Tuesday, July 24, 2012

The Process... Nicotine

Now I am not going to discuss the obvious, but I am going to write about the side effects that Tobacco causes in our body that we really never can overcome without very radical measures. The biggest effect that tobacco has on our bodies, besides cancer which is obvious, is that for those that quit… weight gain. Now, let’s get something out in the open right away… you do not have to smoke those cancer sticks in order to get nicotine in your body. Chewing tobacco and even the nicotine gum are just as bad and have all the same side effects. So for you all that think that this may not pertain to you, you’re wrong. While you are consuming nicotine it does speed up your metabolism and it does get your body to burn more calories. Did you know that every cigarette you smoke, cigars included, burns 200 calories as a minimum? What that means is that 20 cancer sticks equals 4000 calories. Now, imagine smoking more than 1 pack a day, you do the math. Now because your body is burning so much, this energy needs to be replace and in most cases this allows you to eat more than you really should and this is the biggest reason why when a person quits smoking they gain weight. It is not that they are eating more it is that your metabolism is not being as stimulated as it was when you are indulging. Now some may still be confused so let’s look at it in another light. The average workout burns 500 calories at best, trust me I’ve seen how some of you work out, and with that said if you had been smoking throughout that time you were burning an additional 2000 calories (assuming a whole pack of cancer sticks), which means you were burning 2500 calories a day. Now because of the other side effects of those cancer sticks you decided to quit. Now you are losing 2000 kilocalories of energy. So what is the overall effect of that… weight gain even while you are working out. The average person will gain 50 pounds over a short period of time after they stop smoking (less than 1 year). It is not that you ate more it is just that you never reduced your food consumption once you stopped. Ok, so now you stopped smoking and you are thinking to yourself why you stopped smoking. You don’t want to gain weight. Well look at it this way, better stop now and give your body a fighting chance of survival than commit slow suicide. Now here is how I believe you can minimize the damage and get yourself in much better shape in the process. We already know that for those who choose to use nicotine, once they stop they will gain weight and there is now stopping that so how can you slow that process down? It is actually one of the hardest things that you can do because it takes a long time before you begin to see the results of your effort. How long? 5 years as I see it. Your lifestyle changing has to be dramatic and your food consumption has to be minimal. There can be no alternatives or cheat days. You have to become really focused on one thing recovery. At first you will gain weight but once that begins you need to do one thing switch your diet up totally. What do I mean? If you are a meat eater, than you need to minimize your meat consumption and begin to look at alternative ways to get the same nutrients without consuming meat product. If you are a starch person, then reduce your intake and stop eating starches after a specific hour of the day. This is what I am referring to. Then once that is done and under control, then you should intensify your workouts. This formula will give your body time to recover and at the same time get you in much better condition. This is not easy to do, especially in the society we live in today. The best thing for anyone to do is just not start using nicotine at all. This will save you from having to deal with the weight gain when you decided to quit. The next step in the process is a routine.

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