Tag Archive for: Smoking

Quit Smoking: Tips, Tools and Tricks

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quit smoking

I read a funny quit smoking joke by Conan O’Brian: “The CDC says that it’s graphic anti-smoking TV ads have have helped over 200,00 people to quit. Not quit smoking, quit watching television.”

But if you are a smoker, and want to quit smoking, you know that quitting smoking is no joke. It can be very hard.

The dangers of smoking are well known. Since May is  National Health and Fitness Month, I’d like to provide some tips to help you quit smoking. If you don’t smoke but know someone that does, please forward this to them.  It might just save their life.

Some people are able to quit smoking on their own, but research show that the best way to quit is through evidence based smoking cessation technologies and programs. Seventy percent of smokers will attempt to quit smoking without using a program and 9o percent will relapse. (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.)

Ready to quit smoking on your own? Here are some tips to increase your chances.

  • Have a plan. To quit smoking, you must be prepared. Pick a goal date when you will smoke your last cigarette and start your life as a non-smoker. Between two weeks and 30 days from today.
  • Get a physical. Be aware of any health problems that may exist. It’s better to know. Make sure it’s ok for you to exercise.
  • Get regular exercise. Get your health back.  Walking is a great way to start, riding a bike or doing exercise videos at home. Exercising will also help you deal with negative feelings that may arise in your first days of quitting.
  • Prepare to quit. If you smoke over a pack a day, give yourself two weeks to prepare your mind to quit smoking. If under a pack, give yourself a week. Adjust if necessary and based on your intuition and experience. During your preparing to quit period:
  • Write down all the reasons why it’s so important for you to quit smoking. The more emotional, the better. (“I don’t want my kids to watch me die of lung cancer” for example.) Write your reasons down on a few 3×5 cards and carry them with you. Put them up where you will see them. Read them several times a day.
  • Change your diet. Since nicotine acts as an appetite suppressant, you don’t want to gain a bunch of  weight after you quit smoking. (Very common after folks quit smoking.) Start to eat three healthy meals a day with healthy snacks in between. Increase protein and reduce refined carbs.
  • In your preparation period, start to scramble your smoking pattern. For instance, if you smoke in your left hand, start smoking in your right. If you like smoking on the front porch, change your smoking spot to some uncomfortable place like out by the trashcans. Stop buying cartons and buy one pack at a time, changing brands each time you buy a pack. Start cutting cigarettes in half.
  •  FIND REPLACEMENTS. In my opinion, this is the number one secret to successfully quit smoking. There are many reasons people smoke: to ease boredom, reduce stress, relax, as a reward, or simply because it’s a habit. Of course, there is the addiction component as well. Find things to replace  smoking with and have them ready on your quit day. Some examples:
    1. Find ways to stay busy to keep from being bored. At work instead of a smoke break, take a short walk.
    2. Keep your mouth busy using sunflower seeds in the shell, gum, sugar free suckers or hard candy, licorice, carrot sticks, celery sticks, pretzels, flavored toothpicks. Some people say that putting a Listerine slip in their mouth takes away the urge. Drinking milk works too.
    3. Keep your hands busy with a stress ball, or an object you can keep in your hand like a pen or small stone.
    4. Drink lots of water.
    5. Take a Vitamin B supplement to help with stress.
    6. Deep breaths.
    7. Use the nicotine patch,  gum or prescribed smoking cessation meds if you need to, they are much more effective when used in combination with the techniques I’m giving you here.
  • Use affirmations. Use positive self talk such as “I am free!” or “I can do this” or “I am in control” or I’m worth taking care of ” or “I am healthy, happy and free from addiction.” Make it a habit to say them several times a day.
  • ON YOUR QUIT SMOKING DAY: Tell everyone what you are doing to make yourself accountable. Pick your quit day carefully; a day when you have time to focus on your goal.
  •  After you quit smoking, avoid drugs like alcohol and marijuana which can decrease your motivation. I suggest giving them up at least for the first month of being a non smoker, longer if they are major triggers that make you want to smoke. If coffee makes you want to smoke, cut down or eliminate it for a while.
  •  Get lots of sleep. You body needs energy to heal.
  • Get your teeth cleaned. 
  • Get your car washed and detailed if you smoked in your car.
  • Avoid situations that will tempt you. Stay away from bars and parties where people will be smoking. Ask those close to you to refrain from smoking in front of you.
  • Give yourself a reward. Have a plan to get a massage after 30 days of smoke free. Or take a trip. Or buy something for yourself.
  • DON’T KID YOURSELF! Don’t even think for a second that you can have “just one” after you quit. Chances are you can’t. “Just one” can undo all of your hard work. Begin to see cigarettes for what they are: a deadly poison that you want to stay away from.

Hypnosis was found to be more than twice as effective as quitting “cold turkey,” and over
three times as effective as nicotine replacement therapy, according to a a study presented October 22, 2007 at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians.

I offer a four session “Freedom From Smoking Forever” ® program using hypnosis and hypnosis recordings for listening  at home.  Research shows that using hypnosis to quit smoking can be up to 66% effective when 4 or 5 sessions are used in a 6 to 12 month period.

Your health is the most precious thing you have. If you are ready to quit smoking and want more information about my smoking cessation program, you can request a free consultation by clicking here.

Ted A. Moreno
Certified Hypnotherapist

Ted A. Moreno Discusses Hypnotherapy in Interview by Lisa Tarves of Just Believe Radio

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hypnotherapy

hypnotherapy

  I was recently interviewed on Just Believe Radio by Lisa Tarves discussing hypnotherapy related topics as well as my book.

