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I quit smoking and now can't help but eat, eat and eat.
Basar
IstanbulRegistered User regular
IstanbulRegistered User regular
So i quit smoking about a month ago and I think I have given up on one addition to pick up another. I have been pretty cautious about what I eat and drink my whole life, and have been practicing sports and lifting for a long time, so I have a pretty defined and athletic body, but now, after I've quit, I cannot control my indulges for eating. It's horrible. I really don't miss cigarettes that much but it's amazing how hungry I am 24/7. Cigarettes must have suppressed my appetite I guess. It's 12:42pm where I am, and I have already eaten a bowl of cereal with milk, a Spanish ham sandwich, an apple, an avocado, a piece of birthday cake, a turkey breast sandwich, 3 espressos, 2 cappuccinos, 2 glasses of OJ... I think that's all. And I still feel hungry.
Any tips other than stuffing a sock in my mouth? :?
Any tips other than stuffing a sock in my mouth? :?
i live in a country with a batshit crazy president and no, english is not my first language
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Just ignore the urges if you can, it should wear off eventually and you can control it.
If you know you are getting enough to eat, just don't eat.
Now I'm sure this is easier said than done, but I can't think of any other ways that don't involve smoking.
Less caffeine will help too, it makes you hungry as well.
Found this: http://quitsmoking.about.com/od/weightgain/a/weightgainquit.htm
Congratulations on quitting by the way!
Edit: Beat. And, those last few words sound dirty.
This is very much the case. Picking up one of those fake cigarettes or something similiar really helps. If you're drawing away on that, then you're far less tempted to eat.
If you do decide to eat, then try to make it something healthy. I started taking a couple of apples to work to eat during my breaks. That chewed up my fifteen minute break and didn't leave me sitting around doing nothing - because that can very easily end up with you desperately wishing you could have a fag which leads to tension and stress which just amplifies the feeling even more.
Congrats on quitting by the way. It's not easy, but after a month the hard part is mostly over.
Main point is while you might piss more often your filling your needs for filling your mouth while not going all pint of ice cream in front of the TV on yourself. Obviously none of these remove the need for true meals, but minimize the impact of the constant mid day snacking.
An occasional square of dark chocolate or some babybel cheese or something else high protein can help curb hunger better than high carb crackers, and won't pack pounds on you as much. Dark chocolate is a better appetite suppressant than rice cakes. If you're going to snack, at least try to make it somewhat healthy. Fruits, veggies, small cheeses. Celery or apples with peanut butter. Hummus. Protein over carbs.
Congrats on quitting. Getting over the snacking urge is tough. I quit last December and slapped on 15 pounds in just a couple months. I changed my diet drastically and started exercising and have cut off 45 now. YOU CAN DOO EEET.
I'll mirror above and say that your assumption is correction -- you've traded one thing for another, and "this too shall pass." You can tough it out, or eat high-protein meals only. Avoid sugary things like cakes and cereals and juices, because they won't really help you feel full, and if you're eating a big plate of meat you should fill up faster.
Still, nicotine is a stimulant and stimulants are known for their appetite suppressant nature. Caffeine is too, BTW -- you might want to swap those espresso drinks for drip coffee, so you can sip it over a longer period of time.
It would make sense that quitting cold-turkey would have a more pronounced effect on your appetite than weaning yourself off nicotine... since it would be an abrupt change in appetite suppression instead of a gradual decline.
Uh, does one of you have a source on this? I'm not trying to start a discussion, I'm genuinely interested.
I blew up like a balloon after I quit the first time. I started going to the gym after I realized what a fatass I had become. I made the mistake of thinking 'oh i can have one or two at the bar once a month' and fell back into smoking again. It's been 2 weeks now since i've had a smoke and while I feel more hungry, I know now why I do and dont succumb to the urge to snack almost at all.
Source: http://www.teeccino.com/PDFs/weightloss.pdf
Also, anecdotal evidence;
When I drink a cup or two of coffee at work with out eating a decent breakfast I'll get hungry, and sometimes hypoglycemic. So I end up grabbing simple carbs and candy around to office to quell that until lunch.
Yeah, I've already incorporated a lot of this advice into my routine, but I have one glaring flaw: Finding time and motivation for exercise is tough. I feel really good about what and how much I eat, but I have a problem being active. I do research all day, and my adviser expects me to basically work all hours of the day, so even when I do have time to exercise, I usually spend it doing something else.
However, there's plenty of reason to connect the increase in blood sugar to the release of seratonin, which removes stress and in general calms people. Which is why hungry people seem agitated and full people seem sleepy or calm.
Caffeine is a stimulant, which I think we can all agree on, and stimulants in general are appetite suppressants. I could link a bunch of studies -- here's one that shows that caffeine plus nicotine amplifies the appetite suppression ability of nicotine: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118714593/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
And to add an anecdote, my wife is dieting currently and has increased her caffeine consumption and has noted that sipping on it throughout the day (with splenda as a sweetener and nothing else, so no calories), has certainly helped her appetite throughout the workday.
The thing is, unless you're going to really up the amount of stimulants in your diet, you're better off not worrying about them -- or consuming them also in moderation. A lot of people say that exercise functions as an appetite suppressant as well (unless you're obese and have leptin issues).
