Fwiw, I lost about 4 kg of my average weight (That was about 7% of my body weight) when I stopped smoking. A couple of years down the road I also quit drinking which also decreased my average weight by another 4 kg.
(With average weight I take into consideration that I have natural, not dieting related fluctuations of about +/- 1 to 2 kg. The fluctuations are still there but the mean they deviate from is vastly different.)
Maybe I should add that I am still eating about five pounds of sugar a day and I haven’t done sports since 2012, so don’t assume that quitting smoking meant a healthier lifestyle (sadly).
Oh dear God, let me tell you, I feel my bones tickling when I read this. All these flashbacks of my parents meeting other Russian people and, all of the sudden, casually dropping the n word in conversations in public and me just freezing and praying no one overheard them. I mean it was with no mean intent (as you wrote, more like ignorance paired with custom) but if someone heard them, then they didn’t understand the context and only heard them say n*ger.