Welcome to 'A Note from Tina' a weekly or so post, where I post my favorite ideas, inspiration, small businesses, home decor, recipes, instagram feeds, or get on my soapbox about the price of eggs, social media, etc!
Sooooo, are you on a journey to become a healthier you? I'm sure many of us are. And because of this the health/diet industry is making bank! Think about it for a second; you're on Pinterest, you type in healthy living or diets, the result is pretty much every diet using almost every letter in the alphabet, from Atkins to Weight Watchers. OH, and this doesn't include all the diet supplements either.
The same is true for cease smoking aids/programs/medication.
I am NOT a doctor or a health care provider. Please consult your health care provider before attempting any type of cease smoking aids, suggestions, programs or medications mentioned in this post.
Now that I got that out of the way, I will start with the first part of my health journey, which was to stop smoking after 37 years (8/21/18). I had actually stopped smoking once before for about 4 months in the late 90s. Let me just tell you, that first time, WOW, I felt horrible. I tried nicotine patches and had an allergic reaction, I had insomnia, and when I did sleep I had nightmares, and a horrible cough; thankfully this only lasted about 2 weeks. The only thing I didn't do was gain or loose weight.
One piece of information that I found extremely helpful when it came to nicotine cravings was how nicotine warps your perception of time. I can't seem to find the link right now, but the gist of it is, when you're smoking a cigarette it seems like it takes 15-20 minutes when in all actuality it takes 3-5 minutes. So for a day I timed every cigarette I smoked just to verify what I have read, and sure enough they were correct. Another piece of information I found was the lack of nicotine also distorts time.
Another aspect of smoking that many of these programs do not mention is... Unlike with other drug habits or alcohol habits...not only is it smoking the cigarette but it is everything involved with smoking a cigarette that becomes a habit. For example, packing the cigarettes, pulling the cigarette out of the pack, putting it in your mouth, lighting it, inhaling, flicking the ashes, exhaling and then of course putting the cigarette out when you're done. All this is actually part of smoking. Which means when you quit smoking you have got a lot of habits that are involved and smoking that you also have to break. Which explains why it takes so many times to truly quit smoking.
What are some of the other things that they suggest you do?
- find something else to do, (i.e. walking,exercise, so on) when you would normally be smoking - Well for me, for instance, I would read or check my emails (I always smoked outside). I made the decision that I was not going to replace a cigarette with walking or something like that. If I was going to quit...I wasn't going to NOT substitute one habit for another.
With the information above and the knowledge about nicotine withdrawals usually lasting 3 days I was ready to quit. I decided that my last cigarette would be whenever I finished the pack of cigarettes I had. Which happened to be August 21st 2018 at 10:31pm. This time around I didn't have any of the symptoms from before, which made the initial 2 weeks really good. If interested in reading: Here | Here | Here
And here I am almost 4 years later, its been good, but honestly, I still crave a cigarette ever so often...so all I can do is take it one day at a time!
Anyone else quit smoking or want to?
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