The 10 Stages of Quitting —Tom Ferguson, M.D.

Article Adapted from the book: The No-Nag, No-Guilt, Do-It-Your-Own-Way Guide to Quitting Smoking

Smokers tend to think of quitting as a huge, insurmountable obstacle. It’s more realistic—and more useful—to think of it as a gradual, step-by-step process. Here’s how to plan your course and what to expect along the way, along with some suggested activities to help you cope.

1. Think about cutting down/quitting.

Talk to others about smoking. Observe how nonsmokers react to smokers. Observe negative aspects of smoking. Smoke in front of a mirror to see exactly what goes on when you smoke.

2. Seek more information about quitting.

Ask ex-smokers how they did it. Tell a friend you’re exploring healthier alternatives to smoking. When you feel an urge to smoke, wait a minute before lighting up; experience the urge fully and think of other ways to respond to it. Reward yourself for becoming more aware of your smoking patterns.

3. Modify your smoking risk (switch brands, cut down, etc.).

Start a smoking journal and record when you smoke more or less than usual. Try stress-reduction techniques. Adopt a healthful new activity that’s incompatible with smoking (swimming, dancing, etc.). Switch to a lower tar brand. Reward yourself for each risk modification.

4. Decide to quit (no date set).

Keep track of the number of cigarettes you smoke each day. Stop buying cartons; buy only one pack at a time. Identify your top cigarette triggers. Brush your teeth several times a day. List the reasons you want to quit. Switch brands every week, each brand being lower in tar than the last. Postpone every third cigarette. Ask family and friends for ways they can help you quit.

5. Set a quitting date.

Sign a stop-smoking contract. Sit in the nonsmoking sections of restaurants and airplanes. Prepare at least three responses to your top 10 cigarette triggers. Switch brands after every pack. Postpone every other cigarette. Cut back on alcoholic beverages. Set up a health bank. (Deposit a certain amount of money each week that you’ll get back after you stay smokeless for a specified period of time. Or quit with a group; whoever remains smokeless after a specified period divides the kitty.)

6. Refrain from smoking for 24 hours.

Schedule healthful activities (walks, bike rides, fishing, etc.). Have your teeth cleaned. Send your favorite clothes to the cleaners. Discard all your ashtrays. Pamper yourself as much as possible.

7. Complete your first week as a nonsmoker.

Treat yourself to daily rewards (massages, hot baths, etc.). Avoid smoking and drinking areas. Notice how much better your food tastes. Continue to work on your cigarette triggers.

8. Complete your first month.

Begin a regular exercise program. Add one new stress-reduction technique to your activities each week.

9. Complete your first trimester.

Gently increase your exercise level. Treat yourself to a weekend getaway. Volunteer to help a smoker quit. If you’ve been using a nicotine replacement, begin to cut back.

10. Complete your first year.

Throw a party to celebrate!

During stages 1 through 5, you may find yourself in a state of profound and confusing ambivalence. Studies show that during this period a smoker’s positive feelings about smoking do not disappear, although the negative feelings increase considerably. It is only after you actually quit that this conflict begins to ease.

One smoking researcher suggests you make a list of pros and cons of smoking. Chances are they will be fairly evenly balanced in stages 1 through 5. But after you have actually quit, the list of cons will get longer while the list of pros will get shorter and shorter—and gradually disappear altogether.

This material, used by permission, is Copyright 1989 Tom Ferguson, M.D., and is adapted from his book The No-Nag, No-Guilt, Do-It-Your-Own-Way Guide To Quitting Smoking.

Credits:-www.quitsmoking.com

20 Quick Tips to Help You Quit Smoking —By Fred H. Kelley

Quitting isn’t easy, Here are 20 tips proven to help.

