Keep your weight within the healthy range and avoid weight gain in adult life.
One of our Cancer Prevention Recommendations is to keep your weight within the healthy range and avoid weight gain in adult life.
There is strong evidence that greater body fatness causes many cancers, and this evidence has strengthened over the last decade.
An estimated 1.97 billion adults and over 340 million children & adolescents were overweight or obese globally in 2016.
There is strong convincing evidence that greater body fatness in adults is a cause of cancers of the oesophagus (adenocarcinoma), pancreas, liver, colorectum, breast (postmenopausal) and kidney.
Maintaining a healthy weight throughout life is one of the most important ways to protect against cancer. Overweight and obesity, generally assessed by BMI and waist circumference, are more prevalent than ever.
Our goals for being a healthy weight
Keep your weight as low as you can within the healthy range throughout life (BMI of 18.5–24.9)
Ensure that body weight during childhood and adolescence projects towards the lower end of the healthy adult BMI range
Avoid weight gain throughout adulthood
For some cancers, the increase in risk is seen with increasing body fatness even within the so-called ‘healthy’ range. Nevertheless, most benefit is to be gained by avoiding overweight and obesity. Overweight in childhood and early life is liable to be followed by overweight and obesity in adulthood.
BMI is a useful measure for most adults, but because the relationship between BMI and body composition varies between ethnic groups, different reference ranges have been proposed for Black and Asian populations.
BMI results may be less reliable for other groups of people, including:
athletes, and those with a lot of muscle
older people
pregnant women
those less than 1.5m/5ft tall
children and teenagers
How can I be a healthy weight?
This Recommendation can best be achieved by maintaining energy balance throughout life by:
Better and earlier diagnosis and treatment are critical in combating cancer, but we’re shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted if the factors that are fuelling cancer rates aren’t also addressed – Dr Kate Allen, World Cancer Research Fund International’s Executive Director of Science & Public Affairs
Public health and policy implications
Globally, the prevalence of overweight and obesity is high and in most countries it is rising. A whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach is necessary to create environments for people and communities that are conducive to being a healthy weight.
A comprehensive package of policies is needed to enable people to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, including policies that influence the food environment (how food is priced, marketed, sold and procured), food system (how food is produced), built environment (how accessible environments are for physical activity) and behaviour change communication across the life course. Browse our NOURISHING database for information on food policies that are being implemented around the world and find out more on policy action for cancer prevention.
Our Recommendations work together as an overall way of living healthily to prevent cancer.
Diet and Cancer Report 2018
In 2018, we produced the Diet and Cancer Report, the third in our series of major reports looking at the many ways in which our diets, and how active we are, affect our cancer risk. You can find out much more about our Cancer Prevention Recommendations by downloading a pdf of the relevant chapter in the 2018 report. Please note, however, that this webpage may have been updated since the report was published.
