Okay hands up, those who have heard that smoking helps you lose weight!
Yup, thought so!
I must admit, I used to be very concerned about my weight and when I came across people telling me that the best way to lose weight is to start smoking because it acts as an appetite suppressant, I was more than a little tempted to start puffing. Of course, other things like oh, I don’t know, the risk of lung cancer and emphysema made a strong case for the opposition, and I ended up passing on the ciggies. Not everybody has a grandmother who died of lung cancer due to decades of unfiltered cigarettes, though. Which is why statistics have found that 26% of 15-year-old girls are smoking, as opposed to 21% of boys that age.
Apparently, the idea that tobacco will suppress appetite is one that comes from images of super-thin celebrities who smoke. Geri Halliwell advocates yoga to keep slim, but images of her with a cigarette between her fingers have been splashed all over tabloid magazines. The same goes for the gorgeous – and skinny! – Cheryl Cole, and a host of other celebrities. Is it any wonder that teenage girls (and not a few adult women) draw a link between thinness and smoking?
According to a study published in the medical journal Tobacco Control, researchers from Okoyama University in Japan studied 273 girls aged between 12 and 15 from Massachusetts. At the time of the study, the girls had only tried smoking once. The subjects were asked to rate the importance of being thin on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being ‘not important at all’ and 10 being ‘extremely important’. Four years later, the same 273 girls were surveyed again. 1 in 4 had progressed to becoming established smokers (meaning they had smoked more than 100 cigarettes), and of the total number of established smokers, only 7% considered being thin unimportant. Those who rated thinness as moderately important made up almost 25%, and the ones who considered thin as being very important made up 30%! That’s a lot, considering the girls were, at this point, between 16 and 19. In many countries, ours included, the legal age to buy cigarettes is 18.
Emmagem recommends a healthy diet and exercise regime for those looking to lose weight: overnight miracles don’t last long and you’ll end up with fluctuating weight that may cause you to end up with saggy skin when you age! Instead, gradually decrease your calorie intake. I’ve found that cutting back on white rice and bread and substituting them with brown rice and wholemeal bread helps: white stuff just turns into sugar and burns up really fast, leaving you hungry soon after a meal which leads to snacking, which then leads to fat. Cutting back on sugary drinks will also do you a world of good and besides, sugar ages your skin!
Now, the E-word: EXERCISE. I can hear a chorus of groans from the couch-potatoes out there, and I am most definitely one of them. But I’m joining a gym (soon, I swear!) because moving that butt is going to help me slim down AND tone up! There’s no point being small-sized but flabby, and bony is NOT attractive.
Will I see you at the gym? Please say yes!
And say ‘no!’ to cigarettes!
http://www2.emmagem.com/2011/05/29/smoking-kills/