quit cold turkey
Ninety-nine percent of smokers know that at some point in their lives they will quit. Their reasons for stopping will vary, and the time they choose to stop will also vary. But we know that health fears for themselves or their close family members as a result of smoking, along with government health warnings, anti-smoking campaigns, and Surgeon General’s warnings on cigarette packs, are generally not convincing to you. nor many others. there to pack it up.
Your reasons for quitting will be yours and yours alone. You may have many reasons or just a couple, but when you come to the decision to quit, you will go through five general phases.
Phases to stop smoking
Pre-contemplation: This is the first phase, you are not seriously thinking about quitting in the near future, even though you know you will at some point.
Contemplation: In this phase, you are actively thinking about stopping, but you are usually not ready enough to make a serious attempt yet. He may tell himself things like, “Yes, I’m ready to quit, but I’m under a lot of stress and I don’t want to gain weight” or “I’m not sure if I can.” he.”
Preparation: During this phase, you are serious about quitting for the next month and may have even tried to quit in the last 12 months. Usually, you will have some sort of plan on how to quit, whether it be with patches, a hypnotherapist, gum, acupuncture, willpower, etc.
Action – Quitting with help (Stage 1): These are the first 6 months where you are actively looking for ways to kick the habit. Once you’ve found your way, set a date and promise yourself: “This is it.” Many people don’t even make it to this stage due to the pitfalls we described in the previous sections.
Stay detained (Stage 2): This is the period from 1 week to 5 years after stopping when you are aware of the danger of a relapse and sometimes take steps to avoid it.
Unfortunately, most smokers only make it as far as phase 4 – quitting, but completely neglect or are unaware that to successfully quit smoking they must avoid relapse and remain quit.
So, once the decision to quit smoking has been made, it is very important to continue through the two main stages of quitting. Both stages involve a great deal of detail and thoughtful planning and preparation; When it comes to smoking, the old phrase “failing to plan is planning to fail” is extremely apt.
In Stage One: Quitting, you need to look at the things that make you smoke, not just the addiction. You need to find out what your main reasons for smoking are, many of which are individual to you. For example, do you smoke mainly due to stress? Do you smoke mainly out of habit? Do you smoke when you are bored? Do you smoke primarily as a social activity? Is smoking your main/biggest/only pleasure? as an excuse to get out of a boring and uncomfortable situation.
These factors play a very important role in your smoking behavior. When you stop, these situations and moments will come up again, and if you don’t plan how to handle them, your mind will automatically remind you to smoke. That is why it is important that you find out what each of these situations consists of.
The best way to do this is to write down each cigarette you smoke, and why you smoke it, for a few days. Then analyze the results and plan how you are going to break those links and make sure they can no longer be a valid reason for you to smoke. For example, if you smoke because of stress, find two main ways to reduce stress in your life.
First of all, find something you can do quickly in a moment of stress, for example, you can use a variety of breathing techniques, a stress ball, you can take a short break and go for a walk, or you may want to lie down or just yell at full lung if it is convenient to do so.
Second, you need to set aside time each day specifically to relax and relieve stress. Discover the one thing, besides smoking, that completely relaxes you. Maybe it’s a trip to the gym, half an hour in the sauna, reading a book, a puzzle, a walk on the beach with your dog, etc.
Make sure the activity takes you at least half an hour to an hour each day; You probably spend at least an hour a day smoking, so you need to experience the same pleasure/result for the same amount of time each day.
You should also plan to have a frequent weekend break or plan to spend a few hours every weekend dedicated to relaxing. They are key here and the goal is first and foremost to show yourself that you can relax without smoking and in fact you can relax much more without smoking.
When you’ve done this, you’ll have eliminated relaxation and stress relief as one of the main reasons for smoking, then move on to the next reason. The key is to completely eliminate and break down your reasons for smoking: if you don’t have a reason to smoke, why smoke?
