48 hours after you stop smoking your taste and smell senses start to enhance and will go back to normal. This will give you the ability to enjoy good meals. But the problem is your lips were used to receive something : the cigarette. So you need to compensate the lack of this by something else, and often you eat more than you should. The compensation is one of the 2 reasons that make you gain weight.

The second reason is because of the metabolism. People with higher metabolism, burn more calories. This is the case when you are a smoker : your body fights against the toxins all day, so your metabolism accelerates. When you become a non smoker, your body don’t have toxicity anymore to fight, and your metabolism slow down. The result is of course that you don’t burn calories as fast as you did.

So eating to compensate the cigarette and having a slower metabolism leads you to gain weight. Metabolism is something bodybuilders know well. What’s the relation with bodybuilding, you ask. Well, these guys can eat more frequently and eat a lot more calories than you, but their meals are much smaller. Their metabolism speed up so they burn more calories too : they lose fat, and gain muscle.

Now here is what usually happens for you. You find that you are always hungry, you open the fridge several times per day, and eat to compensate. Of course this is not a solution, because you kept your regular meals the same quantity as when you were a smoker. If you have to eat more often then, eat smaller quantities, you will reduce your calories intake and even increase your metabolism.

How to eat like a bodybuilder : up to 6 meals a day but small meals and small portions. Have a preference for fresh fruits and vegetables. And remember bodybuilders make sport, so do some exercises if you can. If you can manage to walk or run everyday, this will considerably help you to not gain weight, even if you do it for a few minutes.

We often say that we need to get new habits and keep our mind and body busy to lower the withdrawal symptoms. This involves to substitute the cigarette between our fingers or between our lips. Here are some more tips to stop smoking without gaining weight :

  • A toothpick can be a good solution to replace the oral fixation, just don’t try to light or eat it.
  • You can have a sugarless chewing gum packet in your pocket : this will replace your cigarette packet and the habit will be to chew instead of smoking.
  • Sunflower seeds are generally an effective substitution to cigarette. It seems that sunflower seeds effects are the same as nicotine.

You know eating less is just common sense when you don’t want to gain weight. So control yourself, this is also part of your new habit. Eat low calorie food, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. You don’t have to eat more to satisfy your stomach. Eat slowly and enjoy your meals, don’t go fast and eat normal quantities. If you choose to take some sugarless chewing gums, there are many flavors you can taste. Make some sport and think that when you are not smoking, you are already getting healthier.