Obesity

In 2024, 30% of adults in England were defined as obese. That's twice the share in 1993.

Two-thirds of adults were overweight or obese, up from 53%.

Most of the rise happened in the 1990s and 2000s. Since around 2010, the share has risen more slowly.

Men are more likely to be overweight than women (70% compared with 62% in 2024),

However, men and women have similar rates of obesity: 29% of men and 31% of women.

Obesity rates are similar across the UK's nations.

Around 3 in 10 adults are obese in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. In each nation, about two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese.

Obesity rates vary a lot across England. You can see this in the map.

In 2025, about 1 in 10 adults in Camden and Richmond upon Thames was obese, compared with more than 4 in 10 in Sunderland and Gosport.

These local estimates are based on people's own reports of their height and weight, which tend to give lower figures than measured surveys.

Every year, children in England are measured for their height and weight at school in Reception (age 4 to 5) and Year 6 (age 10 to 11).

In 2025/26, 11% of children in Reception were obese, and 23% of children in Year 6, more than twice as many.

Obesity in Year 6 has risen from 17.5% in 2007. It jumped to 25.5% during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has since fallen back, but remains higher than before the pandemic.

Over a third of Year 6 children are overweight or obese.

Obesity rates vary a lot across England. In the map, you can see childhood obesity rates by local authority. This is shown for children in Year 6, but using the toggle you can see this for Reception year, too.

In 2025/26, 10% of Year 6 children in Waverley, in Surrey, were obese, compared with 32% in Sandwell, in the West Midlands.

People in poorer areas are more likely to be obese. In 2024, 38% of adults in the most deprived fifth of neighbourhoods in England were obese, compared with 25% in the least deprived, after adjusting for age.

The gap is much larger for women than for men.

Among children, the gap is even wider, and has grown. In 2025/26, 30% of Year 6 children in the most deprived tenth of neighbourhoods were obese. That was more than twice the share in the least deprived tenth (14%).

Black adults are the most likely to be obese (37% in 2022 and 2024), and Asian adults the least likely (22%), after adjusting for age.

The difference is largest among women: 48% of Black women are obese, compared with 30% of White women.

But people of Asian and Black backgrounds face higher risks of type 2 diabetes and heart disease at a lower BMI, so the NHS uses a lower threshold for them: 27.5 instead of 30. On that measure, 56% of Black adults and 37% of Asian adults have a BMI that puts them at high risk, compared with 30% of White adults.

Among children in Year 6, obesity rates are highest among Black Caribbean (31%), Black African (30%) and Bangladeshi (29%) children, and lowest among Chinese children (15%). 21% of White British children are obese.

Body mass index (BMI) is a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in metres. For adults, a BMI below 18.5 is classed as underweight, 18.5 to under 25 as a healthy weight, 25 to under 30 as overweight, and 30 or more as obese. A BMI of 40 or more is classed as severe obesity. On this page, "overweight" includes people who are obese, unless stated otherwise.

BMI is a simple measure that doesn't distinguish fat from muscle, or show where fat is carried, so it can misclassify some individuals, such as very muscular people. But it works well for tracking changes across a whole population. People of Asian, Black and some other ethnic backgrounds face higher health risks at a lower BMI, so the NHS uses lower thresholds for them: 23 for overweight and 27.5 for obesity. The charts on this page use the standard thresholds for everyone.

Children's BMI changes as they grow, and differs between boys and girls, so children are compared with a reference group of the same age and sex (the UK90 growth reference). For tracking the population, children at or above the 85th centile of the reference are classed as overweight, and those at or above the 95th centile as obese. Doctors use higher thresholds (the 91st and 98th centiles) when assessing individual children, so they classify fewer children as overweight or obese.

Adults in England are measured by interviewers in the Health Survey for England, which measures a sample of several thousand adults each year. Scotland and Northern Ireland have similar surveys, the Scottish Health Survey and the Health Survey Northern Ireland. Wales's National Survey asks people their height and weight rather than measuring them, so its figures aren't comparable and aren't shown.

Local authority figures for adults come from Sport England's Active Lives Survey, which asks around 175,000 adults a year for their height and weight. People tend to overstate their height and understate their weight, so the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities adjusts the answers, but the estimates are still lower than those from measured surveys. They are best used to compare areas, not to track the national level.

Children are measured at school in Reception (age 4 to 5) and Year 6 (age 10 to 11) by the National Child Measurement Programme, which covers almost all children in those year groups in England. During the COVID-19 pandemic, measurements stopped in March 2020, and in 2020/21 only a sample of schools took part.

Deprivation is measured by the English Index of Multiple Deprivation for the neighbourhood where someone lives, which combines income, employment, education, health, crime, housing and living environment. Figures for adults by deprivation and ethnic group are age-standardised: adjusted as if each group had the same age profile, so differences aren't simply due to some groups being older than others.