Believe in yourself. Believe that you can quit. Think about some of the most difficult things you have done in your life and realize that you have the guts and determination to quit smoking. It’s up to you. After reading this list, sit down and write your own list, customized to your personality and way of doing things. Create you own plan for quitting. Write down why you want to quit (the benefits of quitting): live longer, feel better, for your family, save money, smell better, find a mate more easily, etc. You know what’s bad about smoking and you know what you’ll get by quitting. Put it on paper and read it daily. Ask your family and friends to support your decision to quit. Ask them to be completely supportive and non-judgmental. Let them know ahead of time that you will probably be irritable and even irrational while you withdraw from your smoking habit. Set a quit date. Decide what day you will extinguish your cigarettes forever. Write it down. Plan for it. Prepare your mind for the “first day of the rest of your life”. You might even hold a small ceremony when you smoke you last cigarette, or on the morning of the quit date. Talk with your doctor about quitting. Support and guidance from a physician is a proven way to better your chances to quit. Begin an exercise program. Exercise is simply incompatible with smoking. Exercise relieves stress and helps your body recover from years of damage from cigarettes. If necessary, start slow, with a short walk once or twice per day. Build up to 30 to 40 minutes of rigorous activity, 3 or 4 times per week. Consult your physician before beginning any exercise program. Do some deep breathing each day for 3 to 5 minutes. Breathe in through your nose very slowly, hold the breath for a few seconds, and exhale very slowly through your mouth. Try doing your breathing with your eyes closed and go to step 9. Visualize your way to becoming a non-smoker. While doing your deep breathing in step 8, you can close your eyes and begin to imagine yourself as a non-smoker. See yourself enjoying your exercise in step 7. See yourself turning down a cigarette that someone offers you. See yourself throwing all your cigarettes away, and winning a gold medal for doing so. Develop your own creative visualizations. Visualization works. Quit smoking hypnosis programs are a form of guided visualization. Cut back on cigarettes gradually (if you cut back gradually, be sure to set a quit date on which you WILL quit). Ways to cut back gradually include: plan how many cigarettes you will smoke each day until your quit date, making the number you smoke smaller each day; buy only one pack at a time; change brands so you don’t enjoy smoking as much; give your cigarettes to someone else, so that you have to ask for them each time you want to smoke. Quit smoking “cold turkey”. Many smokers find that the only way they can truly quit once and for all is to just quit abruptly without trying to slowly taper off. Find the method that works best for you: gradually quitting or cold turkey. If one way doesn’t work do the other. Find another smoker who is trying to quit, and help each other with positive words and by lending an ear when quitting becomes difficult. Visit this Quit Smoking Forum and this Quit Smoking Chat Room to find a “quit buddy.” Have your teeth cleaned. Enjoy the way your teeth look and feel and plan to keep them that way. After you quit, plan to celebrate the milestones in your journey to becoming a non-smoker. After two weeks of being smoke-free, see a movie. After a month, go to a fancy restaurant (be sure to sit in the non-smoking section). After three months, go for a long weekend to a favorite get-away. After six months, buy yourself something frivolous. After a year, have a party for yourself. Invite your family and friends to your “birthday” party and celebrate your new chance at a long, healthy life. Drink lots of water. Water is good for you anyway, and most people don’t get enough. It will help flush the nicotine and other chemicals out of your body, plus it can help reduce cravings by fulfilling the “oral desires” that you may have. Learn what triggers your desire for a cigarette, such as stress, the end of a meal, arrival at work, entering a bar, etc. Avoid these triggers or if that’s impossible, plan alternative ways to deal with the triggers. Find something to hold in your hand and mouth, to replace cigarettes. Consider drinking straws or you might try an artificial cigarette called E-Z Quit found here:http://www.quitsmoking.com/ezquit.htm Write yourself an inspirational song or poem about quitting, cigarettes, and what it means to you to quit. Read it daily. Keep a picture of your family or someone very important to you with you at all times. On a piece of paper, write the words “I’m quitting for myself and for you (or “them”)”. Tape your written message to the picture. Whenever you have the urge to smoke, look at the picture and read the message. Whenever you have a craving for a cigarette, instead of lighting up, write down your feelings or whatever is on your mind. Keep this “journal” with you at all times.

Good luck in your efforts to quit smoking. It’s worth it!

