I’m really proud right now.

In theory, that’s because Tuesday marked my third official quitiversary: that’s three years of life after smoking. For those of you who are new to CR, here’s the deal: I was a heavy smoker for about 8 years. I loved cigarettes, and I still miss them. I started writing CR about a year after the day I quit, and I wrote a long post about it, which you can read here. It’s pretty hard to believe that three years have gone by since I broke the habit. Fortunately, my pangs of longing have grown very faint indeed. Quitting smoking is without a doubt one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I feel that my life is richer, healthier, more frugal, and probably a lot longer because of it.

I wish I could say that I haven’t touched a single cigarette since I quit: that’s not true. There have been a few. I had a couple on Chloe’s wedding night, for example: some people crave booze on special occasions, some crave cake, I craved a smoke. And there were some odd ones in the last year, like the one I bummed from an undergrad on Columbia’s campus—a hotbed of smoking memories for me—when I started to grasp how challenging this post-bacc business would be.

I’m not telling you this because I’m proud, or because I don’t think it’s a big deal. I tell you a) because I don’t lie to you, and b) because I want to demonstrate the old proverb that to err is human. I’m human, and one piece of proof is that in the three years since I quit life as a smoker, I’ve been occasionally tempted to taste cigarettes again. What I like to focus on, however, is the fact that I haven’t felt the impulse to pick up my smoking habit again—not even a little—in the moments where I did yield to temptation. One cigarette did not beget more. They still tasted good, but I now value my health more than I value the pleasure they offer. And that’s the crucial difference between where I’m at today, and where I was three years ago.

I often find myself telling clients not to let one bad day turn into two, or assuring them that one moment of regrettable food choices matters far less than how they handle the moment after. Food and smoking are different things, and I don’t want to overstate the comparison, but maybe you see my point: one setback does not undo years of effort, just so long as you can identify its potential harm. Acknowledge how dangerous more setbacks might be, and to move forward without letting bad habits form anew. Today, I’m three years past life as a smoker, months past that anxious campus puff, and fully dedicated to a smokeless future.

And I celebrate that fact with cake.

Yes, cake. We all know I’m not the best with dessert in general, and even less so with raw ones. But this week, to celebrate, I made a raw, vegan cheesecake, and that’s the REAL reason I’m so proud.

Raw Vegan Cheesecake with Cacao Crust (raw, vegan, gluten and soy free)

12 Slices

For the crust:

2 cups almonds
1/4 cup cacao nibs
1 1/4 cups pitted, packed dates
Dash salt

For the filling:

2 1/2 cups cashews, soaked 2 hrs or more
Juice of 3 lemons
Dash salt
3/4 cup agave syrup/maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla (or 1 vanilla bean, scraped)
1/4 cup coconut butter
1/3 cup water (more if needed)
1 tbsp chia seeds

1) To make crust, place almonds and cacao nibs in a food processor and process till very crumbly. Add dates and salt, and process till mixture is holding together well.

2) Press crust into a regular sized pie or tart shell, and store in fridge while you make the filling.

3) Blend all filling ingredients together in a high speed blender till absolutely smooth and creamy. Add more water than the 1/3 cup if necessary to achieve a thick, yet blendable texture.

4) Pour filling into pie shell, and transfer to a freezer for 30 min to set. Transfer to fridge, and cover with a layer of saran wrap. Decorate with berries if desired.

5) Serve, and savor every bite!

Let’s be real here: there’s nothing particularly healthy about this cake, aside from the fact that it contains no processed junk. It’s about 100% fat and sugar (plant fat and sugar), and it is totally delicious. So, eat it with discretion, and allow yourself joy from every bite. The nicest thing about raw desserts—at least in my experience—is that a very small amount can be very, very satisfying.

This is, believe it or not, my first real raw dessert. Ever! Aside from chocomole and Ani Phyo’s famous raw donut holes, this is the the inaugural raw, vegan dessert. And again: I’m pretty proud.

