GIVING UP SMOKING » stop smoking

What If I Fail or Failed Giving Up Smoking?

StopSmokingCoach — Wed, 11 May 2011 04:35:50 +0000

Some of you might have tried giving up smoking before and failed. Then there are some of you who are hesitant to try because you are afraid to fail to give up smoking. Here’s what you don’t know though and is the fact that most people fail on their first try. From my knowledge there has never been a statistical study on the percentage of people who had success on their first try to quit smoking, but I have quit smoking myself and I have dealt with dozens of former smokers over the years and I only remember a couple of individuals who were able to quit on their first attempt.

I, like many others before was not able to quit cigarettes on my first try. In fact, it took me many attempts before I was finally able to quit for good. I haven’t smoked a single cigarette for over 3 years now. I can tell you from firsthand experience that just the attempt to quit really helps you give up smoking in the long run. There is a big difference between knowing what to expect and not knowing at all what you the challenges will be. For me, the failures served me well in the end and on my last try I was very relaxed about the whole process of quitting smoking.

The first time you stop smoking, the urge to smoke catches you by surprise, because it is much stronger than you ever expected it to be. I remember on the first day of my first attempt to stop smoking, I was so nervous about not being able to smoke that I could not relax not even for a minute. Needless to say, I failed miserably on my first attempt and I believe I lasted about 5 hours without a smoke. I tried again after couple of months, but I found it very surprising that I wasn’t as nervous as the first time. I thought I’d be even more stressed, but knowing what to expect really kept me composed and relaxed. I had failed again on my second try, but I lasted a little over 24 hours without a single cigarette.

I found myself more and more used to the idea of giving up smoking and at every attempt I lasted a little more than the previous without having to smoke. I can’t even remember after how many attempts, but at some point I just because extremely confident about my ability to go without smokes. I told myself that if I could go without smoking for 3 days, then I probably would have gone past the most difficult part of the whole quitting process. I was right. I was able to last for 36 hours without a cigarette and by then the urge to smoke was not as intense as the first and the second day. I knew I had succeeded to give up smoking and it had happened after multiple tries.

Do not concern yourself over having failed to quit smoking or to fail to quit smoking on your first try. Every attempt you make, you are one step closer to kicking the habit for good and it is not a failure by any measure. So go on and give your second and third try, you will quit smoking in time but you have to continue trying. If you feel that you need some additional help to quit smoking successfully, then click here to quit once and for all.

Giving Up Smoking One Step At A Time

StopSmokingCoach — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 18:24:02 +0000

Why is it so hard to stop smoking?

Smoking brings about changes both in your mind and in your body. The physical changes are brought upon by the nicotine addiction. The changes in your mind are brought upon the act of smoking over a long period of time. Combine these two and you have a smoking habit.

Smokers enjoy accompanying cigarettes with numerous other activities. Generally, smokers like to enjoy a cup of coffee with cigarette, as well as alcoholic beverages, and phone calls seem to go hand-in-hand with cigarette smoking as well. Other activities that may not be as enjoyable, but often done with a lit cigarette are; driving, when bored, when stressed, when scared, when concerned, and while socializing with other smokers.

Why you should stop smoking right now

Stinky breath – your breath smells worse than poop.

Stained teeth – brushing and whitening can only help so much.

Cough – quite simply it hurts.

Increased blood pressure – check your family history.

Second and third hand smoking – it sounds terrible, but you are slowly killing the people around.

Cost of smoking – cigarettes tax will continually increase with time.

Decreased lung capacity – you will make a habit of catching breath.

Toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke – just to name one, rat poison.

Cancer – many cancers are associated with the smoking of cigarettes.

Advanced aging – seriously, this is not a myth, smoking cigarettes increases wrinkles.

Heart disease – you do not want to know the waiting list for a heart transplant patients.

Children – you don’t have to smoke in front of them to bring about harm to them due to your smoking habit.

Preparing to give up smoking

First, you have to get ready. Speak your family and friends about your undertaking. Learn as much as you can about how to cope with the stress that comes from the urge to smoke. Stop smoking aids such as nicotine gums and nicotine patch are optional. Relapse can occur and in fact, most suffer from it at least once. Doesn’t matter that you fail, the key is to keep trying until you are successful.

Additional steps giving up smoking

Although you should try to quit smoking as soon as you can, it is better to prepare your mind for the tough road ahead and give yourself a few weeks of time before giving up smoking. Keep a quit smoking diary if you can, there you can write about your motivation for quitting smoking, write down when you smoke the most, and write down the time of the day when you feel the biggest urge. Continue to make note in the diary and use it as a motivational tool.

