Many people who decide to quit smoking, experience weight gain because the nicotine fix provided by smoking stimulates the nervous system, which in turn expends energy. In other words, when you quit smoking, your metabolism slows. Fortunately, there are ways to get it back up to speed.
Step 1
Eat a big breakfast daily. A 2008 study by Hospital de Clinicas in Caracas, Venezuela, concluded that women who ate a big high-carbohydrate breakfast were less likely to see lulls in their metabolism than those who went with a smaller, low-carb breakfast.
Step 2
Balance your diet. When your body needs energy, it seeks protein and carbs while burning fat. But if you gorge on fatty foods and pure sweets, your body isn't able to process all of it and stores some as fat.
Step 3
Eat plenty of foods that have complex carbohydrates. While "simple carbs" found in sweets such as cookies are quickly digested and absorbed into the bloodstream, complex carbs take longer to digest, giving you a longer-lasting feeling of fullness and keeping your metabolism running strong. Beans, cereal, oatmeal, rice and whole-wheat pasta are popular choices because they are high in complex carbs and they're not fattening.
Step 4
Shift calories. "Calorie-shifting" diets have become popular because they purport to keep your metabolism guessing. Vary your eating habits from day to day. Eat different foods at different times, the theory says, and your metabolism won't fall into a predictable pattern and will keep churning away. Despite its popularity, calorie shifting has not been the subject of any conclusive studies.
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