Can Vaping Help With Weight Loss?

A highly addictive chemical, it wouldn’t be different if nicotine offered you a small energy boost whenever you took a hit from a cigarette.

And, you might think it a benefit, but the way it masks the signs you need to eat is one of the biggest reasons why you lose weight when you’re smoking.

It’s always true that nicotine addiction is not worth having just to lose weight. Once you start smoking, the addiction is extremely hard to shake off.

Add in the chemicals and carcinogens in every tobacco stick, and the case for zero tobacco in diets is truly made.

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Now, vaping is different.

Instead of smoke, relatively harmless vapour is its output (the substance you inhale in your lungs.

Is it safer than smoking? And will vaping help you lose weight?

Let’s learn more about them in today’s post.

Appetite Suppression and Nicotine

Appetite suppression is one of the clearest side effects of nicotine. Whether it’s from tobacco or vapes (or even nicotine pouches), it still causes you to suppress your appetite and give you a small amount of energy enough to forget about eating altogether.

Nicotine also affects your body’s dopamine system (our internal reward system).

Every time you take a hit from tobacco or vapes, your brain’s reward system lights up and forgets about everything else, like eating and hunger.

That’s why you’ll likely find people gain weight after they’ve stopped smoking. Take into context the severe withdrawals of some motivated smokers on their quitting journey, and food becomes target number-one as their stimuli of choice after dropping smoking.

Sure, it’s clear that nicotine can help suppress your appetite and help you lose or even maintain your weight.

However, it’s not sustainable and will cause you to drop back to your weight (and then pack on some more weight) after you stop smoking.

Let’s turn to the science of this topic.

A study on white mice diets uncovered that nicotine’s introduction in their diets kept hunger at bay much longer than their unaffected peers. 

While this study is just a singular one showing the effects on nicotine on hunger, it shows that nicotine has some effect on your body’s hunger cues.

In large doses, it may even turn off your hunger signals completely by satiating the psychological aspect of eating. Take chewing gum for instance — you grow less hungrier when you’re chewing something as opposed to having nothing between your teeth.

Does vape make you lose appetite? Yes, it may, but not in the best and most sustainable way.

And if you’re using vapes (even medical-grade pharmacy vapes of low nicotine levels that don’t require scripts) to lose weight and not to quit smoking, you may have years of crippling nicotine addiction instead of just losing weight.

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/