All that information made me think of you, my readers. As it turns out, insomnia is one of the most pervasive and persistent of the nicotine withdrawal symptoms. Even if there weren’t other statistics to support that statement, I would be able to tell just from the volume of responses to my post on insomnia. From the comments it’s clear that many people have struggled for months, if not years, with the effects of not being able to fall asleep, waking up in the middle of the night, or simply waking up tired all the time.

Well, I have some good news for you. If you’ve been struggling with sleep issues, you’re not alone. (One in four people suffer from insomnia at some time in their lives, and the number is even higher for ex-smokers.) The good news is, there are some easy, inexpensive things you can do about it that will not only help you sleep, but will also improve your health in other ways.

The Impact of No Sleep

If you suffer from insomnia, I probably don’t have to tell you that it robs you of your joy and energy, and puts you at risk for returning to smoking. But did you know chronic insomnia is also associated with a whole host of diseases, including cardiovascular disease, anxiety, stroke, and potentially cancer? As an ex-smoker, the last thing you need is to increase your risk for any of those, right?

What’s NOT a Solution

You probably also instinctively shy away from sleep drugs like zolpidem (Ambien®), eszopiclone (Lunesta®), and temazepam (Restoril®). They may put you to sleep, but they result in poor sleep quality, which means you may be just about as tired as if you hadn’t slept – especially over the long term.

Or maybe you’ve resorted to them, desperate for a decent night’s sleep, but you know it’s not the best long-term solution.

So what can you do?

Here are five easy, inexpensive things to do right now to sleep better tonight. And they’re actually GOOD for you.

1. Magnesium

Magnesium is an essential mineral that contributes to over 300 biochemical processes in your body. If you take a multivitamin, it probably has magnesium in it, but you still may not be getting enough. Magnesium deficiency is associated with all kinds of health issues including cardiovascular disease, muscle cramps, irregular heartbeat, depression, anxiety, and – you guessed it – insomnia. Magnesium deficiency is widespread, and if you drink carbonated beverages, caffeinated beverages, or alcohol, have a “sweet tooth,” or are over 55, you’re even more likely to be low in magnesium.

How to use it to help you sleep

You’ll want to take 400-500 mg of magnesium before you go to sleep. Ideally you want a chelated form (such as citrate, ascorbate, orotate, or glycinate). You can take capsules or tablets, or for a noticeable immediate benefit, get a magnesium powder that dissolves in water, and take that right before bed. Here’s a very affordable version from vitacost.

2. Melatonin

Melatonin is a hormone made in the pineal gland in response to darkness. When things are working right, melatonin production rises at night, and is lower in the morning. Exposure to some kinds of light (e.g., light from a TV or computer screen) can interfere with melatonin production, so it’s best to stay away from those as part of your bedtime routine. Melatonin production also tends to decrease as we get older, so if you’ve been smoking for years, you may have a double-whammy related to insomnia: Your melatonin production has dropped as a natural result of aging, and you also have insomnia related to nicotine withdrawal.

Melatonin has been shown to reduce the amount of time it takes to fall asleep, improve sleep quality and alertness after sleep, and reduce the number of times you wake up in the night, so no matter what form your insomnia takes, melatonin may help.

How to use it to help you sleep

Use sublingual* melatonin tablets or drops just before bed. Just put a tablet under your tongue if you’re having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Within 10-15 minutes you should begin feeling relaxed and drowsy.  I don’t take melatonin routinely, but when I have trouble falling asleep, I use Source Naturals 2.5 mg peppermint sublingual tablets.

Here are some other options if you want to try a different dosage or flavor.  Whatever you choose, I definitely recommend using a sublingual version.  *Sublingual just means that instead of swallowing it, you put it under your tongue and let it melt. That allows it to be absorbed through your mucus membranes and enter your bloodstream directly, without going through your digestive tract. The benefit is that you feel the effects faster and it doesn’t matter if your belly is full or empty.

3. Vitamin D

Vitamin D deficiency is also associated with an astonishing array of diseases and poor health outcomes ranging from bone problems to cancer, including sleep problems and restless leg syndrome. Deficiency is really common, as well, with some experts estimating that up to 80% of the US population has Vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency. Smoking depletes Vitamin D, so if you’re an ex-smoker and you haven’t been supplementing with a significant dose, you’re almost certainly deficient. (If you’re taking a multivitamin with the RDA of 400-800 IUs of Vitamin D, you’re probably still deficient. You can ask your doc to test you if you want to find out for sure, but you can also safely supplement with around 2,000 to 5,000 IUs a day without much concern about getting too much.)

How to use it to help you sleep

You won’t get the immediate relaxation from Vitamin D that you get with magnesium or melatonin, so consider this a longer-term strategy for improving your sleep. The recommended form is Vitamin D3, and it’s inexpensive, widely available, and typically comes in small softgels that are easy to swallow. Since Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin, it is better absorbed if you take it with a meal. Here are the ones I use the Vitamin Shoppe brand of 5000 IUs, but you can choose a different dosage if you prefer.

