Are there any other No Smoking Day 2008 quitters still around and on the wagon?
Today marks two months completed and the start of month three for us all!
Yippee!
Three weeks ago tomorrow, I joined the best gym in town to lose some of the 1.5 stone weight I put on since I stopped the fags. One stone down, another half to go, but seeing as I was already two stone over what I SHOULD weigh, I still have quite some distance to travel before I'll be happy.
Something's happened that I'd heard about but I would never have thought it could happen to me - I've become addicted to the gym! If I don't spend a couple of hours there every day I feel sad and withdrawn by bedtime.
My stamina levels are way above where I ever remember them being and my ability to concentrate has sky-rocketed. Stuff (either physical or intellectual) that used to take me a couple of hours is now zooming past in a quarter of that time.
A week's fag money for a month's (classy) gym membership - it really is a no-brainer, and the 40 x 5 mins fag breaks I used to take every day is more than the amount of time I spend at the gym. There really is no defence and I'd recommend it to anyone!
I smoked my last cigarette 2 Months and 29 minutes ago. I have £501.51 that I haven't spent on 2,135 cigarettes and saved 1 Week, 9 hours and 55 minutes of my life.
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nsd_user663_3029
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You'll have to let me know how you got addicted to the gym though, coz I cant do it for love nor money! Thankfully, I'm more of an 'outside' exerciser otherwise I'd be gaining rather than losing weight..
Thanks to everyone for the good wishes. It really does mean a lot.
I have spent the last 10 years or so making excuses about why I can't/shouldn't go to the gym, and I've always had intellectual issues with the concept anyway. It's always struck me as odd that over the last couple of generations, we keep inventing new gadgets and gizmos to allow us to do more and more while expanding less and less energy, and spending a lot of money on these devices, and then spending yet more time and money going to gyms to spend the energy we've otherwise saved! Why not just lead a more active lifestyle in the first place? (I'm a big fan of "joined up thinking", and that's always struck me as particularly unjoined!)
Luckily for me, my basic diet has always been pretty healthy (I eat tonnes of fruit and vegetables, and love salads) - my downfall has always come from having a very sweet tooth and snacking far too much in front of the telly at night. Having proved to myself that I can manage without chain-smoking all evening, I'm slowly getting over the need for a constant sugar rush. When I feel like one, I just do some stretches instead!
Deciding to start on a get-fit regime is the same kind of decision as stopping smoking, and accepting it as part of my lifestyle has been the same mental process as stopping smoking was.
Last year, I tried an exercise routine without giving up the fags and lasted about 4 sessions. Part of the problerm was the gym and the other people attending it. One of the things I like about the place I've now signed up to is that the hard-core fitness freaks with huge muscles getting ever bigger are largely separated off from the rest of us - "us" being all the people in exactly the same boat as me which accounts for fully 90% of the people I see there. The place I went to last year, I felt really intimidated, but here I really do feel at home. I know that the gym even does special group sessions for people with serious weight issues so they can achieve some kind of minimum mobility before using the general equipment, and indeed feeling less out of place.
It's a nasty spiral: the longer one puts the decision off, the harder it gets to make it, and the more intimidating and embarrassing it is to be in the company of moderately-fit people. One thing I quickly learned is that everyone there has their own issues and really doesn't care what others look like.
Another thing I've discovered at the gym is a cameraderie a bit like here among us ex-smokers, with people a little further advanced in their regime giving support and advice to the newbies. It really is a case of turning it into a social activity just as smoking used to be social, and now stopping is just as social!
As for the addiction thing, once I hit my stride and found my natural balance where I'd be exercising without killing myself, I realised that (just as the textbooks say) I was getting the same kind of hit that I used to be getting from nicotine, only much stronger, slightly longer-lasting, and without any of the feelings of guilt increasingly associated with smoking.
The first stone is easy, considering I weighed at least four (ideally six) stone more than the chart at my doctor's says I should...
I expect the second stone will take a lot longer to lose and I'm hoping to do it in six weeks (i.e. double). The (at least) two more I want to lose will probably take until Christmas. I just hope I can maintain the momentum in both diet and exercise when the weather inevitably turns foul.
And I'm certainly not counting my chickens just yet, as I've not even lost the weight I put on since I stopped smoking! It goes on a heck of a lot more easily than it comes off!
I smoked my last cigarette 2 Months, 2 Days, 22 hours and 4 minutes ago. I have saved 1 Week, 18 hours and 25 minutes of my life. I haven't spent £524.14 on 2,237 cigarettes, although £298 of that has been spent at the gym so my super-TV fund now stands at £226.14.
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Day 9 & in desperate need of some encouragement!!!
Wasn't going to post but what the heck
Stuck between a cigarette and a hard place!
Popping back to say hello... because...