This weekend, take some time to consider what changes you’ve made for the better in your own life in the last three years. What are they? Did you start to eat healthier? Did that mean eating more? Eating differently? Eating more consciously? Did you ditch a habit that wasn’t healthy for you, or perhaps change the terms of a relationship that was causing you pain? Whatever it was, give yourself a moment to be thankful for the improvement.

And then, if necessary, have some cake.

xo

One of the first things that new clients like to declare to me is this: “Just so you know, I love my morning coffee, and I’m sorry, but I’m not giving it up.”

Hmmmm. OK. Thanks for sharing?

To be frank, this statement amuses me. Half the time I’m tempted to reply, “In comparison to some of the things you’re eating, buddy, coffee is the least of your problems. Lay off the processed food and diet soda, then we’ll talk about coffee.” The rest of the time, I want to smile and say, “Don’t worry, I’m not giving up coffee, either.” Because –after much tortured consideration — I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not.

Coffee. Java. Black gold. Cafe. Joe. Drip. Brain juice. Jet fuel. Liquid energy. Morning thunder. Mud. Bean juice. Americano. Day starter. Lifeblood. These are only a few of my pet names for the smooth, sultry, and incomparable stuff that is coffee. Few pleasures in life can compare to coffee drinking. Since my first sip at the tender age of ten, coffee and I have been good, good friends. I remember sneaking out of class in fifth grade to spend a whopping $4.00 on iced mocha from Timothy’s. A small fortune, then, but it was worth it, every time. I remember the advent of the frappucino — what a joyous day that was! I remember hot, tall lattes that steered me through every study break, every play rehearsal, and every homeroom hour of high school. I remember drinking six or seven cups of the burnt, bitter, totally ordinary, yet totally reliable brew that was churned out all over the Columbia campus for each and every day of my college career. I remember discovering real espresso in Italy during my sophomore year, and wishing that one day I might squander a paycheck on an espresso machine. Sigh. So many beautiful memories.

If coffee is so divine and dear to me, why bother writing about it at all? Why not simply guzzle it to my heart’s content, and be done with it? Well, here’s the thing: coffee’s not exactly awesome for you. It’s heavily acidic, which is bad news for reasons I’ve discussed many a time. It’s dehydrating, which is no fun. It’s a stimulant, which means it exerts stress on your adrenal system and keeps your body in a constant state of over-stimulation and recovery. Drinking too much coffee has been linked to fatigue, foggy headedness, cranky moods, and weakened immunity. And, if you suffer from IBS or a sensitive belly, coffee is very likely to exacerbate your symptoms and prompt attacks.

The news isn’t all terrible. As you’ve probably read, moderate coffee consumption has been linked to some good things, too: reduction of headaches, mood elevation, and even a decrease in changes of Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and colon cancer. I’m not totally convinced about the latter claim, but I do think that coffee can boost athletic performance, increase alertness, and (perhaps) offer us some antioxidants. Which is why I hold firm in my insistence that drinking a cup or two of coffee each day is far less harmful than eating poor, processed, and impossible to digest foods on a regular basis. But let’s get real here. Coffee ain’t kale. It ain’t green juice. It isn’t health food. There may be purported benefits, but at the end of the day, I’d suggest that the known downsides of coffee probably outweigh the potential upsides. And because it’s acidifying and can irritate digestion, it’s fairly at odds with the rest of the things I try to do for my body.

Two years ago, I decided that it was time to wean myself off. I had just quit smoking: how tough could coffee be? The answer is, relatively un-tough. Compared to the misery of quitting smoking, ditching coffee seemed like a piece of cake (OK, maybe not quite, but it wasn’t painful, either). I missed the taste quite a lot, but I didn’t seem to suffer any significant withdrawal, and my tummy certainly felt good without it. Green juice gave me the jolt I needed, and I wasn’t suddenly lacking in energy, so it seemed to me that I could and should vow to do without coffee for good. If I didn’t need it, and it wasn’t great for me, why bother?

