does smoking lead to weightloss?

i am just wondering, i have heard that some girls smoke to avoid eating, does it really suppress the appetite? i know that it takes alot for me to resist cravings! lol  but i would never smoke, it stinks and the health problems are far worse then weight gain...

I don't think smoking leads to weight-loss necessarily, but it does supress the appetite. It also gives you something to do, so instead of reaching for food when you're bored, you might reach for a pack of cigarettes.

I've never been a smoker myself, but I know lots of people who do or at least used to.

It seems to temporarily reduce the appetite when one is hungry, but unless you smoke all the time, it wouldn't be really effective.  I personally know one person who started smoking for the purposes of losing weight and it didn't actually help her much.  It helped her avoid some really bad junk food cravings and such, but it was not really good as a diet aid. 

One of the real problems with people who smoke for weight purposes is that if you quit, it's difficult not to put weight back on. In fact, lots of people who quit gain weight, at least initially, from having their appetite back.

One more point: I've met many very overweight people who are chain smokers. It really can't be that effective.

So...it really wouldn't help you that much unless you smoked all the time and had no intention of quitting...bleh! You're right: the health issues and nastiness are not worth the slight appetite suppression.  Caffeine does that too and is less unhealthy, although still can be if you have too much.

i dunno if smoking leads to weight loss... cancer sure does though!

Smoking is F**KED UP!

I have been a smoker since I was 11! Im almost 45! It sucks! Im quitting for like the 20th time in 6 months! i've quit over 30 times! Once you start, then you get addicted, then you can not quit without incredible suffering! nonononononono!

IT IS AN ADDICTION!

IT TURNS YOU INTO A JUNKY! I am a junky, cigarette junky. 

IF YOU think smoking is in anyway helpful or a move towards health, You are deluding yourself and courting a life CHAINED TO HELL.

dont replace one vice with another! 

Please don't start. its just plain stupid, it stinks, it tastes bad, it wastes money, and it doesn't make you skinny, its just a distraction. it makes it hard to breathe, hard to excersize, makes you want to move less. . . .

then when you cant smoke, you'll want to eat.

its a vicious trap. 

and dont think you can just start and then stop before your strung out, because thats what we all thought, and now we are fat, old, out of shape women with no energy and gross disgusting lungs. 

Would you lick an ash tray? 

No value in being skinny but having to haul your oxygyn machine around with you! but you'll have no energy, cuz you cant breathe. 

turn away now!

take a different road!

dead end! dead end! 

warning warning danger danger! 

sorry, is an issue close to my heart, a struggle every day. 

Exactly what Bubbles said!

38 days smoke free and counting...every frikkin minute. It's hard now and it will always be hard.  It has no impact on weight as far as I can see.  I know many overweight smokers.  We don't have the lung capacity for exercise. It is only now that I quit that I am even considering getting in shape.  Weight loss was easy compared to quitting smoking. 

Once an addict, always an addict.

I don't know about you, but I know and have seen plenty of overweight smokers.

And kudos to those trying to quit (no matter how many times it takes). :) My mom quit cold turkey and has been smoke-free for 5 years now! :>

When you are a smoker (regular smoker) they say that you are actually 6 pounds below the weight you would be if you were not a smoker.

Yes it suppresses your appetite and as some have said gives you something else to do instead of eating food.

BUT, it makes you lethargic, you have less energy, you cant exercise as well as if you didnt smoke, youre out of breath very easy etc etc..

The bad points are numerous.... as everyone knows but as it is an addiction, a drug addiction, well it is harder to give up.

Smoking doesn't lead to weight loss. Smoking leads to disease. How many healthy and fit smoker's does one see each day. Maybe, just maybe, if you'reyoung and you're new at smoking. Then you might be fit. But that only lasts a short while, like a year! Forget the fact that people think you smell bad, your breath smells like something crawled into your mouth and died, your hair, clothes, car, house, skin, EVERYTHING about you smells really bad. And no amount of perfume, cologne, deodorant, shampoo, air freshener or bathing can get rid of it.  The bad smell is one thing. It's the disease that will really make a change in your life.  "Oh, but I'm a young woman/man! Disease is for old people in their 30's!" You know, I was thinking of giving a half-hearted attempt of a cross between comedy and drama about this smoking thing but I changed my mind.

 I was raised with smokers. Growing up every person I knew smoked, all the way from my grandparents, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors, teachers, my doctor, the preacher, everybody. I started smoking at 15. It didn't curb MY appetite. Nor the appetites of a lot of people in my life. Except, the people who were dying. They didn't eat as much. Because they were too busy trying to keep food down. They were too busy taking chemo and radiation and drugs to keep them alive. They were too busy spending days and weeks in the hospital. Some were too busy keeping the funeral directors busy. Like my dad. The cigarettes really kept his weight down. He went from weighing 165 to less than a 125 in no time. He didn't gain much weight because he was too busy gasping for a tiny bit of air. His body would shake violently while he gasped for that bit of air, the oxygen his body needed to survive. His skin was the color of cement. His bones protruded, his skin stretched tightly over his skeleton. You could see in his eyes that he knew he was going to be dead soon. How horrible that must be, knowing inside that you are going to be dead soon. That there is no going back, no way out. It's going to be over soon. There were days you could see the terror in his eyes. He couldn't talk about it because you can't talk if you can't breathe. Trying to feed him, washing him, make him comfortable. You just want to ease his suffering. There isn't anything you can do for him though. The doctor's know it, you see it on the faces of the nurses. You see it on the faces of the visitors. Oh and its so horrible that HE KNOWS IT.  He's dying. You hold his bony, trembling hand while the Hospice worker's move around quietly outside his room. Dad's head is back against the pillow, his dead eyes (yes, they're dead eyes even though he's not dead) are sunken into his skull. His mouth is constantly gaped open in the struggle to get a breath. Just one little breath is all he wants. But when emphysema has you grasped in it's cold, icy fingers, you don't get one little breath. He lays there in a state of constant, never ending pain and suffering. Oh wait, it does end! Those last few moments of life, those last few precious moments when you see him going. You know this is it. You know this is the last moment in time that you and your dad will ever share on earth. That last effort to take air in is all that's left. He takes in that last terrible, horrendous bit of air but nothing comes back out. It goes in through his mouth but he's silenced now, his face frozen and  twisted in horror by the pain of trying to breathe. Those are the last memories I have of my dad. But, yes, the smoking certainly suppressed his appetite and he didn't look fat in a swimsuit.

