Does nicotine have a strong hold over you? It’s one of the most addictives substances on the planet – found naturally in tobacco. Although not illegal, it’s equally as addictive as cocaine or heroine, two illegal drugs known for their strong addictive qualities.

When you use nicotine, your body begins to rely on it both mentally and physically. You can’t quit smoking because you have to face both the psychological and physical issues facing you at this point, which is often overwhelming for anyone.

It’s not the smoke itself that wreaks havoc on your addictions and makes it nearly impossible for you to quit smoking – it’s the nicotine that gets carried in the smoke deep into your lungs where it plants itself in your bloodstream and then moves to every available part of your body to affect your internal health.

Your heart and blood vessels, your brain, your hormones, and your metabolism are all directly affected by nicotine. Even though you may logically know the damage being done, your ability to quit smoking is diminished because the drug has the same effect as endorphins, releasing mood-elevating feelings that cause you to crave more.

But nicotine has another result. When you try to quit smoking, or even stay at the same number of cigarettes you currently smoke, your body triggers you to smoke more, telling you that you’ve become tolerant of your current usage. Nicotine can cause your body to react faster than if you were given a drug intravenously.

If you are able to quit smoking, nicotine will still reside in your body for up to four days after you stop using it. Your body will go into withdrawal, which is both a mental and physical obstacle you have to overcome.

While the physical portion of the addiction has to be dealt with through symptoms such as sleep disturbance, headaches, and dizziness, when someone quits smoking, the mental portion is noticeable when the newly ex-smoker starts dealing with depression, frustration, and anger that results from nicotine withdrawal.

Because of the pressure felt in both the mind and body, many smokers return to the bad habit so that the nicotine will erase the symptoms they’re feeling. The dilemma of withdrawal symptoms when someone quits smoking can last for days or weeks, depending on the severity of the addiction.

Eventually, the symptoms disappear and the strong hold nicotine has over the user loosens up its grip and allows the ex-smoker to break the habit for good. Most smokers have to try several times before they’re able to quit smoking forever, although many do it on the first try using smoking cessation aids.

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Do you still have a skinny picture hidden in the back of your wallet that you pull out whenever you want to relive the “good old days?” You may be onto something positive, and it’s more than just harboring dreams of days gone by.

Many experts now recommend that dieters visualize where they want to be – so that they can achieve their weight loss goals more quickly. That could mean fitting into your jeans from when you were 20, or just being a healthy person for the first time in your life.

Visualization techniques help people achieve their goals by bringing it one step closer to reality. If done correctly, you begin to live life as if you’ve already reached your healthy weight, which reinforces good habits.

Picturing yourself healthy is a good way to encourage you to stick it out and adhere to your diet and exercise plan. You have something to look forward to and you know what it will feel like once you get there.

Visualization is more than a static image. True visualization techniques use all of the senses. You can close your eyes and imagine what it would feel like to lose 100 pounds, not just how great your backside will look in a new pair of tight-fitting jeans.

It’s also a technique that doesn’t require any special skill, money, or time – you can do it anywhere and no one will know that you’re secretly visualizing your weight loss success.

You want to start by fully imagining how your future self will be once the weight is off and you’re at your goal size. Picture yourself sitting down to a healthy meal at a nice restaurant and envision the smells, tastes, and sounds around you.

What feelings would you have at that very moment? Surely a sense of satisfaction – one that will carry into the present and help you work harder to make that image come to fruition.

Don’t picture yourself sitting at a table as if you’re a nearby diner. Instead, visualize the scene from inside your own body – the new you that worked so hard to lose weight and get fit.

As you implement visualization techniques to your daily diet plans, you can also reaffirm your goals as you do it by focusing on positive affirmations. The process of visualization can be addictive in itself because it brings about a sense of self-confidence and excitement about the future that’s in store for you.

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How many times will you hear a diet counselor tell you to cheat on your eating plan? It’s not often, but that may be the exact key to helping you learn lifetime healthy eating habits.

Flexibility can mean the difference between being able to stick it out long-term and giving up for good. Sometimes a little cheat of chocolate can keep you from feeling utter desperation and deprivation.

Giving in is very different from giving up. When you give in and have a little taste of heaven, you’re not giving up on your diet plan – you’re being flexible. Does this mean you can give in 24 hours a day and consume as many calories as you feel like eating?

Not if you want to lose weight. But successful dieters understand the importance of having a little leeway to live life according to their own needs, and sometimes that includes something off limits.