What I left out of that reasoning was this: I may not need coffee, but I love it. Dearly. And because I ignored that crucial factor — pleasure — my coffee hiatus was not meant to last.

A few months ago, I find myself craving my morning joe. A lot. So I had a cup. And one became another. And another. And another. And, like the dysfunctional, yet stubbornly persistent ex-boyfriend I thought I’d kicked to the curb, coffee crept back into my life in the weeks that followed, guilty cup by guilty cup. Today, as I write this, I’ve gone from stolen sips of espresso and furtive trips to the office coffee maker to brewing at home each morning. So much for quitting.

Today, my friend Kristen posted an excellent article on how to kick a caffeine habit. In it, she offered many of the tips I offer to clients myself: sip juice each morning; try Teechino; depend on caffinated teas, and then move to herbal tea; try warm almond milk with cocoa powder to satisfy a craving. Awesome tips, Kristen! I couldn’t have said it better myself. The problem is that it’s not caffeine I’m addicted to. It’s coffee. I’m actually not particularly responsive to caffeine. When days go by — and don’t worry, many still do! — when I don’t drink coffee, I don’t feel very tired or cranky. I don’t get headaches. In fact, I know darn well that green juice boosts my energy far more than coffee does.

No no, the lure of coffee isn’t the caffeine. It’s the taste, the smell, the associations. Like all true pleasures, my love of coffee can’t be replicated with a substitute. No coffee-like beverage — not tea, not Teecino, and certainly not grain coffee — tastes as good to me as the real thing. And since it’s not caffeine per se that I want, but coffee itself, I’ve virtually no interest in anything that’s meant to seem like coffee, or simply to deliver some caffeine. When I quit smoking, the idea of nicorette gum seemed absurd to me. How on earth would a little nugget of nicotine help me get over my adoration of the smell, taste, and sensation of smoking? Well, ditto for coffee. You can keep the Teecino, thanks. If I’m going to drink something coffee-like, it’ll be the real thing, or nothing at all.

What about green juice, you ask? Doesn’t that help? In a word, no. Green juice is heavenly: in many ways, it’s my idea of lifeblood. But for me, it offers an entirely different experience than drinking coffee. The two can’t even be compared, and I don’t see how one is supposed to supplant the other. Of course I love and drink juice. But it’s no stand in for my tall, dark, and handsome morning bean.

So where does that leave me? Well, let me break out the counseling skills for a moment here. Whenever a client and I discuss the pros and cons of eating a food that’s not ideal, I ask my client not to think in terms of “good” and “bad,” but rather to consider the whole picture. Maybe a food isn’t exactly bad for him or her, but it tends to prompt overeating or binges that are bad, both physically and psychologically (many women feel this way about nuts, or sweets). On the other hand, maybe there’s a food that isn’t nutritionally ideal, but it gives my client a great deal of pleasure, and helps him or her not to feel deprived, which in turn helps maintain balance. In those cases, I’ll always say that the food should stay in my client’s life. Living without pleasure does not fit into my definition of health.

Of course, such a statement can be misused and taken to extremes: if my client’s pleasure happens to be heroin, or Big Macs for dinner each night, I’ll most likely declare that the pleasure afforded is vastly outweighed by the harm done to his or her body, and we should work on strategies to excise the habit. This is what I ultimately had to do with cigarettes. Yes, I loved them, but I knew that they did me too much harm for me to keep them around on the grounds that they gave me pleasure. With some habits, there’s no middle ground.

With coffee, fortunately, there is. Coffee’s not doing my body any favors, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not sending me to an early grave, either. I drink an eight ounce cup or less almost every day, but not every day, and I don’t return to the coffee maker all afternoon for more if I can help it. I drink the caffeinated stuff, but it doesn’t make me overly jumpy. And the nice news is that my digestive system is now so strong, and my terrible IBS such a distant memory, that coffee doesn’t send my body into spasms of discomfort. Score!

