How To Quit Smoking – 5 Steps to Follow

Have you ever watched a classic 1970s or 1980s movie? You’ll probably notice that most of the actors had a smoke in their mouth. It was just common practice to smoke – even in public areas, smoking was totally permitted and many people might have even looked at you weird if you weren’t smoking.

Today, many things have changed – including the culture around smoking and behaviours when smoking. In most cities, it is illegal to smoke inside, and depending on the building you are standing close to you may not be able to smoke at all.

Thinking about this objectively – there must be a reason the government has finally put a major ban on cigarette smoke.

Pretty simple – smoking kills.

It’s not good for your lungs or any other internal organs. It drastically raises your risk for chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer and even lung disease. Truthfully, smoking is one of those habits you need to break in order to live a long and fruitful life.

Look, we know we’re not saying anything new – you know that smoking isn’t good for you, but the addictive qualities in cigarettes and tobacco, in general, keep you coming back.

Trouble is, we’d be willing to bet you’ve tried most of the popular methods to quit smoking. Chances are you’ve tried the patch – you’ve tried to slowly wean off tobacco, but it’s just not working.

Not to worry, giving up on quitting is not the answer. In this easy-to-follow guide, we are going to show you five simple methods you can implement in order to quit smoking for good.

Five Simple Steps to Follow To Quit Smoking and Enjoy Your Life

1. Exercise and Diet

This is a concept that is hammered into you from a really young age – but it is true. Diet and exercise are the primary components of your life that you could be missing out on. If you are missing these crucial components your body may not have the potential to go through withdrawal symptoms effectively.

What do I mean by this? Exercise is one of the best ways to limit your withdrawal symptoms. A complete diet will also help your body to balance its hormones and internal systems so that you do not always feel the need to have a cigarette.

In fact, some people only smoke to reduce appetite because they are always eating empty calories. Eating a more balanced and wholesome diet can help anyone to see the benefits from better lungs, healthier arteries and a better feeling of fullness after a balanced meal.

Having complete nutrition will also help to ensure that your body is setup for the long and difficult process of quitting. Your food determines your strength, so eat up!

2. Never use Nicotine Replacement

Nicotine replacement or nicotine chews and patches might seem like a really effective way to slowly wean yourself off nicotine, but the truth is, according to the research, only about 6% of users who use NRT’s are actually successful.

If you’re asking us, that a pretty low stat that I wouldn’t want to base my money on. Perhaps there are more effective ways to quit smoking above nicotine replacement.

3. Consider Non-Nicotine Medications

There are many prescription meds you can get that will be covered under your health care that can actually help to limit your urge to have nicotine. Some of the best are bupropion (Zyban) and varenicline (Chantix).

Both play a major role in your bodies ability to reduce your nicotine consumption by altering the way your brain uses it – thereby reducing the craving or attempting to interfere with the brain receptors for nicotine altogether.

Either way, both of these prescription meds have far higher success rates than most NRT’s and in some cases will even be covered by your government health-care plan.

4. Try Natural and Holistic Methods

This might not be your thing, but holistic medicine is how all medicine started until we have performed concrete science on it. Of course, we are referring to Auriculotherapy – through the use of specific acupuncture point and magnets some people have found that by using a product like EaseQuit they can drastically reduce their cravings to smoke.

Some people even report that smoking starts to taste much worse than before – with really limits their intrinsic desire to smoke. Either way, looking into a product like EaseQuit that uses Auriculotherapy could be one of your best shots at breaking the habit.

5. Behavioural Support

Let us not forget that tobacco and nicotine are drugs and you would be welcomed into any support group that assist people in breaking habits. Although you might be able to find more specific venues for smoking tobacco any type of behavioural support can be a very effective way to kick the habit.

Simply by talking to other people about their struggles and sharing your own, you can relate to other people’s challenges and even create joined efforts to break the habit or gradually quit over the course of several months.

Why Quitting is so Difficult

Drugs are a huge aspect of modern culture. Even if it’s not tobacco, other drugs like alcohol or even caffeine have been around the average person since the start of modern agriculture – this makes them ingrained in our culture.

It’s no wonder its hard to quit when wherever you look there is someone abusing some type of drug. Now, this doesn’t have to be you, you can quit, but it is important that you understand you will need to virtually go against everything you have seen demonstrated in modern culture.

Your Best Shot At Quitting

Your best shot at quitting smoking is to try something that has a high rate of success – duh, right?

Joking aside, your best bet at quitting will be combining behavioural therapy with prescription meds – all the while improving your exercise and diet.

Sounds like a lot right?

Truth be told, this is how you better your current life. Exercise and diet will not only create changes in your body composition – research shows that the way you eat reflects your biology – that is, having a diet rich in fruit, vegetables, beans, lean meats, nuts and some grains can be your best bet at creating a stronger and healthier body. At the end of the day, a healthy body will respond the best to various treatments.

Take care of your body, use medication when necessary and collaborate with other people who have the same struggles to create new venues for success.

Gabriello Ianniruberto

Gabriello is a writer and strength expert best known for his science-based and practical approach to Exercise Physiology, Nutrition and Strength. After serving in a directors position for The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology Gabriello moved towards writing to help more people understand the importance of living a healthy life. Gabriello’s writings have been published in several languages on some of the largest health and fitness websites helping people learn, grow and understand the complex components of optimizing human performance in a simplistic way.

Gabriello also takes on specialized, high-performance athletes who are in need of strength, mobility and conditioning programming to optimize their fitness through his Earned Fitness program.

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