Addressing women's concerns about weight gain due to smoking cessation

Specific concerns about weight gain following smoking cessation inhibit attempts to quit smoking, especially in women. However, adjunct interventions to prevent weight gain after cessation have generally been successful only in attenuating, rather than preventing, weight gain. More aggressive weight control adjuncts may be necessary to prevent cessation-induced weight gain. On the other hand, weight control programs have not been found to improve long-term smoking abstinence and, in fact, may actually impede abstinence, necessitating a search for alternative approaches to addressing weight concerns. Since the typical amount of weight gain is essentially trivial from a health standpoint, particularly when compared with the health benefits of quitting smoking, the most appropriate clinical strategy may be to combat the weight concerns themselves rather than the weight gain. A second alternative approach is to focus all treatment efforts on smoking cessation alone, to avoid placing excessive burdens on participants resulting from attempting simultaneous changes in multiple health behaviors (i.e., smoking and those related to weight). The rationales for these three clinical approaches to addressing concerns about weight gain-more effective weight control, direct reduction in weight concerns by cognitive-behavioral treatment, and smoking cessation only-are presented, followed by descriptions of the adjunct treatments based on these approaches currently being evaluated in a clinical outcome study with women trying to quit smoking.