I recommend taking vitamin D regardless of what other sleep solutions you decide to try – it’s inexpensive, useful, and hard to accidentally get too much of, so just consider it cheap insurance.

4. Potassium

Potassium is another of the minerals that has an impact on sleep. In particular, if you tend to wake in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, low potassium might be the culprit. You can increase the amount of potassium in your diet by eating more potassium-rich foods such as beans, leafy greens, avocados, and bananas, or by adding a potassium supplement.

How to use it to help you sleep

If you tend to wake up in the middle of the night, consider keeping bananas on hand to have for a midnight snack, or just eating one before bed.

5. Progesterone Cream

This suggestion isn’t for everyone, but particularly if you are a near-menopause or post-menopausal woman, you may find progesterone cream helpful. Progesterone is one of the hormones that declines with age, and supplementing with it can help you relax and sleep at night. (If you’re concerned about news of hormone replacement causing cancer and other diseases, rest assured: real progesterone cream is a bioidentical* hormone which is molecularly identical to the hormones made in your own body, not the patentable progestin and/or horse-urine-derived Premarin that were implicated in the disease outcomes detailed in the Women’s Health Initiative study.)

How to use it to help you sleep

Progesterone cream is available over the counter at many drug stores, or you can order it online. It’s simple to use – just rub the recommended amount (usually ¼ to ½ a teaspoon) into your skin about 30 minutes before bed. It works best when used routinely, but the effects are pretty immediate.

I’ve used a couple different versions, and find that the Source Naturals progesterone cream works well, and it also absorbs better than some of the others I’ve tried, which left me feeling sticky.

*For a detailed explanation of the difference between bioidentical hormones vs. non-bioidentical along with some of the effects of balancing hormones, read this.

If I quit smoking, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to relax – I can’t handle even the thought of a stressful situation without a cigarette.

Signed,

Stressed and still smoking

Dear Stressed,

Most smokers share a sense of anxiety about dealing with stressful events without smoking.  In fact, this may be one of the most common reasons people go back to smoking after they’ve quit.

I’ve got some really good news for you, though.  It’s not only possible to deal with stressful situations without smoking, it’s actually easier, once you create the correct circumstances for yourself.

Let’s look at what happens when you, as a smoker, experience stress:

First, your body’s sympathetic nervous system kicks in – that’s your “fight or flight” response.  Physiologically, what happens is this:  Your heart rate and perspiration increase.  Blood flow to your muscles increases, your pupils dilate, and your muscles tense up in preparation to fight or flee.

One side effect of all of this physiological action is that the nicotine in your bloodstream is rapidly flushed out, quickly dropping your nicotine level.

You know what happens when your nicotine level drops too low, right?  Yup, a classic nicotine fit.  For most people, the symptoms of a nicotine fit are very similar to symptoms of stress– you feel tense, anxious, irritable, and maybe even dizzy or shaky.

So you light up, take a deep drag, and immediately you feel some relief.  It feels like the cigarette is “calming you down.” You’re still stressed out, but not as bad as a few moments ago.

What’s actually happening there is that the cigarette is relieving the acute nicotine withdrawal symptoms you were experiencing.  The regular stress from the event itself it still there, and of course you still have to deal with whatever it is that’s stressing you out (angry boss, annoyed spouse, screaming child, unpaid bills…) But because the nicotine withdrawal symptoms have been relieved, you feel a little less stressed than you did a few moments ago.

There are two very important points to get from this:

First, understand that stressful situations tend to be doubly stressful for smokers because they are often coupled with symptoms of acute nicotine withdrawal.  In other words, if you weren’t a smoker, stressful events would actually be less stressful because you wouldn’t be having a nicotine fit on top of them.

Second, the inevitable result of repeating this circumstance over and over is that the experiential part of your brain has learned that cigarettes help you deal with stress – even though they really don’t.  Teaching your brain to “unlearn” this faulty association is one of the major challenges of quitting successfully.

The reality is, you can quit smoking and be more relaxed than ever.  But I realize you may not yet be convinced of that, because I know that “undoing” that experiential learning requires more than just logical arguments.  Instead, to unlearn the association between cigarettes and dealing with stress, you must look at your own experiences, and even create new ones.   If you’re willing to give that a shot, read on…

Look at Your Own Experiences

Use the questions below to consider whether your personal experience supports the idea that smoking may actually INCREASE stress in your life rather than decreasing it.

