PixelSketch

Hi Natalie! I'm new here, but I'm glad you made the decision to come back. Tomorrow is a brand new day and a brand new start. You can do this and we've got your back! :)

Thanks guys! :wub: That helps. I guess I'm so excited about finally quitting, I just expect to feel completely awesome immediately. LOL But, I agree, after putting poison into my body for 20 years, it will take some time for everything to adjust. And I'm sure some of it is unrelated, but it just feels like it is when it hits you all at once right after the quit. Gaah! It's just frustrating. I'm usually 'Go, Go, GO!' so I'm feeling a bit hemmed in. And I'm a lousy impatient patient. :P Hanging in. Tea, lemon, honey, repeat. Waiting for the really good part once I'm through this. :good3:

NOPE! Not today! Happy Friday! :)

Lake Charles, Lucinda Williams.

I'm on Day 19 smoke and nicotine free. Mentally, I feel so so good. Physically, I feel both good and awful. I can breathe deeply, I can laugh whole heartedly without coughing, I have a ton of energy, my skin is looking better, my eyes are clearer, my teeth are whiter. I can smell things again. Of all things, my nails are really shiny. What? And it goes on. At the same time, in the last almost 3 weeks, I've had a bladder infection, a cavity, bronchitis, sinusitis, a flare up of my TMJ/TMD (jaw joint issues) from too much gum chewing (not nicotine gum, just normal gum), and it just feels like it's been a merry-go-round of antibiotics, and doctor and dentist visits. I rarely get sick and now, it's everything all at once. I'm taking care of it all with the appropriate doctors etc. as it comes up, but it's annoying. It's like my body was holding it together until I quit smoking and now it's just letting all the problems, all the cats out of the bag, as it were. I'm falling apart. Yet, I also feel really healthy. It's really confusing. Have you guys experienced anything like that?

You can only do so much. You've planted the seed, you've given the resources, but, horses and water, you know? When you're in the middle of it, you can logically know the dangers, you can be experiencing the ill effects and you will still find a way to rationalize it all away so you can smoke. You need to be ready to walk away. Once you do, you start to see the addiction for what it is. But before that, it's hard.

I think the homework was motivated by fear! ;) I really was ready to quit and I was scared of quitting at the same time, so I figured, the more I could learn, the better equipped I'd be to deal with it. You have an awesome handle on everything and a great attitude! We're doing this!! :D

Thank you Nancy! :) I guess I needed the extra Vitamin C. I'm glad that stage is over. I like citrus, but there's only so much of it I want to eat per day!

Truth. Why does that happen?? For me, it was the first 10 days. I felt like I was living in a giant blob of molasses. Everything took forever and it was all in slo-mo. Also, I felt like I was watching a movie of my life, rather than actually being in my life, if that makes any sense. It was almost like there was a dirty, foggy window between me and life. It's like, I think it was SNL, a long time ago, did a parody of an Elizabeth Taylor perfume commercial. And they kept adding more and more vaseline onto the camera lens as they went along to make her look younger, but she kept looking more and more blurry and fuzzy. LOL That's what I felt like. My life kept getting fuzzy and unfocussed. Nothing felt real.

H Pooks! :) I can't speak to the thyroid issues/meds, but I've been a fitness junkie most of my life. I spent many years in the martial arts, I ran and I did a lot of weights. I was trained by trainers and I also trained others. A few chronic sports injuries and smoking sidelined that now and again, and there were periods where I didn't adjust my diet when I stopped the physical activities for, sometimes, months at a time, and gained weight. When it comes to losing weight, it's super common to hit plateaus. I hit them all the time. Our bodies are super smart and efficient. If they can find a way to do something that you regularly do in a more efficient way, and expend less energy doing it, they will. And you will burn fewer calories over time doing a familiar routine. I second Boo and ExTex. Change it up, both in food and workout type/intensity. Add weights. Muscle takes more energy to maintain than fat, so you'll burn more calories even when you're just sitting if you have more muscle mass. But make sure you eat enough calories to fuel your workout, plus recovery from that workout as well. Your body needs to have energy to expend. Otherwise you end up tired and you can hurt yourself over the long term. Try circuit training with weights. It's a nice mix of strength training and cardio and it keeps your body confused and working harder if you switch it up. Look up HIIT. Find exercises that use multiple muscle groups at once. So, for example, a shoulder press with free weights, while doing squat motions. Give your muscles enough time between workouts to repair and recover. Don't overwork a muscle. Also, it's not always about the number on the scale. I now that sounds cliche and trite. But, I've had so many times when the scale wasn't moving, and I was so frustrated, yet when I did my measurements, I found I had actually lost inches. Other times, I upped my calorie intake and that, contrary to what I expected, got the scale moving down again. All that finally got me to stop thinking in terms of the number on the scale and start thinking in terms of how I was feeling and fitness accomplishments, like lifting 5 more lbs this week than I did last week etc. Sometimes you are actually making progress, it's just not as obvious.