I know that this isn’t a balance that should be abused: if I were to push the envelope and drink coffee three or four times a day, I’d likely begin to feel sick. But fortunately, I won’t. I’m not perfect, but I do possess fairly impressive stores of discipline (to counteract my equally impressive stores of coffee love), and I know I won’t often go beyond the pleasureful morning cup — or perhaps an afternoon cup, if that’s my pleasure instead.

Is coffee undoing all of the good things I do for my health? Nah, I don’t think so. It’s probably making me more acidic, but the amount of juice and alkaline foods and greens I put in my body should do a fine job of counteracting that effect. It’s probably stressing my adrenal system a bit, but to be honest, my stress levels are far more responsible for any adrenal fatigue I’ve got, and I’d rather spend time working on stress management than depriving myself a sip or two of liquid joy each morning. And since my own vision of health includes certain things that aren’t necessarily biologically ideal, but boost our pleasure and enhance our waking experience, a little bit of coffee in the morning is actually not so very out of keeping with my own talk.

Don’t get me wrong: getting back together with coffee isn’t exactly something I’m proud of. If I were, I wouldn’t be writing this little wry apologia for the habit. But I do think it’s important for us all to recognize the value in certain gentle imperfections. Would I like to love coffee less, and want it less? Yes. I’d no doubt be better off. But since it does mean a lot to me, and since my life is otherwise bursting with good foods and habits, I like to think that the joys coffee affords me stack up sort of evenly with its dangers. And, after two years of trying to avoid the stuff simply because I know it’s not ideal, I’m ready to welcome it back into my life. If I can drink my green juice first, and if that sometimes satisfies my taste for morning thunder, great: I’ll skip the java. If not, well, I’ve got a lovely French press at home that’s just dying to be dusted off. And I’ll be happy to get reacquainted with it

OK, readers. You’ve stuck with me this long. Tell me: what gentle imperfections do you like to keep around? And why?

Have a lovely night, all!

xo

P.S. I highly recommend anyone who’s been following Jamie Oliver’s show — and those of you that haven’t — to check out Heather’s wonderful “insider” post on school lunch.

First of all, thank you so much for the many incredible comments you all left me yesterday. I can’t tell you how much they meant to me. My celebration was so much richer because of all the support I got from all of you. To the women who’ve emailed me about quitting, and to those quitters who shared their stories: you guys are an inspiration. Future quitters, I applaud you on your soon-to-be triumphs, and quitters, I’m inspired by your determination and success. Thank you, thank you.

So, on to the good stuff: my celebration. I didn’t originally intend for this post to be an epic poem to Pure Food and Wine, but I see now that it is. I also should apologize in advance for the lousy photo documentation. I was so eager to dive into my delicious food today that I totally forgot to take pictures of most of it! I promise to be a more efficient food chronicler next time.

I had three wishes for my quitiversary:

1)    No editing
2)    A facial
3)    Dinner with my Mom at Pure Food and Wine

The first simply meant ignoring the mountains of paper that are accumulating in my apartment. Easy. The second was enabled by a gift card I have yet to redeem from Christmas. The third was arranged by my generous mother. I also had a bonus event: lunch at One Lucky Duck with my friend Cassie. It’s always a joy to spend time with Cassie: she and I have very similar views on nutrition and health, and she was tremendously supportive about commemorating the day. We met up at 12:30 and chatted for nearly three hours—fueled by raw chocolate! We had both ordered salads (mine was a mixed green, sprout, kale, carrot, cucumber, and almond crumble mix; hers was the signature seaweed salad with miso dressing), but we came to the mutual agreement that leaving without splitting at least two of Pure’s incredible raw treats was unacceptable. It took us some time to settle on the winners, but we chose the chocolate Moon Pie and the chocolate cheesecake. Here’s what they looked like after we had already attacked them:

A close up of the cheesecake:

Dear god, these were good. The cheesecake was frighteningly authentic, and the moon pie was so, so delicious: layers of nut brownie and vanilla cream, all wrapped in a dark chocolate ganache coating. We ordered the desserts to go, thinking that we’d “taste” them and take some home, but who were we kidding? We polished both off with no trouble. Oh, and we got ice cream samples, too. That’s right. Chocolate orgy.

