What happens when you quit smoking is that your body starts to heal in a million different ways. We have all seen the charts and the statistics about how after one hour without a cigarette, your heart rate returns to normal, and then after one day without a cigarette, your throat starts to heal and your lungs get a bit better in some small way, and so on. There is a huge list that goes on and on and shows that all of these different symptoms of the body start to heal and improve over time when you quit smoking.
Even more remarkable are the stats on smoking related diseases in regards to those time lines. After a certain number of years, your risk of developing the different forms of cancer keep decreasing until they reach the same level of a non-smoker. Pretty cool stuff, and pretty motivating too.
You should use this information to help motivate you to quit. Go find the chart and print it out and post it on your wall. Then quit smoking. When you get to each milestone on the chart, you should highlight it and read it to yourself and know that you are receiving those benefits. So if the chart says “within one week, the tiny hairs in your throat that move mucous start to grow back,” then you can walk around that day and tell people “Hey guess what? The tiny hairs in my throat that push mucous around are starting to grow back today!” And they will say “Oh really? That’s great!” It is the little things like this that will get you excited about quitting smoking and help keep you motivated.
What really happens when you quit smoking cigarettes is that you start battling a mental war against a constant onslaught of triggers. What happens is that you feel the need to smoke in situations where you used to always smoke. So when you get in the car to drive to work, you will want to light up. And when you finish a huge meal, you will want to smoke then too. You have to deal with every trigger situation a couple of times before you retrain your brain to realize that you are no longer going to give it nicotine in these situations. Until your brain figures that you, you will suffer from pretty severe urges to smoke in a lot of these different situations.
