Smoking has extensive detrimental, terrible effects on the body’s systems. If you continue to smoke through your life, you will continue to put dangerous, immeasurable stress on your body and stunt your health. Many people take up and continue to smoke as a means of controlling their weight. This theory carries no evidence with it, and is being constantly challenged by new findings relating smoking to higher intake of calories and retention of fat than nonsmokers.

In addition to being full of cancer causing carcinogens, smoking raises your heart beats per minute to risky levels. This means a pack-a-day will cause anywhere between ten and twenty extra beats per minute. That’s the equivalent of carrying an added 40 kilos of weight! Quitting smoking will drop your metabolism, but in a healthy way. Focus on healthy activities that will boost your metabolism in a healthy safe way, such as regular physical activity throughout the day, small regular healthy meals, drinking lots of water and performing interval training a few times a week to exercise your heart.

Studies have also shown that people who smoke demonstrate an inability to detect fat and sugar in foods through taste, and therefore make worse food decisions than non-smokers. Smokers also suffer from higher levels of cravings than non-smokers.

These resulting eating habits in addition to higher levels of fatty deposits in smokers contribute to larger median waist to hip ratios than non-smokers also. This tends to mean that smokers generally carry their weight around the middle (creating that ‘apple’ shape), which is more dangerous than carrying it lower. Belly fat is visceral fat. This means it is deeper than the fatty tissue that lies under the skin on your buttocks and thighs. This type of fat decreases your body’s ability to counteract sugar with insulin, increases your bad cholesterol levels, increases internal inflammation and heightens your risk of heart disease.