Little Risk Found of Big Weight Gain if Smokers Quit

Most adults who quit smoking will not gain a significant amount of weight, researchers report today in a detailed study on smoking and weight gain.

Though the average man who quits will gain 6 pounds and the average woman 8.3 pounds over several years, about half of all adults who quit will gain even less than that, according to the study. Blacks, heavy smokers and underweight women have much greater odds of experiencing a major weight gain after giving up smoking.

The study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that some people are more likely to gain weight after quitting smoking and might benefit from a smoking cessation strategy that includes weight control.

One in four adults smokes, and the fear of gaining weight is often suggested as a major deterrent to attempting to quit, said David F. Williamson of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, lead author of the article. But the weight gain for most people “has no effects medically,” he said. “And no matter how much weight you gain, the effects of smoking are much worse.”

The study of more than 700 former smokers made several new findings about the relationship between smoking and weight gain:

* Major weight gain, more than 28 pounds, occurred in 9.8% of men and 13.4% of women who quit smoking.

* Blacks of both sexes are about three times more likely to gain more than 28 pounds.

* Women who were underweight while smoking were four times more likely than women of normal weight who quit smoking to gain more than 28 pounds. Among men, weight before cessation had little to do with subsequent weight gain.

* Men and women under age 55 who quit had a higher risk of weight gain than older people.

* Men and women were more likely to gain excess weight if they smoked more than 15 cigarettes a day.

By documenting only a small risk of serious weight gain, the study should reassure people who want to quit smoking, the authors said.

“The average person who quits smoking gains six to eight pounds,” Williamson said in an interview. “People need to put this amount of weight in perspective. A lot of people gain this amount of weight each year from Christmas to New Year’s.

“We don’t see this as a large amount of weight.”

The study suggests that smoking lowers weight and that after one quits, weight edges up to the level of average Americans who have never smoked. “Our study shows there is little evidence that you shoot past the body weights of the rest of the population,” Williamson said.

The research should contribute to a public health campaign aimed at persuading weight-conscious young women not to smoke, said Clifford Carr, an educational psychologist at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center who has studied smoking and behavior. While smoking rates have declined in many segments of the population, the rate has increased among adolescent women.

Cigarette advertising has “been picking on people’s vanity,” Carr said. “There are a lot of adolescent women who are on a diet. These are the ones who are going to start smoking.”

The study followed 409 men and 359 women, ages 25 to 74, who quit smoking. They were examined and weighed in the years between 1971 and 1975 and were weighed a second time between 1982 and 1984. The smokers and nonsmokers were matched for age, race, level of education, alcohol use, illnesses and physical activity. The former smokers’ weight patterns were compared to continuing smokers and people who have never smoked.

Williamson said it was expected that women would gain more weight than men because studies in laboratory rodents show that a reduction in nicotine leads to increased weight gain in females. This may be due to biological factors.

But, he said, other variations in weight gain in the study were unexpected.

“We were surprised to see that blacks, especially black men, gained substantially more weight than non-black men,” Williamson said. He added that he did not know the reason for this difference. In the general population, black men are no more likely to be overweight than white men.

As for age, people over 55 as a group might be less likely to gain large amounts of weight after quitting because they are more susceptible to illnesses that cause weight loss, Williamson said.