but only when they go into chemotherapy for the lung cancer or other cancers it will eventually cause. Chemo is very effective at dropping the pounds, I hear.

I am embarrassed to admit that I smoked for several years. The good thing I learned from that experience is that it IS possible to quit smoking this addictive drug. Going through the withdrawal phase was difficult but it taught me that, if you persist, you will succeed. If you give in and have that "one more cigarette" that you crave, you will be strengthening the chains of your addiction.

Forty years later, you may still be putting off quitting until you have one more cigarette.

I'll tell you my tips for quitting smoking on another page. This page is about "Just doing it." The "why" that may motivate you.

Smoking and weight loss have a lot in common. In both of them, you either become a stronger person by finding a way to succeed or you become weaker by giving in.

All you have to do is to wait out the craving and replace whichever activity -- either smoking or eating foods that make you fat -- with a healthy alternative. For me, making a habit of daily jogging both took the edge off my nerves and installed a habit that was incompatible with smoking.

I chose to be able to climb mountains easily over the "pleasure" of smoking. That pleasure only comes from relieving the withdrawal pains caused by nicotine. Why get started?

You can't be thoroughly happy with yourself if you know that a stupid habit like smoking has defeated you.

The same goes for those who have tried many silly temporary diets to lose weight and then give up. They may drown their sorrows in food, but that's a poor substitute for the benefits that successful weight loss would give them.

Smoking for weightloss is a combination of the two top preventable causes of health risk in the U.S. Why add to your misery later in life? Why pay for the certainty you will die sooner, enjoy fewer of the heavenly pleasures of life, and smell like an ashtray to anyone who gets close to you?

Here is another reason why smoking for weightloss is insane: You are letting yourself be taken for a chump by some fat-cat cigarette company executive who is profiting off your weakness. Get over it and reclaim your dignity!

I've heard all the excuses and I'm not buying them. You will feel a lot better about yourself when you overcome these negative habits that are holding you back from having what you really want in life.

Smoking for weightloss doesn't help you lose weight. It just adds a new bad habit to your existing ones.

Let me add one final tip as to why, if you smoke, you should quit. The cost of health care is going to bankrupt not only the USA, but many other nations of the world. You won't enjoy trying to get help for your emphysema, cardiovascular disease, asthma, or lung cancer when there isn't enough money to take care of all the sick people.

Have you ever seen these poor old folks walking around -- or driving an electric cart around -- carrying a little personal tank of oxygen? If they didn't have that pure oxygen to breathe, they would be gasping for air like a fish out of water. Don't find yourself in that position when the hospitals have to ration health care to only those who "aren't too far gone."

This is tough talk, but I offer it in the hope you will decide to choose to enjoy the best health you can, rather than a slow form of dying by smoke inhalation.

If You Want To Lose Fat, Here Is a Better Alternative to Smoking for Weightloss

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