Be sure to throw out all your cigarettes, ashtrays, lighters, matches. It would be wise of you to get rid of anything that reminds you of smoking a cigarette.

How to deal with the urge to smoke

You can no longer smoke when you are stressed. However, there are other means to deal with the stress that comes with quitting smoking. Exercise helps a lot, so go for a brisk walk or a light jog when the urge is unbearable. Drink a lot of water, it is important to keep yourself well hydrated during this stressful time. Hot bath is also proven to help curb the urge to smoke.

Final advice

It is very stressful to think that you’ll no longer be able to smoke another cigarette, but giving up smoking is not about losing control and it is the complete opposite. Until now, your life revolved around cigarettes. Your girlfriend/boyfriend, wife/husband, family and friends, they all complained about how much you stunk up their nose. Work hours seem to go on forever until you could have that one puff of smoke. You always felt uneasy when you were down to the last few cigarettes. You were enslaved to your smoking habit and it controlled your life.

Giving up smoking is much more than just breaking an addiction to improve your healthy. The whole world changes once you give up smoking and that should be enough to motivate you to at least try. Don’t be afraid to fail, because half the battle is won just by you trying. Even if you fail once, or even twice, you will eventually succeed.

Create Your Own Personal Stop Smoking Plan

Derek Kim — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:10:29 +0000

What I’m about to share with you can be helpful for anyone who’s trying to quit cigarettes, but if you are reading this, then chances are you have already tried quitting smoking and you have failed. Smokers will usually take the plunge without any preparation on their first try and when they fail, which they usually do on their first try, they will try to be more methodical about the whole quitting process on their next try.

One of the most important aspects of quitting smoking is the fact that everyone does it a little differently. To give you an example, two people can quit smoking using the cold turkey method, but the two can go about it drastically different. Smoker number one will set a quit date and buy himself enough packs of cigarettes to last him until his set date. Smoker number two will smoke his cigarettes as usual and he will quit on the day, hour, and the minute on which he feels the most confident to quit. Both have quit cold turkey, but the way they approached it is very different.

That’s where you come in to the picture. You have to understand that no matter how other former smokers have quit cigarettes and regardless of what the authority in quitting smoking informs you of (CDC for example), in the end, you have to experiment on what’s right for you. Over 90 percent of smokers who try to quit fail on their first try and the statistic for the second time quitter are not that great either. But the ones that are persistent, the ones that continue to try quit smoking and to try to experiment with how they should go about it are eventually successful.

To give up smoking successfully, you have to create your own personal stop smoking plan. You cannot depend only on what others have done to quit smoking, because you are a unique individual under unique circumstances that requires a stop smoking plan that works best for you. The best person to come up with this plan is you and you can do this by experimenting with the process of quitting smoking. If you speak to hundreds of former smokers like I have, you learn that the little difference, the little details can become crucial in quitting successfully.

Some former smokers will swear by their experience that it is easier to quit smoking the first thing in the morning (start the day smoke free), but I have also seen plenty people who say they needed that last drag during the day before they kissed goodbye their addiction for good. Here are some more examples. Some former smokers say they couldn’t stop smoking successfully until they changed their cigarette from regular flavor to light flavor. Some also claimed that it was helpful to smoke more than usual on the day they decided to quit. Reasons varied from “I was pretty sick of smoking”, to “I needed one last big shot of nicotine before I quit”.

No matter how unscientific, the fact remains that these little quirks can mean the difference between successfully giving up smoking, and failing miserably time after time. So don’t worry about the past failures and do your best to try to learn from them. Try to remember what helped you the most with the craving, the time of the day the craving was the worse, and all other details that might help you on your next try. You can also try going smoke free on different hours of the day and for different length of time. This will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect the next time you quit smoking and it could be important because lots of smokers go into a mini panic attacks on their first day of quitting smoking.

Don’t just depend on the generic guides that are written by medical professionals and other qualified sources. Meet your personal need with your knowledge and create your own personal stop smoking plan and you will give yourself the best chance to successfully quit smoking for good.

5 Effective Giving Up Smoking Tips

StopSmokingCoach — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:19:23 +0000

Giving up smoking will surely test you as an individual and it’s important that you don’t jump in unprepared. Knowing what to do and avoiding the pitfalls many cigarette quitting hopefuls fall in, can mean the difference between success and failure. Here are some helpful tips that could help you give up smoking for good this time.

1. Consider seeing a doctor – Your doctor can help you determine whether you’ll need prescription drug to help you cope with the withdrawal symptoms. It really depends on your smoking habit, but generally withdrawal symptoms are intense and the use of quit smoking product or prescription drug may give you the best chance to stop smoking for good.

