Quitting Smoking & Losing Weight.

So right now I’m working on quitting smoking and losing weight at the same time.  On the surface, these seem contradictory goals, because at one time or another I’ve heard, and believed, that -

- While quitting smoking, one will want to eat to satisfy the oral fixation, and

- As one’s palate recovers from being deadened by smoke, food will taste better (and one will want to eat more of it).

These are probably both true, and I’m sure there are a lot of smokers out there who put off quitting because they don’t want to gain weight.  And when you feel like snacking but know you shouldn’t, few things are as effective as a cigarette at stifling your appetite.

But!!! All of the facts above are reasons why quitting smoking will lead to increased food consumption, not weight gain. Of course, if you want to increase food consumption without gaining weight, you have to increase your physical activity as well.   But if you’re quitting smoking, you

- Are increasing your lung capacity

- Are (after the immediate withdrawl) going to feel generally better, physically and mentally, and

- Are going to be looking to fill the void left by smoking with something else.

And these three mean that when you quit smoking, it’s not a bad time to start exercising.  Now, of course, there are some smokers who work out already, so just change “start exercising” to “start exercising more.”

The smoker’s model of maintaining a given weight, or losing weight, is generally to smoke instead of eat as often as possible, and then not have to exercise.  While this may “work” for weight loss, it is phenomenally unhealthy.  And you can lose weight without being healthy – but if you live a healthy lifestyle, you will lose weight!!!

My advice – for the first two or three weeks after you quit smoking, don’t step on a scale.  You probably won’t like what you see, and at this point, your mind and body are just looking for an excuse to start smoking again, and an extra five or ten pounds would be exactly that.

Coming soon – recommended reading for quitting smoking (and not books like How To Quit Smoking In Two Weeks For Good, but literature that happens to help with quitting smoking).

Also coming soon – A delicious recipe for tempeh that is great food to serve to people who say they don’t like vegetarian food.

Here Because Old Habits Die Hard

So I am two days into attempting to quit smoking, again.

It’s something I’ve tried to do between a half a dozen and a dozen times in the five and a half years that I’ve been a smoker.  The problem isn’t the physical withdrawl – I can get through that, unpleasant as it is.  The quitting usually fails after six to ten days; I’ll have a cigarette, then the next day have two, and within another couple days it’s up to half a pack a day.

The problem I run into is that, for a week or so, I am okay with thinking about not smoking when I usually would be smoking.  But I have trouble transitioning from the mindset of a man quitting smoking to someone who has quit, to having the mind of a nonsmoker, as it were – nonsmokers aren’t thinking about not smoking, because, well, it doesn’t occur to them to think about it, one way or the other.

Whenever I finish a meal, whenever I’m driving, when I want to eat but know I shouldn’t, when I’m having a cup of coffee or a pint of beer – this is when I’m thinking to myself, do not have a cigarette right now.  Like I said, that might work for a week or so, but it won’t work forever.  I’d rather face those situations without thinking either smoke or don’t smoke, but telling yourself not to think something is a damn good way to make sure that you think about it.

Part of the solution will probably be mental discipline – the way to end up not thinking about smoking will be to concentrate on whatever it is at hand that I’m doing, and to not let my mind wander.  I think another part is going to be modeling the behaviors of nonsmokers – whenever I feel like smoking, and don’t know what to do instead, I’ll find the nearest person who’s not smoking and do what they’re doing, or at least take it as an inspiration.

The thing is, I don’t even want to quit because it’s going to kill me someday.  Something’s gonna have to finish me off.  The issues that concern me more are reduced lung capacity, the wasted cash, and the fact that my palate is to an extent deadened by the constant exposure to smoke.

I think that this time I will be successful in quitting – and with an attitute like that, I just might.

Maher & O’Rourke Consider Tobacco Legislation To Be Nonsense.

So tonight on Real Time, Bill Maher and P.J. O’Rourke discussed a number of topics, and briefly touched upon the new tobacco legislation, and they both seemed to think it was a silly idea.  I shared my views on the topic earlier tonight.  I would have exact quotes from Maher and O’Rourke, but I don’t remember them, and I would embed a video but it’s a little early for one to be floating around, so watch it on when it comes on again and if you don’t have HBO, then do what I did, and move in with somebody who does.

