Diet Days - Smoking, drinking, and dieting

Print Page | Close Window

Smoking, drinking, and dieting

Printed From: HairBoutique.com
Category: Beauty Talk
Forum Name: Diet Days
Forum Description: A place for sharing ideas, tips and our daily struggles
URL: /forum_posts.php?TID=28023
Printed Date: Dec 26, 2024 at 11:11am

Topic: Smoking, drinking, and dieting

Posted By: Aoecean
Subject: Smoking, drinking, and dieting
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 2:20am

Hi everyone,
I am wondering if smoking and drinking have a place in dieting...I mean I know their unhealthy for you, but as unhealthy as fast food...I do both in extreme moderation and when I smoke I feel I don't have to eat as much and when I drink, I can control my food consumption better.

Your thoughts?

Replies: 29

Posted By: Aoecean
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 2:20am

Posted By: demodoll
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 12:37pm

I used to smoke and was much thinner. You substitute a smoke for a snack. I don't think smoking can ever be considered good though. I quit for good 7 years ago and will never go back. My Dad is dying of cancer and although he only smoked for a few years as a teenager over 55 years ago, his doctors told him that could be part of the cause! I wish I had never started! Don't smoke if you can possibly help it! $ S bd`ter - ,,bb - 0b` /4! $(!, $- $%%, ` "6

Posted By: Jennifer
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 12:58pm

Smoking also severely restricts your blood vessels, which is very bad. Thus, it will probably make exercising harder for you. Thin is not healthy if it's accomplished by nicotine. Much, MUCH better to be slightly heavier with a healthy heart, lungs, blood pressure, and well-functioning organs than to be thin with diseased organs.

Posted By: Jennifer
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 1:01pm

Oh, about drinking. Alcohol *slows* down your metabolism, which is like fooling your body into thinking it's eating more than it really is! Thus, it's very, very easy to gain weight with alcohol. Plus, alcohol is extremely caloric. A 4oz glass of wine can be 200 calories!

Of course, you don't have to be a tee-totaler to lose weight, but for best results, alcohol should be consumed very seldom for weight loss because of the calories and its effect on metabolism.

Posted By: Elissa
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 6:35pm

It may be true that smoking decreases some people's appetites. But, at what price? I lost my mom, a sweet, beautiful woman, 7 years ago from smoking-related lung cancer. She was 51 years old and had a bright future cut short.

Smoking can help make you thin and dead. Not to mention, wrinkled and stinky. And broke. No good can come from it.

Elissa
quit cold turkey
October 31st, 1989

Posted By: Elissa
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 6:37pm

Re: alcohol and dieting

Over the last year, I have had wine with dinner or at parties occasionally, anywhere from one to three glasses and it didn't affect my diet at all. I also had the occasional mixed drink. I factored the extra calories into the day's calories. I think that in moderation, it's fine if you can handle it. For me, not depriving myself of this small pleasure helped me to stay on my diet in the long run. Only you know if this works for you.

Elissa

Posted By: Jennifer
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 7:16pm

Elissa, I am so, so sorry to hear about your mother. That is so tragic.

I've never smoked in my life so I have no idea how difficult it is to quit, but with all the information and education we have today, I simply do not understand why anyone would ever start in the first place. It's completely stupid. Like you said, who wants to be stinky and wrinkly?

Posted By: Elissa
Date Posted: Jun 2, 2003 at 8:08pm

Thanks, Jennifer. It was indeed a terrible tragedy.

Incidentally, quitting cold turkey was one of the hardest things I've ever accomplished (I was a 10-year pack and a half a day smoker). I will do anything I can to support friends (or strangers, for that matter) who need help or advice on quitting. No family should go through what we had to.

Elissa

Posted By: princessmonica
Date Posted: Jun 3, 2003 at 5:05pm

my mom went back to smoking after 3 months of quiting. she said she has to much stress and is gaining to much weight. i wish she would stop again

$- P cn`dp0% 00BB .(4`p /.%%%,-!,%!% !, b` -.

Posted By: Elissa
Date Posted: Jun 3, 2003 at 7:56pm

I am sorry to hear that. Don't give up on her, Monica.

Posted By: Jennifer
Date Posted: Jun 3, 2003 at 10:42pm

Monica, does your mom exercise? That can make a huge difference, not only in her weight, but how she feels about herself.

Posted By: princessmonica
Date Posted: Jun 3, 2003 at 11:01pm

#d`" $ @$$" ```
she used to. she just can't get motavative to exercise again. for awhile we didn't have a car so she was walking a lot. she still wants to try to keep walking but with the heat starting it gets to hot to walk around.
i feel i'm he one that got her started smoking again. she quit when she found out i was pregnant but then i had a miscarrige

my mom still stop for alittle bit. i feel if i didn't have a miscarriage she wouldn't of started smoking at all. $- P cn`dp0% 00BB .(4`p /.%%%,-!,%!% !, b` -.

