Smoking and Diabetes

Suspect Headlines

It’s important to pay attention to smoking health risks but although the headlines read “Smoking cessation may actually Increase Risk of Developing Type 2 Diabetes”, this really was a little misleading. The only risk from quitting smoking in relation to Type 2 Diabetes is from any weight you might gain; not from the loss of any of the poisons and tars in a cigarette. In fact there is a far greater risk to your health if you continue to smoke.

Study Leader Hsin-Chieh “Jessica” Yeh, Ph.D., an assistant professor of general internal medicine and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says “If you smoke, give it up. That’s the right thing to do. But people have to also watch their weight,”

Risk factors of quitting

Smokers are constantly bombarded with the risk factors attached to their habit but rarely consider that there may be some risk attached to quitting. Of course continuing to smoke is dangerous at every level but we quit smoking to support our health – as most smokers do – then we need to take care of ourselves in other ways also.

When you quit smoking, the only real risk to your health is to then swap one unhealthy habit for another! Why would you do that? Massive weight gain is NOT inevitable.

Weight gain facts

• On average former smokers gain around 8lbs in weight
• Therefore, logically, some gain a great deal more, some less, some none at all and some may even lose weight – this makes up the average
• Food tastes and smells better when we have quit so is more tempting
• Some smokers swap their “mouth habit” to food instead of cigarettes – it’s just an alternative pacifier (child’s dummy – UK).

Many of my clients are really worried about weight gain when I help them quit but when I tell them the average and how it’s made up they are amazed. They seem to have gained a false impression that smokers balloon out of all proportion automatically, piling on weight and unable to quit like an express train whose brakes have failed. NOT TRUE.

Prevention Well, in the first couple of weeks you may well find yourself nibbling a bit more but the only way you can prevent that turning into a permanent habit – replacing the old smoking habit which you just rejected – is to be aware of your tendencies. You see, many people just go about their habits with no thought that they can be changed. They just keep nibbling without engaging in any assessment of their new behaviours. If you don’t notice you’re doing it how can you stop it?

Many former smokers assume, as I said above, that weight gain is inevitable. It isn’t. You are in charge of your own body. You have made an awesome decision to quit smoking; you’ve achieved one of the most important goals for your future health; you’ve succeeded – maybe after months or years of previous failures. Don’t ruin it all by making the assumption that you will put on weight because that very assumption will become your reality!

How to think Instead; keep looking at those bullet points above. These are proof positive that permanent weight gain is not inevitable. Make a choice. Make a decision. If you notice you are eating more than you used to, just go back to eating the amount you did before and eat your meals slowly:

• chewing your food thoroughly sends messages to the brain that you are, in fact, eating. When we gulp food down fast and use little or no chewing motions, our brain thinks we haven’t eaten.
• Chewing food helps digestion. The food reaches the stomach sooner, is processed more quickly and therefore you feel fuller before you cram down the pudding.
• Chewing food at a meal takes a lot longer than just shoveling it down. It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to feel full so it makes sense to take a long time over a meal.
• Chewing food thoroughly helps weight loss immeasurably. The food becomes mixed with saliva which helps it break down correctly in the digestion process and reduces the amount of fat stored.

So cut those smoking health risks today and cut the only quit-smoking health risk along with it and you’ll have a healthy future to look forward too with no more cigarette toxins in your body and no weight gain either.

Smoking health risks are just a small element amongst the mega-learning that you’ll gain from Stop Smoking Now and there’s loads more information on how to stay slim and trim afterwards in our free bonus guide too. Find out more about the only hospital-based program on the market and how it can help you achieve your dream.