CHRONIC. Smoking cessation is often associated with weight gain. It is possible to avoid it by changing a few habits. The health benefit will be maximum.
By Boris Hansel, with Guillaume Paret (video)
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Every Friday, find, on Le Point.fr, the nutrition chronicle you pr Boris Hansel, endocrinologist and nutritionist at Bichat Hospital in Paris. He is also the host of the PuMS health channel on YouTube.
LDuring smoking cessation, yes, there is a risk of gaining weight. But this risk is much less severe than we think: it can be mitigated, or even reversed.
There are three causes of weight gain:
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When you smoke a cigarette, you expend 10 kcal! One packet per day thus represents 200 kcal. So, if you quit smoking without changing your lifestyle, you will naturally gain weight.
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In addition, smoking can reduce appetite. It is therefore usual to be hungrier during weaning.
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Finally, we sometimes tend to snack, especially to occupy the hands used to holding a cigarette.
On average, the weight gain is four kilos. Some people take more and some people take less. Some patients even lost a few pounds. This can be explained. Tobacco impairs taste and smell. And, when you quit smoking, you regain your taste buds and olfactory receptors. The flavors of food are better perceived and allow you to feel more pleasure while eating less.
Improve the quality of your diet
For those who are afraid of getting fat, are there effective strategies to prevent this from happening? Unfortunately, the nutritional methods that accompany smoking cessation, for example the use of meal replacements or low carbohydrate diets, have not been shown to be effective in scientific studies.
But it would seem, according to a large study, that the use of a nicotine patch associated with fluoxetine, the famous Prozac, limits, to a certain extent, weight gain.
In practice, when quitting smoking:
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organize yourself to improve the quality of your diet and try to reduce the quantities slightly;
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implement a physical activity program; at a minimum, fight once morest a sedentary lifestyle on a daily basis;
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If necessary, get help with nicotine patches and, if your doctor deems it useful, an appropriate medication.
READ ALSOThe electronic cigarette with a sweet taste, very bad for DNAAnd two more essential pieces of information, little known:
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Certainly, we risk gaining a few pounds when quitting smoking, but continuing to smoke is associated in the long term with an accumulation of fat in the belly!
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Finally, one might imagine that gaining weight would cause the benefits of smoking cessation to be lost. Well, that’s wrong! The benefits of withdrawal, particularly on the cardiovascular system, outweigh the risk of weight gain.
In short, there are no longer too many objective reasons to give up permanent smoking cessation. It’s difficult, sometimes long, but we always come out a winner.
