There are days after you stop smoking, that it feels as if your every thought is dominated by your desperate desire to smoke. Thankfully, most of these cravings are fleeting, coming and going in a matter of minutes.
To crush these cravings, you need a strategy that tackles both the psychological as well as physical cravings. Quit smoking hypnosis is proving helpful for many in vanquishing those cravings. Hypnosis implants a negative association with smoking that interrupts your cravings as they emerge.
It also helps to distract yourself by doing something to distract yourself from your physical cravings. You’s be surprised how effective redirecting your focus can be in fighting your physical or psychological craving.
Basically, in the early days after you quit smoking, you’ll find yourself dealing with two forms of cravings:
- Psychological cravings: Driven by trigger events, these are cues signalling you need a cigarette, whether it’s a stress response or social occasions, food or driving. Those subconscious suggestions can trigger fiendish cravings when you quit smoking
- Physical cravings: These are your body’s response to nicotine withdrawal and usually surface as a tightness in your stomach or throat, and anxiety or tension.
Here are 3 simple ways to crush your psychological and physical cravings and grab greater control over your efforts to quit smoking once and for all.
1. Amp Up Your Exercise
Keep your brain distracted by increasing your daily exercise. You’ll feel better, you’ll have more energy and best of all, you won’t be sitting around stewing in your cravings. Even a ten-minute walk through your local park can help sharpen your mind and dull your cravings.
2. Treat Your Psychological Cravings
If you want to quit smoking permanently, you’ll need to tackle the psychological cravings that go hand in hand with trying to quit smoking. That’s where hypnotherapy has proven itself.
Hypnosis works by relaxing your mind to allow your subconscious to take over. Engaging your subconscious makes you more receptive to both aversion therapy (negative associations with cigarette smoke and its smell) as well as positive suggestions designed to assist you to quit smoking permanently. If you want to learn hypnotherapy and its effects in more detail, you can learn it with Australian-based trainer Issac Lomman available at isaaclomman.com.
3. Meditation and Deep Breathing
Breathing is a bodily function we rarely think much about. However, if you have control over your breathing rate, mindfully exhaling and inhaling deeply, can be a powerful method in reducing anxiety and lessening stress, helping you overcome your cravings.
Similarly, meditation can help you feel calmer and refresh your mind and spirit. Meditation reduces activity in the area of your brain known as the amygdala. Less activity translates into less stress and fewer smoking triggers. Meditation also increases activity in your prefrontal cortex, reinforcing your self-control, while nurturing the self-awareness needed to change your behaviour, supporting your desire to quit smoking.
Another Point
A healthy diet can help you face down your urge to smoke. Healthy food choices can reduce smoking triggers and give you the energy you need to overcome your physical and psychological cravings.
Avoid processed foods, candy bars and baked goods that are often packed with refined carbohydrates, high-fructose corn syrup and saturated fats. These can wreak havoc with your blood sugar, sending it on a rollercoaster ride as well as causing you to stack on the weight and aggravating your cravings.
Final Observation
No one finds quitting smoking easy, particularly dealing with those cravings. Remember, cravings are a siren song of your nicotine habit, not your destiny. By focusing on what matters to you, be it your health, your future, your family, or your friends and tapping into smart techniques such as quit smoking hypnosis you can overcome those persistent cravings. So, stay positive, stay focused, you’ll break your smoking habit.