1. Have you ever had a nicotine fit?  What symptoms do you experience when it happens?  Is the experience stressful?
2. Do you ever use cigarettes as a pick-me-up?  If so, how do you explain them operating in two opposite ways – both as a pick-me-up and to calm you down?
3. Do you believe that smoking a cigarette during a stressful event would feel calming to someone who has never smoked?
4. Are there other ways that cigarettes cause stress in your life?  If you can’t think of any, consider these scenarios and see if any of them apply to you.

Create a New Experience for Yourself – Train Your Brain

The second thing you must do to “unlearn” the faulty association between cigarettes and dealing with stress is to re-train your brain by creating a different experience for it to process.

So far your brain has had a lot of experiences where it felt like the cigarette was calming you down/helping you deal with stress.  Now you know that it was mostly just relieving the nicotine craving, but your experiential brain still “believes” that cigarettes relax you.  In fact, this is such a strong belief that months after quitting, a stressful event can still leave you craving a cigarette.

To combat that experiential learning, you have to actually DO something different when stress happens.

To “unlearn” that faulty association, you have to provide your brain with the experience of relieving stress by doing something other than smoking that results in your body feeling more relaxed. 

The very easiest thing you can do is a simple deep breathing exercise – you can do it anywhere, and it works for most people.   If you prefer, you can try a muscle relaxation exercise, or one of several other relaxation techniques that are simple, free, and that you can do almost anywhere.

You may think these are too simple to make a difference, but I encourage you to try them to find out for yourself.  Choose whichever ones appeal to you and practice using them regularly for two weeks, then step back to assess the effects. 

Start Now.

The great news is, you can start re-training your brain right now, whether you’ve quit smoking or not.  It will work even better after you’ve quit and eliminated that nicotine-fit-relief component, but you can absolutely begin training your brain for a different method of stress relief even before you quit, and it will make your next quit that much easier.

Oh, and one more piece of good news.  These stress reduction techniques?  Once you’ve quit, they’ll actually work way better than smoking a cigarette ever did, because they actually help relieve stress rather than just satisfying a craving.  You get to feel relaxed, shrug off stress, and be smoke-free.

Your new life starts now.  Don’t wait.

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I invite you to share in the comments which techniques you’ve tried, and what seems to work best for you.

It’s normal to feel that quitting IS about giving something up – most people do.  But when you start from that viewpoint you’re halfway down the path of failure, because no matter how much you want to quit, you’re just not fully committed.

It’s not win-win.

It’s not all good.

There’s this dark side to quitting for you that sounds like, “I’m losing my best friend.”  “I won’t be able to enjoy my coffee any more.”  “I can’t relax without a cigarette.”  “I can’t de-stress without a cigarette.”  “I can’t have any fun without a cigarette, and I’m gonna end up fat and cranky and miserable, and maybe even divorced and unemployed, and it’s just not worth it.”

At least some of those are there for you, right?  So take a minute to re-read those, and figure out which ones are resonating inside your head.  Acknowledge them.  They’re there, and that’s OK – for now.

The thing about it is, whatever is resonating for you feels really, really true, doesn’t it?  You probably even experienced some of them when you tried to quit last time, right?  So I get it – it’s really hard to buy the idea that quitting isn’t about giving something up.  That’s not what your experience is telling you.

The point I’m trying to make here is this:  It feels true to you that quitting means giving something up.   So to seriously consider the opposite requires that you develop the ability to question your own beliefs.

It doesn’t mean you have to immediately buy into someone else’s belief, including mine – I’m not asking you to become a mindless follower and not think for yourself.  I’m just asking whether you’re willing to consider the possibility that something that really feels true for you just might not be true.

So…  are you?  If you are, read on.

The first exercise is to simply spend a few moments considering what an optimal outcome for you would be with regard to quitting.  That is, what would it be like if the “downsides” you’re imagining turned out differently than what you’ve experienced so far?  What would that look like in your life?

For instance, if you feel that you wouldn’t know how to relax, what would it look like if you DID know how to relax without smoking?  Take a few moments and think about what that would look like for you.  Be specific, and feel free to “make up” whatever feels right to you about how that might look in your life.

I invite you to share in the comments below what you imagined as an optimal outcome for one or more of your dark-side areas.  In my next few posts I’ll help you debunk some of the specific losses that you may be worried about.

The truth is, there are a lot of things that make quitting challenging – the addictive nature of nicotine, the extent to which smoking is associated with all of the things that we do, from eating to relaxing, the fear of withdrawal. But there’s really only one thing that makes quitting hard.

What makes quitting hard is this:The idea that when you quit you’re really giving up something. If you are a long-term smoker, you almost certainly have a deep-seated belief that quitting means that you won’t enjoy life as much (or at all) after you quit. That belief is what makes quitting difficult.

If instead you really had the sense of breaking free – if you expected quitting to feel like you’d just finished paying off a debt, or just completed a difficult task, you would end up approaching quitting with a completely different view. And that different view would give you a completely different way of being around quitting: You would be excited and joyful about the prospect of what was to come.  You wouldn’t be able to help it, that’s just what it would feel like to you.