P.J. O’Rourke is a bit of a douche, but then again, I think it’s intentional, like that’s his schtick, and anyway he’s an amiable, affable douche, which puts him head and shoulders above most “serious” conservatives these days.

On a semi-related note – if you live in the Greenville, SC area, well then my condolences, but there is good news.  Bill Maher is going to be performing a stand-up show at the Peace Center on June 25th.  I already have my tickets; you can buy yours here.  You can also buy tickets for Chicago, which I believe refers to the musical as opposed to the over-the-hill rock band, because I don’t think Chicago (the band) is at the point where they can do a week’s worth of shows in Greenville.  Diana Krall is also playing.  I may have to go to that.  Hmm.  Decisions, decisions.  I am rambling; that means it’s bedtime.

In Defense Of Tobacco

So the Senate has passed a bill to allow the FDA to regulate tobacco; the House passed one a few months ago.  If you’d like, you can read the New York Times’s self-righteous editorial on the subject.  I’m a former smoker, and while I’m not in love with the tobacco industry, I think they get a lot of shit that they don’t deserve.

I mean, the Times says, “…clearly the regulators will still need help from strong anti-smoking campaigns.”  Really?

I am twenty-three years old, which means that I have seen thousands of anti-smoking television commercials, and precisely zero commercials for cigarettes.  I still smoked for five years.

In defense of tobacco companies, I would say that there are a whole lot of companies that sell products that could kill people.  And I don’t mean like alcohol companies and gun makers, but like, the folks who make Hot Pockets.  Tobacco companies are the only ones who put labels on their products that say, for all intents and purposes, that they will kill you.

Tobacco is like any other drug on the face of the earth – it’s like caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, aspirin, whatever.  There are good things about it, there are bad things about it.  I mean, if we want to get economic about it, whouldn’t stifling tobacco companies put some farmers out of business?

The Times talks about kids, and of course I don’t want tobacco companies to market toward kids, but they don’t. The only places I’ve seen tobacco ads lately are in Rolling Stone and Fast Company (American Spirit has advertised there, if memory serves).  Kids don’t read those magazines, because, well, kids don’t read.

I am not pro-tobacco company; I just think the industry is an easy target that allows people to avoid thinking about a lot of the other garbage – pharmaceutical, dietary – that we put into our bodies on a regular basis.

No Blogging!

So I have been doing absolutely no blogging lately, mainly because

1. I have been doing a lot of work on my novel, which I consider to be a more valuable use of my time than blogging, and

2. I have a new lady friend, which has a whole bunch of business affliliated with it that is a hell of a lot more fun than blogging.

When I started writing this I never really expected it to be something I would be able to update every day, as I am a fairly erratic person by nature.  I probably won’t let it go another month without a post, but I know myself well enough to realize that even this prediction may not hold.

How We Got Here is coming along nicely, so nicely in fact that I have no qualms stating that my prediction that it would be available on February 14th is now so far off from the truth that it seems laughable to me.  While the entire novel is, in some form, written, I would say that only a third of it is even close to where I would like it to be when it’s complete. As a novelist, I spend far more time as an editor than I do as a writer.

Adventures With Delta!

So the new policy with Delta Airlines is that you get no free checked luggage.  I figured I would let you know here because Delta doesn’t feel the need to tell you this in advance.  When I travelled on December 19th, one bag was free, and silly me, I presumed that would be the case today; it is not.  Oh well.  If I’d known that, then last night when I was letting Delta change my itinerary I would have tried to finagle a free check as part of the deal, but of course I was unaware that it was something I should even be trying to finagle.

I was annoyed by my local TSA representative this morning – when I gave him my boarding pass and license, he spent about fifteen seconds looking at the latter and said, “I’m just trying to figure out if you’re this guy.  This guy looks a lot younger.”  Dead serious.  I just said, “Yeah.”  I thought three things.

1.  The license is six years old; I know this because when we were done I looked at it and it says “Issued 8.29.2002.”

2.  His phraseology made me feel like I’ve aged visually a great deal in the last six years.  Way to go man!

3.  I was reminded of what Mitch Hedberg once said: “Someone handed me a picture and said, ‘Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.’  Every picture of you is when you were younger.  ‘Here’s a picture of me when I’m older.’  Where’d you get that camera, man?”

