If you smoke, you have good reason to worry about its effect on your health, your loved ones, and others. You could become one of the more than 440,000 smoking related deaths every year. When you quit, you reduce that risk tremendously!
It is never too late to quit. No matter how much or how long you've smoked, when you quit smoking, your risk of heart disease and stroke starts to drop. In time, your risk will be about the same as if you'd never smoked.
How do I quit?
Step One
- List your reasons for quitting and read them several times per day.
- Wrap your cigarette pack with paper and rubber bands. Each time you smoke, write down the time of day, how you feel, and how important that cigarette is to you on a scale of 1-5.
- Re wrap the pack after each cigarette so you have to make a conscious decision to smoke.
- Keep reading your list of reasons to quit and add to it if you can
- Don't carry matches or a lighter and keep your cigarettes out of easy reach
- Each day, try to smoke fewer cigarettes, and try to eliminate the ones that aren't the most important based on your rating scale above.
- Continue with Step Two but set a target date to quit
- Don't buy a new pack until you have finished the one you are smoking
- Try to stop for 48 hours at one time
- Quit smoking completely. Throw out all cigarettes, matches, and lighters. Get rid of ashtrays.
- Stay busy! Go to the movies, exercise, take long walks, go bike riding. Find activities that make it difficult to smoke.
- Avoid situations and triggers you relate to smoking
- Find healthy substitutes for smoking
- Carry sugarless gum or artificially sweetened mints. Munch on carrots or celery sticks. Try doing crafts or other things with your hands
- Do deep breathing exercises when you get the urge to smoke.
Remember that you are doing a great thing for yourself and your family when you quit smoking!
From the American Heart Association
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