Why should someone quit smoking?
Smoking is probably the worst sedentary lifestyle habit that we pick up. Quitting smoking changes everything right from the way you feel, taste and smell, your breath smells better and even your cough goes away. Quitting smoking cuts down the risk of cancer, stroke, neuropathy, heart disease and breathing disorders like bronchitis, pneumonia, and emphysema.
Not just that, quitting saves money too… just one of the many financial rewards of quitting.
Quit Smoking Tips
- Write down the reasons you want to quit for, and how it will benefit you: for e.g. live longer, feel better, family safety, save money, smell better, find a soul mate easily, etc. You know what’s bad about smoking and you know what you’ll get by quitting. Read the list daily.
- Ask for help from your family and friends. Help and support of family and friends without being judgmental helps a lot. You need their support when you become irritable and even irrational while you withdraw from your smoking habit.
- Set a Deadline. Set a quit date when you will extinguish forever. Prepare a plan.
- Talk with doctor and take his support and guidance.
- Exercise. Exercise helps relieve stress and recovers body from damage caused due to cigarettes. Start slow and increase up to 30 to 40 minutes.
- Begin to breathe. Daily deep breathing for 5-15 minutes will help cleanse the respiratory system and provide more oxygen repairing the damage caused to respiratory system and help cope with withdrawal symptoms.
- Do not quit abruptly. Cut down on cigarettes gradually. Plan everything about number of cigarettes you will smoke each day till the quit date, reduce the number each day.
- Buy single cigarette at a time. This helps a great deal to limit smoking.
- Change brands. This way you won’t enjoy smoking as much.
- Undertake social commitment. Keep your packet of cigarettes with someone else, so that you have to ask for them each time you want to smoke. This way you’ll feel guilty about asking and hence smoking; hence lowering the number of times you smoke.
- Find a mate who is trying to quit. This will boost the morale and keep up the positivity. Try finding a quitting chat room.
- Learn what triggers desire to smoke – like stress, the end of a meal, arrival at work, entering a bar, etc. Avoid these triggers or if that’s impossible, plan alternative ways to deal with the triggers.
Now, after you have read this, sit down and write your own list suitable to your personality and way of doing things and create your own plan for quitting.