Posted By: Elissa
Date Posted: Jun 4, 2003 at 2:28am

Monica, she's an adult and you are not responsible for her smoking. It's normal to feel badly that her smoking appears to have started again after that event, but each of us alone is responsible for what we put into our bodies.

I long ago accepted that my mother died at 51 because she chose to smoke. It was her life and her choice. I am not angry at her for it (most of the time!) because it was her life to do with as she pleased, not mine.

So please don't feel like it's your fault, because it isn't. You're not being fair to yourself.

Elissa

Posted By: demodoll
Date Posted: Jun 4, 2003 at 7:44am

Smoking is a weird and insidious habit. It is all tied up with emotions as well as physical addiction. It is easy to tell yourself that you can have just one and when that one isn't enough, you can con yourself into believing that cigarettes aren't hurting you. Afterall, lots of skinny stars smoke. Remember though, you are making the choice to do it. You can also choose not to.

I could quit for years and then something awful would happen in my life and I would just HAVE to smoke. Often, that HAVE to would turn into several years of smoking every day.

I work in healthcare so I know exactly what a horrible toll cigarettes take on the human body. On my 40th birthday, I decided to quit for good and I have done just that. It really wasn't that hard since my husband wouldn't let me smoke in the house or car and at the office they had thrown all the smokers outside (in the cold) so there weren't many places left to smoke in comfort. I have gained 20 pounds but that could also be attributed to middle age too. That is what my doctor told me.

My 17 year old daughter smokes. I throw her cigarettes away whenever I find them but she always manages to get more. I have tried to get her to quit but with a kid that age, the more you nag, the more they want to do it. I am hoping that she will want to quit on her own soon.

Smoking is just one of the worst things you can do! $ S bd`ter - ,,bb - 0b` /4! $(!, $- $%%, ` "6

Posted By: Elissa
Date Posted: Jun 4, 2003 at 12:26pm

Demodoll,

Congratulations on quitting and your firm resolve to stay quit. You are right, smoking is an insidious and deadly addiction. You are a winner!

I agree on not pushing your daughter. From what I remember, only one out of ten who smoked as teenagers actually became long term smokers (from my high school group.) Unfortunately, that one was me! Fortunately, next October will be fourteen years since I quit.

Congratulations again!

Elissa

Posted By: princessmonica
Date Posted: Jun 5, 2003 at 3:23pm

thank you. i know deep down it's her choice. when i first met my husband he smoked. he could smoke 2 packs a day. then he would smoke just a little. finally one day he quit altogether. $- P cn`dp0% 00BB .(4`p /.%%%,-!,%!% !, b` -.

Posted By: tina m
Date Posted: Jun 5, 2003 at 10:57pm

I've never had to diet, I've never been overweight.

I used to smoke alot, drink alot, marijuana -(and worse than that!!!)-.

Now I don't have hardly any vices to speak of, other than an occasional drink and maybe too much coffee sometimes.

I'm glad I am clean living now but it was SO MUCH FUN being decadent!!!

I still like sex though, I will NEVER give that up!!! Tee hee!!!!

4!,!

Posted By: tina m
Date Posted: Jun 5, 2003 at 11:11pm

Elissa I'm sorry your mom died in middle age but there really are no guarantees for any of us.
I lost my dad when he was 48 so I know it hurts to have a parent die prematurely, even though I wasn't that close with my Dad, he didn't live with us. You never know though, there are so many ways to die. You never know when or how you will die,-( even though we all want to live healthy and long of course).
My Dad died violently in a shootout that was basically his fault, he was intelligent and charismatic but he was unfortunately also a criminal, he got shot robbing a store.

.
....but that is in the past, on to other things!

4!,!

Posted By: Elissa
Date Posted: Jun 6, 2003 at 11:32am

I am so sorry about your Dad, Tina.

Elissa

Posted By: tina m
Date Posted: Jun 6, 2003 at 6:08pm

Thanks Elissa.
My Dad choose to live the way he did.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
He could have lived and died differently.
He had a rough live, was raised poor and so forth , but that's no excuse for some of the things he did.
He wanted to be an outlaw.

...but as I said, that's past now. On to other things.

4!,!

Posted By: Jennifer
Date Posted: Jun 9, 2003 at 1:18am

Perhaps this is just a wild coincidence, but people that I know who are lesbians, who used illicit drugs, or who sold their bodies (all things which have happened to you, as you claim) all had absent fathers in their lives.

