This may sound ridiculous to you, but many teen age girls and even adults for that matter actually believe that smoking cigarettes can help them stay slim so that they won't put on extra weight. Yes, you read that right. It is because of this belief that is preventing many young women from quitting smoking.   Research conducted in Canada and the United Kingdom showed that one third of young girls viewed weight gain as a reason not to quit smoking for good.

Stay Slim and Sexy!

Take for example, Cindy, a petite slim 24 year old lady, said "I tend to eat a lot when I don't smoke, in particular food like candy, chocolate and junk food. The last time I tried cutting down on cigarettes, I gained about 6 pounds in just a matter of weeks. Frankly, I don't worry about the health risks for being a smoker as they seem so distant. However, I can see the link with my weight immediately. So I continue smoking to maintain my ideal body weight."

Why They Don’t Quit Smoking?

So is it a mistake for young women to take up smoking in the belief that smoking will help them manage their weight and to stay slim?

Well, it is known that whether you smoke or not does not really matter as far as putting on weight is concerned. It is that people have the tendency to put on weight when they quit smoking.

This is what Dr Chris Steele, a British general practitioner and the resident doctor on the popular UK TV show, This Morning said, "About a third of people gain quite a lot of weight when they give up smoking. Another third gain a small amount of weight and another third don't put on any weight at all". Dr Steele runs smoker's clinic for more than 3 decades and has lectured all over the world.

So the question is then why to people gain weight when they quit smoking? According to Dr Steele, Nicotine suppresses the appetite and increases the metabolic rate. Furthermore, an average female smoker puts a cigarette into her mouth about 200 times a day and so while she is doing that, she can’t snack or eat. Thus smoking is a way of curtailing putting food into the mouth.

He added that most smokers light up a cigarette after a meal. The nicotine then delays gastric-emptying of the stomach making the food stay in the stomach longer making the smoker feeling full longer and thus relieving the urge to snack in between meals. So when a person quit smoking, the stomach empties more quickly and so the temptations of snacking in between meals become much more apparent.

Although people may gain weight when they quit smoking, smoking itself does not cause weight loss. Therefore taking up smoking will not help you to stay slim.

As for smokers who do not want to quit because they fear that they will put on weight, Dr Steel offers this advise, "Firstly, people should realize that continuing to smoke is a very dangerous way of maintaining weight. Furthermore, it is only helpful in about 30% of cases. If you smoke 20 sticks a day, you are spending 60 to 100 minutes each day smoking. So why not devote that time to exercising for weight maintenance instead?"

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Best Wishes