“Strengthening exercises will help speed up your metabolism. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking, misguidedly, that strength exercises are for increasing your size. You can do resistance exercises without making your muscles bulge. The true payoff for strengthening your muscles is that you’ll build a little more lean muscle mass, which will help you burn more calories throughout the day and speed your metabolism.
Any movement speeds metabolism, including fidgeting (called nonexercise activity thermogenesis in scientific lingo, or NEAT for short). Every increase in body temperature of one degree increases your metabolic rate by 14 percent (eating protein appears to do the same thing naturally, by the way). When you sleep, your metabolic rate decreases by 10 percent. When you starve yourself for more than twelve hours, your metabolic rate actually goes down by 40 percent. When you skip meals, your body senses a dietary disaster and quickly goes into storage mode rather than burning mode. That’s the primary reason why deprivation diets don’t work. Your body panics about going into a famine, so it slows metabolism into emergency-storing mode rather than a steady state of burning. Breakfast eaters are on average thinner than those who skip breakfast because they keep their metabolism genes turned on; this means that calories are more likely to be burned off before they can turn into fat.”

I started strength training about a month ago (BodyPump classes 3/week) and am losing about 1 lb./week. I’ve quit for 3 months now and never thought I would lose! I am also following Weight Watchers faithfully and started a walk/run program http://www.C25K.com. It’s a lot of physical activity, but it’s better than the enormous weight gain I had the last time I quit – which eventually drove me back to cigarettes.

Well, I have quit smoking many times. The last time before this time was about 4 years ago. I had quit for 3 months and gained 30 pounds. I was a bit over weight at the time of quitting, but only about 10 pounds.

So this time it has been since November 12th and I have already gained about 20 lbs. YUCK. I will not start smoking again because I do not want to wake up at night hacking and I am sick of the stench on my clothing. I cannot bear to think of going through trying to kick it again.

Unfortunately, I am a real addict and if I have only one cigarette, I’m on my way to the gas station to buy three packs. I could NEVER do the 5 cigarettes per day, I am an addict.

I know that there is a real metabolism change, I can feel it. But I also know that I am filling in my habit with eating and I am working on trying to stop that. I think we should all congratulate ourselves and keep on plugging along. I plan to tackle the weight next…….good luck to all and don’t listen to people who have no clue!!

I hope I’m that successful, as I’m at day 25 and doing ok. I too smoked for 25 years… cold turkey (chantix made me do/feel weird things).

Well, the weight issue is/was a problem for me ( I think I’m back on track??). I was up 7 lbs and only into 10 days of my quit…. This was very upsetting since I had lost about 70 lbs 15 years ago and do work out religiously. In this I thought, “not me”, I work out I won’t gain weight. Wrong! I did not realize that smoking increased ones’ metabolism rate thus, I was (did) gain weight. So, I upped my workout time 2 hours of cardio and nothing… still gained weight. I purchased the ‘One a Day vitamin for Metabolism’ and now I’m down the 5 of the 7 lbs I gained. Don’t know if it helped or not or if I’m just more focused at the gym, or if time is a factor (so many variables here) but maybe this combination may help you too?

Water pills is a false sense of weight loss, get a new MD. Remember, letters after a name (MD) does not make a person and expert in a field od study- get a new MD.

Much luck!! Keep at it… Terri