By You don’t have to resort to patches or Vape to eliminate your dependence on smoking.
I don’t have to tell you how dangerous smoking is. Some colleagues have resorted to vaping because they smell nicer and don’t harm their breath as much as your stock standard ciggies. I wouldn’t say I like smoking — and it’s unnecessary.
Smoking to me is like having a food obsession; it depends on your emotional response from within or your environment. We grab some junk food or a ciggie when that emotion is triggered.
Unfortunately, the two instances don’t fall far from the apple tree.
Smoking can risk your life
My distaste for smoking stemmed from my dad’s bad habit when I knew what smoke was.
When he would relax, I’d see him smoke. When he was repairing the car, I’d see him smoke. Smoke would be in another when he had a whisky in one hand. It was disgusting, and I was not too fond of the smell.
Eventually, Mum and I banned him from smoking inside the house, but that didn’t deter him from the habit. Smoking eventually killed my dad. His cancer was so bad that the doctors couldn’t determine where it initially manifested.
We only found he had cancer through an unexpected seizure. Then, one day, it shocked us all out of nowhere.
That’s when my mum called to tell me that Dad had cancer. That was the first time I started to shake with nervousness and anxiety — my dad, the building block of our family, has cancer. He forever told me he would outlive Mum and all of us combined.
For about nine months, he was in and out of the hospital. Some months he’d be on the verge of death, then he looked like he was making a recovery at other times.
Cancer does that to you — it tricks you into believing you may have a chance.
But then suddenly, it gets worse, and you are back where it all began. I shared this journey with my teenager. Today, teens are obsessed with vaping because it’s cool.
Vaping has become a new obsession.
Vaping is our old-fashioned equivalent to smoking. My daughter knows the dangers. She can hear the pain in my voice, see the pain in my eyes when I speak about her grandfather — the man she never had the pleasure of meeting.
Quitting is an arduous journey. You may be faced with a terminal diagnosis if you are unlucky. But do you want it to get to that stage — struggling to breathe and contemplating your lost life in the hands of a smoking obsession?
Cigarette smoking kills thousands of Americans every day, and whilst a large proportion of smokers want to quit, less than five per cent go ahead and do so without help.
We should have tools and strategies that help smokers quit successfully, and it appears there is something that can do that.
What the study uncovered
In a pilot study, Joseph Ciccolo, PhD and colleagues enrolled 25 male and female smokers aged 18–65 who had smoked five cigarettes daily for the past year.
All participants received a 15–20 minute smoking cessation counselling session and an eight weeks supply of nicotine patches before being randomised into two groups. One of the groups engaged in 60 minutes of training sessions per week for 12 weeks.
It was a full-body routine involving ten exercises, and the researchers slowly increased the weight and intensity every three weeks. In addition, these participants watched a video on health and wellness twice a week. The control group did not exercise.
At the end of the 12-week duration, 16 per cent of smokers in the resistance training group had not only quit smoking but decreased their body weight and fat. Compared to the 8 per cent of individuals in the control group who quit smoking yet increased their body weight and fat.
What’s excellent news is that those who exercised experienced long-lasting changes.
For example, three months after the study was complete, 15 per cent of those in the resistance training group had successfully eliminated smoking, compared to the 8 per cent in the control group.
Although Ciccolo says these results are promising, further research is needed before resistance training can be used in a clinical setting to treat smoke cessation.
Smoking costs the US approximately $193 billion yearly in health care expenditures and lost productivity.
It’s pretty disgusting, as that could be used for other life-threatening genetic health disorders.
Key takeaways
Speak to your doctor first, but think about using strength training to quit smoking and change your health and life. As I always mention in many posts, you will naturally filter through all the other necessary components once you become more active. That might mean your diet or lifestyle, and it is only natural for you to want to keep progressing.
Once you develop a healthy mindset, your life will become dedicated to achieving it. You feel so good it’s hard to stop! Have you quit smoking, and what was the most significant catalyst for you to plunge? Please sign up via my link if you want to read more articles like this or start writing your own. I’d love to see you on the other side.
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