It is a known fact that smoking adversely affects health, and a decision to quit smoking will keep you healthy. Despite this universal knowledge, people continue to smoke and to support their actions, argue that smoking helps in controlling weight. The unfavourable effects of cigarettes are no secret, but it has been suggested that smokers tend to have lower body weight, and many have started using smoking as an excuse to lose weight. Let us discuss this in detail.
The Relationship Between Smoking and Body Weight
Smoking and Body weight have a complex relationship. People who smoke a lot lose body weight gradually as compared to nonsmokers. This weight loss must not be treated like normal weight loss as it does more harm than good. Let's evaluate the relationship of body weight with smoking. Smoking is an appetite killer. The nicotine in tobacco activates certain receptors in the brain that defuse hunger cravings. Smokers suffer from low food intake, so when you start smoking, the body's metabolism increases, leading to a loss in weight. This is not healthy.
Anything associated with smoking is not healthy and causes sustainable damage to health that is reflected through loss in body weight. Nicotine and metabolism have a relationship. Nicotine is also a calorie burner activating the sympathetic nervous system and decreasing weight. This effect has detrimental consequences on the body even though it lasts for short spells. People who smoke are likely to develop cancer, heart disease and respiratory diseases. After smoking for a long time, the weight loss effects of nicotine also diminish. Stopping smoking is a healthy choice.
It may increase weight as the lost appetite is regained. A decision to stop smoking sharpens smell and taste which induces a renewed appetite to eat as the taste and smell of food is so much better. Metabolism is slower when one quits smoking, but with lifestyle corrections, the choice of returning to a healthy life is far better than continuing to remain a smoker.
Smoking is a bad decision for weight management as one bad habit invites a chain reaction that triggers several other severe health consequences. If weight management is what you are after, choosing a healthier option is a sensible choice. Adopting a corrective approach to eating with regular physical exercise can keep people in much better shape than using smoking to manage weight.
Many take to smoking to relieve stress. It is a strange coping mechanism that many believe helps them to cope with the everyday stress of life. It may support temporary relief when one is smoking but passes soon after the effects of nicotine subside. Then one craves for more, entering into the vicious cycle of ready relief, in turn jeopardizing your health. Instead of smoking, there are other natural ways of beating stress the most effective being workouts, daily walks, spending time with family, and friends, engaging in hobbies, doing things for others, and charity. Life is beautiful and instead of blowing it away on packets of cigarettes, why not deal with problems with valuable solutions than make-believe ones that act adversely on health? A smoke-free life adds so much meaning to life.
Does smoking reduce weight?
As discussed, smoking suppresses appetite and diffuses hunger pangs in individuals. Nicotine in tobacco plays tricks with the brain and the nerves diffusing the urge to feel hungry. Smokers generally lose the appetite for food, their sense of smell and taste is not as acute as nonsmokers, which creates no special urge for subtle flavours making them gradually lose interest in a variety of food. This is not a healthy trait and taking up smoking, thinking it will help you to reduce weight, is not one of the wisest decisions to make. Smoking comes with far more severe consequences and should not be tried as a weight-loss measure.
Numerous good practices can be adopted to maintain a healthy body weight and smoking is certainly not healthy. It just appears to lose weight initially, as smokers stop feeling hungry. Tobacco addiction releases certain hormones in the body increasing nicotine metabolism, which can be exhausting, resulting in weight loss. Smoking acts as a distraction from food, it does not let you replace hunger with food but with tobacco. This strong addiction causes health risks that can grow with your advancing habit of smoking and create the possibility of life-threatening diseases such as lung cancer, heart disease, COPD and much more. Before the risk of tobacco starts playing with your health, you should quit smoking. The faster you quit smoking the better will be your health.
Smoking leads to weight loss is a myth. Do not start smoking for an elusive and unsubstantial reason. Do not take up smoking in any given situation if you have started to walk into a smoke-free life and save your body from further harm. Quitting smoking has numerous benefits, improving your overall health, disposition, and finances. It also significantly improves your appetite.
Yes, quitting smoking resurges the appetite making ex-smokers develop a healthy appetite. Taste and smell find renewed impetus and the person starts eating voraciously. Though this is understandable due to the long course of non-enjoyable meals, the risk of gaining weight is heightened. So, while you devour everything that is on your plate, be mindful of weight gain. Corrective lifestyle and healthy practices can help keep your weight in check. Weight loss through smoking is not healthy and must not be used to shed extra kilos. Instead start regular exercises or walks and manage weight sustainably. Short-term weight management strategies like smoking can spell greater harm than good, so do not try to reduce weight through this harmful habit.
Factors that Determine Change in Body Weight with Smoking
Smoking can have various ill effects on the body and changes your body’s condition in many ways, not just losing weight. It is a much-discussed bad habit that invites a poor quality of life, before you realize you are addicted, it is hard to quit smoking. The harm that smoking can cause to the body is a universal truth. From cancer, severe damage to lungs and COPD, heart diseases, skin infections, gum and teeth diseases, skin problems and a plethora of other body malfunctions, smoking can wreck life in more ways than one. However, smokers still find a reason to hold on to smoking by justifying that smoking manages body weight. Not only is this argument baseless but quite harmful. This myth of losing weight in the wrong way again causes greater harm to a person’s physical and mental well-being than can be imagined. Losing weight from the side effects of smoking can hardly be regarded as a healthy weight loss measure.
The argument goes that it decreases weight even when the body is at rest. This means that nicotine metabolism burns calories while you are sitting and watching cricket or other sports, movies or any other source of entertainment or pastime without having moved an inch of your body. Even a child knows that this is not the best way of losing weight. Smokers further argue that if they quit smoking, they will start gaining weight as nicotine metabolism will no longer work. Without tobacco, their urge to eat will increase, making them eat much more than they should, leading to obesity. People who decide to quit smoking have tremendous self-control. So, upon quitting smoking they may jump on food, but through self-control, they will be able to resist the temptation and while eating also find ways through workouts to maintain body weight the healthy way.
Getting addicted to smoking is easy, but quitting smoking is quite challenging. So, if you are addicted to losing weight but have realized the peril and have decided to stop smoking then you have taken the best decision. But nicotine withdrawal symptoms make it difficult for smokers to hold on to their resolution and they soon return to smoking. With Nicotine Replacement Therapy(NRT) you can safely come out of withdrawal and quit smoking in due course. NRT comes in the form of gums, lozenges, patches and effervescent tablets. Trust a reputed company for the best results. NRT is a nicotine tapering therapy that gradually makes you wean out of addiction helping you to move onto a smoke-free life. About losing weight as discussed, leading a normal and healthy life will help you lose weight and improve the quality of life. Live better and healthier with a smoke-free life!