Health for a lifetime >>>> How to quit smoking and don’t gain excess weight

How to quit smoking and don’t gain excess weight

Smoking is a persistent bad habit, but it has a hidden agenda - it is a means of relieving stress. In this way, smoking is very similar to the habit of stress eating. For this reason, people who want to quit smoking often face the problem of replacing one bad habit with another undesirable habit. This leads to the fact that quitting smoking contributes to weight gain. Maintaining your usual weight and quitting smoking is not as difficult as you might expect.

How to quit smoking and don’t gain excess weight, if the desire to smoke provokes an immoderate appetite? Knowing in advance that the craving for smoking is replaced by an uncontrollable desire to eat, it is worth reviewing the approaches to nutrition in the initial period of quitting smoking. For these purposes, food is selected taking into account the calorie content of food products. This means that there is no need to limit yourself in food, but there is a need to switch from fried meat products to boiled meat, from smoked meats to fish, from fatty dairy products to milk, kefir, sour cream, cottage cheese and cream with a low calorie content.

Potatoes (including French fries and chips) are a high-calorie vegetable that is best replaced with durum wheat pasta or grain porridge cooked in water or milk.

If the goal is to replace the desire to smoke with a snack every time, then it is necessary to stock up on various fruits, vegetables (mushrooms, legumes, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplants, tomatoes, carrots, beets, etc.), berries and drinks with a low carbohydrate component (fruit drink, compote, carbonated water without sugar, homemade lemonade, fruit tea, milkshake).

To relieve attacks of acute desire to smoke, rye bread sandwiches and grain breads with fresh vegetables, fish, boiled chicken, low-fat pate (for example, vegetable pate) are suitable.

The number of approaches to food can be increased by reducing portions. Thus, meals will not be three times a day, but five, seven or nine times a day.

Another attack of appetite can be temporarily calmed by simply drinking a large glass of water. This way you can trick the body and give it the opportunity to be satisfied with "digesting" water.

In the future, you should gradually reduce the number of meals, replacing them with simple concentration on some activity that can absorb your attention and at the same time give you pleasure from its results, that is, you need to get yourself a hobby.

Transitioning from smoking to binge eating and quitting both can take a long time, but will help restore your health.