Tomorrow I will have been stopped smoking for 19 whole weeks. Apart from the blip in April when I smoked 18 cigs over a few days, then picked myself up, ditched the junk Champix and carried on.
19 weeks of stress, misery, tears, and hair pulling later how do I feel. Umm, exactly the same. Could still quite happily smoke. I don't have some fantastic sense of smell other than tracking down a smoker at 20 paces. Cycling for some weird reason seems to have got a dam sight harder rather than easier. I still get through 5 or 6 nicotine lozenges a day, I am now the proud owner of an e-cig, though to be honest I see it more of a fashion accessory than anything like a decent replacement for a real cig. I have a few drags on my e-cig followed by a lozenge because the e-cig just doesn't hit the spot quite the same.
I've put on about 9lb up to now in weight. My size 12 clothes that I worked bloody hard to get down to from a size 16 in 2010 are now fitting me like a shrunken glove. Hell, I even bought a top last week in size 14 cos that fits better. Things taste exactly the same as they did when I smoked. Oh and I now keep getting spots on my nose, at least one a week, but hey I could pretend to myself that I'm a born again teenager.
I'm told to think positive. Why? I have never been a positive thinker for my whole life, why should stopping smoking make me into someone I'm just not.
On the plus side, I have more money, I don't have to stand in queues in Asda to buy cigs. My teeth are still looking as sparkling as they did after the last scale and polish. I no longer have nasty looking yellow fingers. I now realise that my clothes used to smell because smokers clothes absolutely stink. I honestly can't think of any more positives for not smoking. Oh yes my health. As far as the eye could see there was nothing wrong with my health. I had no obvious signs of ill health caused by smoking so how do I know that stopping is going to increase my life expectancy. I could get cancer 10 years from now as a result of smoking for 33 years. So then all the misery I'm going through now would be in vain.
Yet for some reason I carry on. I think it would have to be some kind of life and death event that would ever cause me to take up smoking again. Despite being fed up, fat and sad I still don't want to go out and buy cigs and take up smoking again. I honestly think I'm cured of that habit. I'm not cured of nicotine addiction otherwise I wouldn't be sat here sucking a lozenge but the habit of smoking has definitely gone.
For anyone starting out on the path of trying to kick the habit I think my advice would be don't expect the impossible. You're addicted to nicotine and whatever else they shove in cigarettes and that's all. If you're generally a grumpy bugger when you smoke, you're not going to become some happy clappy positive fun loving person just because you don't smoke anymore but conversely if you are a generally happy person who always looks on the bright side of life, you'll get through the withdrawals and come out the other side with a smile on your face and soon be back to your normal self.
Anyways Mrs Grumpy here is going on a diet tomorrow then I'll be a slim, fit, non smoking misery guts. 
I love those books. 
Cravings bugging me again -arrggh.
A Domestic Goddess in Training
Keep going back to smoking
Smoke smell on others after quitting
Trying to quit number 500 (okay, not literally but feels like it)