After the dessert lovefest, I headed uptown to Feline, one of the few really excellent spas on the Upper West Side (which is my hood).

I confess, I’m a sucker for spa treatments, possibly because I never can afford them without gift cards. I had an aromatherapy facial that was much needed after a long winter and trotted to my Mom’s fresh-faced and (nearly) ready to eat again.

Of the many people who were proud when I quit, no one was prouder—or more relieved—than my mother, who lost her own father to emphysema and throat cancer. My mom handled my smoking as she handles all issues of child-rearing: gracefully. She expressed disappointment, and she was known to hide my packs from me when I came home for Christmas (which made for some comic search operations on my part), but she was also wise enough to know that she had to let me reach the decision to quit on my own. She never patronized or preached, and for that I am forever grateful.

My mom has handled my raw journey in much the same way: wisely and respectfully. She, like most parents of the newly raw, expressed some concerns at first. But as soon as I showed her that I had educated myself about the nutrition, she not only respected my new lifestyle, but started making efforts to participate in it—from calling me from the supermarket as she’s comparing cereal brands to making real changes in her own diet. She’s ditched the Splenda for agave nectar and begun cooking vegan meals at home—could I ask for a more supportive parent?

Which is why I was so happy to take her to my favorite dining spot in the city. I probably don’t need to wax poetic about the joys of Pure to you guys—some of you have eaten there, and others have read all about it. But to be brief: the place is unsurpassable. Dearly though I love most vegan restaurants in NYC, many still feel a bit too “healthy” for mainstream diners (which is most of my friends and family). They’re tasty, but they’re cramped, and they smell like wheatgrass. Sarma Melngailis’s genius was to make Pure a lush, sexy dining environment—a seductive place for raw foodists and omnivores alike—and to endow it with an extensive cocktail, wine, and dessert menu. (My ex, who lives on a diet of meat and cupcakes, would go to Pure for the master cleanse martini and the classic sundae.) The food is seasonal, astonishingly creative, and always delicious. I have yet to take a diner there who left without awe, and no matter how many times I eat there, I’m amazed, too.

I knew what was on my wish list for the night: the asparagus Sushi Rolls with mirin soaked forest mushrooms avocado, red pepper, and scallion, followed by my old favorite, the S&M salad (which I described in a post last week). I also knew what I was ordering my Mom to get: the Caesar salad with pignoli parmesan and the heirloom tomato lasagna with basil-pistachio pesto, sundried tomato sauce, and pignoli ricotta. The latter two are, I think, the most accessible menu items for raw newcomers. And when the first course came, Mom was thrilled. Here’s a photo of the food, after we started eating – sorry!

(The sushi “rice,” if you’re curious, is a mixture of jicama and pine nuts: it’s something I’ve made at home, and it’s totally delicious!)

And of course I forgot to snap pictures of the entrees. We were way too busy chatting and pigging out. Fortunately, there are numerous photos of the lasagna floating around, so here’s a sample of what it looks like:

Finally, we ordered the mint ice cream sundae for dessert. That’s right, kids, I ate not one, but three Pure desserts yesterday, and I savored every single bite. I should commemorate personal anniversaries more often.

Mom loved her meal, and she even noted an hour later that she felt totally satisfied, and yet not full—ah, the joys of eating raw!

All in all, it was a really special day, and I’m so happy that I shared it with all of you. I’ll be back tomorrow with a new recipe, and I hope in the meantime that your weeks are off to a good start! xo

Hello, all. Hope you’re having a terrific weekend. I’m about to head out to a day of celebratory festivities, since it’s a very special occasion for me. Today is my one year quitiversary: that is, the one year anniversary of the day I quit smoking. So prepare yourselves for an unusually candid post.

Anyone who has met me in the last year will invariably exclaim: you’re so perfect. Do you have any vices? I won’t deny that I live a very healthy lifestyle nowadays. Most popular varieties of vice (drinking, drugs, infidelity, sloth) kind of bore me. But you’ll all be surprised to know that I’m a former smoker, and not only that: I’m a former heavy smoker.

