Common questions
What is the most obese state?
Mississippi, where 40.4% of adults had obesity in 2024.
What is the least obese state?
Colorado has the lowest adult obesity rate, with 25.7% of adults affected in 2025.
Why are some states shown for 2024?
CDC publishes a state’s figures only when its survey collects enough responses. In 2025, California, Mississippi, and Nevada fell short, so we use their 2024 figures, the latest available. Obesity rates usually change by much less than the survey’s margin of error from one year to the next.
How is obesity defined?
As a body mass index of 30 or more, here calculated from self-reported height and weight. Because people tend to overstate their height and understate their weight, survey rates run lower than rates from measured exams.
What this ranking measures
Adults age 18 and older with obesity (a body mass index of 30 or more), as a percentage of all adults, based on the height and weight they report in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey.
Self-reported height and weight understate measured obesity. Figures are for 2025, except California, Mississippi and Nevada, where CDC did not have enough 2025 survey responses; their figures are from 2024. Obesity rates change slowly, so the one-year gap rarely matters for rank.
The size of the gap
The difference between the highest and lowest state estimates is 14.7 percentage points. The U.S. benchmark is 33.5%. It is not a simple average of the states. CDC’s national figure for 2025 is based on the 2025 survey, which had no usable data from California, Mississippi or Nevada.
26 states have point estimates above the U.S. benchmark and 22 below it, with 2 equal to it. These counts do not establish statistical significance.
How much should you read into a rank?
Margins are approximate 90% intervals derived from CDC’s published 95% confidence limits (half-width × 1.645 / 1.96). For two different states, we flag a difference only when its absolute size exceeds the square root of the sum of their squared margins of error. The comparison tool applies this check to every selected pair.
Non-significance is not proof of equality. These pairwise tests are not adjusted for multiple comparisons and do not form ranking confidence intervals. Statistical method and limitations.
Ranks use the full precision of the source file, so only truly equal values share a rank (1, 2, 2, 4).
Keep exploring
Explore the same states in a side-by-side comparison, or combine this measure with others in the custom ranking tool.
Source and method
- Producer
- CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
- Product / file
- BRFSS, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity data · BRFSS Q036, 2025 (2024 where 2025 is unavailable)
- Period
- 2025 (2024 for three states)
- Unit
- Percent
- Calculation
- Published weighted, crude prevalence (data_value) for each state’s latest year: 2025, or 2024 where 2025 did not meet BRFSS minimums. 90% MOE = (high − low 95% confidence limit) / 2 × 1.645 / 1.96. Rank = 1 + number of eligible jurisdictions with a higher value.
- Coverage
- The 50 states are ranked. Washington, D.C., can be added with the toggle above the table; Puerto Rico is shown for reference only, where the source covers it.
- Cadence
- Annual. 2026 survey results expected in late summer 2027.
- Independence
- Rank the States is independent. The agencies that produce the source data do not endorse these rankings.
Download, cite, or embed
Download the default full table (CSV) or use the download above for the table’s current filter and order. Data dictionary and source metadata
Updates and corrections
Last updated Oct. 23, 2026. Earlier editions stay available on the data page, and every change is listed in the update log. If a number or definition looks wrong, report an error with the state, value, and source you checked.