Letters to the Editor
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Anonymous x-smoker runner-
Good to hear you're so fit now, and running four miles (a day?) but don't blow-out your knees. Seriously. By the 40's lower impact exercises are advisable unless you want knee replacement and bad arthritis.
Running on grass and soft trails helps somewhat. Walking/hiking is better, and can be strenuous on hills. Biking, X-sking, etc are low impact alternatives.
Have an MRI done of your knees for pre-arthritic chaffing.
Not trying to be a dick about this. Just trying to make the point that while smoking, obesity, + lack of exercise are far greater problems then over exercise (probably by 1000x) going to the other extreme has some health problems too.
The benefits of exercise greatly outweigh the risks, especially compared with smoking or obesity.
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I can't run anymore becasue I am missing cartildge
but running allows you to pick any aerobic intensity at any moment in a way that other exercise does not, there are usually constraints of strength, terrain etc. that set limits on what you can do second to second. I know why people are reluctant to give it up. This is a real problem with exercise: people cling to what they like even when it is highly medically advisable to make changes.
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thanks (pant pant)
Hey it's me, and just kidding about the pant-pant...I take it slow (ten-minute miles) ... I don't run but 3 times a week and alternate with the elliptical, the rowing machine, and the treadmill (hate it.) I usually run on a gravelly trail, padded indoor track (although my IT band or whatever it is doesn't like the turns) or one of those cushiony trails in a park, hardly ever on asphalt and never on concrete. I've never quite been obese, although BMI has hovered between 25 and 28 since I quit smoking. I know I should get more weight off before I run too much. I was 45 when I started running so hopefully with just 3 times a week I don't have too much time to wreck my knees. It's my boobs that kill me. None of the running podcasts talk about that.
There's just something about the machines that's so boring--and running "works" so fast!
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I may be
rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.
I may be unfriendly, harsh, and not good at citing my sources to your standards.
I may be obnoxious and unbearable.
But I'm not a drug addict deluding myself that my drug addiction is anything other than bad for me and those around me.
Former trumps latter every time. Now go enjoy your ciggies, you smelly, hacking ratbag.
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Don't know where you live but
Most places I've been lately in the states, there is no smoking indoors, anywhere except the home, so you are not going to be exposed to the levels of second-hand smoke that will have the least deleterious effect upon you. If you believe any kind of one-sniff theory, you are an idiot.
One glass of tap water won't kill you either. Man, people are paranoid these days.
For those of you still living where the next table over can all light up while you are just tucking into the appetizers, my sympathies.
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lol - Debate 101
Nice try, but resorting to ad hominem attacks to cover up the lack of a cogent argument or tangible evidence is a dead giveaway. Citing sources and evidence is not an optional nicety - it's a basic tenet of argument - otherwise, we just resort to mud-slinging and name-calling(see your own post)- and unhappily, that doesn't trump anything.
btw - at no point has my argument been concerned with the potential harm a smoker does to him or herself - that is proven and accepted by anyone who is not delusional or in total denial. The argument, in case you missed it, is about second-hand smoke, and the social agenda which is pushing it.
btw - I'm not sure what Joni Mitchell, Albert Einstein, Barak Obama, Joe Jackson, Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, David Hockney, Robert Oppenheimer, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Sigmund Freud and a host of other gifted smokers who made huge contributions to the world would make of your third-grade insult - they're probably never have started in the first place, faced with such an insightful argument - the smelly, hacking ratbags that they are!
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Good for you, Rebecca!
Great article - congratulations on quitting and on writing about it without being supercilious and annoying. I enjoy your essays very much. I had a similar experience 7 years ago when I overhauled my exercise and eating habits and lost 30 pounds (which I have kept off - which isn't easy when you're banging up against menopause). Everyone kept patronizingly asking me, "Don't you feel better?" when really, I was hungry, cranky and tired of getting up at 5 to get to the gym every day.
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given that the majority of the population smoked at various points in the past
it's kind of silly to characterize "smokers" as a distinct group over time. At some points everybody important and unimportant, good and bad, smoked.
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one whiff CAN be a problem for people with allergies
but I agree that other than that unless you are in an enclosed space with people who are smoking or are standing in close proximity to them in an unenclosed space you aren't likely to get medically significant exposure.
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Stay with it anyway
Rebecca,
I am a smoker who once quit successfully 17 years ago. Unfortunately, I fell off the wagon after three months (a huge life accomplishment at that point) and reactivated the addiction. I'm writing because I haven't been able to quit since.
Had I known that the new marriage I was about to embark on would go south, and that several other terrible struggles lay ahead as well, I would have stayed off cigarettes no matter what. Smoking all the while improved none of these awful outcomes, and I'm still stuck with the addiction.
If I'd stayed smoke-free, at least I'd have had that turn out well...one of the few things that actually turned out to be partially within my control.
So, stick with it. If you go back to smoking, I can guarantee that you'll never say the words, "Thank God I lit up again, otherwise life would be unbearable." Trust me, that'll never happen.
I have been sorry to see smokers so demonized, because it seems barely possible that we could be responsible for virtually all the evil in the world. Blaming us gives such a license to people who don't have much fun themselves and long to be mean to others in a socially sanctioned way. So, if you stay quit, you can remain beyond the reach of some vicious Puritan wanna-bes, which is all good, as well.
You did the hard part--don't go back.