Weight Loss & Obesity Statistics for Women: What the Data Shows

Weight is one of the most talked-about health topics for women, and one of the most cluttered with made-up numbers. How many women actually have obesity? How much weight do women gain between their 20s and midlife? How many keep lost weight off, and how common are GLP-1 medications now?

Quick heads-up: I made a free 60-second weight check that shows what's most likely keeping your scale stuck. Take the free check here.

This page pulls the most reliable answers into one place, from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the National Institutes of Health, large clinical trials, peer-reviewed studies and polls from KFF and Gallup with published methods. It’s written for women 25 and up.

Most of the national data covers adults 20 and older, so age groups are listed wherever the source breaks them out. Every figure links to its original source at the bottom of the page. Data last checked November 2026.

Jump to a sectionIn this article15 sections

1. Key Weight Loss and Obesity Statistics at a Glance
2. Obesity Rates in U.S. Women by Age
3. Overweight and Obesity Combined, Then and Now
4. Waist Size and Belly Fat in Women
5. How Many Women Are Trying to Lose Weight?
6. How Much Weight Women Gain From Their 20s to Midlife
7. How Many People Keep Lost Weight Off?
8. How Much Weight Loss Improves Health
9. GLP-1 Medication Use Among Women
10. Obesity and Related Health Conditions in Women
11. Physical Activity and Keeping Weight Off
12. What These Numbers Mean for You
13. How to Cite These Statistics
14. Sources
15. Frequently Asked Questions

Key Weight Loss and Obesity Statistics at a Glance

• 41.3% of U.S. women 20 and older had obesity in 2021–2023, based on measured height and weight.¹
• 12.1% of women had severe obesity (BMI 40 or higher), nearly double the rate in men (6.7%).¹
• Obesity peaks in midlife: 47.4% of women aged 40 to 59 had obesity, compared with 36.8% of women aged 20 to 39.¹
• About 7 in 10 U.S. women (69.5%) have overweight or obesity.²
• Severe obesity among women roughly doubled, from 6.2% in 1999–2000 to 12.6% in 2021–2023.²
• 56.4% of women tried to lose weight in the past year, compared with 41.7% of men.⁴
• Women in the Nurses’ Health Study gained an average of 12.6 kg (about 28 pounds) between age 18 and age 55.⁶
• Losing just 5% of body weight improved insulin sensitivity in the liver, muscle and fat tissue in a controlled trial.¹⁴
• Lifestyle changes aimed at 7% weight loss cut the risk of type 2 diabetes by 58% in the Diabetes Prevention Program, where 68% of participants were women.¹²
• One year after stopping semaglutide, trial participants had regained about two-thirds of the weight they lost.⁹
• 15% of U.S. women were currently taking a GLP-1 drug in late 2025, compared with 9% of men.¹⁶
• More than 87% of National Weight Control Registry members were still keeping off at least 10% of their weight 5 and 10 years later.¹⁰

Obesity Rates in U.S. Women by Age

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is the gold standard here, because trained technicians measure each person’s height and weight instead of relying on what people report. In the August 2021–August 2023 survey, 41.3% of women and 39.2% of men had obesity, a difference that wasn’t statistically significant.¹

Age	Obesity	Severe obesity
20–39	36.8%	13.0%
40–59	47.4%	14.7%
60+	39.6%	8.4%
All women 20+	41.3%	12.1%

• Obesity means a BMI of 30 or higher, and severe obesity means a BMI of 40 or higher.¹
• Women had higher rates of severe obesity than men overall and in every age group.¹
• Adults with a bachelor’s degree or more had lower obesity rates (31.6%) than adults with a high school diploma or less (44.6%). The gap showed up in both women and men.¹
• U.S. adult obesity remains above the Healthy People 2030 goal of 36.0%.¹

BMI is a screening number, not a diagnosis, and the NCHS notes that body fat can differ at the same BMI by sex, age and race. If you want to see where you land, try my free BMI calculator for women.