Tina, I'm very sorry that your father was a criminal, but perhaps we could all work on uniting families so that tragedies like this will become less common.

>>>>>I wasn't that close with my Dad, he didn't live with us. You never know though, there are so many ways to die. You never know when or how you will die,-( even though we all want to live healthy and long of course).
My Dad died violently in a shootout that was basically his fault, he was intelligent and charismatic but he was unfortunately also a criminal, he got shot robbing a store..
....but that is in the past, on to other things!

Posted By: tina m
Date Posted: Jun 9, 2003 at 5:23am

It could have been worse, my Dad could have been living with us and beat his kids often, like some men do.
My father's death WAS tragic, and his life wasn't all good,-( although he did usually work and he had his good points, and he was interesting to talk with)- by any stretch, but his life was at least interesting and he did live fully. Same with me.

Is a life that doesn't always go smoothly but a life that is interesting better or worse than a mundane boring life?
Hard to say isn't it.
It takes all kinds to make a world. I have no regrets.4!,!

Posted By: Jennifer
Date Posted: Jun 9, 2003 at 1:03pm

>>>Is a life that doesn't always go smoothly but a life that is interesting better or worse than a mundane boring life?

It's better to lead a boring life than to threaten other people's life with violence. I'm all for excitement in life but never at someone else's expense.

Posted By: KathyAnn
Date Posted: Jun 9, 2003 at 7:56pm

*Lay off Tina a little Jennifer, Tina's been through plenty because of her family and the way she was raised. You don't know the half of it.
*And you don't know everything about Tina's father either; how he served our country in the military, how he saved a man's life who was in a serious car wreck, other things about him which I don't have time to go into here. He was a very complex person and he had an extraordinarily difficult life, much more than most.
Some of his problems he brought on himself but not all of them. Tina and I have discussed her father alot. He had a profound influence on Tina, both in positive and negative ways. Even his frequent absence and certainly his death affected her.
It took her years to work through it.

*** I am not the world's most patient person I admit, and I am even less patient with ignorance, especially when it concerns lesbians or gays.
I really do need to lay out a few facts because of what was stated here.

Study after study after study shows that;

myth 1 - Lesbians are more likely to come from broken homes or single parent homes than hetrosexual women.
Fact 1- Wrong. There is no real difference between lesbian and hetro women in this regard. Lesbians are just as likely to come from two parent homes with a father present in the home as a hetrosexual woman.

myth 2 - Lesbians are more inclined to abuse drugs or liqour than hetrosexual women.
Fact 2 - Wrong again, no evidence indicates this.

myth 3 - Lesbians are socialized to be that way by their environment as a child. (family, neighborhood, etc.)
fact 3 - Wrong again. A lesbian is just as likely to be raised in a conservative lower middle class Catholic family in a conservative neighborhood( as I was raised), as being raised in an upper class liberal family in a liberal New York neighborhood.

myth 4 - Lesbians are more inclined to be Caucasion.
fact 4 - Once again wrong. Lesbians come from all races.

myth 5 - A child raised by a lesbian couple is more inclined to be a gay or lesbian than a child raised by a hetrosexual couple.
fact 5 - This is probably the biggest myth.
Most people, genetically, are hetrosexual by nature. Gays and Lesbians will always be a small minority of people. A child is just as likely to be hetrosexual raised by a lesbian couple as by a hetrosexual couple.

I have known since I was a girl that I was a lesbian. Tina has told me she has known since she was a girl that she is bisexual. Certainly it is mostly genetics that determines a person's sexual preference.

I hope I have dispelled a few myths here that are often used against gays and lesbians to deny us our rights, even to attempt to take away our biological children.

I am willing to tolerate alot but not ignorance and mythology concerning race, ethnicity, or sexual preference.

Thank you for reading this.

Posted By: Jennifer
Date Posted: Jun 9, 2003 at 9:37pm

Kathy, I agree about combating ignorance. I gave my opinion, as did you.

You assumed that I was referring to all lesbians. Please read what I wrote, not what you THINK I wrote.

It's also ignorant to give opinions as facts. Until you give a basis for your "facts," they are merely opinions. I can say that the moon is blue and tell you it's a fact, but until I give you proof, it's only an opinion.

Facts can be proven. Opinions cannot. Ignorance wears many masks.

Posted By: tina m
Date Posted: Jun 9, 2003 at 11:20pm

What Kathy is saying is true Jennifer. If you don't believe it talk to socioloigists about it and read the surveys.

Several major newspapers, -(including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and U.S.A. Today)- published a prestigious study that was released last year on lesbian mothers raising children. It found that most of their kids grow up to be hetrosexual. The odds are very good that my daughter will be a hetrosexual woman when she is grown especially since both Kathy and I tell her that most children have a mommy and daddy, and my daughter also knows her daddy, he lives near us and he sees her every weekend.

