For years on end I wondered why my body keeps accumulating fats when I’m eating less and less and even feeling hungrier than ever. So I started to do some serious research on this until I stumbled across the materials that talked to us about detoxification and its importance. Because I feel this is the thing that helped me the most, more than any other diet I have tried, I will attempt to describe you all the benefits a detox diet can bring a person, and all the things that truly touched me and made me understand that I really need one.

The world we are living in is overloaded with toxic substances that get in our body when we breathe eat and drink water. Even our body is producing residue that must be eliminated to keep us healthy and maintain our vital force. A body that is correctly and healthy fed will eliminate those toxic residue naturally through the lungs, skin, kidney and colon. But it’s quite obvious that my body as well as yours hasn’t been fed as it should’ve for many many years. And in this case, the toxins will accumulate.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Because they did sound all too familiar to me: tongue residue, unpleasant mouth smell, headaches, dizziness, the constant need of sleep, a serious decrease in energy levels, negative thoughts, irascibility, hypertension, bad digestion … I was shocked to know that all these things are also a sign of a urgent need for a detox diet, next to the fact that I was obviously overweight.

Apparently, because of the incorrect alimentation, of the food rich in starch I was eating of aliments excessively prepared and with way too many calories as fries, meat derivates and fast food that I used to love and eat every day, there will be a thin plate of residue left on our colon that in time will solidify. At the same time, putrefaction and fermentation processes will occur in the colon. Both sides of the story affect the body. I even read that if we fail to detoxify when needed, we are actually poisoning ourselves with intestinal toxins, and this is causing us to lose the race with longevity.

After reading all these depressing facts that seemed to have no answer and were only making me aware of how much harm I have already done to my body by eating all the time prepared food and very fat meat, I finally reached the solution. I needed to take a detox diet immediately. But detoxifying once is not enough, especially after years of not caring about this. This is a thing that needs to be done periodically between 2 to 4 times a year, for one to two weeks.

Here is my detox diet check list, which proved not to be such a hard thing to do and also managed to raise the efficiency of further weight loss diets I have tried:

• Never eat anything fried these two weeks.
• Aliments that are preserved in some way are also a big no no.
• Nothing bought out of the hypermarket that contains additives (E – substances)
• No meat or any other meat products
• Instead of sweets I was eating fruits
• No white flour. Instead, I ate cereals and black bread
• At least two liters of water a day
• No sugar, coffer, alcohol and sodas
• Instead of sugar, add honey
• Instead of coffee I decided to drink green tea, because I am a caffeine addict
• I drunk lots of natural juices and teas, all made in my home by my wife, and not bought from stores
• Before bed, I had to drink a glass of plain water with a honey spoon and the juice of a half a lemon: a delicious lemonade in fact
• I ate lots of fresh yogurt, without preservatives
• I did daily easy exercises, as walking for half hour or running for ten minutes, but mainly walking
• One day in each week of the diet I ate only non-cooked food: fruits, vegetables, nuts, cereals and milk, teas

Fortunately, I have quit smoking many years ago, and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. However, the weight gain when you quit smoking is not a myth, it is real, and it has happened to me in a way that I never imagined possible. You see, I used to be a rather skinny man while I was smoking (and before staring) and I was one of those constantly laughing at my friends that were struggling with diets and were barely eating anything just to lose a couple of pounds more. I simply could not understand the difficulties they had to go thorough, and because I was a person than could usually eat everything he wanted and not gain a pound, I simply thought they were imagining things, and that things can not go that bad… Until they did… The day I decided to quit smoking was a glorious day, but with all the stress and problems that were on my head at that point I never thought, not only for a moment, about the fact that I will be experiencing weight problems if I am not careful.

To be frank, even if someone would’ve told me that I couldn’t have cared less, because I was overwhelmed by the idea of not touching cigarettes again. But my struggle with nicotine addition is a completely different story…

Weight gain when you quit smoking is going to happen no matter what you do mostly because most smokers are usually malnourished already. Even if this is not visible in the pounds they weight, they surely lack plenty vitamins and minerals and the protein metabolism in they bodies in all messed up. Also, smokers tend to forget about sports, because if they smoke long enough they will feel unable to do some basic exercises. If I tried to run for only a couple of feet, I would feel a burning pain in my chest and the shorted breath stopped me every time. Also, when I was smoking I was consuming a lot less water than normal. Mainly because with every cigarette I lighted I needed something to go along with it and that was usually a cup of coffee. Drinking all that coffee disallowed by body to feel thirsty…or hungry. After quitting, all the thirst and hunger sensation were back and stronger than ever. I was like being born again, and I was happy to see the food tasting better, but never thought about weight gain when you quit smoking issues. Not at that point.

And the months passed, and everyone was congratulating me and the pounds continued to add until it was obvious that I was beginning to fell tired and unwell again. This time it wasn’t the nicotine and coffee that made me feel like that, this time was all that extra fat that was a new addition to by body. Maybe if you are a bit overweighed by nature you feel differently when you gain a bit of weight, but for me this was like a true torture: each pound seemed to weight as much as ten. I was really tired and I went to see my doctor. All my eating, all the fats and sweets caused me to almost double my weight is less than a year. That was huge and the doctor said that I was almost obese. Me, obese!

At this point I had to turn to those friends I used to laugh at back when I had no weight problems. Now it was their turn to laugh, but they didn’t. Instead they helped me lose the weight I’ve gained. You see, having to deal with weight problems their entire lives changed the way they treat others with the same issues, because they understand. I couldn’t understand before, so I was mean to them. We decided that I needed a diet to return me to normal weight. It took me almost another year to do this, and the weight gain when you quit smoking effects are still visible sometimes, because I didn’t know how to stop in time. The frequent eating I did affected my metabolism in so many ways that it is very hard to speed it up efficiently. Anyway, with lost of efforts, I managed to regain a rather normal weight, but I’m on a regular diet plan. Not really a diet but more like a healthy eating plan: I eat cereals, raw foods and foods that are not very processed and fish or chicken, and also seeds. But the main thing that turned my life around was exercising. Without my daily running hour I would still be overweighed.

If I were to quit smoking again now, with all my knowledge against weight gain when you quit smoking I would do everything quite differently. Maybe a minimal weight gain would still occur, but I wouldn’t double my weight for sure. When you quit smoking you can go for a simple detox diet. That should keep you off eating unhealthy stuff because you are stress at least for one or two weeks. The best choice is a meat free diet or a raw food diet. Then, I would try do exercise the very first day I quit. Since the nicotine is gone, why worry I will get tired? I might be hard at first but things will only get better in time. In a word, I would do everything in my power not to let smoking further ruin my life even after I’ve decided to quit.