intoxicated yoda

@Sunshinei packed on about 40 pounds in 4 months. *yikes*

@Boothat suit and cape is a trap!!! he still broke every bone in his body despite wearing them AND safety goggles. just sayin'

6 month update...sticking with the diet pretty good. it's not very hard to stay with a diet where you can eat as much as you want. i'm fully expecting that in my mind it will cease to be a diet and start being just the way I eat. I know eating nothing but meat seems extreme and maybe it is but for now it's working. Once I hit my physical markers I'll start adding in some seasonal fruit and honey. Staying far away from leafy greens as they are full of chemical booby traps. I mean, tobacco is a leafy green before it's dried and rolled. Just because the other leafy greens aren't addictive doesn't mean they aren't f***ing you up in other ways. With the exception of tonite, i've stayed away from coffee. some family brought me a decaf so I had to drink it. not gonna lie, it was good. as far the quit goes, i just started an experiment today. One of the symptoms i've had from the beginning that i've always associated with craving was a feeling like a lump in my throat that would be vastly diminished in the morning and get more noticeable in the evenings. It's one of the physical symptoms of craving that has driven my completely crazy for the last 6 months and nothing really helps it. Well today I finally found a possible answer for it. I may be low on calcium. So starting to day i'm adding cheese into my diet. I had my first meal with cheese this evening and so far it's not a severe as usual. it's still there just not as annoying and of course way to soon for there to be anything other than a psychological reaction so i'll monitor it. If I can fix that I swear 90% of my quit problems will be gone. so...what's better, what's worse and what's not changed. let me see. what's worse...I've actually had more trouble getting to sleep very recently. Now, once I go to sleep i sleep soundly and slowly i'm feeling better in the mornings. I just need to get my arse in the sack and settled down earlier at night. what's better....damn, this is gonna be a list so let's go. as mentioned above, sleep is deeper and more sound. joints are getting better and less painful by the week. the morning wood is back and it's oak, baby. mood is markedly better, still have my bad days and bad moments but overall much improved. i think my vision is starting to improve. i don't stay freezing cold all the time. attention span is getting better. i feel more connected to reality than before. overall psyche has improved. waistline is down 4 inches. exercise is less painful. and the best, when I lay down to go to sleep, breathing is completely effortless. I can breathe as deep as I can force myself with absolutely no wheezing, coughing or pain in my chest. For that I am eternally grateful. what's not changed...cravings are about the same but i'm working on that. digestive issues haven't changed much. flexibility not improving yet and neuromas in my feet still flare up. the bloating is still an issue. while it's not a cumbersome as it had been it's still some there and until it's gone it's not changed as far as i'm concerned. All in all the effort has resulted in an overwhelmingly positive result. I've got 19 pounds left to lose to get back to my pre quit weight so I'm almost at the halfway point. The revised goal is to get my waistline down to 34 inches and I'm a third of the way there on that. who knows...maybe old yoda will transform into han solo before it's all over with.

I'm glad you found a solution to keep you in the game, Kdad. You can do this

welcome @DenaliBlues17days is a great start. Keep doing those wall pushups and focusing on anything other than smoking. If you have made it this far on your own that should be proof enough to yourself you can go the distance. Buckle yourself in tightly on the train and embrace the ride.

This sums it up. The above is all you need. Print it off, write it down, tattoo it on your hand if necessary so you can read it every minute of every day until it becomes part of your being. You don't need books or pills or plug to shove up your bum, you just need understand this.

@nicotine_freethis is a marathon and not a sprint. You can fall a few times and still finish. But to get past this addiction you have learn to beat all your triggers. Glad you aren't letting this derail you. Hang tough.

praying for you Opah. Get well soon.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement and support. It's meant more than you all will ever really know!!

Great job Jordan7. Almost like you predicted this in your handle!! awesome quit!!

Congrats Kate! Way to go!!

That's a great quit you got there, Kris.