Credits:-http://www.quitsmoking.com/content/20-quick-tips-to-help-you-quit-smoking

How Smoking Affects Your Body

There’s hardly a part of the human body that’s not affected by the chemicals in the cigarettes you smoke. Let’s take a tour of your body to look at how smoking affects it.

Starting at the Top

As a smoker, you’re at risk for cancer of the mouth. Tobacco smoke can also cause gum disease, tooth decay and bad breath. The teeth become unsightly and yellow. Smokers may experience frequent headaches. And lack of oxygen and narrowed blood vessels to the brain can lead to strokes.

Lungs and Bronchi

Moving down to your chest, smoke passes through the bronchi, or breathing tubes. Hydrogen cyanide and other chemicals in the smoke attack the lining of the bronchi, inflaming them and causing that chronic smoker’s cough. Because the bronchi are weakened, you’re more likely to get bronchial infections. Mucus secretion in your lungs is impaired, also leading to chronic coughing. Smokers are 10 times as likely to get lung cancer and emphysema as nonsmokers.

Smoking and the Heart

The effects of smoking on your heart are devastating. Nicotine raises blood pressure and makes the blood clot more easily. Carbon monoxide robs the blood of oxygen and leads to the development of cholesterol deposits on the artery walls. All of these effects add up to an increased risk of heart attack. In addition, the poor circulation resulting from cholesterol deposits can cause strokes, loss of circulation in fingers and toes and impotence.

Smoking and the Body’s Organs

The digestive system is also affected. The tars in smoke can trigger cancer of the esophagus and throat. Smoking causes increased stomach acid secretion, leading to heartburn and ulcers. Smokers have higher rates of deadly pancreatic cancer. Many of the carcinogens from cigarettes are excreted in the urine where their presence can cause bladder cancer, which is often fatal. High blood pressure from smoking can damage the kidneys.

The Results

The health effects of smoking have results we can measure. Forty percent of men who are heavy smokers will die before they reach retirement age, as compared to only 18 percent of nonsmokers. Women who smoke face an increased risk of cervical cancer, and pregnant women who smoke take a chance with the health of their unborn babies.
But the good news is that when you quit smoking your body begins to repair itself. Ten years after you quit, your body has repaired most of the damage smoking caused. Those who wait until cancer or emphysema has set in aren’t so lucky—these conditions are usually fatal. It’s one more reason to take the big step and quit now.

10 tips to quit smoking

10 Tips for Quitting Smoking

I recently celebrated my one-year anniversary of quitting smoking. Well, of finally quitting … like most smokers, I had tried to quit many times and failed. But this quit stuck, and I’d like to share the top 10 things that made this quit successful when the others failed.

1. Commit Thyself Fully. In the quits that failed, I was only half into it. I told myself I wanted to quit, but I always felt in the back of my mind that I’d fail. I didn’t write anything down, I didn’t tell everybody (maybe my wife, but just her). This time, I wrote it down. I wrote down a plan. I blogged about it. I made a vow to my daughter. I told family and friends I was quitting. I went online and joined a quit forum. I had rewards. Many of these will be in the following tips, but the point is that I fully committed, and there was no turning back. I didn’t make it easy for myself to fail.

2. Make a Plan. You can’t just up and say, “I’m gonna quit today.” You have to prepare yourself. Plan it out. Have a system of rewards, a support system, a person to call if you’re in trouble. Write down what you’ll do when you get an urge. Print it out. Post it up on your wall, at home and at work. If you wait until you get the urge to figure out what you’re going to do, you’ve already lost. You have to be ready when those urges come.

3. Know Your Motivation. When the urge comes, your mind will rationalize. “What’s the harm?” And you’ll forget why you’re doing this. Know why you’re doing this BEFORE that urge comes. Is it for your kids? For your wife? For you health? So you can run? Because the girl you like doesn’t like smokers? Have a very good reason or reasons for quitting. List them out. Print them out. Put it on a wall. And remind yourself of those reasons every day, every urge.

