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This is an interesting take on why people gain weight after giving up smoking. The irritation from to the intestines from smoking ceases, the guts heal and you start to absorb more nutrients and calories. The problem is that most people are so scared of weight gain upon quitting that knowing you get extra nutrition may well not be spur enough.
First you need to know that smoking puts a heavy toll on the liver as it tries to detox the chemicals found in the cigarettes. The liver is under dreadful load each day anyway from detoxifying the many chemicals to which we are exposed, so to add smoking in is adding insult to injury and ultimately leads to weight gain from a toxic liver. More how this happens elsewhere. But for now just focus on the fact that you will get fat whether you quit smoking or not.
Smoking speeds up the metabolic rate, so for a while, upon quitting, this slows down – which doesn’t help the waistline. However, the metabolic rate recovers and so will your waistline. More importantly, smoking docks into the pleasure receptors in the brain so when you quit, you suddenly find yourself craving things like sweets/alcohol or crisps etc. And over consumption of foodstuffs certainly do make you fat. And if you are finding that your cravings are actually increasing despite still smoking, then this is a sure sign that your poor guts are struggling. The pleasure receptors are called neurotransmitters, and these things are made throughout the intestines (from proteins in the diet) – hence the term ‘gut feeling’ is correct. So if you intend to give up smoking, it would be wise to heal your guts:
Before stopping, really reduce sugary and starchy foods. Be serious about this. Retrain your palate. You have to stop eating wheat – read The Story with Wheat blog as to why. This will start your guts healing. Eating wheat blows holes in your gut wall and eating an excess of sugary/starchy foods encourages an overgrowth of yeast in the gut and encourages bad bacteria to party on down there. Eat plenty of organic butter (clarified if dairy is an issue) – the butyric acid in butter feeds the good bacteria. And also plenty of coconut oil since this is a good source of caprylic acid which will help kill unwanted overgrowth of fungus in the gut.
Upon quitting, take the highest quality Aloe Vera you can lay your hands on along with L glutamine and a top quality pro-biotic (Poliquin being a most reliable brand). L glutamine will help heal the gut and is also the precursor of the happy neurotransmitter, GABA.
If you have distended guts or feel tired all the time, it would be worth investing in a proper stool test to check your guts out for yeast overgrowth or pathogens. Unfortunately, if there is excess yeast, glutamine tends to feed this.
Of course, a liver detox will help. Be sure to do one with plenty of amino acids (broken down proteins) or you’ll make things worse. The liver needs proteins to help it detoxify and many older liver cleanses are have no or very little protein in them.
You also need to do the HCl challenge to restore the vital HCl to the stomach so it can properly digest protein. As the weight loss page talks about, as far as meat protein is concerned, it is more thermogenic than carbs or fat, so digesting it properly will aid weightloss, aid your liver, aid your production of the happy neurotransmitters, aid you uptake of vitamins and minerals and so is a good step to regaining vigour and lust for life.
So if you heal your guts, you will heal the cravings, your energy levels will rise, you will feel much happier and you will be more active, so the metabolic slow down will be counteracted by more activity.