Of course, I’m happy that airline travel is safe enough where I can be jaded about the safety aspect, and get bored enough with it that I can complain about customer service.

The Update That Wasn’t.

So, I didn’t really post anything here yesterday, because it was Christmas, and I won’t really be posting too much of anything here today, because I’m spending the early afternoon with friends before departing, and I’m spending pretty much until midnight travelling.  Maybe I’ll post something when I’m in the Atlanta airport, but maybe I won’t.  We’ll see.  Hope everyone’s December 25th was pleasant.

Et Tu, MacMillan?

In keeping with my recent trend of following the death of the traditional publishing industry, here is an article from the Huffington Post about how MacMillan is laying off workers.  How sad is it that I feel like noting it’s a loss of “only” sixty-four workers?  A sign of the times, I suppose.

Book In A Month! (?)

So.  I just got back from a meeting with my friend and occasional collaborator, Billy Baraw, in which I showed Mr. Baraw a forty-page excerpt of my forthcoming novel, How We Got Here.  We met in the cafe at our local Barnes & Noble, and as he read, I perused the merchandise.

In the writing section, I came across a book that immediately filled me with dubious fascination, Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s Book In A Month.  A few observations -

1.  In general, I have mixed feelings about “how to write” books.  I think that you will learn more about how to write a novel by reading “On The Road” or “Great Expectations” or, really, any novel, than by reading a book that is explicitly about how to write a novel.  Or rather, I guess, that you will learn more about how to write a novel by reading a shit-ton of novels than a shit-ton of books about how to write a novel.

2.  Dr. Schmidt’s credentials include a bachelor’s degree in film, a master’s degree in writing, and a doctorate in psychology.  These are impressive accomplishments.  She has also written two previous books about how to write.  However, unless she’s keeping a secret, she has never written any novels.  Isn’t it slightly odd to teach others how to do something that you yourself have not done?

3.  Writing a book in a month seems to me like shooting a movie in a week or performing a heart transplant in five minutes – there are some activities where, I think, an emphasis on quality is more important than an emphasis on speed.  Who does Dr. Schmidt offer as an example of a writer who writes books in a month?  Nora Roberts!  Okay.  Two things -

3a.  I have never read Ms. Roberts’s novels, so I cannot speak to their quality, and I mean certainly they sell well so there are a lot of people who enjoy them, but perhaps one should aspire to her quality before they aspire to her speed;

3b.  James Joyce did not write a book every month; Jonathan Lethem does not write a book every month; Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Philip Roth, Elmore Leonard, Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, Jonathan Franzen, J.K. Rowling, Jon Krakauer, Malcolm Gladwell, Douglas Coupland, and John Updike do not write a book every month.

So, I mean, I guess what I’m saying is that quality should be more important than speed.  And I’m not sure how valuable the advice of a non-novelist is when it comes to the subject of how to write a novel.

Everything Is Okay!

So I don’t usually link on here to stories I read about how various aspects of the publishing industry are dying, because really, these articles are almost as easy to find on the internet as pornography, but I’m procrastinating about working on my book right now, so here goes.

This is a diary on Daily Kos by occams hatchet about the LA Times, which I do not read, because I live on the east coast, but apparently a lot of people who live a lot closer also don’t read it.  The LA Times is involved in the cycle of -

1.  Hey, fewer people are reading our newspaper, and we’re making less money!

2.  Let’s make our newspaper have less content so our costs will be lower, and fewer people will read it!

3.  Rinse and repeat ’til your industry collapses.

I mean, I like the idea of newspapers in theory, mainly because they’re a great platform for journalists, who seem to be good people, but newspapers are really assisting in their own collapse to a degree where it makes it hard to sympathize with them.  I mean, shit, at least the people who publish books are trying.  In Barnes and Noble yesterday, I was struck by how nice books are getting – I mean physically, editions of trade paperback and hardcover books seem to be becoming higher quality.  Is this just me?  I’ll have to do some research.

In conclusion, newspapers are gonna die.