I used to smoke before I started something because I needed inspiration. I used to smoke when I finished something because I deserved a reward.  Needless to say my smoking habit made me quite unproductive.  Now consider that I smoked a pack a day (twenty cigarettes) for about fifteen years.  If I slept for about eight hours a day, then I would smoke one cigarette every 48 minutes.  I would not smoke inside the house or office so add in the time to get outside for each smoke and well, I would have little time to do much else.

My smoking habit came hand in hand with a soda habit.  I needed a Diet Coke or Coke Zero in order to smoke and would concoct elaborate plans to guarantee my stash of both for the perfect pre- and post- activity fix.  I smoked when I was happy, I smoked when I sad, I smoked even more when I was out with my friends and I even smoked in my wedding dress.  Therefore it was no surprise I couldn’t run across the street without panting for air.  But one day, my husband Joe and I decided we wanted to have children and so we both decided to quit smoking.  He had been smoking for even longer than I had, but for our quit to be successful we both knew we had to do it together.

On October 25, 2004 we were in Madrid, Spain.  Our flight to Miami was a mess and we were going to have two layovers.  In the past, I was the crazy lady that would run through customs, out the airport, smoke a cigarette and then run back through security and to my gate.  To spare myself the trouble, and since there was no smoking on the plane anyways, we smoked our last cigarette together at the Barajas airport before we boarded on an almost twenty hour trip.

And so it started – cold turkey.  I remember I joined quitnet.com which was very helpful at the time.  I revisited it today and found out I have not smoked 46,756 cigarettes, spent over $8,000 and have saved close to a year of my life.  Amazing. 

What is most amazing is how your body bounces back.  According to quinet.com, my body has recuperated from the damage I did to it, and my risk of lung cancer has been reduced to half of that of a smoker.  And I can breath! I can run, I can swim, I can go up a flight of stairs without panting.  Quitting smoking was sandwiched between quitting drinking two years earlier and finally quitting all sodas in 2010.  To date, I refuse to quit sugar and chocolate … perhaps that is the next frontier but I am nowhere near it.

I needed to be a quitter to be able to do the things I wanted to do: initially to have children, then to give them every chance to be healthy, and finally for me to be healthy and be able to keep up with two rambunctious boys.  Thank God I did

Though the decision to quit was taken years ago, without it, the active life I have today would be impossible … and certainly the “triathlon” in TriathlonMami would be nonexistent.  Not just because I wouldn’t be able to train with my breathing ability, but because I wouldn’t have any time in between cigarettes to swim, bike or run!