Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [77]
1. A nicotine pang can feel like a mild hunger pang. So if you find yourself getting ‘hungry’ at odd times of the day, it’s more likely to be a nicotine pang. Just brush it off and celebrate yet another sign of your recovery.
2. Nicotine speeds up the metabolism slightly but its effect on your weight when you stop smoking is minimal. Nicotine also robs you of energy and once you stop smoking increased energy levels cause many people to actually lose weight on this method because instead of moping around eating chocolate and feeling deprived, you feel like getting out and doing things with all of your new-found energy and confidence.
In my experience the stories we hear about people putting twenty, thirty or forty pounds on are always due to substituting food for cigarettes. You won’t feel the need to substitute with this method so you shouldn’t have any issues caused by substitution.
If there were any truth about cigarettes and weight control you would never see an overweight smoker, and there are plenty of those around; I should know, for years I was one.
In the US, the constitutional right to free speech is one of the most cherished. If cigarettes really relieved stress, controlled weight, helped us relax and concentrate etc., tobacco companies would claim it on the pack. The fact that none of these claims appear on the pack is proof that they are not true. In fairness, it is smokers, not tobacco companies, who make these claims. As a senior tobacco executive said in 1982, “We should start to see ourselves as a drug company rather than a tobacco company.”
If you put on a couple of pounds over the next couple of weeks, don’t worry. After years of punishment due to smoking, it takes our bodies a little while to settle back down. As I have said repeatedly; stopping smoking doesn’t make you put weight on, overeating does. Be sensible, don’t substitute, eat properly and exercise and you will be feeling—and looking—like a million dollars before you know it.
CHAPTER 38
SHOULD I AVOID TEMPTATION?
Up until now, I have been categorical in all my advice and would ask you to treat this advice as instruction rather than suggestion. The reason for this is twofold: first, because there are sound, practical reasons for my advice and, second, because those reasons have been backed up by the experience of hundreds of thousands of successful EASYWAY quitters.
On the question of whether or not to try to avoid people or situations you associate with smoking during the early days of your quit, I regret that I cannot be categorical. Each smoker will need to decide for himself. I can, however, make what I hope will be helpful suggestions.
Every smoker fears that when they stop smoking they also have to stop living. I am delighted to tell you that the opposite is true—with the cigarette out of your life, you can really start living. This fear is really just a fear of the unknown and it is this that keeps us smoking year after year. This fear consists of two distinct phases.
1. How can I survive without a cigarette? This is the same fear that smokers get when they are out late at night and running low on cigarettes. Of course it’s caused by the cigarette. Non-smokers never feel this fear. Indeed, one of the sweetest things about becoming a non-smoker is to be free from the constant, nagging fear.
This fear is purely psychological and thoroughly irrational. Think about it rationally. Why should we have a fear of not poisoning ourselves to death? The question should not be ‘How can I survive without the cigarette?’ but ‘How did I survive being a smoker all these years?’ It’s amazing our bodies can put up with the punishment. Life without cigarettes is normal, natural and fun—look at the millions of non-smokers and ex-smokers who are getting through life quite happily without the burden of drug addiction and the slavery of smoking. They’ve done it and so can you. It’s only smokers who obsess about cigarettes and get panicky when they can’t smoke. Non-smokers couldn’t care less. And neither will you once you have made the