You can control your weight as you quit smoking

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http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/health/w8quit-smoke/index.htm

Here is the summary of this article: You can control your weight as you quit smoking

Many ex-smokers do gain weights; some, a few pounds, but only a few, lot of weight.Quitting smoking is much more important than gaining a few pounds. Just some simple changes, like developing healthier eating and physical activity habits can help you control your weight when you quit smoking. Averagely, people quitting smoking gain only about 10 pounds if you have smoked for 10 to 20 years or smoked one or more packs of cigarettes a day.

The reasons of gaining weight are: when nicotine, a chemical in cigarette smoke, is in your body that causes you have low or no appetite for food; therefore, when you quit smoking your body turn back to normal and back to the weight you would have been had. During first week after quitting, you might gain 3 to 5 pounds due to water retention. After you stop smoking, you may burn less calories than when you were smoking.

Smoking causes more than 400,000 deaths each year in the United States. When you smoke the heart rate increases, and about 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke pollute environment around you, and 40 of these chemicals cause cancer─high risk to get lung cancers.

Here is some data:

Men are 22 times more likely to develop lung cancer, women, 12. Smokers are twice as likely to have a heart attack as a nonsmoker. Smoking cigarettes are hurting not only smokers’ health, but also the health of anyone who breathes the smoke─smokers or nonsmokers. The smoke could cause heart disease and stroke, chronic bronchitis and emphysema, lung cancers and some types of cancer.

Adapted from the National Cancer Institute's "Smoking: Facts and Tips for Quitting"