Track your Smoking Behaviours

Smoking is more than a physical addiction to nicotine. People who smoke develop powerful psychological and emotional attachments to cigarettes – and associate smoking with certain situations, people, places and feelings. Without thinking, daily habits, routines and activities can trigger the urge to smoke.

Understanding your smoking behavior can be helpful when you're quitting smoking. Keeping track of your daily tobacco use is a great way to do this. By recording when, where, why, and with whom you smoke, you will notice patterns in your smoking behavior and identify the triggers - those times, situations, feelings and even people – that cause you the most intense cravings to smoke.  Once you are aware of this, you can take steps to change these patterns and develop new coping skills and behaviours to replace the urge to smoke.

To understand your smoking behaviour, keep track of your daily cigarettes for a week using this Cigarette Tracker.  Recording when you smoke will give you an accurate account of how much you smoke, and you will begin to see patterns in your smoking behaviours. This will help you break these patterns on your road to becoming tobacco-free. 

As you track your smoking habits, take note of the situations that trigger your most intense cravings. The cigarettes you crave the most will likely be the ones you'll miss the most after you quit. Common triggers include:

• Soon after waking up
• Talking on the phone
• Having a drink
• Watching TV
• Social events
• After meals
• With friends or family
• Driving in the car
• When stressed

Dealing with Cravings: Know your Triggers

Every smoker experiences certain things that trigger the need for a cigarette. Feelings, places, situations, activities or even certain people can trigger a craving for a cigarette, and you can experience these cravings even when you are no longer going through physical nicotine withdrawal. That’s why it’s important to know your triggers (or those times when you most crave cigarettes) so that you can develop a plan for what you can do differently the next time the situation occurs.

Review your Cigarette Tracker after a week and see if you can identify any patterns to your smoking. Once you know your triggers, you can plan ahead to make the necessary changes to reduce the cravings and break your smoking patterns.

Use this Know Your Triggers chart to help you identify your own list of triggers that cause a craving to smoke. Think about what you will do differently once you quit to reduce the craving in each situation. Identify alternate things you can do instead of reaching for a cigarette. This will come in handy on your quit day.