And guess what? Quitting under those circumstances would actually be easy, despite the challenges associated with it.

I’m planning to spend the next few posts talking about some of the misconceptions around smoking and quitting that feed into the view that quitting means giving something up. It does not, despite your experience that makes it feel like it does. If you can get – at an experiential level – the fact that quitting is NOT about giving anything up, quitting will actually become easy for you.

I invite you to use the comment section to say what you feel you’d have to give up if you quit, and I’ll try to address it in an upcoming post.

Three weeks ago I quit smoking cold turkey after smoking for 25 years. It was very hard, but hardest of all has been the insomnia I have been experiencing since then. Any advice?

Signed,
Sleepless & Exhausted

Dear Sleepless,

Congratulations on quitting – that’s a HUGE accomplishment! The next step, of course, is to get through the aftermath of quitting without going back to smoking, right?

Insomnia is a common problem after quitting, but rest assured it’s temporary – once your body adjusts to not smoking, you will sleep better than before, and wake up much more rested than you did when you were smoking.

What’s happening is this: Nicotine affects your sleep patterns, and after you quit, it takes your body a few weeks to readjust to the new patterns. Research shows that smokers spend more time in alpha (light) sleep, and less time in delta (deep) sleep. When you quit, some of the time you were spending in light sleep ends up breaking the surface into wakefulness, meaning that you wake up multiple times during the night.

The good news is, as long as you stay off of nicotine, within a few weeks your body will gradually adjust on its own so that you revert to the sleep of a non-smoker: more time in deep, restorative sleep, less time in light sleep, and no waking up multiple times in the middle of the night.

In the meantime, you need to get some sleep, right?

The normal techniques for dealing with insomnia should help you get some sleep during this adjustment period, as well as help to get your body on track for normal restorative sleep patterns:

• Don’t get reliant on sleeping medication.
• Keep regular sleep hours.
• Don’t spend hours laying in bed awake – if you can’t get back to sleep get up and do something for a little bit until you feel sleepy again.
• Avoid nicotine, excess caffeine, and napping.
• Develop a relaxing nighttime routine to prepare your brain for sleep.

If you need more help, take a look at this article about insomnia and what to do about it.

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Share your experience with others: Have you had trouble sleeping after quitting smoking? What did you do to deal with the problem? How long did it take for you to get back to normal sleep patterns?

Ask the Advisor a Question

If you haven’t managed to quit yet, but still want to, read more about the Complete Quit System and how it deals with the psychological aspects of quitting.

I’m planning to quit smoking soon, and I’m wondering, what are the withdrawal symptoms of quitting smoking cold turkey?

Signed,
Cold-Turkey Quitter

Dear Cold-Turkey Quitter,

There are many withdrawal symptoms that can occur when you quit smoking cold turkey.  They include headaches, anxiety, itchiness, insomnia, restlessness, muscle cramps, fatigue, cotton mouth, heart palpitations, drowsiness, sore throat, poor concentration, tremors, constipation, digestive problems, irritability, hunger, thirst, dizziness, sensitivity, and the list goes on.

Yes, it’s a long list of symptoms, most of which are a result of the rapid depletion of nicotine from your body that happens when you quit cold turkey.

The good news is, even if you do decide to quit cold turkey, it’s very unlikely that you’ll experience all of these symptoms. The even better news is that there are ways to minimize the withdrawal symptoms you do experience.

The simplest way to minimize withdrawal symptoms is to reduce your nicotine intake gradually over time. You can do this either by using a nicotine replacement product like a nicotine patch or gum, or you can use a technique called nicotine fading. If you decide to try a nicotine replacement product, just follow the instructions on the product package – most are designed to gradually reduce nicotine.

The nicotine fading technique is a natural technique for reducing the amount of nicotine you get while you are still smoking, until you quit completely. The advantage of this technique is that there are no side effects from the technique itself, and it can significantly minimize nicotine withdrawal symptoms.

To use the nicotine fading technique, you’ll need to decrease the amount of nicotine you get from the cigarettes that you smoke by gradually cutting down the number of cigarettes you smoke every day, and/or switching to lower nicotine brands over a period of time. You can learn a little more about this technique here: Quit Smoking Gradually.  The key is to do in a structured, planned-out way.

A structured nicotine fading plan is one of the techniques I use in my Complete Quit System, which is a step-by-step quit smoking program designed to eliminate both the physical addiction to nicotine, and more importantly, the psychological addiction to smoking.  If you’re planning to quit, consider checking it out.

By the way, if you’re willing to take a few minutes to provide me some feedback on my newly designed website for the Complete Quit System, I’ll reward you with an opportunity to get the Complete Quit System program at a significant discount as part of the launch of our community support project.   Take a look at the website, and then complete the feedback survey.

If you like, you can learn more about the Community Support Project here.

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If you found this information useful, or have suggestions you think may be helpful to others, leave a comment and share your experience. Have you ever tried to quit smoking cold turkey? What kind of symptoms did you experience? 

If you haven’t managed to quit yet, but still want to, read more about the Complete Quit System and how it deals with the psychological aspects of quitting.

I’ve stopped smoking now for 4 days and am finding it really hard today. I’ve got a headache and feel sick – is it because I’ve stopped smoking? How long do cravings last?

Signed,
In a Funk

Dear Funk,

A headache is one of the classic nicotine withdrawal symptoms, so it’s quite likely this is because you have just quit, especially if you quit cold turkey. I’m not sure about the ‘feeling sick.’ If you mean you feel nauseous and achey, you may simply have the flu. If you’re referring to a general feeling of malaise – listlessness, respiratory issues, etc., those may well be withdrawal symptoms. The good news is, these symptoms will pass, generally within a few days if not sooner, provided you don’t return to smoking. (Intermittent cigarettes may feel like they temporarily relieve some of the withdrawal, but in the long run it just makes them go on for longer.)

You also ask ‘how long the cravings will last.’ The answer to that question is much more complicated. First, it’s worth nothing that withdrawal symptoms and ‘cravings’ are very much different processes, produced by entirely different body systems.

Withdrawal symptoms are a function of the physical addiction to nicotine, and will pass with no particular effort from you, as long as you stay away from nicotine.

“Cravings” can be a result of both the physical addiction to nicotine, and the psychological dependence on smoking. The physical addiction portion of the craving is likely already done for you, since you’re on Day 4 of not smoking. (It generally takes the body about three days to flush the nicotine from your system.)

However, most people experience cravings or urges to smoke long past the three-day mark. These desires to smoke are part of the psychological dependence on smoking, which is much more pervasive and difficult to eliminate than the physical addiction.

How long these cravings last depend in part on how you deal with them. So here’s some advice around that:

The very WORST thing you can do is give in to a craving and have a smoke. This is like feeding a dog from the table, just once. You know what happens, right? The dog will keep coming back to the table, hoping to be fed again.

An improvement on this approach is to distract yourself when you have a desire to smoke – this is the advice you normally get, and is certainly better than giving in. And if you continue to do this, the urges will eventually go away. Go for a walk, do a crossword puzzle, turn the radio up and dance and sing along… Whatever you need to do to get through it.

A more direct approach is to begin to look at where the desire is coming from to begin with. What triggered it? If you used to smoke when something stressful happened, when that happens now, you’ll have a strong urge to smoke. Instead of simply distracting yourself, consider learning and using techniques for actually dealing with stress.

If you used smoking to relax or reward yourself in the past, you’ll have strong urges under those conditions. Thoughtfully (and perhaps in advance?) choose some healthier ways to reward yourself, and employ those instead.

Finally, you can ‘examine the urge.’ When you get an urge to smoke, stop for a moment, sit quietly, and scan your body – what does it actually feel like? For instance, some folks will say they ‘feel like they’re going to explode’ or ‘feel like they’re going crazy.’ Instead, break this down into bodily sensations: Are your hands clenched? Pressure in your head or chest? Shoulders tight? Notice the body sensations, and allow yourself to feel them directly for a moment, instead of ‘interpreting’ them. Then, if you can ‘fix’ any of them (for instance, by consciously relaxing your shoulders) feel free to do so.

The urge will pass in 2-3 minutes in any case, but sometimes looking the ‘demon’ in the face can help make it less scary and help the cravings fade away more quickly. In contrast, trying to ‘avoid’ the urge or pushing it away can actually give it energy.

In my program, I walk folks through these techniques step-by-step. If you’re still smoke-free, the program may not be for you, since it starts with a two-week tapering-and-switching strategy to minimize withdrawal symptoms. But for anyone who is still looking to quit, it may be very helpful.

In any case, I wish you the very best of luck – hang in there!

Deanna.

Here it is, mid-January, and I did manage to quit smoking for 2010, so far at least.  However, now I have another problem:  my middle is expanding noticeably.  In fact, I’ve already outgrown several of my pants.  I know why – it’s because I’m eating almost constantly!  Any advice?

Signed,

Smoke-free but Still Growing…

Dear Growing,

First, congratulations on quitting – that’s a HUGE accomplishment.  Just for some perspective, the health risks of smoking outweigh the health risks of being overweight so dramatically that you’d have to double or even triple your body weight to even come close to equivalent risks.

So make no mistake, even if you’re gaining weight, quitting was the right move, health-wise.

Vanity-wise, though, no one wants to be overweight, and there are some things you can do to begin to put a stop to that out-of-control [gravy] train.

1.  The first thing to do is find stuff to eat and/or drink that’s not-so-bad for you.

For instance, if your constant grazing includes raiding the donut supply in the break-room at work, or constantly popping candy into your mouth, you’re taking in a lot of calories that you don’t have to.  Sure, it’s better than picking up a cigarette, but there are other options:

• Raw or Blanched Veggies – most have very few calories, and plenty of fiber and micronutrients, so you can eat them in almost unlimited quantities without expanding further around your middle.  You don’t have to limit yourself to carrot and celery sticks – try some small cherry tomatoes in a bowl where your candy dish used to be, or cut up some cucumber sticks and add a little salt and pepper.

• Herbal Tea – having something hot to drink that doesn’t make you jittery and nervous (like too much coffee) can be a good thing.  Herbal tea is caffeine free, and there are lots of different flavors out there now.  If you drink it without sweetener, you can allow yourself practically unlimited amounts with no ill effects.  It’s hydrating, too, so it will help you flush all those toxins from your system.

• Fruit, especially apples – fruit is not quite as low calorie as most veggies, but it’s still much lower in calories and higher in fiber than the chips, donuts, and candy that you may be snacking on.  You would have a seriously hard time gaining weight from eating too much fruit, so this is a good choice.  Apples are an especially good choice because: 1) They require a lot of chewing, satisfying that oral desire.  2) They are high in fiber, so they can help ‘clean you out’ a bit.  (One of the physical effects of quitting smoking can be constipation – so an apple a day may help…)  3) They are loaded with pectin, which can bind to toxins in your body to help remove them.  4) Finally, they’re easy to carry, and you can even buy them already sliced up, so they’re convenient.  But heck, if you prefer strawberries, or pears, or even kumquats, go for it.  It all works.

2.  The second thing to do is figure out what need you’re trying to satisfy.

If you’re like most [ex] smokers, you smoked for a number of reasons: you probably smoked when you were bored, anxious, stressed, wanted to relax or reward yourself, and so on.  Now that you’ve quit, a lot of your eating is following a similar pattern.

So the next thing to do is to start to analyze what exactly you are responding to, and begin to substitute more appropriate responses.  For instance, if you used to smoke to combat boredom, you probably now want to eat when you’re bored.  But a better response would be something that would more directly alleviate boredom – like physical or mental activity – do a puzzle, or take a walk…  Same thing is true if you’re responding to anxiety, stress, or some other emotion.  Try to identify the emotional trigger, and brainstorm more effective responses to that emotion.

If you like things that are systematic and analytical, keep a food log and analyze it later. Record things like the time, the situation or setting, what you chose to eat, and what kind of emotion you think you were responding to.

If you prefer a less formal approach, just begin to get into the habit of asking yourself – why am I eating this now?  If it’s because you’re hungry, great.  Eating is an appropriate response to hunger.  But if there’s another reason, brainstorm some ideas for a different, better response.

Initially it may not feel as satisfying, but as you get into the swing of it, you’ll find that your new responses actually work better than your old ones did.  For instance, eating is not really a great way to reduce stress – especially if you’re already worried about gaining weight.  But taking a walk, or a bubble bath, or doing a meditation – those are good ways to reduce stress, and as you get better at them, and more consistent at doing them, you’ll find your urges to eat (or to smoke) in response to stress diminish.

3) Finally, know that you don’t have to be perfect, just persistent.

No one is saying that you can never have another donut.  But if you do choose to eat a donut, don’t shrug your shoulders and say to yourself, “Well, today is shot.  Might as well eat the rest of the box…”  Instead, allow yourself the occasional donut – savor it, even – and then quietly go back to your plan.

Just keep going back to your plan…

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If you found these suggestions useful, or have suggestions you think may be helpful to others, leave a comment and share your experience.  Or Ask the Advisor your own question.  If you haven’t managed to quit yet, but still want to, read more about the Complete Quit System.

We’re just a few days into 2010, and I’ve already failed at my New Year’s resolution – again. I really, really want to quit smoking, but no matter what I do, nothing works.

I’m tired of making the same old New Year’s resolution every year, only to fail, over and over again. Is it possible I just don’t have enough willpower to quit?  Do you have any advice that will help me quit permanently?

signed,

Tried & Tired in Denver

Dear Tired,

I do have some advice for you, and in the spirit of the New Year, I predict that 2010 will be the year that you finally quit for good.  Here are three things you can do right now to improve your chances of success:

Don’t ‘Fight’ with Yourself

A lot of people talk about not having the ‘willpower’ to quit smoking, but I believe that anyone can quit, with the right tools and motivation.

When you’re trying to quit, motivation is actually a lot more important than willpower.  Trying to quit using willpower is like having a fist-fight with yourself:  Part of you wants to quit, but another part of you really wants to smoke.  Whether you manage to quit or not depends on which ‘you’ wins.  Regardless, it’s painful and difficult for ‘both’ of you.

