At a birthday party recently, someone asked me the question I get asked constantly, in person, in messages, in comments: what’s your secret?
The person asking was smoking at the time. I said, “You wouldn’t listen.”
Someone else nearby said, “I’ll listen.” So I said, “You need to stop smoking, for a start.”
Silence.
That’s the real answer nobody wants, because it isn’t a supplement, a food, or a five-minute morning routine. It’s the accumulation of choices, most of them inconvenient, made consistently over years. No cigarettes. Real food, most of the time, prepared rather than packaged. Sleep treated as non-negotiable rather than optional. None of that fits in a caption.
I understand why people want a single answer. A shortcut feels achievable. “Quit smoking” doesn’t, because it asks you to give something up rather than add something new.
But here’s the nutrition-specific piece of it, because quitting a habit isn’t the whole picture. What you eat either supports your body’s recovery from damage like this or leaves it to cope alone. Smoking depletes key nutrients, particularly vitamin C and other antioxidants, faster than most diets replace them, so even someone eating reasonably well while smoking is often running a deficit they don’t realise. That’s exactly what I test for and correct in client work: not “eat healthier” in the abstract, but identifying precisely what a depleted body is short of, and correcting it directly.
So if you’re asking me the question at a party, my honest answer is still the one that got me silence that night. Stop what’s actively working against you first. Then feed your body properly. There isn’t a version of this that’s easier than that, but there is a version that works.
Prevention rather than cure.
Milvia Pili
Functional Nutritional Therapist