I remember my first. I was seventeen. It wasn’t peer pressure, or booze, or the media. It was plain old curiosity. I bought a pack during a free period at school, walked to central park, sat on a bench, and lit up. It tasted, as most cigarettes will to the uninitiated, pretty bad. But even in spite of that, it was incredibly seductive. It made me a little anxious, a little high—it felt like a coffee buzz, but better. And when I got back to class and smelled the rich scent of tobacco on my hands, I had a premonition: I’m screwed.

No, I didn’t pick up the habit right away. It took college life for that to happen: when you live in a small apartment with your very vigilant mother, it’s not easy to mask a habit. But then I got to Columbia, a schoolyard for the urbane, the neurotic, and the nicotine-happy. Giant stone urns, filled with sand and brimming over with butts, stood outside each building. As on any campus, students gathered before class, after class, and during class to get their fix. And within a month of my freshman year, I joined their company.

For the next seven years, I was a smoker. I wasn’t a social smoker. I didn’t smoke when I was drinking. I didn’t smoke once in a while. I smoked. Period. I smoked a pack a day until the year before I quit. And, truth be told, I relished every cigarette I ever had.

I smoked in with my morning coffee. I smoked when I got home from work (to “unwind”). I smoked during my lunch break. I smoked after meals. I smoked after sex. I smoked after the gym—it was my reward, I reasoned. I smoked when I drank, and I smoke when I was sober. I smoke when I was stressed, and I smoked when I was mellow. I smoked when I was healthy, and when I was sick (I smoked right through strep throat once; another time, I smoked myself from bronchitis into walking pneumonia). I smoked after tears (I always thought that cigarettes tasted particularly wonderful after a good cry) and when I was happy. I smoked indoors and outdoors. Through good times and bad, ups and downs, I smoked.

That I was also a vegetarian, and then a vegan, didn’t seem to deter me. That I exercised daily didn’t deter me. That I had made those choices under the rubric of being “healthy” didn’t really deter me, either. One day it was easy to quit drinking; it was still inconceivable to quit the smokes.

When I told this story to my friend Mary, she laughed and said, “Gena, you’re such a New Yorker, in all the best ways.” That is a huge compliment—one of the best I could imagine—but really, my smoking habit was nothing to take pride in, and it didn’t even have much to do with my being from New York. It was pretty hypocritical. I valued a healthy lifestyle, but I made exceptions for the unhealthy habits that I happened to like the most? My doctor once chuckled during a physical and asked, “how does it feel to be undoing all of the incredible things you do for your body? Because that’s what you’re doing.”

I’m not sure of when exactly it was that I decided to quit. The rumblings began two years ago. I was fully vegan at that point; I had just gotten out of an unhealthy relationship and given up the sauce, and I felt great. Why, I wondered, couldn’t I just give up the cancer sticks, too? Over the next year, I tossed the idea around in my head. What would it mean not to smoke anymore? How would I end meals? What would I do at 4 PM when I was tired, or stressed out at the office? What would I do as I waited for people outside of restaurants when they were running late? How would I stay focused when I was editing? What would I do with my hands while I was talking on the phone?

Then I went to Mexico on an eight day yoga retreat. And for the first time in seven years, I went a day without smoking. Then two, then three, then four. I wasn’t trying: I was practicing three hours of yoga a day, running every morning, and cigarettes simply didn’t cross my mind. When I realized how long it had been, it occurred to me that I’d been given a gift: nearly a week without nicotine. Don’t they say that it only takes a week or so for the junk to leave your system, and the rest is all mental? Whatever the case, I knew I’d never have another chance to go five days without any of my triggers: stress, NYC, editing deadlines, etc. So I decided to quit, right then and there.

On April 19th, (in the grips of a lousy case of Montezuma’s revenge), I smoked my last cigarette outside of the Cancun International Airport. I threw the rest of my pack away, came back to New York, and with a few exceptions (like the morning my then boyfriend moved to LA), I haven’t smoked since.

