"Being Overweight & the Increased

Risk of Cancer"

Just being fat increases your risk of cancer. That's a medical fact, but it's one that is known by only 8 percent of Americans. And this is troubling to doctors when some two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.

Not only are most of us unaware of the fat-cancer connection, but also many of us are unaware of our own weight and radically underestimate our substantial girth with just 17 percent of the 2,000 people surveyed by the American Dietetic Association knowing their body mass index or BMI. BMI is a calculation based on weight and height and is really the best measure of whether someone is overweight or obese.

"Obesity is the second leading cause of premature and preventable death in the United States, second only to smoking," David Grotto, a spokesman for the ADS, told HealthDay News.

How does fat cause cancer? Although doctors do not yet have a complete understanding of the process, it appears to be connected to the body's inability to use insulin. "Being overweight can make you insulin-resistant," McCullough explained to HealthDay News. "And being overweight or obese can cause several different types of cancer, including breast cancer, aggressive prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, and endometrial, kidney, pancreas and esophagus cancer, as well as certain lymphomas."

We don't realize how fat we really are because as Americans have grown larger, those proportions start to seem normal. "It's been a slow but sure evolution," McCullough conceded to HealthDay News. "We've loosened the belt." He admitted that living healthy and eating right--especially later in life--takes real determination.

What foods are contributing the most to our plus size? It's not so much what we eat as how much we eat. The survey found that more than half of the respondents said they found certain foods to be completely irresistible. The leading cravings:

Chocolate: 20 percent
Pizza, pasta and Italian food: 14 percent
Cookies, cakes and muffins: 10 percent
Hamburgers, beef and other meat: 9 percent
Fish, shellfish and seafood: 9 percent

"One of the things we want people to know is you don't have to cut out your favorite food," McCullough advised. "But we encourage them to have them in smaller portions, less frequently."