Can Vaping Help With Weight Loss?

Nicotine gives you a small boost of energy, which can mask the signs you need to eat. But, is the addiction to nicotine worth it?

Once you start, tobacco and nicotine addiction becomes very hard to shake off, even when you know you’re inhaling 7,000 chemicals (69 being carcinogenic) with every puff of a cigarette. 

While it’s reported that vaping is relatively safer compared to smoking tobacco, does vaping make you lose weight? In today’s post, we’ll dig deeper into it.

Appetite Suppression and Nicotine

Can vaping make you lose weight? Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical found in both vapes and cigarettes that makes you smoke more cigarettes or use your vape continuously and cause your hunger to subside.

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Regular nicotine consumption allows the chemical to affect your dopamine system — the body’s internal reward system. With continuous dopamine hits, your body can turn it into a habit that will affect your body’s hunger cues.

When you stop taking in nicotine, your body starts recognising its hunger cues once again. Combined with severe withdrawals causing you to need more stimuli from various other sources, you will most likely consume more food than usual after you’ve stopped smoking for good.

So, does vaping help lose weight? It might, but for all the wrong reasons.

One study discovered that by introducing nicotine to the diet of white mice, researchers found that they did not respond to hunger as strongly as their control group that didn’t ingest nicotine.

Combining this fact with how illegal vapes sold in tobacconists and convenience stores have strong, fruity flavours, they can very likely satiate the psychological aspect of eating – similar to chewing gum.

However, it’s not guaranteed that these will suppress your hunger due to the limited studies and data on the phenomenon. What it does guarantee is long-term addiction with continued use. 

If you’re not quitting under the guidance of a medical professional using responsible pharmacy vapes, the kilos you’re looking to drop by vaping may come at the cost of having a crippling nicotine addiction.

Does vape make you lose appetite? In a way, it does, but not in the best way.

Note: There’s a big difference between illegal vapes and high-quality medical vapes sold in pharmacies for smoking cessation. Learn more about the differences here.

Metabolic Effects of Nicotine

Nicotine makes most smokers feel like as if they’ve eaten. It also affects their metabolism

With your dopamine release triggered regularly by nicotine, it can also cause the release of serotonin and norepinephrine, two hormones that make you feel full after eating.

However, there’s limited research on the correlation between nicotine and increased metabolism. And, even if nicotine were to increase your metabolism, it isn’t a good idea — you’ll most likely just have a long-term addiction that’s hard to shake off.

If you want to improve your metabolism, it’s better to just exercise and have a healthy diet. You’ll have a far more sustainable and healthy way losing weight.

In fact, if you’re starting your quit journey, exercise has been proven the best way to urge smokers to quit by feeling stronger and more fulfilled.

And you’ll most likely have metabolism after just two weeks of exercise.

Behavioural Factors

Are there calories in vapes? It’s true that there are almost zero calories in every hit of a fruit or sweet-flavoured vape. It seems like a great convenience for emotional eaters who just want something stimulating without the added calories when going on a diet.

However, sweet-flavoured vapes are illicit vapes, which have numerous dangers and are made to get you hooked on their products. Instead of feeling healthier, you’ll probably feel worse — even if you aren’t eating as much — by consuming illegal NVPs. It’s just not worth it.

Plus, you might become emotionally dependent on smoking or vaping rather than food.

Instead, it’s better to focus on controlling portions when eating, exercising, and practicing mindfulness when having meals. More importantly, improving your relationship with food as a whole is the best and most sustainable way to lose weight.

Pharmacy Vapes to Quit Smoking

Vaping soared in popularity because of overseas manufacturers bringing their products to shore and distributing them illegally via convenience stores and tobacconists.

It’s important to remember that all vaping products sold outside of a pharmacy are illegal and can be extremely dangerous to your health. 

Buying from a pharmacy ensures you’re using a product designed for smoking cessation and with your health in mind.

Let’s learn the difference between these two products.

Illicit Vapes

Illicit vapes (such as those in convenience stores and tobacconists) are imported under the radar, just like illicit tobacco and drugs, and are made as cheaply as possible for maximum profits.

When we say cheap, we’re not just talking about the price – it also means they don’t adhere to any standards at all, nor do they care to. 

Does it taste good and produce a huge amount of addictive nicotine to guarantee repeat purchases? That’s the goal for these opportunistic manufacturers and sellers, even if their devices also produce high levels of nickel and lead with each inhalation and have questionable manufacturing practices (they’ve found human saliva in them, too).

Apart from heavy metals and saliva, you simply don’t know what you’re inhaling when you use illegal NVPs.

Pharmacy Vapes

Now, let’s talk about the most trusted and reliable option – pharmacy nicotine vaping products (NVPs).

NVP products sold in pharmacies are made under stringent pharmaceutical standards on the manufacturing process and ingredients, are toxicologically assessed for inhalation, are locally insured, and are specifically designed to help you stop smoking. 

Unlike their illegal counterparts, local manufacturers adhere to high medical standards, such as GMP and ISO standards for medical device manufacturing to ensure the consistent safety and dependability of their NVPs.

Summary

So, does vaping make you skinnier? It can, but it’s not the best way to go about it. Using illicit NVPs for weight loss isn’t really a cut-and-dry approach to reducing weight and supplementing your diet. While it might have some fringe benefits like appetite suppression and metabolic increase, it doesn’t always work.

Furthermore, nicotine only introduces weight loss – which is different from the fat loss that people actually want. More importantly, you also lose body tone due to muscle atrophy, a clear sign you’re not eating properly because nicotine suppresses your appetite.

The best and most sustainable way to lose fat and improve your weight is still to stop smoking and only use pharmacy-sold NVPs to quit smoking and alleviate withdrawals.

You’re probably reading this because you think that by quitting smoking, you can gain weight and you can use vaping to suppress your appetite. We hope this information helps.

Smokefree Clinic gives you access to many medically reviewed and trustworthy resources that can inform and aid you in your path to wellness, so have a look around! 

If you’re ready to get started, Smokefree can connect you to Australian healthcare professionals who excel in helping patients quit smoking for good.

Link Reference

• https://www.science.org/content/article/why-smokers-are-skinny
• https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/about-e-cigarettes.html
• https://www.science.org/content/article/why-smokers-are-skinny
• https://exerciseright.com.au/body-reacts-to-exercise/
• https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/vs2527/do-vapes-have-calories-the-most-authoritative-answer/
• https://www.healthline.com/health/emotional-eating
• https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65614078
• https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2023/08/paddy-gower-on-vaping-shocking-facts-uncovered-about-the-known-and-unknown-health-risks-of-e-liquids.html
• https://www.iso.org/iso-13485-medical-devices.html
• https://www.tga.gov.au/good-manufacturing-practice-overview
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5421125/