intoxicated yoda

@jillari have tried decaf. I seem to react very similar to both with the only difference being the decaf doesn't make my heart flutter as much. @Krisi have tried tea as well and to be honest i'm just not a fan of it.

bale the hay

gonna crap a few thoughts out here tonight since the board seems kind of slow and I need to stay close to the process. I'm actually struggling a little bit tonight. That nagging gnawing feeling just won't quite ever go away. I wonder if the chemicals in the cigs affects the thyroid very much? I'll have to look up on that and see what I can find. In the meantime, breaking the associations is seemingly getting easier. I'm not really consumed by thoughts of smoking so much, it's more a physical feeling in the back of the throat or the pit of the stomach. I still can't break myself away completely from coffee which might be my problem. I've reduced it by a lot but I can only seem to leave it alone for a couple weeks max then I cave back into it. Other than that, the plan to get my weight back under control is seeming to work. I weighed myself a little while ago and I was at 189 and my lowest weight was 186. That was starting from 199.5 on 12/26 so that is some pretty good progress I think. 10 to 13 pounds gone in a little over a month and I cheated 4 days. Cheat days on the this way of eating is not something to look forward to though. A few moments of mouth pleasure leads to a few days of real suffering...sounds like another addiction I know. Joints are getting better since I've been able to start working out. A typical routine is 1 set of 10 regular pushups. 3 sets of 25 inclined pushups. 5 half pullups and 3 sets of 50 wall pullups. 2 sets of 20 squats and hold an asian squat for 30 seconds 3 times then a 10 to 30 minute walk. I still want to do the Qigong but I've got to make some room for that. As my joints improve and the weight goes down I'll be able to get a little more aggressive on the workouts but for now slow and gentle is what is called for. If anyone wants to start doing a very gentle workout I would recommend Hampton at hybrid calisthenics on youtube. He's got some great things you can do regardless of what level of fitness you are at and its free and requires no equipment. Give him a look and support his channel if you like what he has to offer. Tomorrow I try again to get through the day coffee free. It tastes so good going down but the physical reactions I get make it not worth it. Not gonna beat myself up if I give in since I'm quitting a lot of things already but it's got to go sooner rather than later. Anyhow, I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and remember, a goal without a plan is just wishful thinking.

@Doreensfree I've known a few ladies that were addicted to tubular meat products so I don't think it's rare

@Doreensfreei think the most important thing is what do you react to. If you don't get any bad reactions to those things then roll with them.

@reciprocitycongrats!! 5 years is an awesome quit.

Nicely done Kate and thanks for being an inspiration to those of us following you.

pout and cry

you can do it @gum_addict you got a great start and a great quit going

@Doreensfreethanks for the vote of confidence. I will continue to explore different things and provide updates...for the foreseeable future anyway!!

@Edy 10 days is a great start. Sleep disruption is still a problem for me as well. I'm sure that there is some kind of connection to cigarette addiction and food addiction. I've found that if I don't try to quench a cigarette crave by eating some kind of carbo loaded food then both cravings will go away or at least diminish enough to not bother me after a while. I can see gluten being a problem for that as well. For me cleaning everything up at once wound up being easier to do. Hopefully you find a strategy that works for you and your quit goes smoothly. However difficult or easy it may be it's definitely worth it. Congrats again on your quit and hopefully you get some sleep.

5 months quit today. 153 days of not smoking. Time for a little reflection. In hindsight the first couple of weeks quit was a lot easier than month 2 to month 4. I had a lot of changes going on at that time and the positives of quitting were far out weighed by the negatives I was experiencing. The great equalizer for me was that I knew I had gotten to the point where smoking that next one would only make me want the one after that even more which is what led me to quit in the first place. What's the point of smoking if the crave never goes away? There was always that fear of emphysema in the back of my mind but that was never enough to get me to quit cause my lung function was still pretty good. Yeah, I would get the wheezes occasionally but it was never bad enough to actually scare me. Nope, the quit was mostly about the crave. It annoyed me that smoking that cigarette realistically only gave me about 2 minutes of relief from the crave after I put it out. I can see how some people become chain smokers because that's what I was becoming. Of course through all the struggle I came to the conclusion that the best defense against relapse was to get clean of everything. Trying to quench the crave with Mt. Dew, chips and candy bars was causing me extreme strife and much to my surprise I found out it was only making the craves worse!!! Funny how that happens, almost like there was a demon in my head hell bent on my demise by whatever means. Sugar addiction takes the same neural pathways as nicotine and heroine addiction, or so I've read. Don't take my word for anything about addiction as I'm just firing shit off the top of my head to reinforce my quit, but I digress. My hypothesis was the sugar and carb addiction was keeping the pathway open for the cigarette addiction and if I quit all of it then as the craving for one addiction lessened they would all lessen. And when I beat one I would beat them all because maybe they are really all just the same addiction. Maybe Lord of the Rings was on to something. One ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them. Or in this case, one addiction to rule them all. Anybody know where Mt. Doom is? I'll go on a quest and throw the addiction back into the fire that made it. Was Mt. Doom even a place in that movie? I can't remember and it doesn't matter. What does matter is that I didn't smoke today. My goal is to destroy this addiction to the point it's not even a memory. I don't know if that is possible but the depth of our minds is inconceivable. We like to think the science of man has it all figured out but when you think about what our subconscious mind does just as a daily routine....I mean think about this, there are about 10 billion cells in our bodies that get destroyed and replaced everyday. Our subconscious controls all of that, in fact, if we had to think about if we would be dead in a matter of seconds because we can't even go to the grocery store and come out with everything we need without a list. So if we can get that kind of power programmed correctly to eliminate the addiction totally it should be able to do it in a matter of seconds...if we allow it. Something to think about, the power of the mind. Anyway, I've gone on long enough. If anybody is suffering through a crave and stumbles across this I hope it kept you occupied long enough for the worst of it to pass. And maybe it sparked an idea in you that could be of use to all of us. Please share it if it did. Peace.

@gum_addictwelcome and good job quitting smoking. it really doesn't matter how you get the job done as long as you get it done. 21 days is a great start. and that ticker is a great motivational tool.

thanks for all the love, guys! it means more than you'll ever really know...

Perhaps the guy in this video knows @jillar

What if.... I read somewhere that the majority of the dna in our bodies isn't ours but is of the microbiome that inhabits our gut. What if there was a fungibiome that was also there that took control of our brains and was doing everything it could to control us in to maintaining the habits that are killing us for it's own purpose. Think that's irrational thinking or that it can't happen? Think that old yoda fell off his rocker and cracked his noggin? Not only is it possible but it happens in other species on this planet all the time so why couldn't it be happening to us now? Think about it and pleasant dreams... here's another interesting one....

@KEL nice work being grateful for finding the will to avoid smoking. Old habits create grooves in our minds that take quite a bit of time to fill in but only one slip and they can be as deep as they ever were. Gratitude is a great tool for filling in those old ruts. Stay strong and have a beautiful restful night.

that is good news Sal. Keep that momentum going.

no, pens hadn't been invented yet do woodchucks chuck wood?

listen with your eyes Why is it called a new moon when it's always the same one?

strippin' the walls

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Mitch was funny