David M. Hinds Discusses New Book

David M. Hinds is back with his new book Slimline Secrets: Quit Smoking which is designed to help you kick the habit.

And it is something that David knows plenty about after his smoking habit had a serious impact on his health.

I caught up with him to talk about the book, his own experiences and why it is so hard to quit.

- Slimline Secrets: Quit Smoking is your new book so can you tell me a little bit about it?

Anyone who has ever quit by any method has done so by exercising willpower. Smoking - if you do it every day - is a multidimensional addiction that requires release on 4 different but interlocking levels: physical, emotional, subconscious, and right here in the conscious reality of life.

The aim of the book is to give readers the know-how and mental toughness to manufacture and nurture willpower within their mind so that they can negotiate the minefield of post quit cravings and temptations even if they have the backbone of a caterpillar and the willpower of a field mouse.

With the use of stress management techniques adapted from my award-winning consultancy, readers quickly discover how to adopt the mind-set of a non-smoker enabling them to quit and stay quit for the all-important 6 month benchmark.

This is ground-breaking progress because once you’ve made it through the mid-year barrier; you are almost guaranteed to remain a non-smoker forever.
 
- The beginning of a new year sees many smokers make a resolution to kick the habit so why does the allure of a cigarette prove too much?

The short answer is a natural aversion to pain, discomfort, deprivation and change. The craving for nicotine in tobacco products is only part of the explanation for the exceedingly high drop-out rate that peaks at around 93% - 95% by the middle of the year. The underlying culprit is the sheer complexity of the smoking phenomenon.

Quitters are bombarded time and time again in the early days, weeks and months of cessation with stimulation from the 7 classic causes of smoking: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

In Slimline Secrets: Quit Smoking readers are introduced to simple but effective mind exercises that convert these classic causes of smoking into actual causes of cessation, making permanent cessation do-able for anyone willing to fully participate in the exercises of their own free will.

The mind exercises are designed to take the sting out of the cessation process before quitting commences so that you can start the book a smoker and, by the end, you’ve quit smoking for good.
 
- A staggering 93% of people fail on the NHS programme so why do you think this is the case?

The quit industry thrives on false, misleading and recycled claims. The NHS Smokefree initiative which is, in effect, directed but not administered by the pharmaceutical Goliaths, will dispute these figures even though I will stake my reputation on their authenticity and accuracy.

Exhaustive clinical studies into the effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) by acknowledged world experts Dr. John R. Hughes and Dr. Saul Shiffman whose credentials and findings are beyond reproach record success rates of 7% for NRT at the earliest meaningful benchmark of 6 months.

That, for the non-mathematicians amongst you is a failure rate of 93% for the likes of patches, gums, lozenges, inhalators and mouth sprays whether you obtain them over the counter from Boots, via the internet or free on the NHS.

You ask me why I think so many people fail on the NHS Smokefree programme.  Allow me to ask you one question first, the answer to which I believe will reveal all. If you used NRT, quit for 4 weeks and then relapsed and resumed smoking, would you consider yourself to be a non-smoker? I thought not!

But in the NHS Stop Smoking Service records you will be recorded as a successful quitter at just 4 weeks! And that erroneous statistic will authenticate the already much-inflated claims of the pharmacological support used.

Scandalous, isn’t it? But it gets worse! Let’s say you keep on trying to quit on the NHS twice a year ad infinitum and the outcome for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th attempts are much the same as in the above example.

While you are ‘a work in progress,’ the quitting industry is a serial winner with one or other of the above products credited with ‘your successes’.

Yet more dodgy statistics and a mountain of money for the manufacturers at the taxpayers’ expense! Don’t blame yourself exclusively if you used NRT in good faith and saw your New Year Resolution go up in smoke. Perhaps the blame lies elsewhere?

- Is the blame fully to lie with the NHS or do those trying to quit just not have enough willpower?

I blame the present government, particularly the Chief Medical Officer along with NHS bosses for allowing these pharmacological bankers to infiltrate and abuse our precious National Health Service in the name of profit: profit for failure! Never in history has a greater array of pharmacological quitting products that promised to double cessation rates fooled so many people - many of them in a position to know better!

NRT products release nicotine into the bloodstream to help counter cravings for nicotine in tobacco products. In this very limited objective they succeed, but that does not help would-be quitters to give up smoking.

It prolongs the nicotine elimination process which would normally take a mere 3 days. Personally, I think NRT is unethical, worthless and an abuse of the word ‘therapy’. NRT relies on the medical profession for its legitimacy and the ‘patient’s’ willpower for the major ingredient of the ‘cure’.

The NHS Stop Smoking Services then seek to take credit for a dubious ‘quit’ which is outrageously premature at just 4 weeks. Smokers are deceived into believing that these products will make it easier to quit.

They are brainwashed into believing that they cannot quit without these ridiculous supports. Respectable nurses doubling as ‘community smoking cessation advisers’ after receiving 1½ days ‘unbiased’ quit training from, yes, you guessed it, the pharmaceutical companies or their agents, complete the masquerade.

- So what tips and techniques does your book cover when it comes to giving up the fags?

The book is designed to be a comprehensive quit solution that can be relied on to work when the concept is embraced in its entirety and all of the mind exercises are completed.

