How to quit smoking on your own

For ten years I was in solidarity with Joseph Brodsky, who said: “Have a cup of coffee in the morning and not smoke ?! Then there is no need to wake up! ” And now in the morning I have a spoonful of honey and a glass of boiled water with lemon, which wake up my body much better than the previous attributes.

I smoked for ten years, ten! And, like all smokers, she repeated: I have no addiction, if I want to, I’ll quit. Yes Yes. Honestly, in all ten years, the thought came to me only once, whether to quit, the rest of the time I got great pleasure. Imagine, I didn’t read Allen Carr, didn’t listen to my grandmother, didn’t pay attention to pictures on packs of cigarettes … And then one day I woke up and thought: I don’t want to be captivated by my own habit. Tired of it! Tired of having to leave the restaurant to smoke, tired of shopping in blocks on every trip, running to the store in the middle of the night, if the pack suddenly ran out, tired of smelling smoke, tired of the fact that the jacket on the index finger of the right hand turns yellow (did you not notice?), tired of chewing the smell of tobacco before an important meeting, tired of everything! I just decided to test my willpower and tested how to quit smoking on my own. Without the task of “quitting forever”, I simply said to myself: I will smoke when I really, really want to, when I feel that I can no longer live without a cigarette, that it is vital for me. And now for two months now I have been quietly living without nicotine.

This is not yet the deadline – you say, and you will be right. Sometimes I dream about cigarettes, and sometimes I’m tempted to take a cigarette and see if I like it again. But I hold on, imagine how dizzy from the first puff, as after a long flight, and the desire immediately disappears.

But God bless him, let him dream of cigarettes. There are more serious problems: excess weight, loss of concentration, nervousness – these are all attributes of a person who quit smoking. Of course, the outlook is not bright, so many fail. But the solution to these problems was not so difficult. Let’s sort it out in order.

Quitting smoking on your own is not difficult. The main obstacle is psychological. I am sure that 90% of girls are afraid to quit smoking, because they are sure that they will get fat. My colleague decided to approach this issue fully armed. I signed up for the pool, gym, and yoga. And the weight was gaining … Six months later, she could not stand it and smoked again. And now she regrets, she says, she realized her mistake: the more you go in for sports, the more you want to eat.

“Quitting smoking leads to an increase in appetite stimulants in the brain itself, the hypothalamus,” said Woman’s Day Ruzanna Eganyan, Leading Researcher, State Research Center for Preventive Medicine, Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. – Imagine how much is going on in the body of a person who quits smoking: catabolic breakdown of glycogen in the liver, normalization of digestive juices. Of course I’m hungry. What you need to do: lean on fruits and vegetables. So many toxins have accumulated in the smoker’s body, be healthy! To detoxify, you need to eat foods that are high in fiber. These are berries, fruits, preferably not very sweet. You need to consume 20-30 grams of fiber per day. 100 grams of vegetables contain 2-3 grams of it, which means that just a day you need to eat half a kilogram-kilogram of fruits and vegetables. Plus bananas and legumes are also good at detoxifying.

The second step: you need to increase physical activity: move less by car, walk more, go up the stairs instead of the elevator to the apartment, do gymnastics in the morning. At least 30-40 minutes a day – a smoker needs it. And count the calories, and if you go in for sports, then leave them the same, do not reduce! In this case, the maximum that you gain is 2-3 kilograms, but they will go away very quickly. They are not worth starting smoking again. “

This is actually a problem. In the early stages, smoking promotes concentration. After the habit and persistent attachment have developed, it becomes impossible to concentrate without a cigarette. If you need to make an important decision, come up with something, you involuntarily reach for a cigarette. This is real hell and pretty close to an obsession. Many smokers, realizing the seriousness of the situation, try to distract themselves from thoughts of smoking. As a rule, food becomes a substitute. Something tasty can suppress the craving for a cigarette for a short time. But, as you know, all our problems are in our heads. If you keep thinking that you cannot make the right decision without a cigarette, then it will be so. If you sleep well, drink a cup of green tea instead of coffee, do exercises, you will be no less capable than after a couple of puffs.

“Distraction-substitution therapy is very important,” continues Ruzanna Azatovna. – If you want to smoke, click seeds, preferably flaxseed, because there are good amino acids and fatty acids. I also recommend gnawing on carrots to distract yourself. “

People don’t like change. For a smoker with serious experience, quitting smoking means interrupting the usual morning ritual with the first morning cup of coffee, losing the opportunity to go to the smoking room with colleagues at the height of the working day, losing a comfortable object to twist in your hands during an important conversation … In fact, with quitting smoking our level of stress tolerance is greatly reduced due to a lack of vitamin C.

“The diet of a former smoker should have 200-300 mg of vitamin C,” advises Yeganyan. – With it, you strengthen the vascular wall and get an anti-stress charge. What foods contain vitamin C has long been known to everyone: rose hips, currants, citrus fruits.

Our nervous system also needs B vitamins. The process of smoking strongly affects the intestinal microflora, which synthesizes B1, B9, B12. These vitamins are very important not only for the nervous system, but also for the hematopoiesis, the heart system, therefore, in the diet, we must provide for such foods that contain B vitamins: this is whole grain bread. And, by the way, it has less calories than ordinary bread. “

Skin problems are inevitable at this stage. Firstly, while your body removes nicotine, it, in turn, takes with it a lot of useful things. For example, vitamin C, which we talked about above. Every morning you should start with a glass of boiled warm water with lemon, eat more honey, and buy a face cream with vitamin C.

“Smoking also affects the acid-base balance of the body, shifts it to the acidic side,” adds Ruzanna Yeganyan. – It threatens the deposition of salts in the joints, and even worse – in the kidneys. On the face, this can be reflected by edema. What should we do. Drink plenty of water: at least 30 ml per kilogram of normal weight. It is normal, which should be at your height, and not how much you really weigh. It is also useful to eat citrus fruits in the afternoon: kiwi, oranges, tangerines, and at least drink tea with lemon. Citrus fruits help remove excess salt. “