Chrysalis

I think that the thread "Your First Days, Nicotine Free" is very valuable and will be extremely helpful to newbies. Can you include either as a pinned thread or add it to The Newbie Database?

I don't think I'm going to like this game. The best I could do is: WEEPING BRAT :wacko:

Did my dog walking today. Three dogs @ 20 minutes each. I'm not sure how many calories I burn doing this--not as many as I had hoped. These are rescue dogs (almost all pit bulls and rotweilers) who have not been socialized and don't actually know how to "walk" on a leash. They run ahead and pull your arm out of the socket then stop dead while they sniff something in the grass. So my response as a volunteer dog walker is supposed to be to stop walking until they come back and walk next to me. With most dogs that would be fine, but these dogs are stubborn and very excited to be out. So it's walk, stop, walk, stop, walk, stop, walk, stop... And sometimes they get confused and wrap the leash around my legs and THEN pull like mad!! (A-a-r-r-g-g-h!). Periodically we take a break I spend a few minutes teaching them "sit" and "stay". But then it's back to walk, stop, walk, stop... I'm pretty sure that if I can manage to walk the same 3 dogs 3 times a week they will start to get the hang of walking WITH me instead of pulling ahead (I get to request which dogs I want to walk). Then we will be able to build up some speed and consistency and I can start burning calories. But in the meanwhile, having a 75 pound, well-muscled pit bull pulling your arm out of the socket and wrapping the leash around your legs for an hour is exhausting.

Congratulations, Giopetro! One month is a biggie! That was the one I was most worried about-- I was pretty sure I could make one week. And I was pretty sure that if I made one month I would have encountered and overcome almost all of my trigger situations. But could I make it to one month?? Maybe not. But I did make it and so did you. Hooray!! Now that you have quit smoking how do you feel? Has the smoking made any noticeable difference? I know that you've been serious all along about good nutrition and regular exercise so maybe you were already so fit that quitting smoking didn't change much. What do you think?

Very inspirational! Thank you for posting this!

That figures...leave it to a guy to notice such things. :angry: But hey, at least she didn't ruin the look by showing any ugly panty lines! :P

Bakon, so you will be 2 full years tomorrow, eh? Congratulations! That's terrific! Please do blog these posts. This record of your journey will help a lot of other quitters. I also find it amazing that even after all this time your avatar doesn't look a day older. Quitting smoking must have been good for your skin! :)

Dentalfloss, I can't tell if you are upset by the brief driving crave and the dreams or not. You don't seem to be upset, just reporting on things that have been happening to you, which is good. The only thing I would add (because I frequently forget it myself) is that you should remember that weird things happen to non-smokers, too. There could be things going on in your life right now that are provoking a lot of dreams. Because you recently quit smoking, your brain attaches the dreams to smoking. But if you were still smoking (or had never smoked) your brain would attach the dreams to something else symbolic. Don't worry about it.

Great job, Laura! I read your pre-SOS and it's perfect! I love the part where you say that wanting a cigarette is "just a thought". How true that is! I'm so happy to see you say that you are sick of doing this to yourself and you are determined to quit for good this time. Hang in there, honey, and post here as often as you can. Remember, it will get easier and easier every day. I promise!

Here you go, Action. For some reason this one would not cooperate but here it is.

Well, now we know what happened to all those dancers from the Hahnia Pahnia "snow opera" video. They went on to create "Prancercise"! Perfect! :D

Wow! She's really good! I can't imagine how much practice that must entail. Cool.

Laura, while I agree that alcohol lowers inhibitions and promotes relapses, your problem is not just alcohol. You were saying just last week that you didn't think you could stick this quit. So you have had several issues going on. 1. I think it would be most helpful if you read the thread called "Pre Respond to Your Own SOS" here http://www.quittrain.com/topic/259-pre-respond-to-your-own-sos/ That should give you a lot of ammunition about what to say to yourself when you're thinking of smoking. 2. Write your own Pre-Response to an SOS message. Think about how you felt just before you chose to smoke and how you feel now and talk to yourself honestly and forcefully about keeping your quit. 3. You have quit a couple of times now. Many people do. By now you know that the cravings, while uncomfortable, will not kill you. You CAN survive them. The problem is that you get impatient with them. So I suggest you read the new thread about how people handled their first days without nicotine ( http://www.quittrain.com/topic/2747-your-first-days-nicotine-free/ ). Lots of great ideas there. You have been torturing yourself with quitting and relapsing long enough. You owe it to yourself and your loved ones to get through this! For sure, you must NOT drink for at least the first month of your quit. You know that alcohol will undermine you. And think about and prepare for how to quit and how to keep your quit by reading the posts I suggested. You have to want to quit more than you want to smoke. If you do, the posts, articles and videos here will get you through.