It can be counterproductive and even misleading to showcase tips and techniques piecemeal and out of context. Let me give you an example of why. On page 3 there is a warning to readers not obstruct the effectiveness of this stand-alone quit smoking system by combining it with manufactured nicotine replacement therapy products (NRT).

On page 137 there is a simple but effective tip to overcome cravings for nicotine: Take a fresh orange, peel it and break it into segments. Place one or two segments into your mouth and suck. Now get up and do something - anything!

There, the craving has gone. But, like many of my techniques, this cannot be relied upon to work repeatedly if the reader is wearing a patch or using other NRT supports. Slimline Secrets: Quit Smoking and NRT are simply not compatible.

Likewise, if a busy reader rushes ahead to the heart of the system, without working her way steadily through from beginning to end, engaging with the mind exercises, it will be like going into battle with a formidable enemy blindfolded with one hand tied behind her back.

- Many people, women in particular, worry about putting on weight when they quit smoking so what is your advice to stop replacing cigarettes with food?

They will put on weight when they quit and unless they intend to starve or abuse themselves, there is nothing they can do about it in the short-term. Bestselling books that claim on the cover: Quit Without Putting On Weight are deceiving the majority of their readers even before they get to page 1.

This is because, until the age of 55, there is a normal weight gain with aging that poisonous toxins from smoking have interfered with. This natural weight gain is around 1 pound for every 3 or 4 years, adding up to 6-8 pounds for a non-smoker over 20 years.

It is this ‘missing’ weight that returns when a smoker quits. Women should not allow themselves to be unduly worried about this because once this natural adjustment has taken place; they can work off those extra pounds with exercise and a sensible diet over time.

I advise eating 3 meals a day during the quitting process and to avoid snacking and heavy drinking. Substitute fresh fruit juice for alcohol now and again. Think of all that extra money and vitality they will have by quitting! A twice-weekly work out at the gym or the swimming pool will soon get their figure back in trim.

Choose a health club with a sauna, steam room and whirlpool so that the experience is always a treat, not a chore. A brisk walk, instead of a snack, will work wonders.

- There is a whole host of books on quitting smoking what makes yours so different from the rest?

My book is 100% honest with the facts and the difficulties involved in quitting and I don’t seek to claim on the cover that quitting is easy.

That alone makes it different from the established bestsellers but crucially my book is the one that works because you quickly learn how to manufacture willpower in your own mind and adopt the mind-set of a non-smoker.

- You were a heavy smoker yourself - a habit that almost cost you your life - so how did you go about giving it up?

For 20 years I had enjoyed smoking up to 60 cigarettes a day, but one day I simply decided to pack it in and stop then and there. I have never smoked another cigarette since that moment.

This was 8 months before I suffered the first of two devastating strokes. I used willpower to quit, nothing else.

- It’s fair to say that you stunned your doctors when you made your recovery so what was it that drove to quit?

After my second stroke, which was much more severe than the first - it knocked out an entire main artery - I was never expected to make a full recovery or work again.

Although I was partially-paralyzed on one side and I could scarcely speak or comprehend the written word, the undamaged part of my brain seemed to work OK so I used my stress management expertise to mastermind my own recovery.

It took me 4 years to make the best recovery available but then I was able to write a book called After Stroke for which there is now a Slimline Secrets edition. I guess my strokes were pay-back for 20 years of unadulterated smoking. OK, but there’s life after stroke.

- How do you feel now that you have quit smoking?

It feels like freedom from slavery. It’s worth every effort because you get your life back. I can empathize with Christine Lahti, the American actress, film director and Oscar winner who said: 'I’m more proud of quitting smoking than of anything else I’ve done in my life, including winning an Oscar.'

- So why did you decide to put this help book together? And how long has it taken you to get this book together?

Following the success of my first book which was featured on This Morning with Richard and Judy, and after completing another book on depression, I was encouraged to tackle smoking cessation by friends who had quit my way.

I read all the bestsellers on the subject but I couldn’t find a single one with a system to generate that all-important commodity - willpower - so I decided to put my stress management expertise to work and have a crack at creating my own system.

This proved to be my toughest challenge to date and time-consuming in the extreme: 3½ years in total! The system itself evolved with greater ease than I had expected.

The tough bit was reducing a fully comprehensive quit manual covering every aspect of permanent cessation to a portable pocket-size because accessibility is everything when you could be in danger of relapse.

- For anyone who is having a tough time quitting or doesn't believe that they can what words of encouragement do you have for them? 

Only 2% of quitters find it easy to quit, the rest of us have to work at it. The more you persevere, the easier it gets.

Cravings, on average, only last for 2 minutes - less than the time it takes to smoke a fag. Get up, move, do something, anything, to distract yourself. Avoid dwelling on the thought of a fag!

For less than the price of one packet of cigarettes, you can get hold of the paperback edition of Slimline Secrets: Quit Smoking or you can download the eBook to your phone. Find out more at www.slimlinesecrets.co.uk

- Finally what's next for you?

I am looking forward to taking the book on the road later this year and meeting successful Slimline Secrets quitters. Enterprising SSQ’s will have the opportunity, if they desire, to be trained by me to counsel local would-be quitters who want a more hands-on service than simply reading the book.

Successful SSQ’s will earn a useful part-time income and provide a valuable service to their local community and, I suspect, make many appreciative new friends.

Many thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw