[skinnyninja]

I managed to quit smoking successfully and I have over a year and a half nicotine-free. Here is an excerpt from my blog on how I did it:

So my suggestion? Quit cold turkey. I know that sounds like a death sentence. After I had tried and failed to quit smoking so many times, even with the help of the nicotine patch, I felt that I would have no chance going cold turkey. But it worked. Unbelievably, it worked for me and I stayed quit. However, my success was not a matter of will power—I can assure you. I have tried and failed so many times before this. Here is what worked for me:

Don’t smoke no matter what.

Don’t use any nicotine products—the patch, the gum, the lozenges, the inhalers, etc.

Don’t overdo the sweets and sugars. Chew sugar-free gum. (NOT nicotine gum). Chew toothpicks.

Eat smaller portions of food, but do it more frequently throughout the day. Don’t binge on food! Concentrate on purposely eating much slower than usual.

Drink juice.

Moderately reduce your caffeine intake, especially if you are a coffee drinker.

Here is what really clinched it for me though: I took a few days off of work for the beginning of my quit. On the first day off, I quit smoking at night before going to bed. I woke up the next day and started flushing my system by drinking massive amounts of cranberry juice. I drank the stuff all day long. By night time I was getting into some more serious cravings. Instead of going to sleep though, I stayed up all night long, flushing my system out further and becoming extra tired. At nine o’clock the next morning I was still awake, dead tired, and entering the worst of my withdrawals. See the timing there? I was extra, extra tired when I was approaching the worst part of my physical withdrawal. I believe this was the key to my success—because at this point, I was able to lie down and sleep for about 24 hours straight—right through the peak of my body’s withdrawals. I literally stayed asleep for over 20 hours. When I finally got up, I could tell that the cravings where subsiding. I was through the worst of it. By a long shot, I was through the worst of it. Every day after that, it got a little easier each day. At the end of day five I was telling people that I was surprised at how easy this was turning out to be.