Stage one also involves looking at your reasons for quitting: are they your reasons, or are they other people’s or general reasons? That is, do you stop because you know it is going to ‘kill’ you or because your family/friends push you to do so? It’s important to have your own specific goals: You have to want to quit for yourself and for the things YOU will get when you quit.
For example, you may want to improve your sports performance, so quitting smoking will help you get fitter and therefore better. Or you may be concerned about the smell of smoke in and around you. So by quitting, you personally will smell better, you won’t worry about other people noticing how your hair and clothes smell, and you’ll be able to smell and taste food better.
These reasons are positive and give you real motivation – these are the things that will help you. By combining the two points, you are effectively tipping your smoking scales in your favor. You are making your reasons for smoking much weaker and fewer, while increasing and strengthening your reasons for quitting.
In the second stage of quitting, you need to take active steps to prevent a relapse. In most cases, relapse is due to one of three main reasons: weight gain, withdrawal symptoms, or the pitfalls that come from constantly thinking about cigarettes.
Weight gain and withdrawal symptoms can be overcome by pretty much following the same steps. Weight gain is due to overeating. So why do smokers eat a lot when they quit? There are a number of reasons: snacking easily replaces the habit of playing with a cigarette every half hour or so, your appetite increases as there is no longer any nicotine in your system to suppress your appetite, and eating feels good. When we feel down, feel bad about ourselves, break up with a partner, receive bad news, or lose our jobs, most of us turn to food—it’s a natural comfort.
To beat weight gain you need to stop eating so much, maybe that’s easier said than done. However, the reason smokers eat a lot is because their body is crying out for the vitamins and minerals it has been missing out on due to lack of food. And because today’s fast, convenience, processed, and frozen meals don’t contain as many daily vitamins and minerals as they should, a smoker’s body wants more food, so a smoker will eat more to get the food they need.
The simple solution is to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, eat more cooked foods, drink plenty of fresh fruit juice (which also helps in nicotine withdrawal) and take various vitamin and mineral supplements. These four strategies will cause smokers to eat less and reduce the body’s food cravings, which can often be mistaken for withdrawal symptoms.
Drinking lost fresh fruit juice is especially important as it will spike your blood sugar levels, something your body did artificially, by smoking every half hour to hour. When you smoke, your body absorbs more nicotine, which suppresses your appetite, and it does so every half hour or hour of the day; By drinking fresh juice, you do it naturally and eliminate withdrawal symptoms.
Focusing on cigarettes is extremely harmful for smokers when they quit. Don’t fall into the following common trap of seeing someone else smoking and thinking, “That cigarette looks sooooo good, I wish I had one,” or thinking, “I can’t believe I’ve gone twenty hours without smoking.” a cigarette, and now I’m going to have to go the rest of my life without them, this is so hard’
These thoughts simply rub the cigarettes and tobacco in your face and show you what you are “missing” or have to “give up.” It’s the same reason diets don’t work: because a diet concentrates and focuses on the very things that people want! You can not eat chocolate or greasy chicken or hamburgers. When he thinks about smoking in a similar way, he is telling himself that ‘he can’t smoke a cigarette’. And what is the only thing you want? To the cigarettes!
It is not a good idea to find yourself in this situation. Think about it, when do you most want to smoke a cigarette? Is it when you’re watching TV, in the city, driving or is it when you’re in the middle of a three-hour movie at the theater, when you’re on a long-haul flight, when you’re at a family gathering with the kids around and when you are in an important meeting?
You want cigarettes when you can’t have them. Therefore, focusing on them will only lead to a relapse – do not try to force yourself to see other people smoke, “because you have willpower and it is stronger than cigarettes.” You haven’t been stronger than them in the past, what makes you think you’re stronger now?
Ditch the cigarettes and focus on a new hobby, something you can learn about, and something that will really motivate you to quit.
When you’ve completed Steps One and Two to quitting, you can be sure you’re on the right track. But remember, you probably smoked for over a hundred different reasons.
– keep in mind that there will be other things that will make you think about smoking
– plan how you are going to die with them and quitting will be ten times easier with preparation.