 Sorry for the ramble.

Original Post by sintiachita:

When you are a smoker (regular smoker) they say that you are actually 6 pounds below the weight you would be if you were not a smoker.

Yes it suppresses your appetite and as some have said gives you something else to do instead of eating food.

BUT, it makes you lethargic, you have less energy, you cant exercise as well as if you didnt smoke, youre out of breath very easy etc etc..

The bad points are numerous.... as everyone knows but as it is an addiction, a drug addiction, well it is harder to give up.

 Sintiachita; just curious, who's "they"? 

I don't think it makes you lose weight, it's just the cravings when you give up make you eat instead so giving up makes you fat! (but not giving up makes you dead... but you're adicted so you don't care... but you do care but not enough to give up and get fat...) basicly don't smoke in the first place.

When you are a smoker (regular smoker) they say that you are actually 6 pounds below the weight you would be if you were not a smoker.

I suspect this more of an urban myth than hard science. you'd have to show me the research and then explain why there are those of us who don't fit into the pattern. good science deals with the outlaying data as well, bad science ignores the data that doesn't support what it wants to prove. (oh, another soap box, sorry!). 

(hahaha! it just occurs to me the tobacco industry has likely funded any research that would say so. . . . because they are insideous evil spawn of satan's worst nightmare!)

when i quit a year ago i lost 8 lbs without trying. there are plenty of people on the cold turkey quit smoking web sites that talk about losing 6 to 10 lbs when they quit.

it is a paradoxical drug. while it is said to quicken your metabolism, and that may be true if you look at it one cigarette at a time, it also seems to slow the metabolism for many of us, because we are oxygen deprived people. in the long term, i suspect it slows the metabolism for many.

the lethargy seems to go away once there the body, blood, muscles, and brain are being fed oxygen again. (after one is through the bulk of the withdrawal anyway.) or perhaps those of us who lose when we quit are fidgetty, (in my case that would be the first time in my life). 

i also think there is a lot of danger in thinking there is a big distinction between "regular" smokers and "casual" smokers. its a highly addictive drug and casual smokers soon find themselves regular smokers. the line gets finer and lighter every puff. maybe you think us old women are just a bunch of wet blankets, raining on the social smoking parade, but i, and the rest of us who have lived through it with our own lives, or our loved ones, are here to tell you, there is nothing cool about asphyxiation, or being a slave to your addiction. its parasitic, it kills the host. 

alleyway, thanks for your story. its a hard one. i have an uncle who got kicked out of the hospital when he was hospitalized for his emphasema, got kicked out because he kept taking the oxygen off and going into the bathroom and smoking! 

i dont know if your dad was a world war 2 vet. my uncle was. i think we dont tend to understand how the industry strung that generation out. I didn't until i read Allan Carr's book (the easy way to quit smoking), and then i started asking some elders about it. the us army gave away 4 smokes with dinner every day, sold them in packs of 4 or 5 for a nickel or something, cigarette girls stood on street corners in big cities when the guys got home from the war handing out free smokes, (drugs and sex!). i dont tell the story as well as the people who talked to me about it. its kind of an amazing peice of history, and i think that generation was just an really big, open target for the tobacco industry.

anyway, i wont go into the politics of domination, but for anyone who thinks smoking is a path to weight loss, or a way to get thin, please think again, and if you aren't able to do that, knock yourself unconscious until you can grow some common sense! 

I didn't read all the responses so sorry if I am repeating myself here.

Generally, yes, they say smoking curbs your appetite. However, it never does for me. When my fiance' did try smoking (he quit which is great.) he would actually get an appetite. I think for me besides the stress factor I smoke to kill my boredom for something to do which a lot of people use as a reason for reaching for food.

I've also read smoking does increase the metabolism a bit. (I think it was a question that Mary H. answered on this site.)

The downfalls though are you become addicted and honestly, it messes with your breathing so your work out becomes more harder as far as your breathing goes.

um in no way am i thinking of smoking to lose weight OR just to start smoking in general. i was just curious cuz in so many movies i see thin women smoking constantly and even out in public.

i know its harmful and i would never want my husband or family to have to suffer through my second hand smoke. my mom is a smoker and was since i was a kid, I HATED IT. it stunk. and i didnt even know the health damages it caused when i was younger.

but now i know and ill never do it!

I know a lot of fat people that smoke and they still fat so i doubt it.