No Homer, cigarettes won't make you lose weight...
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In this article, the author talks about how some female teenagers smoke in order to lose weight due to a widespread belief that smoking helps you to control your weight. The author also gives statistics that show that the number of young women who smoke is increasing, and that they use the weight control theory as an excuse to not quit smoking, to prove his point.
This article talks about the link between smoking and weight control. For example, the author gives an example of Charmaine, who believes that smoking helps her control her weight. She says that if she doesn't smoke she tends to eat a lot and gives an example of the last time she tried to stop smoking and gained weight.
However, I do not think that gaining weight was caused by her abstinence from smoking. Anyway, just a few kilograms of extra weight are such an insubstantial price to pay for saving your life from the extremely harmful effects of smoking, which includes various forms of cancer and even death.
Basically, research done has proven that smokers generally gain the same amount of weight that non-smokers gain and that smoking does not directly affect weight gain. However, Dr Chris Steele, an expert in the field of smoking for more than 30 years, states that “nicotine suppresses the appetite and increases metabolic rate” and also that “nicotine delays gastric-emptying, it slows down the emptying of the stomach.” He also says that smokers indirectly lose weight because they cannot eat or drink while the cigarette is in his or her mouth, which is usually for about 60 to 100 minutes a day. Thus, I feel that he is practically saying that smoking does help you with weight control.
In my opinion, I agree with the last part of the article that states that smoking itself does not directly help to control one’s weight. Instead, the healthiest choice is to not start smoking at all, as people who have never smoked in their life will not suffer the harmful effects of smoking while at the same time will have complete control over his or her own weight.
While smoking indirectly helps to control someone’s weight, like stated above, not smoking at all is the best choice in every way. Even though you might gain a few kilograms, getting rid of the immense health risks that smoking poses is far more important. This is also supported by Dr Helen Truby, a certified expert in nutrition and dietetics, who says that you can focus on the extra weight after you stop smoking, as smoking “has a far worse impact on your overall health”.
All in all, I feel that smoking only indirectly helps to control one’s weight only if that person had already been smoking, but refraining from that first puff would not affect your weight negatively and you also avoid the serious health problems that smoking brings.
So please, do what the article says – exercise and adopt a healthy diet.
Oh no its exactly 500 words! It must be an omen...
