Mess With Texas

Men's Fitness recently put out their annual ranking of the "Fittest and Fattest Cities in America". Here are the lists:

[to make the chart larger, click it]

Much like previous years, Texas isn't looking so hot with six spots on the Fattest Cities list, four of which are in the top ten. Now, to be fair to Red States and Blue States alike, I should also point out that California seems to hold quite a few of the Fattest Cities spots. Although, California also holds three of the Fittest Cities spots, whereas Texas only has one (namely, #21 Austin). Regardless, the moral of the story: stop being so unhealthy Texas and California!

Another interesting observation...New Jersey holds ZERO spots on either list, which clearly means that New Jerseyans are not too fat and not too fit, we're just right.

The way Men's Fitness calculates exactly which cities are the fittest and fattest is really quite impressive. According to the article...

[Men's Fitness] spends months poring over statistics on the things that make real people fit or fat, from weather patterns to junk food, from availability of public recreational facilities to TV-viewing habits. We dig through data on how much exercise people get, whether they use their gym memberships, how healthfully they eat, and how much time they spend sitting in traffic. We even quiz city park departments and mayors to learn about local exercise venues, civil leadership, and programs designed to get citizens off their couches and moving.

So, in reality, it's less about being the fittest/fattest cities and more about being the most healthy/unhealthy cities, which makes these rankings that much more interesting. Here are a few "Honorable Mention" awards handed out by Men's Fitness to various cities of each list:

• The Laziest City and The City That Watches the Most TV - Memphis, TN (31% of adults claim to get no serious exercise at all in a 30-day period; residents watch 25% more TV than the average cities in the survey)

• The City That Watches the Least TV and The City With the Most Fitness-Friendly Environment - San Francisco, CA (20% less likely to be watching TV in any given hour than other cities; only five days per year above 90 or below 32 degrees)

• The City With the Most Free Time - Arlington, TX (commuters spend only 7% more time in traffic during peak periods than during off-peak hours, while the national average is 31%)

• The City With the Most Bars and The Junk Food Capital - Cleveland, OH (four times the national average number of bars per capita for cities in the survey; number of fast food joints is twice the national average, pizza is more than 2.5 times as popular, ice cream even more so)