Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease and death—killing around one in five people a year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Luckily, when someone stops smoking, it reduces their risk of having serious health issues such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Stop before age 40, and the risk of dying of smoking-related illness decreases by about 90%. But, what’s the reality for people who are using smoking as a way of weight loss?
Quitting can be difficult. And if you’re a smoker who wants to quit, you may be worried that you’re going to lose the pack, but you’re going to pack the pounds. There is a lot of information about the relationship between weight control and weight smoking. But a lot of them are just simply mythical. Here are some fears that might prevent you from leaving and what you should know.
Why smokers appear to lose their weight?
If you’re a frequent smoker or have a buddy who’s a chain smoker, you might have noticed a difference in your weight or height. Don’t boast anymore if you’ve lost any weight in the process. Smoking weight loss is the most terrible idea and should not be sponsored at any cost. There are several reasons why this ‘weight loss’ is really a bad sign for the body.
1. Appetite loss
This lack of appetite means you’re going to stop eating the right meals. Therefore, cigarette addicts often prefer to have a cigarette than having food. This will cause you to lose weight, but this simply means the body continues to be low in calories and nutrients.
2. To Risk Your Welling
The constriction of blood vessels due to smoke entering your body is another aspect that leads to weight loss. As the blood vessels close down due to this addition of smoke, the working of the stomach begins to be disrupted. That’s why you stop feeling hungry more often than not. So you’re losing weight, but you’re still losing your body at the same time.
3. Smoking initiation and weight concerns
Adolescence is a critical time for initiation of smoking and excessive body weight gain. In female adolescents, smoking initiation is correlated with body weight, height, and dietary activity. In a counselor panel of U.S. adolescents, smoking initiation was more common in females who were overweight, reported attempting to lose weight, or identified themselves as overweight as in females without these attributes. Women students who had previously tried to lose weight or who had constantly been thinking about weight were more than twice as likely to start smoking as those who had not tried to lose weight or who had not constantly been thinking about weight. In addition, the expectation of weight management could be a cause for adolescent males to start smoking.
These results indicate that smoking initiation in both sexes may be caused by weight problems and prior weight loss attempts. One of the implications is that the shift in body weight with smoking can be influenced by factors that followed smoking initiation.
4. Smoking is affecting your metabolism
When it comes to smoking and weight loss, metabolism—how the body uses food for energy—often gets weight control credit. Smoking raises the metabolic rate, but only marginally.
The 2016 study of the literature on the little-understood impact of smoking cessation on metabolic function shows that it is much more complicated. Smoking plays a variety of functions, both physiologically and behaviorally, in suppressing appetite and lowering weight.
“Because you’re smoking, you may eat less. Because you’re occupying your hands and your mouth with other things. This is the observable part,” says Allen. Physiologically, the release of chemical compounds in the brain, such as dopamine and norepinephrine, can play a role in how the body wants food and how much we consume, she says.
5. Smoking is making you thin
On average, smokers weigh less than ever before. Past smokers weigh more than the new smokers do. But this isn’t the full picture.
“All smokers are not slim,” says Karen Johnson, MD, professor of women’s health at the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Institute of Tennessee Health Sciences Center. “Smoking a cigarette keeps you slim.” is a Myth and which is false.
According to a 2018 report by the Global Institution for Cancer Research, heavy smokers appear to weigh more than light smokers. A survey of 450,000 UK participants found that there could be a greater chance of smoking and more smoking for people genetically predisposed to obesity.
It doesn’t mean that the more you smoke, the slimmer you’re going to look. In reality, it could change your shape in ways you don’t anticipate. The rise in cigarettes smoked per day was correlated with a greater circumference of the waist and more abdominal fat, according to a study of more than 6,000 Swiss men and women. In addition, a later meta-analysis published in the 2015 British Medical Journal analyzed the genetic details of nearly 150,000 current, former, and never-smokers and found for a given BMI, a gene variant linked with heavy smoking may contribute to a relative increase in waist circumference. Translation: It’s not definitive, but the more you vape, the more weight you will get around your center.
Benefits of Quitting
Quitting smoking has both immediate and long-term well-being benefits to women of all ages. Smoking induces short-and short-lived long-term improvements in women’s bodies, contributing to early menopause and the emergence of bone disorders such as osteoporosis. Quitting smoking reverses those changes and delays the progression of the disease – and can theoretically impose the harm caused by smoking. Many people do not realize that the health benefits of quitting smoking begin within minutes of the last cigarette – and continue to accumulate for many years.
Conclusion
CIGARETTE SMOKING IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH. Hence smoking is not the way to go if you want to lose weight. This is a technique that makes you frail and not thin, with healthy connotations. Smoking means only illnesses and lifelong health problems in the future. Weight loss should be a sustainable process in which your skin gets a strong glow, and you get several health benefits.
