You just quit smoking but now you are afraid of gain weight? You just take good care of your lungs and we will help you to keep your weight in five easy steps.
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Scientists say that a snap decision to quit smoking cigarettes is actually two to three times more effective than planning ahead. If you did exactly that, good for you, but after you make one of the hardest decisions, to stop smoking, then usually new problems arises from that: How to keep weight?
Step 1
Buy olive oil
It probably sounds as a stupid move but we assure you that it has sense. When danger of a cancer of the lungs will not exist, smoking cigarettes will be the ideal mean to lose weight. They make food travels slower through your stomach which for a longer period gives you a feeling that you are not hungry at all. The moment you quit smoking your stomach switches in a higher gear and you start to feel constantly hungry.
Calories from olive oil allocate differently than those from other oils. Nutritionists made an experiment on two groups of people who were trying to lose weight. People from one group where given a diet with less fats and higher level of carbohydrate while the second group followed the Mediterranean diet. People from the first group lost their weight only in lower parts of the body while those from the second group lost their weight proportionally.
Advice: Drink two teaspoons of olive oil before a meal, or pour it on a piece of a bred. Where's the catch? Not only that olive oil makes your stomach works slower, it activates and excretes a hormone which lowers your appetite.
Step 2
Drink less coffee
What was the first: A coffee or a cigarette? Who knows? However, this is one of the key advices. It's the fact that cigarette speeds digestion of caffeine. This means that when you give up of smoking then caffeine will flow longer through your body. That in turn means that you will start to feel half-hearted, nervous and tense and your body will start to search for a comfort in the shape of an extra food. Luckily for you, coffee doesn't taste as divine without cigarettes as it used to taste.
Advice: Drink half less coffee than usual. Invest in a stress ball or two (or ten) and squeeze them until the urge passes. Arrange your basement, fix stuff, be active, move. Just don't sit.
Step 3
Visit the doctor
It doesn't sounds encouraging, so we'll reformulate: Change your nutrition. Now, it most probably sounds even worse, but nobody has ever said that keeping weight is an easy task.
On the first sight food and cigarettes has nothing in common but they have. Cigarettes and certain food increases concentration of dopamine, a close cousin of serotonin. Dopamine is present in the regions of the brain where, among other things, it regulates feeling of pleasure. Certain food works the same. At least temporarily.
Advice: Visit nutritionist and ask her to make a diet for you. It's a small step for humankind, but a big step for you.
Step 4
Form muscles
Nicotine acts as digestion accelerator which means that when you smoke your body spends calories much faster. Some recent studies show that people who smoke spend calories 3,6 percent faster in rest and 6,3 percent faster during some activity than non-smokers. Now, when you don't smoke your body needs less calories and it spends less calories. (That's why you need Step 3).
Advice: Start to exercise. Studies show that building muscles resets your metabolism to a higher level you have had when you were smoking, and it makes your digestion to works 7 percent faster after just three months of exercise. And you will also look fantastic.
Step 5
Chew
Chew, but not a food. Probably you were already advised to use nicotine patches, which is a very good idea. However, nicotine patches will not decrease your appetite unless you glue it over your mouth. Nicotine patches act excellent as a prevention of repeated smoking but they don't protect you from gain weight.
Advice: Chew nicotine gums. They are the best oral supplement for food. ■