Quit Smoking for Life. Suzanne Schlosberg

Fear: I’ll gain weight

      Yes, many smokers gain weight after they quit. That’s because smoking suppresses appetite and boosts metabolism a bit, and because, upon quitting, many folks turn to food to occupy their mouths and keep stress in check. But the typical weight gain averages just five to ten pounds. Only thirteen percent of smokers gain more than twenty pounds when they quit, and sixteen percent actually lose weight, according to a published review of 62 studies.⁴ These “losers” feel so tremendous after conquering their cigarette addiction that they make additional healthy changes, like taking up exercise and cutting back on junk food.

      Faye Reese, who smoked to cope with an unhappy marriage, gained ten pounds in the first two months after giving up cigarettes. “I remember standing in line at JC Penney to buy a pair of pants, feeling kind of down about it, and I said to a woman in line, ‘I just quit smoking, and I’m finding I need to go up a size.’ The woman said, ‘Congratulations on quitting smoking!’ That helped put things in perspective.”

      Reese wanted to channel all her energy into conquering her smoking addiction before taking on the challenge of losing weight. So, she made changes in stages. “I knew the weight gain was only temporary, but the effects of smoking would not be. My mother and brother died of cancer. My dad died of a heart attack. My brothers had heart attacks. I felt like a ticking time bomb.”

      Six months into her new life as a nonsmoker, Reese took up walking, which accelerated to jogging and marathon running. She began tracking her eating habits with an online weight-loss tool, reducing her portions, and snacking on carrots, fruit, and almonds rather than chips and crackers. She lost fat and gained muscle. “I have some pretty nice-looking calves, and I’m proud of that,” says Reese. “I’m not as concerned about the number on the scale as I am about living a healthy lifestyle.”

Fear: The stress of quitting is going to trigger an illness

      We’ve heard the stories: “My uncle got lung cancer three months after he quit.” Or, “My mom quit smoking and seven years later she died of a heart attack. I don’t want that to happen to me if I quit.”

      Simply put, quitting smoking does not cause illness. Smoking does. Many conditions begin long before they are diagnosed. Any smoking-related disease you may develop after you quit almost certainly would have struck sooner and/or would have been more serious had you not stopped smoking. The longer you put off quitting, the more likely you are to suffer smoking-related health problems such as heart disease and cancer. Research shows that if you quit by age 30, you’ve lost virtually nothing, whereas waiting until age 60 to quit, does cost you years of life. But even smokers who quit at 60 get back four years they’d otherwise have sacrificed. The bottom line: Quitting smoking adds years and quality of life, and continuing to smoke takes years away and decreases the quality of those years. Smoking is a gamble with the odds stacked against your health. The safe bet is to quit sooner rather than later.

Fear: I’ll feel lost without my “best friend”

      At 26, Lisa Koenigsburg-Roshon was working in the music industry and enjoying the New York City single life. Any time, day or night, she could call a friend and say, “I’m having a hard day. Let’s walk down to the Village and go window-shopping.” Then her dad was diagnosed with a fatal blood disease. Koenigsburg-Roshon, who’d already lost her mother, also a smoker, to a massive heart attack, suddenly found herself as her father’s full-time caregiver — in Phoenix, Arizona. “I was by myself in a town I couldn’t stand and where I knew nobody, I didn’t drive, and my dad was terminal,” says Koenigsburg-Roshon. “Cigarettes were my comfort, my friend.”

      Do you feel a similar fondness for your cigarettes? Do you ever think: A cigarette doesn’t judge me. It doesn’t talk back. It’s always there for me.

      If so, let’s consider the flip side of this rationale. Picture your ideal friend. Would you allow this friend to spend your money, damage your body, make you a social outcast, eat up your valuable time, control you all day long, make your house and car smell, or cause strife in your family? We hope not! No doubt you are in a relationship with cigarettes, but it’s an abusive one.

      After her father died, it took Koenigsburg-Roshon more than a decade to come to this conclusion. She was 38 when her daughter, then in kindergarten, said, “Mommy, are you going to die from smoking?” Reminded of her mother’s smoking-related death, Koenigsburg-Roshon decided she did not want to repeat history. When she quit, her mantra became, “Cigarettes aren’t my friend; they are my enemy.” When she’d exit a store and see smokers huddled together, she’d say to herself: You killed my mom and my godmother, and one of my best friends, and you were going to kill me. You are so not my friend.

      By the time she quit, Koenigsburg-Roshon was so angry at her cigarettes that she didn’t grieve their loss. But others do feel sad, and a bit lonely, when they leave behind what has been a lifelong companion. If you do think of your cigarettes as a friend, consider writing a “Dear John” letter to them when you quit. For example: “You’re spending all my money, and you’re trying to kill me. I need to let you go.”

Fear: I’m going to sacrifice my social life

      At 20, Andrew Van Ness worried that if he quit smoking, his college friends wouldn’t want to hang out with him as much. “I felt like things wouldn’t be the same, like I would be an outsider,” he says. Eventually, alarmed by a smoking-related lung infection, he decided that friendships could be repaired later but he might not have the same opportunity with his lungs. “I decided to let the cards fall where they may and focus on quitting. I figured: If you’re friends with someone, they’re still going to make time for you whether you’re smoking or not.”

      After he quit, Van Ness discovered the difference between acquaintances and friends. “Quitting smoking helped me find out which friends were committed to being by my side,” he says, “and it weeded out the people who were just hanging out with me because it was convenient for them.”

      Your friends will want you to succeed at quitting, because that’s what friends do.

Fear: I’ll lose my identity

      A manufacturing engineer with a rebellious streak, Sheila Woods always enjoyed bonding with other smokers. “Everyone else may look at us as if we’re idiots who don’t know we’re killing ourselves,” says Woods, 50, who lives in Rockford, Michigan, “but we look at each other with a deeper knowledge of who we are: addicts. We know that whether we’re a bank president or a custodian, we are all in the same boat.” Woods would even get a small thrill from the dirty looks nonsmokers would throw her way. “I was within my legal rights to smoke. Because of the way society treats smokers, I had to defend myself over and over, and when you do that you tend to become a bit defensive. Smoking was so much of who I was.”

      At age 49, tired of feeling ruled by cigarettes, Woods decided she wanted out of the club. Yet for a long time after she quit, she wanted to tell smokers she was still one of them. “I wasn’t ready to let go of that yet,” recalls Woods, who smoked for 33 years. “I wanted to say, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. A year ago, I’d have been right there with you.’ ”

      Eventually, she did lose the instinct to bond with smokers. Now, she says, her identity as a smoker is gone. “I don’t miss the smoking or the bonding at all. I am who I always was, only now I don’t annoy people.”

      Being a smoker may have once felt like a way to identify yourself as someone who marches to a different beat and who is unrestrained by social pressures to be “good” all the time. But as you consider your identity, challenge yourself to prioritize other aspects of the person you are, keeping in mind that everyone deserves to be healthy. In addition to being a smoker, aren’t you also a loyal friend, a hard worker, a loving aunt, a doting grandparent, a dog lover, a banjo picker, a car enthusiast, or an expert bridge player? Look at the bigger picture. Yes, you happen to smoke, but that doesn’t mean your self-definition needs to include cigarettes. Maybe you took up smoking because back then it was the cool thing to do. But now you’re cool