Instead of fighting with the part of you that wants to smoke, recruit that part of you by tapping into your motivation.  When Abe Lincoln was asked “Don’t you want to destroy your enemies?” he reportedly answered, “Do I not destroy my enemy when I make him my friend?”

So don’t fight with yourself.  Recruit your ‘enemy’ – the part of you that wants to smoke – by learning to tap into your motivation, and avoid the willpower struggle altogether.

Escape ‘Magic Pill Mindset’

This is the one thing that could keep you smoking forever: holding out for a way to quit that is completely effortless.

Have you ever tried hypnosis or acupuncture, and expected it to completely eliminate your desire to smoke, with no effort on your part?  Have you tried nicotine patches or prescription medications, but not bothered with any of the behavioral techniques to go with them?

If you look back on your quit attempts and see that most of them have been centered on a ‘magic pill’ approach – that is, one that promises to quit for you, with no pain or effort involved, you may be a victim of ‘magic-pill mindset.’

The problem is, most people do have to put in some effort to quit successfully.  That doesn’t mean quitting has to be some torturous gauntlet that you have to run, but if you’re still holding out for the magical cure, you’re going to give up too easily.

There’s an old saying that if you don’t get something you want, you either didn’t want it badly enough, or you bargained over the price.  If you have Magic-Pill Mindset, get rid of it now by deciding that you won’t shy away from the effort required to quit successfully.

Be a Statistic

Statistics show that almost everyone who manages to quit smoking for good tried to quit several times before succeeding.  There are two things to learn from this statistic:

First, since most people have to try repeatedly, your ‘failures’ are NOT evidence that you won’t be able to quit.  They are simply learning experiences.  Knowing that, you can make up your mind right now to keep trying until you are successful.

Which leads us to the second point:  To quit successfully, you must learn something from every quit attempt.  Sometimes it’s as simple as, ‘well, that didn’t work…’ but other times you need to dig deeper and figure out exactly what went wrong.

Think about your past attempts:  Did you quit for a few weeks, and then ‘casually’ decide to have a smoke, only to end up back where you started?  Have you tried acupuncture, hypnosis, the patch, or nicotine gum, and expected it to make you just not want to smoke?  (You may be a victim of ‘magic pill mindset’ – see above.)

Spend a few minutes right now considering what didn’t work in each of your past attempts.  Jot some notes if you think that will help.

Make a New Plan to Quit

Use the insights you’ve gained by thinking about past attempts, and come up with ways to deal with the issues that derailed you in previous attempts.  Seriously consider a plan to deal with the psychological aspects of your addiction, too.

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How many times have you made a New Year’s resolution to quit?  Have you been able to identify any of the factors that made you fail in that past?  Share your insights by leaving a comment below.

I’ve been smoking for about 45 years, and recently I tried the 3-month program using Chantix.  I’ve been off the pills just over two months now and I haven’t smoked, but my life is a mess trying to stay quit.

I get up around 1 PM then sit-lay-sleep on couch till about 3 AM when I go to bed. I try to sleep as much as I can to avoid smoking.  I usually don’t bother getting dressed, sit around in my robe.  I often go a week before taking a shower.

None of this was me 4 months ago.

Before quitting I was an active person.  Now I’ve turned into a recluse trying to avoid places where I smoked.  I have a nice hobby machine shop I can tinker in but I don’t because I always smoked while in the shop.

I constantly crave cigarettes, and it’s not getting any easier as time goes by.  Any advice will be sincerely appreciated.

Signed,

Down & Out

Dear Down,

I am not a clinician, so this isn’t an official diagnosis, but it seems clear that you are suffering from depression.  Part of your depression is likely related to the grief process as a result of quitting smoking, but you’ve experienced some other major losses lately, too.

All of the things you used to like to do that you are now avoiding (like tinkering in your shop) constitute a HUGE loss, and much of your depression is likely related to that.

My Advice:

First, if you were experiencing any symptoms of depression before you quit smoking, do check in with your doctor, and/or take advantage of any counseling provided by your employer for help for dealing with issues related to injury or loss of work.

Apart from that, there are some steps you can take to get your life back.  To avoid feeling overwhelmed, start slowly and just do what you can initially.  As you gather momentum, you’ll find it easier to incorporate more into your life.

1.     Get moving!

You don’t have to leap up and run around the block, but force yourself up off the couch and move your body some.  Shuffle around the house, take a short walk, or find a task that requires you to move your body.  If that seems like too much, start by simply standing in front of the couch and moving your arms and legs for a minute or two the first few times.  Give yourself permission to just do a little at a time, knowing that doing a little now will make it easier to do a little more later as you begin to feel like it.

