Eleanor R. smoked for about fifteen years. Having grown up in a very restrictive environment she started to smoke as a teenager because it was “cool” and slightly rebellious. She increased the amount she smoked after being told to do so in a modeling seminar she attended one summer. Smoking was supposed to reduce your appetite so that you would lose weight and look better.

In both graduate school and her first job most people smoked heavily. She discovered the hard way in grad school that activity level had more to do with weight gain than not smoking - as she gained a good deal of weight even though she continued to smoke. (However, after she became more active she lost all the graduate school weight.)

In the course of her first job she was required to build equipment to help treat smoking as part of her job. She bet she could quit on her own better than the other staffers that took the unpleasant treatment. She was right. From that time she only smoked occasionally, usually just at parties or when extremely upset over something. This pattern continued until she learned she was pregnant with her first child. She quit smoking for good then.

That was twenty-four years ago. Now in her fifties, Eleanor enjoys good health, is physically very active and does not have the heavy wrinkling associated with long-term smoking.