The ideal smoker of 40 years ago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nInstantly, the rush of the morning’s first breathe turns to a souring burning on the crevices on your sticky tongue. You test your tongue’s tensile strength against your jaw line, rubbing it against the familiar taste that was there the night before.<\/p>\n
You’re hungry, your stomach moans with a pleasant reminder, and it’s a workout day – you’ll be planning a hearty breakfast.<\/p>\n
Slightly below the surface though, a small battering ram is manned by a thousand tiny barbarians, slamming against the high walls of your encamped amygdala.<\/p>\n
The siege is on. You feel like you’re forgetting something.<\/p>\n
Before you know it, you’ve located, via smoker’s echolocation, your cigarettes and lighter.<\/p>\n
You’ll light up before you’ve spoken a word.<\/p>\n
And, the nicotine enters the busted walls of the city with light speed velocities.<\/p>\n
The seine is over and it feels kinda good.<\/p>\n
An hour later, this will happen, every hour until you can quit. It’s an ongoing war.<\/p>\n
\nI have had many trainees and clients who engage in smoking and exercise over the years.<\/h2>\n
Sometimes, I have watched these guys (almost always men in public), smoke in front <\/em>of the gym.<\/p>\nIt is a hard path to follow.<\/p>\n
On one hand, you know smoking and exercise do not mix very well.<\/h3>\n
Because you are fighting yourself everyday, every hour, and the decision you have made to get healthy is always undercut by the urge to smoke.<\/p>\n
And it sucks.<\/p>\n
The fact that it sucks, make you feel like the whole process is harder than it should be. And, it becomes the entire narrative of your life and your fitness.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nThe excuses build up quicker than typhoon waters:<\/p>\n
\n- If I quit, Ill gain weight<\/li>\n
- It is too hard to quit<\/li>\n
- I smoke because I’m stressed and I need to be unstressed<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Stop the excuses!<\/p>\n
The truth is, folks who don’t smoke get stressed too but never even think about turning to cigarettes.<\/p>\n
Smoking and Exercise are coping Mechanisms…for smokers<\/h3>\n
Instead of thinking of exercise as coping, you should focus on the things that you happy to workout.<\/p>\n
Your family encouragement, your long term health, the relief of endorphins, the freedom you get in gym: these are reasons most of my clients decide to change their lives and workout.<\/p>\n
When exercise becomes a way to cope, we get stuck in a <\/a>vicious cycle.<\/p>\nAnd smoking cigarettes is a vicious cycles – maybe THE vicious-est cycle!<\/p>\n
But, that’s all it is.<\/p>\n
Alan Carr, in his book, wrote about smoking: (we) only smoke a cigarette because of the withdrawal we feel makes us want to smoke another one<\/em>.<\/p>\nThat’s it – smoking cigarettes is only A THING because it is A THING.<\/p>\n
In other words, it is only that we smoke them, that you need to smoke them, and not because of stress or otherwise.<\/p>\n
Inside your body, smoking increases your dopamine and makes you feel stimulated for a while.<\/h3>\n
Carr says that it takes seconds, less than 5, for nicotine to reach your dopamine deprived brain. That’s the fastest delivery of a substance in existence.<\/p>\n
And, it feels good.<\/p>\n
But, you are engaging in a vicious cycle within.<\/p>\n