Healthy resolutions: Can you keep them?

Stub it out: how hard is it to give up?

By BBC News 24's Louise Bevan

Millions of Britons have pledged to give up unhealthy habits for the New Year - but how many will manage it?

As Big Ben struck midnight a week ago, more than two million smokers around Britain were making a New Year resolution to quit.

If you feel a craving, get up and do something. Planning is the key

Shelley Mason, Quit

But for some, the best of intentions are already looking like an impossible goal.

Two thirds of smokers who tried to give up last year admitted that willpower alone wasn't enough.

Instead, some will now opt for nicotine replacement therapy while others have welcomed the arrival of Zyban, a new prescription drug, which works on the chemicals in the brain to block the urge to smoke - though some health authorities are restricting its use on grounds of cost.

Research by Quit, a charity which helps smokers trying to give up, suggests the key to success is planning - not just setting a date to stop, but thinking through how you're going to do it.

Shelley Mason, a Quit counsellor, told the BBC: "Nicotine is very addictive. As addictive as heroin and cocaine.

"You have to understand how difficult it can be to quit."

She has some advice from would-be habit-kickers: "Look at times when it'll be difficult to resist and plan in advance. If you feel a craving, get up and do something. Planning is the key."

No rush to judgement

The charity prides itself on helping rather than judging or chastising smokers and runs regular group sessions giving advice to people trying to quit.

By the end of a six week course, the majority of smokers have usually given up, though for some this will turn out to be only a temporary triumph.

Calls to the charity's Quitline reach a peak over the New Year holiday.

This year approximately 300 calls a day were coming in from smokers needing help, all of them answered by trained counsellors.

The drug zyban may help committed smokers quit

Shelley Mason said:: "People ring up when they have a craving and need advice. Even just to talk to someone to take their minds off it."

But some smokers like Caroline Parke have found it impossible to give up completely in one step. Instead she's trying a different approach - setting herself a deadline to quit by - her 26th birthday at the end of January.

She said: "I used to be able to run up the escalator on way to work...puffing and panting. I've Stopped smoking in the mornings now."

At the end of last year, the Government launched a new style of anti-smoking campaign with a series of television adverts using celebrities like super-model Christy Turlington and actress Troy Titus-Adams from Eastenders, herself an ex-smoker.

The commercials were aimed at the young and an attempt to dispel the image of smoking as cool.

Caroline says she's hopeful that this New Year will be the one she gives up smoking for good.

"End of January, definitely, is the deadline. I'm going to go to the gym more. Yes, definitely."