How many calories are in a cigarette?
Cigarettes are a product that is in your life every day if you are a smoker. If it has become a question of losing weight or gaining weight, how do cigarettes affect that? Do they provide extra calories to your body? In this article, we will look at what the caloric content of cigarettes is and determine the number of calories contained in cigarettes, vapes and hookahs and find out if these products can affect our fitness.
Calories in Cigarettes
You may have noticed that you don’t feel like eating after smoking cigarettes. And some people get the impression that this is because cigarettes are calorie-dense. But in fact they don’t. There are no calories in cigarettes. The structure of a cigarette consists of paper, tobacco and filter – you can read more about the structure of a cigarette in this article What are cigarettes made of? The main components.
So, a cigarette is an ordinary paper cylinder filled with tobacco, burning and releasing smoke. So, tobacco has no calories in the form in which you consume it, and therefore cigarettes are a calorie-free product.
It is also known that a small number of smokers may experience hunger due to stomach irritation from nicotine. However, this has nothing to do with the caloric content of cigarettes and the fiction that cigarettes “burn calories.
Do cigarettes help you lose weight?
Smoking speeds up your metabolism, if you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, your body uses 250 calories daily. But you have to be careful here, because if you decide to quit smoking, your metabolism slows down and there is a chance of gaining weight in the first few weeks of quitting cigarettes.
So technically smoking contributes to consuming less food, but in general smoking has no effect on the weight loss process.
Caloric content of vapes and bongs
Yes, vapes and hookahs contain calories, but the amount is very small. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Caloric content of vapes
Vaping is the process of inhaling vapor from a liquid containing nicotine and other chemicals that are heated with an electronic cigarette or vape. The most common ingredients used in vaping are: vegetable glycerin – similar to a thick colorless liquid, odorless, also used in sweets, and propylene glycol – a clear liquid odorless, but has a sweet taste, also used to make sweets. These ingredients are said to contain up to 4 calories per ml. Various flavorings can also be added, mostly with zero calories. On average, 1 container of liquid has 30-50 calories, in one session of vaping, the caloric value of a vape can range from 0 to 15 calories, that is, this caloric value is insignificant when used for the body.
In addition, some vapes have a high sugar content, which can add some calories. For example, fruit-flavored vapes often contain extra sugar, adding a few extra calories. Even so, the caloric content of a vape is negligible and does not affect your weight.
Hookah Calories
It’s a similar story with hookahs. If you mention the structure of a hookah, it is water, tobacco with different applications and a special charcoal for heating. By adding flavor enhancers to the tobacco, it becomes sweet. The tobacco used in a hookah contains a minimal amount of calories, which means that the caloric content of the hookah is also negligible . It depends on the size and duration of the hookah session. On average, the caloric value of hookah is up to 15 calories, the main part of which is accounted for by different flavorings containing sugars.
However, when smoking hookah, the smoker may consume additional calories as a result of using different types of drinks and snacks. For example, it is common to consume fruits, sweets, and flavored drinks that may contain additional calories while smoking a hookah. It is this factor that can form the erroneous assumption that hookahs affect weight.
Obviously, the caloric content of cigarettes, vapes and hookahs is low, but that does not mean that they cannot lead to negative health consequences. Smoking all types of tobacco and using vapes and hookahs is associated with an increased risk of developing various diseases such as cancer, heart and respiratory diseases, diabetes and others.
Weight control is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, but using smoking to lose weight is unhealthy and dangerous. There are many other ways to control weight, such as eating right and exercising regularly, that are safe and effective.