Overweight and Obesity Combined, Then and Now

Add the women in the overweight range (BMI 25 to 29.9) to those with obesity and you get about 7 in 10. NCHS published updated long-term trends in February 2026:²

Women 20+	1999–2000	2021–2023
Overweight	28.6%	28.1%
Obesity	33.4%	41.4%
Severe obesity	6.2%	12.6%

• These are age-adjusted figures, so they can differ slightly from the age-group numbers above.²
• Going back further, obesity among women aged 20 to 74 rose from 15.8% in 1960–1962 to 42.0% in 2021–2023, and severe obesity rose from 1.4% to 13.2%.²
• The share of women in the overweight range has barely moved since 1999. The growth has come in the obesity and severe obesity groups.²

Self-reported numbers run lower. Gallup’s 2025 survey, which uses people’s own reported height and weight, put the obesity rate for women at 38.8%, down 3.5 points since 2022. Gallup says self-reports tend to come in lower than measured data, so its trend is more useful than its exact level.¹⁷

Waist Size and Belly Fat in Women

BMI can’t tell you where fat sits. Waist circumference can, and fat stored around the middle is more closely tied to heart and metabolic disease. Researchers usually define abdominal obesity in women as a waist of 88 cm (about 34.6 inches) or more.³

Abdominal obesity	Women	Men
Early 2000s	57.6%	39.1%
2017–2018	67.3%	49.7%
Waist cutoff	88 cm	100 cm

• That’s age-adjusted NHANES data from 2001 to 2018: by the end of that period, about 2 in 3 U.S. women had a waist at or above the abdominal obesity cutoff.³
• In the same 2017–2018 data, 41.4% of women had obesity by BMI, far fewer than the 67.3% with abdominal obesity. Many women below the BMI obesity cutoff still carry extra fat around the middle.³

I explain why belly fat matters and what actually shrinks it in my guide to visceral belly fat.

How Many Women Are Trying to Lose Weight?

More than half. In NHANES interviews from 2013 to 2016, 56.4% of women said they had tried to lose weight in the past 12 months, compared with 41.7% of men.⁴ Gallup’s November 2025 survey shows a big gap between wanting and doing:⁵

Gallup 2025	Women	Men
Want to lose weight	58%	46%
Seriously trying	30%	22%
See self as overweight	43%	37%

Among adults who tried to lose weight, these were the most common methods (several methods per person were allowed, and 88.3% used two or more):⁴

Method	Share who used it
Exercising	62.9%
Eating less food	62.9%
More fruits and vegetables	50.4%
Drinking more water	44.7%
Less junk or fast food	42.4%

• Weight-loss attempts were most common in adults with obesity (66.7%), and women were more likely than men to try in every weight group.⁴
• Gallup’s figures for “seriously trying” have stayed close to their long-term average since 1996.⁵

For when and why so many of those attempts start in January, see my New Year’s resolution statistics.

How Much Weight Women Gain From Their 20s to Midlife

Most weight gain in adulthood is slow and steady, which is why it’s easy to miss. A Harvard analysis of 92,837 women in the Nurses’ Health Study found they gained an average of 12.6 kg (about 28 pounds) between age 18 and age 55. Weight at 18 was recalled by the women themselves.⁶

Measure (women)	Result	Source
Gain, age 18 to 55	12.6 kg (about 28 lb)	6
Average weight now	163 lb (self-reported)	5
Average “ideal” weight	144 lb, up from 129 in 1990	5

• Women who gained a moderate amount (2.5 to 10 kg, or about 5 to 22 pounds) developed type 2 diabetes at 207 cases per 100,000 person-years, compared with 110 among women whose weight stayed stable.⁶
• Moderate gain was also linked to higher risks of high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity-related cancers, and lower odds of healthy aging.⁶
• In Gallup’s data, women’s self-reported average weight rose 21 pounds since 1990, and their idea of an ideal weight rose 15 pounds.⁵

Midlife is a big part of the story. In the 40 to 59 age group, obesity is at its highest (see the table above), and the menopause transition speeds up fat gain. I break down those changes in my menopause statistics.

Stress and emotions play a role too, which I cover in emotional eating and weight gain.

How Many People Keep Lost Weight Off?