It may not always be a psychological craving, either. Your body will alert you to deficiencies of certain vitamins and minerals. If you’re dieting, your body may be lacking certain nutrients and making you crave foods is the only way it knows to get those nutrients back in its system.

Even if it’s not a biological craving, giving in can also alleviate the tension you may feel about being on a diet in the first place. It’s better to just vow to eat healthier and be fit, but in reality, fitness and weight loss plans are billed as “diets” and it instinctively gives us a negative connotation because we assume it means giving up our favorites.

Worried that giving in occasionally will result in giving up permanently? That rarely happens for those who have given themselves permission in advance to have anything they want in moderation.

You don’t have to feel disgust and shame in your decisions if you know ahead of time that it’s okay. Not many official diet plans have a built in craving component. They simply say everything good is gone forever, so you may have to make some exceptions and tailor your plan on your own.

Your body will clue you in to the fact that it’s in need of something you’re not giving it. Sometimes it may be carbs, and even if you’re on a no-carb diet, you have to make the decision as to whether or not you’ll address your body’s needs and give yourself permission to cheat – just a little.

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Many dieters fail to follow through on their food plans and inevitably blame one culprit – willpower. Some will argue that there’s no such thing – you either make a choice and stick to it, or you don’t.

Others feel willpower is a mystical component of ourselves guiding us in the choices we make. You might not have an opinion about willpower, but feel comfortable using it as your excuse whenever you make the wrong choice about what you should be eating.

When you’re digging around in the refrigerator at 2 o’clock in the morning and wind up devouring an entire chocolate pie, it’s not willpower’s fault – it’s a decision you made and need to be responsible for.

You also shouldn’t attach any guilt to that decision. Just because you hold yourself responsible for a dieting mishap, it isn’t any reason to beat yourself up and label yourself a failure.

From now on, when you’re dealing with an inner battle between caving in and quitting and staying the perfect path to success, stop and realize that there’s a solid middle ground you can adhere to.

You want that chocolate pie, but the diet says you’re not supposed to have sweets at all. Instead of using the dieter’s excuse of no willpower and eating the entire pie in just under two minutes flat, give yourself permission to indulge just a little bit. Even if it’s a full slice it would be better than eight slices.

Take preventative action by giving yourself permission to learn and make mistakes and recover. Dieting and learning how to eat healthy takes time – it’s not a skill you’ll master overnight.

Make sure that before you make any decisions (even those which mean you’ll steer off the dieting path temporarily), you take ample time to consider the consequences. Don’t rush into anything.

Even giving pause to your good eating habits will only help to instill them into your daily routine. We’re not programmed to think before we eat in today’s world. We’re usually on the go, in a hurry, or mindlessly doing other activities while we make eating decisions.

Don’t let willpower (or lack thereof) get the better of you. There’s no reason to fear failure if you’re willing to take responsibility and learn from your mistakes as much as you celebrate your successes.

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Are you sitting at your computer trying to ignore the nagging feeling that you’re missing something (like a chocolate chip cookie)? It’s perfectly okay to admit that you daydream about not following your diet.

It’s normal and you shouldn’t feel guilty that you’re still longing for those off-limit foods. Don’t believe the hype when diet manufacturers say their plan (or food) is so good you won’t even consider going back to fattening fare. You probably will, and that’s okay.

Some manufacturers say that when you finally rid your system of sugar, you won’t crave it anymore. But dieting pitfalls often occur because of habits we’ve formed around certain foods, not necessarily because we’re encountering a biological phenomenon.

While it may be great to know you’re normal what can you do about it? Sometimes it feels as if these daydreams will eventually lead to complete diet failure. They don’t have to.

Facing your food issues is a good way to put them behind you. If you ignore the feelings, and suppress them long enough, you may binge one day when you’re not feeling particularly strong.

Stop thinking of yourself as a dieter someone who has to abandon a certain food for the rest of his or her life. You may have eliminated the food while you become healthier and fit, but it doesn’t mean it has to be gone forever, only until you have your food fears under control.

Over time, as you begin to accept the fact that your favorites dishes aren’t gone for good, you’ll daydream about them less often and then you’ll be able to go about your day without food clouding your thoughts at all.

Daydreaming comes into play as therapy. Your mind misses something, so it’s trying to relive it again for you. It’s just a phase of growth for your diet plan and you’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment when you realize one day, at the end of a day, that food didn’t cross your mind even once.

Becoming healthy is a long journey. You don’t just give up poor eating habits one day and wake up thin the next. It takes mental and physical preparation to get you to a place where your body is fit and your mind is functioning without fail to help you make the right choices.

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