2. Throw away all the cigarette related products – If you have a box of cigarette available for “just in case”, then trust me you are just setting yourself up to fail. Get rid of the ashtrays, lighters, matches, and anything else that may remind you of cigarettes. If you want to finish that last box that you have saved up, then just finish it and leave no cigarettes that you can fall back to.

3. Set a date to quit and stick to it – If you don’t set a quit day and push yourself to quit smoking, you will continually keep pushing it for the next day and the next week until you no longer even try. This is a fight between your will to stop smoking and your addiction pushing you to take another puff. Push yourself for that ultimate goal to give up smoking for good.

4. Announce it to the world – Tell all your friends and your family that you are quitting cigarettes. Make it difficult for you to fail by letting it be known to everyone you know that you will successfully quit. This will surely give you an extra incentive to kick the habit in one shot. Don’t become that guy that talks the talk, but never walks the walk.

5. Something to chew on – Keep your mouth busy with anything but cigarettes. You will get urges to smoke or to just stick something in your mouth, help relieve these urges by chewing on carrots, chewing gums, straws, or even toothpicks will do. Avoid chewing anything for an extended period of time though, it could cause gum disease or damage your teeth.

Follow the tips above to help you in giving up smoking and don’t give up even if you fail on your first try. What’s important is your willingness to quit and that will ultimately lead to a successful quit smoking experience.

Giving Up Smoking – Finding The Motivation

Derek Kim — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:42:12 +0000

Some studies show that only 3 percent of the first time cigarette quitters give up smoking for good. This is a grim outlook for any smoker hoping give up smoking, but it should also be noted that different studies have shown a more favorable success rate. In any case, one common trend among these studies is that they show very low success rate among first time quitters. As someone who quit smoking for good for many years now, it is my personal opinion that giving up smoking is all about the motivation. So here are some powerful methods to motivate yourself to quit smoking for good on your first try.

The first and the most effective motivating factor are the people that you care about. If you are a father, then what more motivation do you need than giving up smoking for the sake of your children. If you are a husband, then you have a responsibility be there for your wife through the good and bad, smoking will make that difficult for many reasons I shouldn’t have to explain to you. As a son or a daughter of loving parents, the worst thing you can do to your parents is to die before they do, smoking can make that possibility very real. As a friend, maybe your early departure from this life might not have as profound effect as it might have on your family, but you will still be leaving many people who care for you and love you, to grieve for you for the rest of their lives.

For most people, I would assume that family and friends should be the main motivator in giving up smoking. But to be fair, quitting smoking is extremely difficult feat to achieve and you may need additional motivation to stop smoking for good.

Ask yourself this question. When was the last time you felt fresh and energized when you woke up in the morning? You probably can’t remember because smoking will do that to you. No matter how young and or fit you may think you are, if you are a smoker you will not have good mornings. You will wake up with a lump of mucus in your throat and your first action would be to force that lump out of your throat into your mouth and into your garbage with a forceful gag. Not the way to start an ideal morning if you would ask me.

Do you play sports? Try jogging for 5 minutes and I assure you that you’ll feel like dying. Hold the tip of a spoon with your thumb and your index finger. Try to hold the spoon steady and I assure you that you will shake like a 100 year old man. You are not normal and smoking has left you crippled in many more ways than you can imagine.

Think about everything that I’ve noted here so far and use them to motivate yourself. When it comes to giving up smoking, you or anyone else for that matter cannot force it onto you. You have to want it, giving up smoking is very difficult but it becomes so much easier if you truly want it and having the motivating factors to give up smoking will mean the difference between success and failure. Giving up smoking is all about the motivation, find that x-factor that pumps you up and free yourself from cigarettes today.

E-Cigarettes – Are E-Cigarettes safer than smoking?

StopSmokingCoach — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:35:50 +0000

E-Cigarette or “Electronic Cigarette” is an alternative nicotine delivery system to smoked tobacco products such as, cigars, pipes, and of course cigarettes. It looks and feels just like a cigarette but it’s actually a battery-powered device. E-Cigarettes utilize atomizers to vaporize nicotine and propylene glycol (a substance commonly found in fog machines) which deliver nicotine and flavoring to the user without the deadly carcinogens found in cigarette smoke.

Lately, there have been floods of news on E-Cigarettes and the trend doesn’t seem like slowing down anytime soon. Many E-Cigarette users have either cut down on their daily smoking or have completely made the shift to E-Cigarettes. So are E-Cigarettes safer than smoking? The attached video will help determine that on your own, but the general consensus among E-Cigarette users is that “it’s a no-brainer”. Simply put, nicotine on its own is not a harmful substance. What make cigarettes deadly are the additives and the byproduct of the smoke. You remove the smoke and the deadly additives out of cigarettes, and you quite literally get E-Cigarettes.

