Smoking is one of the worst habits that you can participate in. Some even argue that it is worse than food addiction, and many find it more difficult to quit smoking than to quit unhealthy food.
Many smokers reason that they keep up the habit because it allows them to control their weight. And this indeed a fact: smoking helps you maintain lower weight. But when you consider the benefits of quitting smoking on your health, you will find that it is best for you, even if you do gain some weight, which usually is no more than a 5 kilogram addition.
How does smoking help you keep the weight off?
One of the reasons why quitting smoking makes you gain weight is that cigarettes actually have physical effects, along with the psychological ones.
Physiologically speaking, smoking affects your metabolism. Nicotine makes your metabolism faster, and so it makes you burn more calories than non-smokers. As a result, when your body no longer receives the substance, your metabolism slows down a bit, making you gain some weight.
Another aspect influenced by nicotine is appetite. After smoking, there is a sugar spike in your system, which tricks your body into believing it has eaten. So, after quitting smoking, these sugar spikes no longer exist, and that makes you crave fatty and sugary foods.
Psychologically speaking, kicking the habit affects you in several ways:
It will increase your cravings: when you are a smoker, sometimes you confuse your cravings, so you reach for a cigarette instead of a snack. With that option no longer available, you will naturally seek a replacement, usually a calorie-loaded snack.
It is difficult to know when the meal is over: most smokers end their meals with a cigarette. This serves as a signal to the body that the meal is over, and the appetite shuts down afterwards. With the absence of that signal, new non-smokers may have trouble recognizing when they are full, which leads them to eat more.
You don’t know what to do with your hands and mouth: because you are used to having a cigarette between your fingers and in your mouth, you will miss that feeling when it is gone, so you will try to compensate by constantly eating.
