There is no convincing a smoker to quit. So what was the secret for Betania Victor, who used to burn through a pack a day just six years ago?<\/p>\n
\u201cFind something that makes quitting feel like a fair trade.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in Brazil and now living in Canada, Victor, 44, is an engineer by training who today works in the maritime industry. For much of her adult life, she had been sedentary<\/a> and exhausted, and she had been hooked on smoking since the age of 14.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a smoker, we like to smoke,\u201d Victor says. \u201cPeople say, \u2018You\u2019re going to die fast.\u2019 We don\u2019t care. Quitting is a sacrifice. To give up something that made me feel so good, I had to exchange it for something bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n Going cold turkey<\/p>\n That \u201csomething bigger\u201d began in her thirties when she discovered callisthenics and dance. Yet she remained a closet smoker.<\/p>\n When a shoulder injury sidelined her from callisthenics<\/a> in 2020, a friend suggested trail running and planted an absurd seed: training for an ultra-marathon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is no convincing a smoker to quit. So what was the secret for Betania Victor, who used…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[36207,229981,229979,275,13286,45410,37067,229975,59258,134,4431,18977,229982,111,139,54730,69,229980,229978,229977,229973,20789,229976,229974,2025,11038,1059],"class_list":["post-451895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ai-chatbot","tag-betania-victor","tag-blood-flow-to-the-brain","tag-canada","tag-chinese-university-of-hong-kong","tag-cigarettes","tag-e-cigarettes","tag-ear-infections","tag-erectile-dysfunction","tag-health","tag-hong-kong","tag-miscarriage","tag-nethersole-school-of-nursing","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nicotine","tag-nz","tag-pm2-5-particles","tag-poor-academic-performance","tag-respiratory-symptoms","tag-second-hand-smoke","tag-smoking","tag-sudden-infant-death-syndrome","tag-third-hand-smoke","tag-united-kingdom","tag-university-of-hong-kong","tag-vaping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}