To listen to the interview click here. The interview starts at 9:22.

In the interview I discuss

Want to listen to other interviews I’ve done? Click here.

Lisa Tarves, Metaphysician, Author of the book, Just Believe, Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner and gifted intuitive, interviews experts in the area of metaphysics each Sunday at 1 pm Eastern. www.LisaTarves.com

How Hypnosis Can Help Someone Stop Smoking

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The reason it is hard to change a habit such as smoking is because your subconsious mind (which makes up 88% of your mind), likes what is known and familiar and sees change as unpleasant or painful. The conscious part of your mind which makes the decision to quit, (12% of your mind) can’t compete with the strong influence of the subconscious mind. The physically addictive part of smoking plays a part as well, however, after about three days, this usually passes. It is the mind which makes it difficult to quit.

When working with a smoker, the first question I ask, over the phone even before they come into my office, is “Why do you want to quit?” I’ll start getting them focused on freeing themselves from smoking and why that is important. My smoking cessation program involves four weekly sessions. They will quit at either the first or second session. At the beginning of each session, I will ask them “Give me the reasons why you want to free yourself from smoking.” I’ll have them write their  reasons down on a 3×5 card and carry it with them. Repitition affects the subconscious mind.

For the first 30-40 minutes of  each session, we’ll talk about when they smoke, why they smoke, what triggers them to smoke, and provide techniques for helping them deal with urges after they have quit.

The last 20 minutes of the hour session is the hypnosis part. Remember, during hypnosis the subconscious mind is much more open to suggestions. What we will do is create familiarity in the mind of the smoker to how good it will feel as a non smoker. We’ll do that partly with visualization;  imagining a healthier life without smoking. I’ll give their reasons back to them in hypnosis. I’ll help them create a strong belief that not only is it possible for them to quit, but quit they will. With enough repition and reinforcement of new ideas and habits of thinking and behaving through hypnosis, the subconscious mind begins to align itself with the conscious desire to quit.  If the motivation is there, quitting happens so easily that many ex- smokers are quite surprised. No wonder that smoking cessation is the number one reason people go to a hypnotherapist.

If you liked this post, please leave a comment and/or share it with your social networks.

Tman

 Ted A. Moreno
Personal/Small Business Coach
Certified Hypnotherapist
Specializing in Your Success
www.TedMoreno.com                                                                       
 (626) 826-0612

How Hypnotherapy Can Help You Change (Hypnosis 101, Part 2)

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“There’s a part of me that  wants to change but there’s another part of me that doesn’t, and that part always seems to win out!”

Sound familiar? There is a lot of truth to this statement. What we are talking about is a conflict between two minds: the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

Let’s just put it in plain English: the reason it is so difficult for folks to change is because the subconscious mind makes up 88% of your mind  and it likes what is known and familiar. It does not like to change. Your conscious mind makes up 12% of your mind and oftentimes cannot overcome the power and influence that the subconscious mind has over our behavior and thinking. To make changes in our lives, we must get our subconscious minds on board so that it starts to become familiar  with the change we want to make. Hypnotherapy is a very effective way to do this.

Here’s an  illustration of how this works. Let’s say you are born into a family where both mom and dad smoke. As children, we believe everything we hear and see. You hear dad saying quite often “I need a smoke”. Dad seems pretty happy after he has a smoke. So does mom. One day you ask for a cigarette. You are told cigarettes are for “big people”. You want to be a big person too. As you grow up, the people that care for you, love you, and keep you alive, smoke. This becomes your reality. Grownups smoke and they seem to really like it.

A few years down the road, you are smoking too. Maybe you started smoking to fit in with other kids who smoke. Perhaps life got a little challenging and somehow you knew that smoking would make you feel better about these challenges (think adolescence). Maybe you were bored one day, came across your parent’s cigarettes, and stuck one in your mouth. Soon, you are acting out a “script” given to you in childhood which goes like this: to be the person you want to be (cool, tough, grownup, etc.) you must smoke.

Fast forward to 2009. No one seems to like smokers anymore. It’s getting  darn near impossible to find a place to smoke. Cigarettes are outrageously expensive. And just last year, your mom was diagnosed with emphysema. You start thinking about quitting. You try a few of times to quit but last only a couple of days. That time you quit for three days you almost strangled the kid behind the counter at Starbucks  because  the foam wasn’t right in your latte.  You try gum and decide that that really sucks. The patch helps a little but it’s just not the same as pulling that pack out, smacking it against the palm of your hand, pulling out a cigarette with your mouth and lighting it with your favorite lighter. Man! That first hit. You may wonder how you can ever quit, it’s all you’ve ever known! It’s who you are, it’s what you do, it’s what you like, why, cigarettes are almost your…..friends.

But deep down inside you are starting to suspect that these may be false friends. And that these “friends” may be  killing you, at least that’s what everyone says. Maybe you try again to quit, half heartedly. You start to become resigned that you may never quit. Then someone tells you they quit with hypnotherapy. You get the guy’s number, you give him call, you make an appointment. You wonder what’s going to happen.

What happens of course is that you come into my office and quit in one session. But how this happens, Iwill  tell you in the third and final part of Hypnosis 101.

If you liked this post, please leave a comment and/or share it with your social networks.

Tman

 Ted A. Moreno
Personal/Small Business Coach
Certified Hypnotherapist
Specializing in Your Success
www.TedMoreno.com                                                                       
 (626) 826-0612