  we've all heard how after people stop smoking they gain weight and how alcohol can give you a beer gut... well, if you give an individual who smokes a pack a day a 2000 calorie diet and then have him abstain from smoking (while maintaining the same diet), he will gain weight.
apparently the inhaled smoke is so caustic to lung tissue that a person uses a large percentage of the caloric intake to simply repair the damage (and it's this constant need to repair the lung tissue that leads to the development of cancer). so once the trama-inducing substance is removed, the body now has excess calories that end up being stored as fat. as for the beer gut, ethanol metabolism lowers the reduction potential of liver cells, thus making the synthesis of fatty acids much easier. which is why in chronic alcohol use, the first sign of damage is a yellow, fatty liver. MORAL OF THE STORY #1: smoking and ethanol can fuck you up MORAL OF THE STORY #2: overweight? then become anorexic and take up smoking... if the smoking itself doesn't help you lose weight, the lung cancer will 
