's Daily Message - PUFF PUFF

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's Daily MessageThursdayMarch 02, 2006

PUFF PUFF

I would say that two out of every five people that I talk to who are trying to lose weight are cigarette smokers. As you know, sometimes compulsions come in twos, threes, and fours. I usually don`t have to ask if they`re smokers, because I can hear it in their voice, and when I`m signing autographs and meeting people, it just takes me seconds to figure out if the individual I`m speaking with smokes. Smokers have smoker`s breath, which is rather unpleasant. Plus, smokers wrinkle quicker than nonsmokers.

The other day, I was speaking with a lady who is morbidly obese with her weight creeping up to the five hundreds. She`s in pain all the time but pushes herself as much as she can. We got talking about food, and she told me she only had sixty dollars a month to feed her husband and her overweight child. During our conversation, she told me she was totally hooked on Mountain Dew and drank several large bottles a day, and then her smoking habit came up. She and her husband smoke a pack a day, so between them, they smoke around sixty packs a month! She told me this very poignant story.

"One day, my son came in the kitchen, and I was sitting there with my husband, and we were smoking and drinking a soda. My boy came up to me and said, `If you and Daddy stopped smoking and drinking all that pop, you would have money to buy better food for us to eat.` She told me she about fell off her chair! We ended our talk by saying, "I would just love to quit smoking," and I told her "just loving to" was not enough! I told her she had to sit with her husband to make a plan. She promised she would email me soon to tell me how things were going.

I know it`s hard to quit all your compulsions at the same time, but my friend, you`ve done hard things before. If you can quit cold turkey, then do so. If you can quit gradually, there are many online programs on the internet that can help you kick the habit. Don`t put this off any longer! Make quitting smoking one of your goals this month!

Love,