-12

I have been getting my sleep issues resolved lately but it's taken some time to let the process work. first, cutting out the caffeine or reducing drastically can help a lot since the body doesn't metabolize it as efficiently as when you smoked. second, get 10 to 15 minutes of sunlight in your face every morning. go for a walk, preferably before 9 am. It will help reset your body and brain circadian rhythms. The sunlight is much more effective if you are actually outside as opposed to seeing it through a window. Also the effect isn't diminished that much on cloudy days. third, while your outside try and get some exercise. I started skipping during my walks. just enough to get my heart rate and breathing up for a few minutes. And lastly, get a blue light filter for your screens. I use f lux on my laptop and my phone has one built in. f lux is a free app. I started noticing positive results in about 2 weeks. The first thing that happened was I started waking up at about 7 am with no alarm, regardless of how late I stayed up. Then I started falling asleep earlier and earlier. Now I'm usually asleep around 11 30 which is a lot better than the 3 to 5 am bedtimes I was at.

Way to go @GusThat's pretty awesome quit you got there.

@nicotine_freesorry to see you smoked but very glad to see you haven't given up. if the gum keeps you from smoking then use it. and remember, it maybe only 4 days since your last cigarette but you have a not smoking record of 39 and 1. Keep yelling it to yourself...."I'm 39 and 1 and still kicking ass!!!" and scare those craves right away.

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@SunshineI know exactly what you are feeling. I had to live with those same feelings myself. I'll break down what I finally accepted. First, when you started smoking you changed your way of life to accommodate it. There was no goal to smoking. You didn't start smoking with the idea of reaching an end somewhere. But you quit smoking with the idea that there is an end to it. There isn't. You are changing your way of life. That long ass road that you see in front of you is just life. It's the same road that always was there and the goal isn't to get to the end of it. The goal is to take in the scenery as you walk it. In short, the journey is the destination so enjoy the journey and embrace it. Hopefully this helps, I'm sure I'm not very clear.

While you're eliminating one addiction you might want to think about some of the others. Watch this and you'll find out that big tobacco is actually the baby brother of big sugar. Might be why caving to the sugar crave makes the nicotine crave worse...just a thought...

@jillarthat's great. B1 deficiency can be a dangerous thing. I'm currently experimenting with 750mg of benfotiamine and 100mg of TTFD to see if anything resolves.

whew...good news this week. I found out most of the reactions I thought I was having to pork was actually being a little deficient in electrolytes. Started taking some potassium and magnesium supplements and all the heart flutters have stopped. Still get some eye twitching but not nearly as bad. I'm trying some mega dosing of B1 for some of the weird symptoms I get like the eye twitching, vision and gut issues and the raging tinnitus I have going on now. I have managed to stay away from the coffee for the last 2 weeks. It really hasn't been that bad. The only time I even think about it is around 9 pm when all my other cravings start working me over at the same time. Sleep has been getting quite a bit better. I still struggle to get to sleep but once I do go to sleep I have been sleeping at least 6 hours and most of the time it's 7 to 8 hours uninterrupted. Still staying pretty strict on the zero carb diet. I used a little bit of bbq sauce on some beef ribs but I bet I actually ingested less than a half a teaspoon over the 2 days those lasted. Weight bottomed out at 184 and right now sits at 187 which is a bit disheartening but I don't trust my scale so I've decided to not use it and use a tape measure instead. Joints are steadily improving which means my workouts have been getting more and more consistent. I feel like I've made some good progress over the last 2 weeks in areas of sleep and pain management. If anyone is interested in the info on B1 and what lead me to it let me know and I'll post some links and more on the reasons I decided to take it.

Happy Valentines Day everyone. If you have a someone special enjoy being with them. If you don't, take care and show yourself a little love. You deserve it fighting this addiction.

@Gusthis last one really wasn't that bad. It wasn't like I woke up panicked that I might have smoked. It was more like I was at a crossroad, I took a peek down the old road of smoking but my life (the other person in the dream) didn't want to go that way so I keep throwing them away.

Nicely done Rozuki.