Do you gain weight after giving up smoking because you eat more or is it because your metabolism slows down?

Answer 1

Here are some facts from personal experience as well as other family/firends who have given up or tried to give up:

1. your metabolism slows down, you can even feel your pulse slowing down when you give up. Temporarily, smoking a cig can accelerate your heart just a tiny-tiny bit.
2. Food smells and tastes just the same, you just have a craving because you are not smoking, so you want to substitute that craving with eating. Chewing gum doesn't work.
3. You can retain more water when not smoking so you may appear 'fuller' too.
4. Some friends of mine (including my mum) have put on upto 3 stones when giving up smoking (not by eating so much, it's just how their bodies reacted).
5. Most supermodels smoke (as well as other drugs) to stay thinner. In the modeling world putting on even half a stone could wreck their career.
6. Some people can actually manage to get back to their pre-quitting weight but not many.
7. I managed to lose all the weight I put on after quitting but once I reached my pre-quitting weight I had to re-start smoking because the lowered intake of food was driving me nuts and the only way I could keep it down is by lighting up again.
Sometimes I stop for a year, sometimes for 10 months, sometimes for 4 years sometimes just 6 months but I always end up smoking again. Horrible!

Answer 2

a little bit of both, many people do tend to eat more, as smoking sometimes acts as an appetite suppressant, many smokers replace the habit by putting something else in their mouths- food...

since cigarettes contain a stimulant the metabolism is a little slowed by quitting, but this effect is usually small for most folks...

p.s. not all people gain weight - i quit 3 years ago, and didn't put on any extra pounds

Answer 3

You eat more because the taste of tobacco in your mouth
substitutes the sense of hunger. Also by quitting smoking
helps your digestion, because the taste of smoke in your
saliva activates digestive acids when you have not eaten,
and provokes the sense that you have and reduces your
appetite. Therefore, when you stop smoking you will eat
more to satisfy the constant need of a taste in your system,
in substitution to the constant tobacco taste in the saliva
that you were swallowing previously. This is only reporting
on feelings and habit forming and not on physical damage,
since these are mentioned above.

Answer 4

NOT EVERYONE GAINS WEIGHT AFTER THEY QUIT. BUT THE PEOPLE WHO DO GAIN IT IS BECAUSE THEY NEED SOMEHING TO FILL THAT VOID OF NOT HAVING A SMOKE HOW EVER TIMES A DAY AND ALOT OF PEOPLE EAT TO FILL THAT. SOME DONT \. SOME PEOPLE KNIT OR RUN OR DRINK WATER OR CHEW GUM. I KNOW FOR ME...I ATE HAHAHA SHOULD HAVE HAD A BETTER PLAN B4 I QUIT.

Answer 5

Smoking is an appetite suppressant, also you can taste your food properly when you don't smoke which makes it more of a pleasure to eat and therefore you eat more.

Answer 6

After you stop smoking your digestion power will increase and also your hunger increase therefore you tend to gain weight. You do yoga everday and all your problems will be solved.

Answer 7

both actually. Exercise to speed up your metabolism and watch what you eat :-)

Answer 8

after you quit smoking, you have the habit of something going toward your mouth. IE (food)

Answer 9

smoking is ultimately a hand to mouth habit. If you aren't smoking you make up for it with food, again, hand to mouth.

Answer 10

Yes both.