Tobacco is addictive and dieting aims to break another ingrained behavior, overeating. As a result, the interaction between smoking and dieting is complex. People often increase smoking and eating in reaction to stress and in reaction to abstinence, according to the smoking cessation experts at Smokefree.gov and at QuitSmokingSuppor.com. Dieting can sabotage smoking cessation and quitting smoking can sabotage your diet.
Teenagers
Dr. S. B. Austin, in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Children's Hospital in Boston, studied almost 1,300 middle school students between 1995 and 1997. He observed their responses to physical activity and nutritional interventions as they related to smoking behavior. Austin's 2001 report in the American Journal of Public Health documented that boys and girls developed different relationships to smoking and dieting. When teenage age girls diet, especially if they do so frequently, they increase their likelihood of smoking. This relationship was not seen in boys.
Motivation
Diet motivation in teenage girls correlates with smoking. Dr. S. A. French, with the Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, at the University of Minnesota, surveyed 1,700 grade seven to 10 students at the beginning and end of one year, according to the American Journal of Public Health. The girls who began smoking also expressed a desire to lose weight, showed symptoms of eating disorders and obsessed about weight as diet motivations at the year's start. Girls who began as smokers typically expressed diet motivation based on fear of weight gain, desire for and attempts to become thin and eating disorder symptoms. Smoking and motivation to diet appeared to be intimately related for girls. Diet motivation and weight concerns appeared unrelated to smoking for the boys.
Deprivation
Dr. D. E. Kendzor at Louisiana State University's Department of Psychology studied the effects of 24 hours of food deprivation on adult, female volunteers and their subsequent cigarette smoking behavior. Kendzor's report in the journal Addictive Behaviors, in 2008, documented that self-administered nicotine increases during acute food deprivation among female subjects. This confirms the common experience that stress, whether from dieting or anything else, usually triggers smokers to light up.
Recurrent Dieting
If you have a life-long history of repeated dieting and weight loss in early adulthood, your likelihood of long-term tobacco use is high, according to physicians at the Department of Public Health of the University of Helsinki in Finland. They studied 4,521 twins aged 23 to 27 years old. The 2004 report, published in the International Journal of Obesity Related Metabolic Disorders, documented that if twins had different smoking histories, the one with a recurrent diet history was most often the smoker. This was equally true for men and women.
Simultaneous Behaviors
Smoking cessation specialists at QuitSmokingSupport.com and Smokefree.gov recommend that you not quit smoking and start a diet at the same time. When you stop tobacco use, accept that you might gain 5 to 10 lbs. during the next year. The health effect of a modest weight gain is far less than the danger of smoking. Later, when you are comfortable as a nonsmoker, you can more easily drop the extra weight.
References
- PubMed: Dieting and Smoking Initiation in Early Adolescent Girls and Boys
- PubMed: Weight Concerns, Dieting Behavior, and Smoking Initiation Among Adolescents
- PubMed: The Effect of Food Deprivation on Cigarette Smoking in Females
- PubMed: Recurrent Dieting and Smoking Among Finnish Men and Women
- PubMed: Intentional Weight Loss and Smoking in Young Adults
