Do Extra Pounds Increase Death Risk?

It just might be possible to be a little fat and still be fit.

A new government study suggests being 25 pounds overweight doesn't appear to raise a person's risk of dying from cancer or heart disease.

Dr. Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention led the study. She said obesity was linked to about 11 percent of deaths from breast, kidney, colon or pancreatic cancer, and about 9 percent of deaths from heart problems.

"About 40 percent of deaths in the U.S. population are due to causes that are neither cancer nor cardiovascular disease, and there we found that overweight was associated with a significantly reduced number of deaths from those causes," she said.

That means being overweight may actually offer some protection.

However, the study was not based on what people may use as their own definitions of overweight and obese. It was based on the body-mass index, which looks at the ratio between height and weight. The measure is sometimes criticized because people with a lot of muscle can be considered outside the normal range.

"We define obesity as a body mass index of 30 and above. We define normal weight as a body mass index of 18.5 to 25 and overweight is the intermediate category from 25 up to 30," Flegal said.