Without beating around the bush, smoking cigarettes is harmful to your health. It exposes you to the risk of diseases such as stroke, cancer, heart disease, COPD, diabetes, and lung disease. Thus, you have no choice but to quit smoking cigarettes.
As interested as you may be in quitting smoking, it is never a smooth undertaking. The strong urge for tobacco can wear you down. That explains why most people can’t quit smoking cigarettes no matter what they do. Keep reading to find ways to quit smoking cigarettes and keep the habit from reoccurring.
How to stop smoking cigarettes?
#1: Restrict your access to cigarettes
If you are not yet addicted to nicotine in cigarettes, most people will often smoke because it is a habit. If you are in such a situation, you will typically smoke just because you have seen a pack of cigarettes or something.
The easiest control mechanism, in this case, would be ensuring you have limited access to cigarettes as much as possible. Do that via a cigarette case with a timer, a perfect habit forming product, that stashes away the cigarette for a set amount of time. You can lock away your cigarettes for 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, or 8 hours and gauge how best you handle the habit. Start with small time settings and increase as you get used to avoiding cigarettes.
We define smoking reduction as cutting back on the number of daily cigarettes smokers take. They can use this strategy to moderate the health and financial impact of smoking. It is also seen as a move to end the habit.
#2: Avoid triggers
You are likely to have the strongest urge for tobacco when you go to places where you have smoked or chewed it often. These can be places like bars, parties, or where you even regularly take coffee. Identify your trigger factors and avoid them since it is the best way to quit smoking cigarettes.
This strategy is important because it is always a source of relapse for some people. You may have successfully quit the habit, only to get back to it after getting triggered. If you often smoke when on a phone call, replace the cigarette with a pen or keep your hands distracted with something else.
#3: Engage in physical activities
Your mind tends to wander away and fantasize about things that make you happy when you stay idle. That can include things such as tobacco intake. You can avoid this by engaging yourself in a physical activity like walking down the stairs or running.
Those at home or in the office may feel a bit limited by the physical activities they can do to keep off a wandering mind. Simple things such as deep knee bends, squats, or push-ups can prove very helpful.
#4: Delay tactic
You do not always have to act on impulse. When you feel like the tobacco urge is kicking in, try and delay it for some time to see how it develops. For instance, you can tell yourself, “I have to wait for 1 hour before smoking.” Train your mind to wait by keeping the cigarettes in cigarette case with a timer for one hour. That way, the mind will know you do not have access to cigarettes for at least the next hour. Gradually increase this time until you can go a whole day without smoking cigarettes.
Reducing smoking is to minimize health effects
Most researchers often disagree on whether or not to promote and support a smoking reduction in smokers that do not plan to stop the habit. They fear that doing so would not have any meaningful impact on their health.
There is enough evidence that reducing daily cigarette uptake leads to quitting. Long-term reduction in the number of cigarettes per day has a direct positive impact on health. However, these benefits are not as immense as totally ending the habit.
Remember that the main goal of reducing or quitting smoking is to minimize health effects. If a smoker finds it difficult to quit, gradually reducing the number of cigarettes taken per day can motivate them towards finally quitting.