At first, I didn’t feel so bad, and I thought to myself that perhaps I was special, and it wouldn’t be terrible for me. Maybe the armor of my healthy living would magically protect me from nicotine withdrawal. Then it hit me. First came the quitter’s flu. For those of you who don’t know, this is a four-day ailment that looks and feels a whole lot like the real flu: headache, fever, sore throat, cough. It’s actually your lungs cleaning themselves. Then came headaches: dull, achey, unrelenting pains behind my forehead that persisted for days at a time. Then came lousy moods. I was short tempered, cranky, and irritable from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed.

This didn’t last too long, at least not in my case: after three weeks, the worst had passed. But in many ways, the hardest was yet to come. What hurt the most wasn’t the headaches, or lousy moods, or irritability. It was my sense of loss. For many quitters, it’s social gatherings that prove the most trying: being at bars and not being able to run outside for a cigarette; not being able to light up at outdoor concerts; not joining coworkers for midday smoking breaks (interestingly, there’s much research to prove that social smokers have the hardest time quitting: because they associate smoking so deeply with activities that they continue to engage in, they can’t seem to disassociate and break free of the pattern. Chain smokers know that they’ll have to make universal change, and they approach quitting prepared to do it).

And these things were hard, believe me. Hardest, though, were the hours after I’d gotten home from work. For seven years straight, this was the time when smoking helped me to relax. More importantly, these were the quiet, contemplative hours when smoking gave me company, bolstered me against negative feelings or a sense of isolation. Many recovering alcoholics describe a dread of evenings, a fear of coming home and not being able to pour themselves a drink. As a friend who was trying to sober up once put it to me, “What will I do if I have to be alone with my thoughts?” I wasn’t afraid of my thoughts, but I did feel, suddenly, very alone. Cigarettes were my little friends, and I missed them.

I missed a part of myself, too. Gone was the type-A woman who inhaled a cigarette on her rushed morning commute. Gone was the convivial colleague who went downstairs for chatty smokes during the day. Gone was the girl who lingered at parties so that she could get to know the smokers outside. Gone was the stress-addled editor-on-a-deadline, who chain smoked out her kitchen window as she worked into the wee hours. When I told my friend Jordan that I had quit, he expressed huge admiration, but also confessed, “I dunno. It’s just hard to imagine you without envisioning you outside John Jay [our freshman dorm] with a cigarette in your hand.”

Hey, it was hard for me to imagine myself without a cigarette in my hand, too. As we all know, smoking is a habit, but it’s also an aesthetic. From images of old Hollywood to passages in Fitzgerald novels to the downright erotic billows of cigarette smoke curling around Don Draper’s shoulders in an episode of Mad Men, cigarettes carry heavy connotations: sex, seduction, cool, fashion, aloofness. I never smoked to impress my peers, but I did fall for all the symbolism, the style, the timeless lure. And I missed it.

I wish I could say that it got easy quickly. It didn’t. It got easier, but it took months. Certain things helped. The fact that I could suddenly run a few miles without heaving helped. The energy I woke up with every day helped. The bright skin helped. My cowkers helped, with sweet emails and encouragement. My friends helped with their support. The look of utter, unabashed relief on my mother’s face when I told her I hadn’t smoked for a month helped.

Someone else helped, too: she’s a blogger you all know and love. I emailed Kath just as I was quitting and told her how rough it was. She responded with a bright, cheery email telling me that, every time I was being dragged down by a craving, I could email her. She said she’d email right back and encourage me to keep up the good work. And believe me, she made good on that promise. Her emails ranged from the sweet to the hilarious (I wish I had saved them, but the verbiage went something like, “think about how you’ll feel if you don’t have a cigarette. Proud. Strong. Now think about how you’ll feel after one. Gross. Dissapointed. Unhealthy.”) She also gave me another great suggestion: every time I had a craving, she said, I should go do some sit-ups or planks. Soon, I’d come to associate the urge to smoke with upper body strength. Well, the Pavlovian conditioning worked. Within a month, I was making it though my 4 PM office jitters with stronger shoulders to boot.

