Many people experience weight gain after quitting smoking, I’m not really sure why. I get that nicotine is an appetite suppressant so people may tend to over eat after quitting but does the weight gain have any other metabolic causes? Will a smoker gain weight if they quit and still maintain the same calorie intake as before?
In: Biology
As has been mentioned, often the weight gain is tied to
* nicotine being an appetite suppressant
* people who are used to reaching for a smoke, reaching for a snack is a very quick, easy replacement habit
But there’s some [interesting data](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16129730/) saying there’s more going on. For example, smoking changes the distribution of fat to the less healthy, typically male ‘apple’ pattern in both men and women. What this means is that women who smoke tend to put on more fat around their waist compared to women who do not smoke where the weight tends to go to hips.
So there is some mechanism that, while not completely understood, can be measured to show that smoking changes how the body manages fat storage. So it makes some sense that quitting smoking would also have some affect on how the body manages fat, causing weight gain.
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