4. Not One Puff, Ever (N.O.P.E.). The mind is a tricky thing. It will tell you that one cigarette won’t hurt. And it’s hard to argue with that logic, especially when you’re in the middle of an urge. And those urges are super hard to argue with. Don’t give in. Tell yourself, before the urges come, that you will not smoke a single puff, ever again. Because the truth is, that one puff WILL hurt. One puff leads to a second, and a third, and soon you’re not quitting, you’re smoking. Don’t fool yourself. A single puff will almost always lead to a recession. DO NOT TAKE A SINGLE PUFF!

5. Join a Forum. One of the things that helped the most in this quit was an online forum for quitters (quitsmoking.about.com) … you don’t feel so alone when you’re miserable. Misery loves company, after all. Go online, introduce yourself, get to know the others who are going through the exact same thing, post about your crappy experience, and read about others who are even worse than you. Best rule: Post Before You Smoke. If you set this rule and stick to it, you will make it through your urge. Others will talk you through it. And they’ll celebrate with you when you make it through your first day, day 2, 3, and 4, week 1 and beyond. It’s great fun.

6. Reward Yourself. Set up a plan for your rewards. Definitely reward yourself after the first day, and the second, and the third. You can do the fourth if you want, but definitely after Week 1 and Week2. And month 1, and month 2. And 6 months and a year. Make them good rewards, that you’ll look forward to: CDs, books, DVDs, T-shirts, shoes, a massage, a bike, a dinner out at your favorite restaurant, a hotel stay … whatever you can afford. Even better: take whatever you would have spent on smoking each day, and put it in a jar. This is your Rewards Jar. Go crazy! Celebrate your every success! You deserve it.

7. Delay. If you have an urge, wait. Do the following things: take 10 deep breaths. Drink water. Eat a snack (at first it was candy and gum, then I switched to healthier stuff like carrots and frozen grapes and pretzels). Call your support person. Post on your smoking cessation forum. Exercise. DO WHATEVER IT TAKES, BUT DELAY, DELAY, DELAY. You will make it through it, and the urge will go away. When it does, celebrate! Take it one urge at a time, and you can do it.

8. Replace Negative Habits with Positive Ones. What do you do when you’re stressed? If you currently react to stress with a cigarette, you’ll need to find something else to do. Deep breathing, self massage of my neck and shoulders, and exercise have worked wonders for me. Other habits, such as what you do first thing in the morning, or what you do in the car, or wherever you usually smoke, should be replaced with better, more positive ones. Running has been my best positive habit, altho I have a few others that replaced smoking.

9. Make it Through Hell Week, then Heck Week, and You’re Golden. The hardest part of quitting is the first two days. If you can get past that, you’ve passed the nicotine withdrawal stage, and the rest is mostly mental. But all of the first week is hell. Which is why it’s called Hell Week. After that, it begins to get easier. Second week is Heck Week, and is still difficult, but not nearly as hellish as the first. After that, it was smooth sailing for me. I just had to deal with an occasional strong urge, but the rest of the urges were light, and I felt confident I could make it through anything.

10. If You Fall, Get Up. And Learn From Your Mistakes. Yes, we all fail. That does not mean we are failures, or that we can never succeed. If you fall, it’s not the end of the world. Get up, brush yourself off, and try again. I failed numerous times before succeeding. But you know what? Each of those failures taught me something. Well, sometimes I repeated the same mistakes several times, but eventually I learned. Figure out what your obstacles to success are, and plan to overcome them in your next quit. And don’t wait a few months until your next quit. Give yourself a few days to plan and prepare, commit fully to it, and go for it!

BONUS TIP #11: THINK POSITIVE. This is the most important tip of all. I saved it for last. If you have a positive, can-do attitude, as corny as it may sound, you will succeed. Trust me. It works. Tell yourself that you can do it, and you will. Tell yourself that you can’t do it, and you definitely won’t. When things get rough, think positive! You CAN make it through the urge. You CAN make it through Hell Week. And you can. I did. So have millions of others. We are no better than you. (In my case, worse.)

Credits:-http://zenhabits.net/10-tips-for-quitting-smoking/