Quit21Day 2 after quitting smokingFood starts tasting better
By Yevhenii, who smoked for 26 years · Updated 30 Oct 2026 · 2 min readWhat's happening in your body
By the end of today whatever carbon monoxide smoking had put in your blood will have left it. The second change of the day is in the nose and on the tongue. Smoke dulls the taste buds and the smell receptors high in the nose, and both start recovering as soon as the smoke stops coming. The NHS puts the first noticeable improvement at about forty-eight hours.
What to expect
Headaches are common today, and so is hunger that does not match what you have eaten. The hunger is real, not imagined. Nicotine was holding appetite down, and that brake is coming off. Smells get louder, including one you will not enjoy, the stale smoke in your own jacket, car and curtains. Until now it went unnoticed. All of this is part of the first days and eases as they pass.
Try this
Wash what smells. Then eat something with a strong clean flavour, an orange, a tomato with salt, fresh bread, and eat it slowly enough to notice. You are checking a claim, and the result will be better in a week than it is today.
What else you could do
About the hunger. Eat on a schedule rather than when it hits. Three proper meals instead of constant grazing takes care of most of it. Keep something within reach that takes a long time to chew, carrots, an apple, nuts. Drink water before reaching for food, because thirst in these first days easily reads as hunger. And do not start a diet now; day eight has more on that.
Sources. NHS Better Health, Quit smoking. Hughes, 2007.