Also many lesbians are from traditional two parent families. Kathy was.
Vice President Cheney, -(who is of course a conservative Republican, and a conservative Christian from Wyoming)-, has a grown lesbian daughter. .....Cheney, much to his credit, says that not only does he accept his daughter; he loves, admires and respects her. He said on National T.V. that he was proud of her.
Cheney also addressed the Log Cabin Republicans,-(the gay, lesbian, and bisexual Republican group)- and said he was proud of them and glad they were in the Republican Party.

I'm not a huge Cheney or Republican supporter,-(unlike Kathy, who is a lesbian Republican, albeit a moderate Republican)-, but I admire Vice President Cheney in his attitude to his daughter. He is behaving like a grown up who can handle the variety of people in life, -(assuming they are good people, which most of us gay, lesbian, bisexual types are.)-

Kathy is philosophically and politically heavier than I am about this sort of stuff, -(I try to keep it light and make little jokes about sexuality and sex)-, but I have to agree with Kathy that lesbian and bisexual women come from very different backgrounds from one another, just as the hetro gals do.

Every lesbian and bisexual woman I have met,-( and I have met many)-, have a different story to tell. They each have different backgrounds, some of them VERY conservative backgrounds as well as more liberal backgrounds.

Sorry to get heavy but we are just as individual as you hetro ladies are, our backgrounds just as varied, -(and we often are just as feminine!Plenty of "femme" lezzies out there! Tee hee!)-.

.

And many of us have kids too, especially us bisexual types. In fact I am looking forward to having another child. Since I still love my ex-husband and still see him and make love with him on occasion, I hope to have another child in the not-too-distant future. Kathy and I both want to raise another child together. And I want my beautiful 5 year old daughter to have a little brother or sister to play with!

Best wishes Jennifer, always an engaging conversation!

.4!,!

Posted By: Jennifer
Date Posted: Jun 10, 2003 at 9:04am

Tina, the crux of the issue is that I was giving my experience. Kathy read it as if I were giving facts then proceeded to give her own "facts" without any type of backing them up.

Sometimes people read things so personally that they then rush into their own little spiel or agenda without really even paying attention to what was said in the first place!

If I give facts, then I should be expected to back them up -- not ask others to do my research for me.

Also -- always question surveys or research. ALL of it. How many people were involved in the survey? Who paid for the research (major question!)? What were the control factors? Etc, etc. Let's be honest -- I can find almost any statistic that I want to prove my point. If I want to prove that men prefer long hair on women, I can site statistic after statistic as proof. If I want to prove that men prefer short hair on women, I can site statistic after statistic for proof.

What I find with much of communication these days is that a lot of people don't know how to take information and read what it says. We read into it what we want. We read others' words as we want them to read.

I won't even touch the oft-quoted statistic that women only make XX cents for every dollar a man makes! That statistic has been misinterpretted so long that no one even questions it, which I find quite pathetic.

I'd like to start an educational movement, not to teach people WHAT to think but to teach them HOW to think. Many people who actually are intelligent/educated often forget how to do this.

A course on logistics/reasoning/inference should be mandatory for every preteen.

Ahh, time to pump some endorphins into my system now....!

I wish you well, Tina.

Posted By: tina m
Date Posted: Jun 10, 2003 at 10:23am

I understand exactly what you mean Jennifer. Of course different surveys and studies will sometimes give different results on the same topic. It depends how the survey is done; how the questions are asked, who is surveyed,etc.

However if you have a number of different studies done by different people and the surveys were relatively "scientific", -(that is a broad cross section of the public or of a specific group was surveyed)- and the survey was done by people who really know how to give a survey, the results are more inclined to be more accurate.

And if several, very well done, "scientific" surveys show similar results, there may be some validity to the studies.

-(Example----, exit polls at elections. By sampling a representative cross section of voters, many exit polls are within 1 % of being accurate, incredibly accurate when compared to the final vote total.)-

Obviously some surveys and studies are better than others.

Your point is well taken though Jennifer, although so is the point that Kathy and I are making , that lesbian and bisexual women ARE individuals from varied backgrounds.

4!,!

Posted By: Elissa
Date Posted: Jun 10, 2003 at 5:18pm

I have always been under the impression that sexual orientation is physiological in its origins, and that it tends to be either random &/or hereditary. People who are gay come from backgrounds that are as varied as those of heterosexuals. Broken homes and bad parenting don't make people gay.

Posted By: tina m
Date Posted: Jun 10, 2003 at 7:01pm

You are right Elissa.

4!,!

Print | Close Window