A recent study that re-evaluated a 1998 Lung Health Study of 5,887 smokers from the U.S. has revealed that smokers on average add an extra 21 pounds (9.5 kilograms) in body weight after quitting compared to the original result of 12 pounds (5.5 kilograms).

Undertaken by Daniel Eisenberg of the University of Michigan and Brian C. Quinn of the University of California, Berkeley and appearing in the journal Health Services Research, they advised that the new “findings highlight the need to provide effective dietary and physical activity counseling along with smoking cessation programs”. Or in other words, if you’re butt is getting too big, get off it. Further, people mustn’t use the larger weight gain as an excuse to not quit, unless, of course, you look like Keira Knightley.

The team had tried a new statistical method that apparently allowed them to compare “apples to apples” - or should that be cheeseburgers to cheeseburgers? - and came up with the revised weight-gain figures. They warned that the results excluded morbidly obese smokers and hadn’t been split out on ethnic or racial lines and thus they might not apply equally across all population groups.

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