Yes, you can, but it helps to know what you are up against first. The average person gains about 4 to 5 kilograms in the year after quitting, and most of it lands in the first three months. That is not bad luck or weak willpower. Nicotine was quietly running two systems in your body, and when it leaves, both come back online at once. Understand those two systems and the weight question stops being a mystery you white-knuckle through and becomes something you can actually plan around.
What the numbers really say
Let's start with honest figures, because the fear of getting bigger keeps a lot of Canadians lighting up. A 2012 meta-analysis in the BMJ pooled 62 studies of people who quit and stayed quit for a year. The average weight gain was 2.9 kg at three months, 4.2 kg at six months, and 4.7 kg at twelve months (Aubin et al., BMJ 2012).
Two things about that average matter. First, it is an average, and it hides a wide spread. Some people gain nothing. A smaller group gains ten kilograms or more. Roughly a third gain very little. Where you land is not fixed on day one. Second, the shape of the curve is the useful part. Almost two thirds of the total gain happens in the first three months, then it slows sharply. That early window is exactly where your habits decide the outcome, which is the good news buried in the bad.
Why the body changes when the nicotine stops
Nicotine does two things to your weight that have nothing to do with how much you eat. It nudges your metabolism up, and it presses your appetite down. Both effects reverse when you quit, and the reversal is the whole story.
On metabolism, nicotine is a mild stimulant. It raises your resting energy expenditure by a modest amount, roughly in the range of a couple hundred calories a day for a regular smoker, partly by keeping your heart rate and nervous system slightly revved. Take it away and your body settles back to its true baseline. You are not broken. You are burning what a non-smoker your size actually burns. But if your eating stays the same, that quiet drop shows up on the scale within weeks.
On appetite, nicotine acts on the hunger circuits in the hypothalamus and blunts them. Smokers often eat less and feel full sooner without noticing the assist. When the nicotine clears, appetite returns at full volume, sometimes louder than you remember it. Meals feel less satisfying, and the gaps between them feel sharper. Your gut and your reward system both start asking for more.
The craving swap is the real weight driver
Here is the part most people miss. The biggest contributor to post-quit weight gain is usually not the small metabolic shift. It is substitution. The hand that reached for a cigarette fifteen times a day starts reaching for something else, and food is the closest legal option. Sugar in particular hits the same dopamine reward pathway the cigarette just vacated, which is why so many quitters develop a sweet tooth overnight.
We cover that mechanism in depth in our piece on sugar cravings after quitting smoking, and it is worth reading alongside this one, because the appetite half and the reward half feed each other. The point for weight is simple: the kilograms track the substitution far more than they track metabolism. If the reaching moves to food, the scale moves. If you give the reaching somewhere better to go, most of the average gain never shows up.
The practical playbook
You do not need a strict diet during a quit. Dieting and quitting at the same time asks your willpower to fight two wars, and it usually loses both. What works is a handful of small, boring defaults that starve the substitution before it takes hold.
- Eat real meals on a schedule. Skipped meals create the blood sugar dips that trigger the sharpest cravings, and a sharp craving is what sends you to the vending machine. Protein at breakfast blunts the mid-afternoon crash better than any willpower trick.
- Keep the swap dull. If sweets are in the house, the quiet reward system will find them. Stock the fridge with fruit, plain nuts, cut vegetables, and sparkling water. Dull food does not reinforce the loop the way sugar does, and that is the whole point.
- Give the hand a job. A lot of smoking is the ritual, not the nicotine. Toothpicks, a glass of water, a short walk, sugar-free gum. The goal is to satisfy the reaching without feeding it calories.
- Move a little, often. A ten minute walk reliably drops craving intensity, burns a bit of what the metabolism shift took away, and gives the reward system a small clean hit instead of a sugar spike. You are not training for a marathon. You are interrupting a loop.
- Sleep and manage stress. Short sleep raises hunger hormones and makes cravings harder to ride out. A quit is a bad week to also be running on five hours.
None of these are dramatic. That is why they work. They target the first three months, which is where the BMJ curve says the damage is done or avoided.
Where laser therapy fits
Cold laser therapy is built to work on the craving response itself, the same automatic reaching that drives both the cigarettes and the snacking that replaces them. By calming that response, the aim is to make the quit feel less like a fight, which is the exact condition under which people tend to substitute less. The honest framing: the research on laser therapy for smoking is positive but smaller and less established than the evidence for nicotine replacement or prescription medication, so we present it as support, not a guarantee. Our Quit Smoking program is designed to help settle those cravings so the substitution has less to grab onto.
For some people the swap has already happened. They quit months ago, the cigarettes are gone, but food has taken the chair nicotine left empty, with the same automatic reaching for stress and comfort. That is the craving loop wearing a new outfit, and it is why LaserQuit also runs a separate Weight Loss program for the loop once it has settled on food. You do not need both. Most people quitting smoking just want the first one.
If you have been putting off quitting because you are afraid of the weight, that fear is understandable and the numbers behind it are real, but a few kilograms you can manage are not remotely the same order of risk as a pack a day, which runs a Canadian smoker around $500 a month and a great deal more than that in health. Booking carries no upfront fee, and after you book, Meridee reaches out personally by call or text to walk through the options. You can start at /booking.html whenever you are ready.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much weight will I gain if I quit smoking?
On average about 4 to 5 kilograms over the first year, with most of it in the first three months, based on a large 2012 BMJ meta-analysis of 62 studies. That is an average, though, and the spread is wide. Some people gain nothing and a minority gain considerably more, and where you land depends heavily on how much snacking replaces the cigarettes.
Does quitting smoking actually slow your metabolism?
It lowers it slightly, back to your true non-smoker baseline. Nicotine is a mild stimulant that raises resting energy burn by a modest amount, so removing it means you burn a little less each day. It is a real effect but a small one, and it is easily offset by regular light activity and not letting portions creep up.
Why do I crave sugar so badly after quitting?
Because sugar hits the same dopamine reward pathway your cigarettes used to, and your returning appetite makes the pull stronger. The reward system is looking for the nearest substitute and food is the closest legal one. We break the mechanism down fully in our article on sugar cravings after quitting smoking.
Should I diet at the same time as quitting smoking?
Usually no. Quitting and dieting at once asks your willpower to fight on two fronts, and most people lose both battles. It is more effective to hold your eating steady with real meals and simple swaps during the quit, then address weight separately once the cravings have calmed and the habit is solid.
Is the weight gain worth it compared to keeping smoking?
By a wide margin, yes. Every honest clinician will tell you the health gains from quitting outweigh the risk of a few kilograms many times over. The extra weight is manageable and often temporary, while the cost of continuing to smoke, to your body and your wallet, is neither.