How a money and a running regiment helped me quit smoking.

Hello.

I wanted to share this because I know how encouraging feedback can be to reflect back on in times of doubt and struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle and I want to share my experience of quitting the sticks and how I made that happen.

story. I initially took up the habit when I was 15 because of the usual fat person stuff "It can make you lose weight" or "It kills your appitite", you know, the bullshit smokers tell themselves and each other to justify their lack of agency.

But it did neither of those things ever for me, in fact, they fueled my addiction to high carbohydrate foods and helped get up to a sweaty (not in a hot way) 157KG.

As you can imagine, I was pretty fucking huge for a kid in his late teens (18 by that weigh in) and totally addicted to the sweet, sweet nicotine of my favorite brand, Longbeach Blue.

By 22 in the mid-year of 2013 I discovered the ketogenic diet and started to absorb the literature and soon after began my first fast lasting two whole days on nothing but water and at the end of that fast, something clicked that I hadn't realized, I hadn't felt the need to smoke for 24 whole hours...What the hell was going on?

I did some digging into the matter and found that sugar (the ones found in my favorite carby foods) was fueling my addiction just as much as the addiction itself. Now, this wasn't the nail in the coffin for me, not yet.

During my first fortnight on keto, still sitting in my room on my titanic ass I continued to smoke just for the hell of it, out of boredom and avarice, everyone else in my house was doing it so why shouldn't I? That was my hamster wheel rationalization.

By the end of the first fortnight on keto I weighed in. I'd lost 14.7 kilograms. This revolutionary event had pierced my comfort zone bubble and infected me with an idea, a burning desire for more, so I started thinking "What if I started running? I need a new pair of shoes."

So I went and bought a pair and the next day I walked out of my house and started "running".

I didn't make it far, by the first 2 minutes I was clutching my sides and wheezing for air, mouth dried up and ankles sore from the pressure they were under, I quit and went straight back home.

The next day, I got up and was about to eat eggs for breakfast. I had just taken the eggs off of the boil and stood silent for a moment, placed the eggs back on the stove and went to my room to put my shoes on. I left my front door and walked three kilometers, why the time I got home I was spent, so I ate my eggs and went to bed.

It went on like this for a few months, I would get up, put my shoes on and go out walking for a while, smoke a cigarette or three on my way and make it home to eat my eggs, read something stupid on facebook, watch an episode of 'Justified' and go to sleep.

By month four I had lost 30 kilograms and was feeling the best I had ever felt since as far back I could remember and I decided it was time I finally quit smoking. By this time I had cut back to about ten a day out of my 25.

I decided that I was going to run every hour for every cigarette I smoked that day, and something weird happened. I found myself running anyway and not smoking the packet at all, I was too tired to smoke and then I'd have a look at my finances, I was in the fucking green and then I though, I'm too fucking rich to smoke anymore (only poor people smoke, everyone knows this, lol)

Instead of smoking I substituted it with cardio and rubbing my greedy conservative hands at the sight of my bank statements, and felt a sense of euphoria I had never experienced before in my life and realized that what I had was never an addiction smoking, but an addiction to routine that I had built around smoking.

That revelation was key for me to quit right then and there, and I never looked back, never even thought about it when I passed people by who were smoking, hanging out with buddies on pub night who smoked and 100 other people who were smoking simultaneously. It all came down to routine and I had found and become addicted to a new one which superseded the former.

I hope you found even the slightest modicum of enjoyment from reading this post, I have had a good time writing it and I hope to enjoy reading all of your comments.

Arrivederci!