How to reduce weight after quitting smoking

Question

I have gained weight after I quit smoking 4 months ago, e.g. my jeans have become too tight to wear.

I have found that my hunger has increased after I quit smoking. Besides quitting smoking, I have also reduced my alcohol intake.

I want to lose these extra pounds, so my question is: What is the best way for me to lose weight given these circumstances?

Answer 1

There is no easy way to lose weight, all you need to do is look around and realize how many obese people there are - eating/getting obese is obviously easier (and more enjoyable short term) than losing weight and getting in shape. So:

• Get it out of your mind it's going to be easy
• Figure out what interests you have that will keep you physically active
• Get a mindset that every donut, bagel, ice cream cone you consume, you'll be paying dearly to counter the calories with a heavy duty workout
• Join a gym, get a trainer and/or nutritionist to help you set realistic goals and find a workout partner to keep you going and honest
• accept that at the end of the day, it's up to you to make the change, no GOD of fat is tormenting you
• be brave
• put the triple patty, double cheese burger down along with the milkshake and pick up a weight - doing something physical is always an alternative to eating
• adopt a dog to ensure you walk everyday (get a big dog so you'll have to take long walks)
• look in the mirror and visualize what you want to look like and how healthy you want to be and do it daily (along with weighing yourself and recording your weight)
• start a food journal - track EVERYTHING for 2 weeks and do this review every 3 months
• start/keep an exercise journal - any day you DON'T work out - record and write down the poor excuse why not.

It's 90% mental, so, get to it.........and good luck!

Answer 2

People will always recommend reducing your caloric intake, but given that you feel hunger that's not sustainable, even if it were to work for you (it might, but it also might not, weight loss is a very individual thing).

I will suggest to you that your goal should not be to lose weight or for any specific weight target. Your question suggests your issue is that your jeans are too tight for you, so if anything your goal should be too lose inches (which might actually involve gaining weight, as counter-intuitive as it seems).

A strength training program would be advisable. Core muscles that keep your stomach in will make it easier for you to fit into your jeans, although I'm not going to suggest doing ab exercises like crunches. The core muscles are there to stabilise your torso, so doing heavy lifting that forces you to contract your core muscles to keep it rigid will work your muscles the way they are designed to work. These exercises would be squats, deadlifts, presses and chin-ups.

For a beginner to a strength training program, simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain is often possible, so you'll start working towards your real goal of losing inches, even if in that process you start gaining weight (for the same volume, muscle weighs more than fat).

You could modify your diet to avoid feeling hunger as much. Experimenting with the glycemic index or glycemic load diet could work (although for people who have certain conditions, that's actually a bad idea, so pay attention to how you feel after making any changes to your diet). Generally eating foods that are slow to digest (fats, then proteins, not carbs unless they're with fat or protein) could help.

There's also a hypothesis that ex-smokers eat a lot because moving food to their mouths keeps their hands busy. I'm not sure how much truth there is to it, but it wouldn't hurt to find a hobby or habit that generally keeps your hands busy.