Lastly, the best alternative to cigarette is to quit smoking for good. But if you are one the people unable to quit but not for lack of trying, then perhaps is time to try something different. As always, good luck.

FDA Wants to Stuff E-Cigarettes

StopSmokingCoach — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:34:07 +0000

The public are outraged at anti E-Cigarette special interest groups and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for trying to stop E-Cigarettes on the basis (or so FDA claims) that it’s a drug and claiming it needs regulatory approval.

Many supporters of E-Cigarettes are concerned about the new legislation that gives FDA jurisdiction of tobacco products specifically prohibits cigarettes from being outlawed and countless other harmful products which escape the “sin tax”. This leads to the assumption that our government cares more about tobacco tax revenue than the public health.

E-Cigarette users swear by that they have benefited from using E-Cigarettes and the benefits range from stopping coughing, breathing better, ridding of cigarette smoke stench, and countless other benefits.

Sales and use of electronic cigarettes are illegal in Australia and in Hong Kong, but that hasn’t stopped people from purchasing them online. At this point, it’s hard to say how this battle will end, but for the sake for people who’ve benefited from the use of E-Cigarettes, I sincerely hope the people will be heard this time. Learn about E-Cigarettes Here.

E-Cigarettes – Are E-Cigarettes safer than smoking?

Madonna Being a Mom

StopSmokingCoach — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:32:09 +0000

On the Russia leg of her world tour, Madonna has requested, check that, “imposed” the banning of smoking roadies coming within 50ft of her. This has many entertainment publications criticizing her for being a diva, but the real motivation seems to stem from Madonna just being a mother in this case.

Apparently, Madonna is touring with her children and she’s taken the strict measure especially because her next destination is Russia. If you didn’t know, the Russians are cigarette-obsessed and the banning has many Russian crew members baffled. The Russian crew’s side of the argument is that unless Madonna can build her stage on her own, she’ll just have to suck it up.

Would Madonna get her way? Maybe I’ll do an update on that, but for now, I say she’s just being a mom. If the people who criticize her for being a diva knew anything about Second and Third Hand Smoke, I seriously doubt they could write those chiding articles.

New Moon Smoking Castmembers Quitting

StopSmokingCoach — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:19:16 +0000

Breaking away from the stereotypical young Hollywood stars, the “New Moon” actress Ashley Greene and Nikki Reed have teamed up to quit smoking for their fans.

It’s reported that everyone in the cast smokes cigarettes and since they are among of the most lucrative targets for the paparazzi, needless to say there are tons of pictures everywhere of the cast members smoking. The cast members smoking cigarette of course is nobody’s business, but the problem stems from the fact that the majority of their fans are teens. Apparently a close friend of Nikki Reed has sited the reason for quitting, “An effort to be better role models for their young fans”.

I am a firm believer in personal freedom, nevertheless it’s really refreshing to see a young Hollywood star acknowledging the profound impact they have on their young fans. And what’s more, she’s addressing the issue by giving up smoking.

Run To Help Quit Smoking

StopSmokingCoach — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:50:34 +0000

Ex-smokers are likely to smoke again if he or she does not learn to effectively manage stress. Another concern is that while some may successfully quit smoking cigarettes, they replace one addiction with another. These ex-smokers will substitute smoking with eating or drinking for example.

Unfortunately, if you have substituted smoking with binge drinking or eating, all your effort to quit smoking might have gone to waste. The good news is that running could help, running can help you prevent substituting one addiction with another and it can also help you rid of the already substituted addiction.

Benefits of Running include:

•An improved emotional state – A key to not only in giving up smoking but to stay cigarette-free.

•Potential weight loss – It’s normal to gain 5-10 pounds after giving up smoking, running will not only offset the weight gain, it will keep you fit.

•Increase bone density – Studies have shown that smokers in general have lower bone mineral density. You can run to repair the damages done by smoking.

•Improved cardiovascular health – Your heart took a quite a beating (no pun intended) all these years you abused it with smokes, it’s time you help it heal.

•Increased muscle mass – A new study has shown that smokers lose more muscle mass at old age than the non-smoking counterpart. This means you as a smoker are not likely to be independent at old age.

•These are just few of the benefits you can enjoy if you start running and the best part is that it’s free.

Running or exercises in general are quickly becoming a form of replacement addiction for drugs even more potent than nicotine. So before you try any quit smoking product or classes, I highly recommend you try running today. If you’ve already quit and you are having a hard time staying cigarette-free, give running a shot.