It's unreal how it just affects everything. My Mom passed away from cervical cancer just over 8 years ago. She was young - in her 50's. She smoked right up until the end. It was just heartbreaking. Yet, it didn't stop any of the rest of the family, myself included, from smoking. It's just so awful to think about all the damage and destruction cigarettes do, in so many ways.

That is the perfect picture for that!! Once you get your head out of the sand, it's a whole different world. A much better one.

Same! It was almost a challenge to "collect" the whole series of messages/pictures on the packs. "Let's see, I already have 2 messed up eye/teeth ones, now I need a smoking pregnancy and the classic man in hospital bed" WTF???!! Seriously. Not a one of those was a deterrent then. NOW? Only on Day 19, and I was taking a walk earlier, and one of my neighbours was on his porch having a smoke. I swear I almost dived off the sidewalk and into the nearest bushes, because I was so paranoid about one particle of smoke getting in my lungs. Must get away. It's so nuts how your perspective changes so severely, so quickly.

Haha! I LOVE that one and the perfect response that follows it: "Read that again. Slowly." :lol:

Sadly, that's not a euphemism for anything fun. -_- At the end of Day 3, and leading up into Day 6, I was itchy. Actually, literally, physically...itchy. It actually makes me itchy now, just thinking about it. :o My upper chest, neck, face, especially around the jaw, and head came down with a serious case of THE ITCHES. It came out of the blue, it was sudden, and it was really annoying. Like dealing with multiple mosquito bites. There were no bites, no bumps and not even a hint of a rash. The skin, unbroken, looked normal. I went through a mental checklist. Did I change my shampoo, soap, laundry detergent, lotion, anything? No. Did I eat a food I've never eaten before? No. It wasn't cat allergies - those make my eyes red and itchy and they make me sneeze, but they also make me really red and blotchy. And that wasn't happening. Also, my cat allergies only get that bad when I groom the little buggers. So it wasn't that. I do shower regularly. LOL So...what changed? The only thing that was different was that I quit smoking. And when the itching started, the nicotine was almost out of my system. Maybe my body was trying to expel some chemicals? I don't know. All I know is, I spent several days scratching. Ugh. Nothing helped. Not lotion, not Benadryl, not anything. But I got through it. And by the middle of Day 6, it stopped, just as suddenly as it had started. Haven't had an issue since. But now that experience serves as another great reason to NOPE. If I do, I will be right back to Hell Week, and THE ITCHES. No thanks. NOPE. That's not the kind of itch I want to scratch. Never again. :blink:

It's so weird - it almost feels like your body's been hijacked for a week or so. You just have to hang on and ride it out. The rest is just keeping your guard up, but it's never anything like the first week. Which is a good thing!!

I want to have it as a reminder, so that if I ever waver, I can look back and see what I went through and how I don't want to go through it again! I look forward to getting to know you too. :)

But the real question is, why oh why did Noah have to bring two spiders on the ark? Whyyyyy? And did they drink Earl Grey tea too? Would that make them posh spiders then? :huh:

It's so weird how you don't see any of that while you're still a smoker. As soon as you stop, and take a step away from it, it's like the logical part of your brain comes back and you suddenly realize what you've been doing to yourself. Now, I just picture all that tar coating everything and it's like "eww, ewww, ewww...." :angry:

Thank you so much for the warm welcome! :wub: Your posts and stories really inspired me and kept me going these last few weeks and I'm happy to finally meet you. We can do this - the support is so so important to success. Reading posts of people who are ahead of you in the journey, shows you it's possible and motivates you to keep going. It did for me. I agree - the moment when you realize it's an addiction is a real lightbulb moment. I wish someone had put it to me that way years ago. It made such a difference. See, when you think "oh, it's just a bad habit" then you feel weak for not being able to stop doing it. And you feel bad about yourself and that just leads to giving up. "I can't do this. I'm not strong enough. If I was I wouldn't be smoking in the first place. So, there's something wrong with me." When you realize it's an addiction, something shifts in your head. You no longer feel like you are weak in character, like you are defective in some way. You feel like you have, for lack of a better word, an illness, an opponent, and that doesn't reflect on you. It's just a thing that you HAVE, not a thing that you ARE, and so you can fight it and work to get rid of it, without feeling like you're attacking yourself. But you're no longer putting yourself down, or fighting against yourself. I'm not sure if I'm explaining it right, but that mental shift really helped me. And staying vigilant is so important, for sure. That sneaky junkie brain has a nasty habit of crashing the party now and again, and it catches me by surprise at the most unexpected moments. When it does, I just take a deep breath and attack it with logic. "NOPE, nicotine, we broke up, remember? You have no power over me. You're outta my life. This relationship is just not right for me. You're too controlling. It's my life, you know. I'm in the driver's seat. Not you. You're now just a fading memory, and I'm just not that into you anymore. Sorry. I've moved on. It's not me - it's you."* And then I go through all the ways I'm feeling better now that I stopped with the smokes. And I follow that by imagining how awful it would feel to smoke one now. The coughing, the dizziness, the nausea. And then to start all over again in quitting. And I read posts here. And I NOPE. *it's that conversation, but with more swear words :D

Nah-uh. Noppity Nope. NOPE.