The body feedback loop can cause your brain to interpret prolonged ‘stillness’ as depression.

And since feeling depressed results in not wanting to move, it becomes a vicious cycle.  To break the cycle, you must change either find a way to ‘feel less depressed’ or find a way to move your body.  Clearly, the second one is the easier way to begin.

If you’re interested in some of the science behind the relationship between these two things, Spark by John J. Ratey is an interesting read.  It’s available at Amazon.

2.     Begin to reclaim your hobbies!

It’s common after people quit smoking to avoid the places, people, and activities that were associated with smoking in order to avoid triggering cravings to smoke.  This is not a bad short-term strategy, but as you’re discovering, it’s a lousy long-term strategy.  After all, most of those things were in your life because you enjoyed them, so you don’t want to give them all up just so you can quit smoking.

Here’s the thing:

The desire to smoke is like a huge dragon, lurking in all those places where you used to smoke.  If you want to stay quit, you can choose to avoid the dragon, but you have to give up all the things you used to enjoy.

Or…

You can prepare to slay the dragon, and then confront him at the moment of your choosing, to ensure that you will be successful.  Once you do that, you get to reclaim all of those parts of your life.

The good news is, it’s not that hard to slay the dragon of desire.

The key is to find a way to experience those things without smoking, even though you know that the first several times you do it, you will want to smoke.

In other words, you prepare to slay the dragon by getting ready to experience the urge to smoke, but putting safeguards in place that will help you avoid smoking.

For instance, you might choose to go tinker in your shop on a day when you’ve arranged for your wife to take the only car, so there is just no way for you to get any cigarettes.  Or you could enlist the help of a friend or family member you can rely on to help you avoid smoking while in the shop that day.  Be creative to come up with a safeguard that works for your situation.

After a few times, you will start to break the association between that activity and smoking, and your desire to smoke there will start to decrease.  Pretty soon, the fun of tinkering in the ship will begin to outweigh the minor inconvenience of an occasional urge to smoke.

The dragon is slowly dying…

In psychological terms, the association of smoking in your shop is a simple form of learning called “classical conditioning.”  Appropriately, the process of slaying the dragon is called “extinction.”

3.     Learn to ‘accept’ the desire in order to release it.

This is a more advanced technique, and it may seem contradictory, but when you’re ready for it, it’s very powerful.  Don’t try this until you feel confident that you can experience a desire to smoke without picking up a cigarette.

You may have intuitively realized this:

The one thing that is more uncomfortable than having an urge to smoke is the anxiety of trying to avoid the desire to smoke.

In other words, trying to avoid urges, trying to escape from the desire to smoke, trying to push away the craving– is actually worse than experiencing the desire to smoke.

You can prove this to yourself by choosing to experience the desire, instead of resisting it. (Let me repeat here: only try this in a situation where you feel confident you will be able to refrain from smoking – You’re going to accept the feeling of wanting to smoke, but you’re still going to refrain from smoking.)

Here’s the technique:

When the urge to smoke comes, don’t push it away or try to distract yourself.  Instead, sit still, close your eyes, and allow it in.  Notice what it feels like in your body:  Is your pulse faster?  Is your brow furrowed or your fist clenched?  What is your breathing like?  Take a minute to notice all the different things that may be going on in your body.

Don’t tell yourself any ‘stories’ about the urge, like why it’s there, or what it ‘means,’ or how much you wish it would go away.  Try for a ‘pure’ experience of just noticing the sensations as they occur.

After experiencing it for a minute or so, choose something to change about it.

If your breathing is shallow, you can choose to take a deep breath, or to consciously relax your facial expression or other parts of your body that you noticed were feeling tense.

Don’t try to make the urge go away – just make the minor changes to your body that you feel like making, and continue to notice the experience until the urge goes away.

For most people, the biggest revelation is that the urge to smoke – if you accept it rather than resist it – isn’t really as painful and scary as we’ve been telling ourselves.

The urge to smoke is NOT a giant dragon as large as your house.

It’s actually fairly small dragon – maybe the size of a dog or cat.

After trying this ‘non-resistance’ technique a few times, you’ll begin to notice that the desire itself starts to diminish.  It’s as if all of the energy that you were putting into resisting the desire was giving the desire power.  Once you take that energy away from it, the power of the urge starts to fade.

Then your experiential system starts to ‘get it,’ and

the dragon shrinks to the size of a fly

– buzzing around you once in awhile, a minor annoyance.  It may distract you as you swat at it, but you’re certainly not going to cross the street to avoid it.

Eventually the urge to smoke goes away altogether, until you find that you haven’t even thought about smoking – for days, weeks, months, then years…

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Have any of you experienced depression as a result of quitting?  Was there anything that helped you get through it?  How about the non-resistance technique described above for experiencing the urge to smoke – have you tried it?  Feel free to leave a comment to describe your experience.