There is no shortage of literature about how healthy we are going to be after giving up cigarettes. We will be able to run up mountains using our incredibly improved lung capacity, we will be able to taste food so much better, and on and on it goes, the benefits are many, and wondrous.
What is rarely, if ever mentioned is how irritable we are going to be. If my brain is screaming at me to give the tiny cells the balance they want and crave for and I refuse to give it to them, the result isn’t going to be a secret and it isn’t going to be pretty.
Irritable hardly even describes it. Perhaps it will be worse still if the person is giving up cigarettes because they feel they are being forced to do so. They are giving in to pressures from family members, and to the less than subtle pressures from governments, who have now forced the price of one packet of twenty cigarettes to cost more than a weeks worth of vegetables.
The smallest annoying things grow into impossible demands that only a saint could achieve, certainly not our mere mortal family members down here on earth trying to be supportive, trying to live with us. Eating up as much sugar as the body will accept as a substitute seems to be a very good idea, if only for the sake of our families. Worry about controlling the inevitable weight gain later, much later.
Then, at some much later stage, well after the initial withdrawal has taken place it might be possible to at least try to lose some of the weight gained. Exactly what you would predict to happen does happen. Added to the residual irritability of giving up cigarettes is the non-trivial irritability of not giving the body quite enough of what it also wants, a satisfactory amount of sugars and fats.
One tiny helper to absorb some of the irritability, as well as some weight, is to walk. Try walking with a bit more pace sometimes to help manage some irritability if it is detectable. Walking a self-defined amount of distance most days, even a slow ambling stroll will help to cope with periods of blatantly obvious, or even cleverly masked irritation which can go on for years. Many years, even decades.