Some former smokers gain weight when they quit

One reason that smokers don’t want to quit is that they have seen others gain weight.  Some former smokers gain weight without changing any of their former habits.  So the thought is, why should I look heavier and buy new clothes if I quit smoking?

Smoking revs your metabolism
Smoking is horrible for every part of you except your metabolism, which it tends to rev up.  Metabolism is the energy that your body burns up to maintain itself.

The likely reason:  Your body is forced to expend extra energy trying to detoxify itself from the tobacco’s chemicals.  Yes, by inhaling smoke and tar quite a bit of those pollutants will get lodged in your body rather than being exhaled with the smoke you blow out your nose or mouth.  Your immune system attempts to get rid of those pollutants and it has to rev up to do so.

Unfortunately, this is a big part of why people lay on the lard after quitting.  If you don’t change your habits after quitting, your metabolism could slow down because it doesn’t have all those pollutants to deal with.

The solution is to increase your metabolism in healthy ways
You can keep your weight down after quitting if you use healthy way to increase your metabolism to replace the unhealthy way – smoking.

There are various healthy ways to increase your metabolism.  We have listed quite a few under Weight Loss – Boost Your Metabolism – A thru G, L thru P and S thru Z.  Please read those articles.

Avoiding weight gain
We think that About.com has excellent ideas on how to minimize weight gain when you quit smoking.  You can simply link to the site to read their ideas.

Web MD also has excellent recommendations about avoiding weight gain

Here’s what Mayo Clinic has to say about the subject.

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