DR. WALLACE: I'm a female college student who has used this summer to make up my mind that I'm going to finally quit smoking. I wish I could tell you that I just picked up vaping or some other fad within the last couple of months and now I'm going to try to quit it, but the sad truth is I've been smoking cigarettes daily for almost three years now!

I know it won't be easy to quit, but I'm pretty hardheaded and once I make up my mind to do something, I can almost always do it. My birthday is in mid-August, and I promised myself that I'm going to quit either on my birthday or in the early days of that month so that either way my birthday will be smoke-free. However, I'm concerned about gaining weight and a lot of people I've talked to who have successfully quit smoking told me that they went through a pretty brutal weight gain during the first year after they quit smoking. If I can quit smoking successfully, how can I best aim to keep the weight off at the same time? — Quitting is My Birthday Gift to Myself, via email

QUITTING IS MY BIRTHDAY GIFT TO MYSELF: Indeed, the average person gains somewhere around 5% or slightly more of their body weight within the first six months to a year after they quit smoking. But remember, that's only an average, as some people gain more weight, and some others gain only marginal weight or even nothing at all!

I have two thoughts about this topic, and the first one is to make quitting smoking your burning priority above all else. Quitting at this young age will really help your body a lot throughout your lifetime. Whether you gain some weight or not afterwards is a secondary issue and not as urgently important as it is for you to quit smoking permanently.

Having said that, one of the best ways to replace the oral fixation of smoking is to eat healthy snacks and plan to graze on small portions throughout the day in between your regular meals.

Find pieces of fruit or vegetables, things like small carrot bites, celery, broccoli, and so forth that can give you something to graze on regularly without adding a lot of calories. But my overall advice to you is to not go back to smoking simply because you might find yourself adding a little weight as you go through the process. Remember that you can also exercise more and burn extra calories to battle any weight gain you might experience.

HE WAS FIRED FOR THEFT SO HE'S NOT WELCOME

DR. WALLACE: I'm a female college student and my roommates and I were thinking of having an end-of-summer barbecue in the backyard of our rental townhouse near our campus. We decided on how many people we wanted to invite, how much food we would need and so forth. When I was drawing up my list of friends to invite, I noticed that there would be one potential dilemma.

One of my girlfriends who I would normally invite to these types of events has recently started dating a guy that I'm aware of, and who actually worked for a while for our family business. He got into a tremendous argument with my father, as my father caught him stealing inventory from the business. My father apologized to the rest of our family, saying that he should never have hired this individual, as he overlooked some potential warning signs at the time he brought him on board.

This guy knows exactly who I am, and I wouldn't be comfortable having him at this event. My question to you is, should I just not invite this girlfriend at all, or should I explain the situation to her and let her decide if she wants to come alone to the party or not? What's holding me back is the fact that I'm not sure she's aware of what happened between this guy and our family. — It's a Delicate Situation, via email

IT'S A DELICATE SITUATION: You can, of course, simply do your best to ignore this situation and accordingly not invite your friend, but that won't resolve the long-term issue you're likely to face at some point anyway. Unless this friend of yours stops seeing this guy socially, at some point, you're going to come into contact with the two of them.

Therefore, it may be best for you to find a way to talk to her in person about what is going on and why you would like to invite her if she's willing to come alone without her date. Do your best to be diplomatic when you explain things to her and don't get into any innuendos or disparaging comments. You can simply and correctly say it was between him and your father, but that he is no longer working for your family's business and did not leave on good terms.

From there, your friend can make up her mind as to whether or not she would like to attend your event on her own without bringing this specific person as her date.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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