Improving your lung capacity tips

I've search on Google etc but would like to have some tips from Marines.
What can I do to increase my lung capacity ?. I used to be a big smoker. Haven't been smoking for 3 months now.
- I run 3 miles 3 times a week. 25/26 minutes.
- I'm only eating natural food. Such as fruits and vegetables. 5 times a week I eat fish. And every once in a while I eat meat.

I seriously need to increase my lung capacity. Is there a particular exercise that I can do?.
Is water so important when running?
Should I go running after I eat my meal or before?

Thanks,
Nick.

Water aerobics with water weights.....

Blow up ballons....

Breath through a 1/2" tube.....Breath in slowly exhale

It doesn't matter when you run, you burn calories even after exercise, for hours.

Include sprints in your running workout. You have to exercise your fast-twitching muscles which will increase your speed on your short 3-mile runs. I would typically run my 3-mile PFT runs around 18-19 minutes before I started doing sprint workouts. I eventually dropped my run time into the 16 minute range, and even ran a 15:50 3-mile run. You almost have to sprint the entire 3 miles which is why I advocate sprint workouts.

Thank You all. I will try out sprints and some of what Phantom Blooper wrote. I will try to kill myself during the run trying to sprint 1 mile at a time, and then try to sprint the entire 3 miles.
Im good with push ups etc. but the run kills my PFT Score.

Smoking damages lung tissue and that is established fact. One of the things it does is makes the tissue more brittle and less elastic meaning you can't take as big a breath as you feel you need. There are small devices (voldynes) you can buy which force you to take a big breath and exercise the lung tissue. We use these in the hospital to help patients not get pneumonia and get their lungs back to where they were before they were admitted.

If you continue to smoke, further damage will be done which normally leads to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD is irreversable so once you have it you have it. People with COPD are often on oxygen at home and have difficulty walking to their mailbox because they are so short of breath. Besides COPD, lung cancer is a major concern obviously.

To increase "lung capacity" that means air volume as opposed to aerobic capacity, which is achieved through running.

Phantoom blooper gave you exercise for lung capacity. Here is a wiki link that talks about it: http://www.wikihow.com/Increase-Your-Lung-Capacity

Aerobic capacity is achieved through distance running and increasing gradually the length of your runs.

Sprints, or interval running, increases your anaerobic metabolism. This is teaching the body to burn oxygen in the body instead of the oxygen you breathe in. Running too much anaerobically will have the opposite effect and begin to break you down.

It is best to run easy runs and build the volume of these distance runs up for a period of 8 to 12 weeks before introducing fast intervals. At that point you would only want to do these once a week for varying distances, times, and amount. Also good is adding to your program what are called cruise intervals. These are slower intervals of longer duration and at slower pace, around 5k pace. Also run fartleks, but never quit your easy distance running.