I lost almost 20 in the last couple months and I have to say, if I eat big meals I just feel hungrier the next day. If your body gets 3000 calories one day because you ate like crazy, it's going to want 3000 calories the next day. I've been maintaining around 1600-1700 calories each day and I don't even feel hungry -- and when presented with lots of food, I can't even make a real dent in it, because I get full faster.
In other words, snacking and overeating isn't likely to go away for you if you eat like crazy -- you have to approach it like you did smoking. Not abstaining completely, of course, but to "rought it out" for a couple days and eat reasonable portions. My wife suggests pre-packaged foods because they're a set item and it's hard to gorge on them -- because you'd have to make an entirely new meal. And the suggestions above for avoiding carbs and eating fruits & veggies is sound because it eliminates foods that are easy to get fat on.
Still, my wife's lost 1/4 of her body weight and because she's eating high protein, low carb foods, she hasn't been hungry. You're not losing weight, of course, but the idea still holds -- drop out the carbohydrates for a few days and focus on high protein foods, and focus on not overeating. Take up a hobby or get outside and do something interesting, so you're not just sitting around all your food at home and consuming everything as soon as you're slightly hungry.
This is actually pretty common, and to my knowledge it is more prevalent among sudden quitters since the patches/gum still feed you nicotene, suppressing the appetite. This actually leads to a statistically relevant number of ex-smoking-related diabetes cases, though I'm not going to go to the effort of finding hard facts here. That's mostly in older people, of course, but still...tough it out and stop eating.
And not to start another debate in here, but watch the other addiction you seem to be picking up...3 espressos and 2 capuccinos is quite a bit of caffeine there. Especially for 12:45PM.
PSN: TheScrublet
I don't know what sort of resources you have available to you, monetarily, but personally I watch tv episodes on my Ipod while I use an elliptical. If you have the funds to craigslist up a cheap treadmill or stationary bike or something, and can even set a laptop on a table near it, you can hulu tv episodes you might normally watch with your butt on the couch and kill 2 birds with one stone. You can pound out a mile or two on a treadmill in the time it takes to watch an episode of family guy.
There is really no remedy for exercise other than willpower. I don't want to go on the goddamn elliptical and sweat balls every day. But I do it because I've seen the effect it's had on me over the last year. My 42 inch pants now fall down to my ankles if i don't hold them up.
I should have mentioned previously, weigh yourself every day. And keep a chart. If you have wii fit, just do the body test every single day. If you don't, make a graph in your bathroom or something. People who simply weigh themselves every day are more successful at losing weight than people who don't. Seeing your gains and losses mapped out help you to realize how the small choices you make every day (Just a few potato chips can't hurt me that bad right? I deserve an ice cream sandwich for dessert, I worked hard today!) impact your weight. And having the constant positive reinforcement when you are losing weight is tremendous. You can't see a real difference in your body for the first month at least when you've only chopped off 5 or 10 pounds, but seeing it graphed out is amazingly motivating.
It sure is! Until you gain 2 pounds of water weight because it's a weird time of the month (or you just drank too much water). Then it's ten minutes cursing yourself or crying in the shower (I weigh myself in the morning).
Listen, it's good advice to weigh yourself, but personally, if I weigh myself every day, I work myself into a frenzy about every pound (or half pound, or quarter pound) until I'm analyzing every single thing I eat with a microscope. Once or twice a week is really okay, because you will go up and down during the week and that may have very little to do with what you eat (it can have a lot to do with stress, mood, how much sleep you got, and what time of day you are weighing, etc). If you think you are going to become OCD about the scale, don't do it every day.
BTW, get enough sleep. This means eight hours, every night. A lot of people find they pack on the pounds when they don't sleep enough. I'm not certain on the science, but I think it has to do with your metabolism syncing up with your sleep cycle and when you don't get enough sleep, your body becomes stressed and that screws it up. Also make sure you eat enough calories (2000 for a male, 1800 female) don't try to starve yourself, that doesn't work.
Weigh yourself every day, at the same time in the morning right at the end of your morning routine. Then you'll be at your lightest and your body will be at its most 'normal'. Ignore minor fluctuations, but watch out for developing trends.
Food logging is an excellent idea too. Get a plan which you can enter food into from your cellphone and see how fast you consume your days calories, 2000 gets eaten up fast. Even if you are big and have a 2500 limit, it still goes fast when you snack.
Oh, and carrot sticks, celery sticks etc. learn to love them, and try and find some kind of near zero calorie thing you like to put on them. They are hugely bulky, full of water and fill you up nicely. Cherry tomatoes are good to, you want stuff you can eat a lot of without getting a lot of calories.
Exactly. You have to expect you'll fluctuate a quarter or half pound some days. I weigh in the morning after I've taken a piss and before I've eaten breakfast, and am still in boxers and tshirt, and I never have a two pound water weight spike or anything like that.
Even with that your weight froth is very personal. Mine can bounce around like 1.5 pounds either way, but if you weigh yourself every day you will soon know what is a real spike and what is not.
Thats why you only weigh yourself once or twice a week. Weighing yourself everyday can have a very detrimental effect on you if you arent seeing results. (btw you misquoted up there) I, too, do the tv episode thing on my iphone while i use the elliptical or bike. its a good 20m atleast at a time and it helps you forget that youre basically working for nothing.
Sorry for the misquote. My point is, putting on two pounds of water weight in a day is highly unlikely.
Staying up late increases your ghrelin production (a hormone), which stimulates appetite. Probably not the cause, but it might be confounding the issue.