I was scared of Hell Week. I prepared myself as best I could. I took the week off. I stocked up on junk food, thinking I'd probably just eat my way through my first week. I expected to be gorging on cookies, chips, chocolate - anything and everything that was probably not great for me in abnormally large doses. As long as it kept me from smoking, I was ok with it, figuring I could always ramp up my workouts when I was ready. I was right about one thing. I ate. Though eating is probably a gross understatement of what I did. :lol: I ate constantly. But, what really took me by surprise was, I didn't eat cookies, or chips or chocolate. I had absolutely no desire to touch any of it. I wanted tangerines. And snow peas. And sugar snap peas. And tuna. And chicken soup. Not one or two here or there either. Oh no! I ate three bags of tangerines that week. Three! Two bags of snow peas, three of sugar snap peas, SIX CANS OF TUNA! And bowl after bowl of chicken soup. I thought I would explode. :wacko: But I couldn't stop!! I generally eat a pretty healthy diet, but it's a far more balanced and moderate approach. This was so weird. But I figured my body must have some kind of a need for this stuff, so I went with it. Much of what I ate had a high Vitamin C content or other antioxidants. I also take a cranberry supplement with vitamins c and e, and I kept up with that. At least I wasn't smoking, right? I developed an aversion to my beloved coffee and drank cup after cup of green tea. I drank so much water, I was sure I'd drown. Every time I had a craving, I would grab another handful of sugar snap peas. The crunch of these was somehow super satisfying. I watched a lot of Netflix. I read these forums and I ate. My strongest cravings were near the end of Day 2. I came so close to going to the store to buy a pack. But, honestly, I was feeling way too full and, as a result, lazy, to bother going! I held on and I ate. I figured if I could just make it though three days. Just three. If I couldn't manage past that, I would get a pack. On Day 4, I woke up and I didn't really want a smoke upon waking. Which was so strange to me. I think that was the moment that I really committed to my quit and realized that there could be life after smoking. Also, I really didn't want to go through the first three days again. I wanted to see what came next. From that point on, there were some strong cravings for a cigarette. But none as strong as in the first three days. And they weren't constant. They felt more like "I could really go for some cake" type of thoughts. And, as long as I kept myself distracted, they went away. By day 10, my food cravings went back to normal. I'm back to liking coffee, but I'm down to only one cup a day. Not my usual 5 or 6! I still drink green tea and a variety of different herbal teas, as well as a lot of water. I'm back to eating a normal, for me, diet that includes a wide variety of vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains. Also, chocolate. And cookies. And, while I still love tangerines and peas, I no longer eat double my body weight in them daily. :D Progress.

Longtime lurker, first time poster. :P I've been smoke-free and nicotine-free for 18 days. I've been on the fence about joining the forum and posting, but I've found all of your posts really helpful over the last few weeks, and I'm so grateful for that, so I figured it was time to jump in and participate. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better and learning my way around this forum! I started smoking in my early 20's and have been smoking for approximately 20 years, on average 20 a day. For the last 5 or so, I really, really hated that I smoked. But I kept smoking. A couple of years ago, I read Allen Carr's book - three times. But I kept smoking. Despite that, the book was the first time I framed smoking in terms of the nicotine addiction. For some reason, I never really thought of it like that. That led me to more research. And I found Joel's site, and video library. And I found these boards and forums. And I read. And I learned. And I smoked. And I hated myself for it. But I kept smoking. I was scared of quitting. I was scared of never smoking again, as silly as that may sound. I wasn't sure how to live my life without a smoke in my hand. At the same time, I was tired of beating myself up over smoking day after day after day. I was tired of treating myself so badly. That kind of negative talk really puts a dent in your self esteem. Enough. So, I picked a quit date out of a hat. March 19th. I wrote it on the blackboard in the kitchen. It was about a month into the future at that point. I kept smoking right up until end of day March 18th. But, every day, several times a day, I would see that big date looming. And a funny thing started to happen. The closer it got to March 19th, the less I smoked. Day by day, it felt, mentally, like cigarettes had a weaker hold on my brain. By the time March 19th came, I was ready to go cold turkey. I wiped the board clean, and wrote "Smoke-free days" on it instead. At the end of each day, I make a little mark on that board. And they're adding up. Each day is a victory and a greater freedom. Each struggle is a reminder to keep pushing forward. The nicotine is long gone - now I'm retraining my brain. But I am a nicotine addict. And I always will be. So each day is another pledge to NOPE and a big YES to life. And reading your posts these last few weeks has shown me that it's possible and it's worth it.