Evenings were hardest. Each night, I sat at home, my right hand (the smoking hand) itching for the feel of a cigarette between my fingers, and fighting the impulse to run to the corner deli and pick up a pack. Each night, I promised myself that, if it all became too terrible, I could buy a pack tomorrow. But I just had to get through the night. Getting through the night turned into getting through the week, then the month, then the year.

And so it went, until the day (and I don’t remember which day it was, but it was early summer) when I realized that I hadn’t thought about cigarettes in a while. Hadn’t remembered them fondly, hadn’t lusted after them, hadn’t sniffed them outside and reminisced. After that moment, I think, it all became much easier.

Now, a year later, it seems a bit crazy to think that smoking ever figured so prominently in my life. It’s like trying to remember the intensity of being in love with someone long after you’ve fallen out of it: you know it occupied every corner of your consciousness for a while, that it obsessed you, that there wasn’t anything you did without thinking about the love object. But you simply can’t evoke that feeling again. I loved cigarettes. Some people smoke because they’re addicts; I was an addict, but I also savored the taste, feel, smell, and ritual. But I am, fortunately, no longer in love. I still feel pangs every now and then, but for the most part, it’s ancient history.

I wish I could give you some prescriptive advice here, magic tricks that helped me. I’ll say that quitting cold turkey was the best way to go. I’m a compulsive person, and if I had started with Nicorette I don’t doubt I’d have gotten hooked on that, too. Tea, oddly, helped: I think it satisfied the oral fixation (I like ginger tea). Running and exercising definitely helped. Drinking more coffee than I usually do helped, too: I needed to re-create the buzz, at least for a while. The push up trick definitely helped.

At the end of the day, though, it was a matter of determination. Quitting smoking, like giving up any bad habit, is predicated entirely on willpower. No one can make the process easy for you. So you’ve got to call upon your biggest reserves of inner strength. Those of you who have achieved healthy weight loss know a lot about those reserves: the commitment it takes to keep pursuing a healthy goal in spite of so many impulses to give up, skip the gym, and attack the Haagen-Daaz. Those of you who are recovering from disordered eating know a whole lot about it, too: the courage it takes to keep moving back towards normalcy, even when you secretly want nothing more than to stay skinny and stay sick. Will power doesn’t just manifest itself in the obvious or dramatic scenarios, like quitting smoking: we need to use each and every time we choose to do what’s hard instead of what’s easy, what’s new instead of what’s familiar, what’s ultimately rewarding versus what’s momentarily pleasing.

If you take anything away from this post, I hope it’s a sense of possibility, an assurance that there is an ultimate reward for all the willpower you’re trying to muster. Whatever your goal is—whether you’re trying to quit smoking yourself, trying to lose ten pounds, trying to gain ten pounds, or simply trying to eat and live in a healthier way—you can achieve it. (If you’re trying to eat raw, you can achieve that, too.) There was a time when I believed I’d never be able to kick smoking: I didn’t want to, and I didn’t think I could. It took me a while to really want to quit, but once I did, I shocked myself with my own steadfastness. You can—and will—too.

In honor of my quitiversary, I invite anyone who’s really struggling to quit smoking (and reading this post) to shoot me an email if you need to. I will, as Kath was, be happy to write back encouraging words when they’re most needed. I know how it is, and believe me, I’m here to help. So don’t hesitate to reach out.

I won’t pretend it’s always easy, even now. Springtime is the hardest, for me: the smokers are starting to emerge from hibernation, dotting the sidewalks and releasing seductive clouds of tobacco into the air, and I miss being one of them. The other day on my walk home, I was behind a smoker. At one point I caught a whiff of her cigarette and was so overwhelmed with nostalgia that I almost burst into tears on the sidewalk. But it does, I promise, get easier. So hang in there. Be encouraged by this. And good luck. xo