Natalie, vaping (i.e., e-cigarettes) is a complex and controversial topic. As you discovered for yourself, you can "vape" nicotine or non-nicotine liquids. One problem is who is making these liquids and in which country? What are the ingredients? What are the quality controls? Are they deliberately adding addictive substances to their e-cig liquids? Questions like that. Another issue is safety. Is it safe to be inhaling ANYTHING into your lungs all the time? And some e-cigs put out what is essentially steam-- what damage will result from constantly burning delicate tissues with steam? Are the supposedly "non-toxic" ingredients like ethylene glycol really not toxic when repeatedly inhaled? Questions like that. And, finally, what is the purpose of vaping? It was originally conceived as a way to help people quit smoking. Use e-cigs to help you cut down on cigarettes and then go off the e-cigs. But then people started switching to e-cigs INSTEAD of smoking (with no intention of ever quitting vaping) as a way to circumvent anti-smoking laws. And now big tobacco companies are buying up the e-cig companies and actually trying to get people to use (and become addicted to) e-cigs. Some people say that the tobacco companies are marketing vaping especially to children and young people to get decades of profits from their addiction. I, personally, tried e-cigs 3 or 4 years ago to help me quit smoking. They did work in that I was able to cut down on my cigarettes a lot. However, the steam and/or the chemicals burned my throat and caused me to have severe asthma attacks in the middle of the night (I don't have asthma--that was specifically due to the e-cigs). So I stopped the vaping.

I don't find the North Korean guitar children to be "creepy". If it was just one child and he/she was European, we'd call him a prodigy and applaud him (which we often do with child violinists and pianists). So it's not the guitar playing per se that is creepy. What is creepy is seeing so many children who have apparently been relentlessly drilled on the guitar to perform like little automatons. Have they gotten any schooling? Do they have play time? Do they get any physical exercise time? It's the effort and regimentation that must have gone into these children that's creepy. I do find it astounding, though, to imagine what marvels humans could achieve if our brains and efforts were intensely channeled like this. If 4-year-olds can be coached to play instruments at this level (and, obviously, at 4 years of age, they couldn't have had very many years of training) how much of our brain power lies dormant in the rest of us? Are our accepted standards for education and training really the best way to go about things, or are they just the traditional way to go about things? Makes me wonder.

Yeah, I'm kind of obsessed (or is the word "possessed"?) by this video, too. Sort of like the fascination of watching a train wreck in slow motion! Can this be for real? By the way, Action, you've got me wondering about that "boing" noise. Is that a mouth harp or is it Tuvan throat singing? Kola Beldy was an accomplished throat singer so I suspect that was him.

My first thought is don't help him. Men, with all their muscles and testosterone, lose weight much more easily than women. Personally, I get green with envy every time my husband tries to lose weight. Three weeks of no french fries and switching to light beer and --bang!-- he's lost 10 pounds! I HATE that! However, if you want to be a helpmate, my husband sounds a lot like yours-- his idea of a salad is everything except the green stuff (i.e., no lettuce, cucumbers, peppers... lots of chopped egg, bleu cheese and shredded carrots :P ). As I say, most of the time, if he just cools it on the high-calorie junk food-- like cheeseburgers, french fries and beer-- he loses weight. When he get SERIOUS about losing weight, his lunch consists of a sandwich, fruit, diet soda and a snack bar. He likes to use the high-protein high-fiber snack bars that are often marketed to men. Brands like Nutrisystem or Atkins or the like.

Hi, Beth. Welcome to Quit Train. With almost 18 months under your belt you're way ahead of me. I look forward to learning from you and hearing about your experiences.

I must say, Whackamole, you do present interesting challenges! It took me a while to figure out what the heck this is! Turns out that this is a popular mid-70's song from the USSR by Kola Beldy. According to Wikipedia: Kola Beldy was "a Soviet pop singer who scored with some tundra-orientated megahits in the seventies and is considered a hallmark of Soviet snow-opera kitsch." ("Snow opera kitsch"??!! Who knew??!! :P :lol: ) Thanks for the education, Whack.

Yeah, I know how that goes...they could sit and watch it all day! ;-)

Wow, Babs, you really DID transform yourself, didn't you? You look very fit now, and a lot smaller. I'm trying to do the same thing-- good nutrition and regular exercise. It's awfully hard to incorporate these changes into my life, your examples shows me how worthwhile is the effort. Congratulations, and thank you for the inspiration.

I was going to grill some ribs today but time got away from me and it never happened. So I decided to have leftover Cuban black bean soup and blue corn nachos instead. Such a let-down (NOT! :) )

Sazerac, now THAT was a Cadillac! Compare that unique styling with the undistinguished styling of the Cadillac below. I didn't even realize it was a Cadillac until I saw the logo at the end of the commercial. Phooey!

Yeah, Babs, how about some pics? And by the way, how did the voting come out?

Hi, Joe- Since I believe in the adage that a new car loses 20% of its value the minute you drive it off the showroom floor, we always buy used cars. One or two years old with less than 25,000 miles. Then we keep them until they die. Right now my husband is driving a 2003 Hyundai with 120,000 miles and I am driving a 2010 Hyundai with 67,000. Actually, I'm thinking of breaking with tradition and trading in the 2003 for a newer model. The reason is that I do NOT want to have a car payment when we're retired 2 or 3 years from now. If my husband takes my 2010 and I get the new car (lady's perks :) ) we probably will never have to buy another car.