Useful Tips to Help Quit Smoking

There are many things you can do in planning and engaging in an attempt to quit smoking which will increase the likelihood of your effort being successful. They are outlined as follows:

1. Develop a strong desire to quit smoking. Review information and facts about the dangers of smoking and consider the effect that continued smoking will have on your own health as well as loved-ones who stand to suffer because of your ill health, your premature death and the ill effects of secondhand smoke on their own health.

2. Develop your quit plan and set a date that you plan to quit smoking for good. Record your plan in writing or digitally. Realize that you may have to adjust the quit date depending on your progress.

3. Create short notes of why you want to quit, such as living longer, feeling better, looking better, protecting your family from the harmful effects of secondhand smoking and saving money. Put the same on paper or a digital drive and read it daily at least once.

4. Inform family and friends of your decision to quit smoking and seek their support. Explain to them that you may become irritable, even irrational as you experience some of the withdrawal associated with quitting smoking.

5. Consult your doctor about quitting, especially if you plan to use one or more of the nonprescription or prescription quit smoking aids, so as to ensure the safety and increase the likelihood of the success of your quit smoking endeavor.

6. With your doctor approval, begin exercising three of four times per week once or twice per day as a starting point. Anaerobic exercise such as walking is the best type to begin with. It helps to relieve stress, read the body of the toxins produced by smoking in it promotes healing of the damage caused by prolonged cigarette smoking.

7. Research any quit smoking aid(s) you plan to use, evaluating both effectiveness and safety.

8. Cutback on your smoking daily with a set goal of the rate with which you will decrease number of cigarettes per day smoked unless you consider cold turkey to be the best approach for you.

9. Change brands of cigarettes periodically while weaning yourself from cigarettes because the flavor and chemical differences between brands tend to make smoking less enjoyable and less automatic, thus increasing your awareness of the habit.

10. Make a genuine effort to find out another smoker who is also trying to quit smoking and support one another by discussing the positive strides you are making.

11. Document in writing or via a computerized record how your quit smoking plan is going. Include the successes and failures along with planned adjustments for any obstacles you might encounter.

12. Monitor the amount of nicotine in your body and the lowering of that level as you quit smoking with the use of a quantitative nicotine test kit and associate the declining levels with differences in the way you feel such as improved exercise tolerance and decrease and coughing.

13. Drink plenty of water to help flush the nicotine and other harmful chemicals in tobacco from your body.

14. Recognize and document what your smoking triggers are and devise a strategy for dealing with them, such as removing all ashtrays and cigarettes from the house and washing or steam cleaning all fabrics such as clothing, linen and draperies which harbor the smell of tobacco.

15. Curb your cravings with chewing gum, mints, toothpicks, flower seeds nicotine replacement aids, prescription drugs prescribed by your doctor, or other methods that seem to work. Remember however, nicotine replacement products are not intended for long-term use and that prolonged use of them essentially substitutes one nicotine habit with another.

16. Recognize and document the health rewards you experience from quitting smoking such as better breathing and reduction of blood pressure. It is not a bad idea to monitor your blood pressure with a home monitor prior to and after quitting smoking. Oftentimes review the data, particularly if you are tempted to resume smoking or you are stymied in your efforts to taper your cigarette smoking.

17. Reward yourself during and after you have successfully quit smoking in a way that is most encouraging to you and most likely to be incentive not to resume smoking. The reward could be something as extravagant as a vacation to the Bahamas something as simple as a strawberry sundae.

18. Recognize quit smoking anniversary dates and continue to reward yourself at those times.

Victor E. Battles
February 3, 2010

Source: http://www.proactivehealthoutlet.com

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