The nicotine in cigarettes does act as an appetite suppressant so smokers may be able to deal with hunger that way. It also means that they won’t necessarily get the nutrition they need if they skip meals and later snack on whatever is handy.

If someone is looking to lose weight, there can be the appeal of having something else to put in your mouth when you crave food. Chewing gum can help here, and the kinds made with xylitol are not bad for your teeth. (Xylitol is a sweetener with no calories and no effect on your blood sugar that is healthier than the chemical sweeteners.) Something else you could have would be a cup of green tea, as it helps perk up your metabolism, which nicotine seems to do as well. It’s also worth knowing that sugar cravings can become much easier to deal with if you go off sugars and white flour, and temporarily off other carbs too. The South Beach Diet people say that it only takes a couple of weeks to reset your cravings.

Another way to lose weight is to exercise more. There is something called the “runner’s high” which comes about when you exercise vigorously—it doesn’t have to be running—and the endorphins your body produces make you feel good.

The whole idea of losing weight via smoking got a big boost from cigarette advertisers, who typically targeted women. This 1929 ad gives you the idea! It’s only one of many ads that Lucky Strike used in that era to get women into smoking with their slogan “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet.” At that time, smokers tended to be men much more than women. Later, beginning in 1968, the Virginia Slims cigarettes totally focused on women. (Calling the cigarettes “slims” was part of their strategy to make them appealling. By then, the cancer-causing effects of smoking were widely known.)

Researchers have found that some teenage girls who are anxious about their weight will try smoking as a way to cope. It may kill them later, though; according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, six million kids who are alive today will ultimately die from smoking.

One great source of information on diets and fitness for teens is Sparkteens.  This free website asks, “Are you ready to make your life an adventure?” It’s a spinoff of the terrific weight-loss site, also free, called Sparkpeople.

Here’s a video about the harmful effects of smoking on your body. I found it sad that some of the comments under it were clearly from people who were in denial about the risks. When you are young, that may be easy to do, but as you get older, I have noticed that people who take good care of their bodies tend to enjoy their lives a lot more and suffer less physically. They look better; it’s easy to spot long-term smokers by their wrinkled skin.

In doing research for this article, I found a couple of good sources online:

• One from Wikipedia on cigarette smoking done for weight loss
• And this one from Vanderbilt University

These will give you a lot more facts and figures about studies on the relationship between smoking and weight loss. In a nutshell, the answer to “Does smoking make you lose weight?” is “Advertisers stress this point and it might, but at a terrible cost to your health.”

This article is Does Smoking Make You Lose Weight? from Gottaloseweight.com