Regaining weight is common, but the long-term studies don’t show that everyone gains it all back. Here’s what the biggest follow-ups found:

Study	Follow-up	Result
29 U.S. programs	5 years	Kept off just over 3 kg on average
Look AHEAD	8 years	Half still 5% or more below start
Semaglutide stopped	1 year off drug	About two-thirds regained

• In a meta-analysis of 29 U.S. structured weight-loss programs, the average person was still more than 3 kg and more than 3% below their starting weight 5 years later. Women and men did about the same, and groups who exercised more kept off more weight.⁷
• In Look AHEAD, 5,145 adults with type 2 diabetes in an intensive lifestyle program lost 8.6% of their weight in year 1 and were still 4.7% below their starting weight at year 8. At that point, 50.3% had kept off at least 5% and 26.9% had kept off at least 10%.⁸
• In the STEP 1 trial extension (327 adults), people lost 17.3% of their weight over 68 weeks on semaglutide. One year after stopping the drug and the lifestyle program, they had regained 11.6 percentage points, leaving them 5.6% below their starting weight.⁹
• About 20% of people with overweight succeed at losing at least 10% of their weight and keeping it off for at least a year, according to a review from the National Weight Control Registry researchers.¹¹

You’ll often hear that “95% of diets fail.” That number traces back to a 1959 report on 100 patients at one New York hospital nutrition clinic who were handed a diet and sent home, long before modern behavioral programs existed.²⁴

Regain is a real problem, as the numbers above show, but the 95% figure isn’t a modern measurement, so this page uses the long-term studies instead.

How Much Weight Loss Improves Health

You don’t have to reach a “goal weight” to see real benefits. The CDC points out that even modest weight loss can improve blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar. For a 200-pound woman, 5% is 10 pounds.¹⁵

Weight lost	What improved	Source
5%	Insulin sensitivity in liver, muscle and fat	14
11–16%	Further gains in muscle insulin sensitivity	14
7% goal plus activity	58% lower diabetes risk	12

• The Diabetes Prevention Program enrolled 3,234 adults with prediabetes: 68% were women, the average age was 51 and the average BMI was 34.¹²
• The lifestyle group aimed to lose 7% of body weight and get 150 minutes of activity a week. It cut type 2 diabetes risk by 58% over about 3 years, and by 71% in people 60 and older. Metformin cut it by 31%.^12,13
• The benefit lasted: over 10 years of follow-up, the lifestyle group’s diabetes onset was still delayed by 34%, and by 27% over 15 years.¹³
• In a sleep study that followed adults for 4 years, a 10% weight loss predicted a 26% drop in sleep apnea severity.²²
• The CDC notes that people who lose weight gradually, about 1 to 2 pounds a week, are more likely to keep it off.¹⁵

If you’re starting out, my weight loss guide for women walks through a realistic plan step by step.

GLP-1 Medication Use Among Women

GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound have spread fast, and women use them more than men. KFF’s poll of 1,350 adults (October 27 to November 2, 2025) found:¹⁶

Group	Currently taking
All adults	12%
Women	15%
Men	9%
Ages 50–64	22%

• 18% of adults had ever taken a GLP-1 drug, for weight loss or for a condition like diabetes or heart disease. Current use doubled from 6% in May 2024.¹⁶
• 56% of users said the drugs were hard to afford. 14% had stopped because of the cost and 13% because of side effects.¹⁶
• Among adults who hadn’t taken one, women were more likely than men to be interested in a GLP-1 for weight loss (27% vs. 18%).¹⁶
• Counting weight-loss use only, Gallup found 15.2% of women and 9.7% of men taking GLP-1 injections in 2025.¹⁷
• By mid-2026, 11% of U.S. adults were currently taking a GLP-1 for weight loss and 15% had taken one at some point, according to Gallup’s survey of 5,065 adults.¹⁸

These drugs work largely by turning down appetite, and stopping them often brings weight back (see the STEP 1 numbers above). I explain how that works in GLP-1 and appetite.

Obesity and Related Health Conditions in Women

Excess weight raises the risk of many conditions, and some of the biggest numbers fall on women.

Condition	Finding in women	Source
Heart failure	About 2x risk with obesity	20
Sleep apnea	3% (30–49), 9% (50–70)	21
Cancer	495,000 obesity-linked cases (2022)	23
Type 2 diabetes	Nearly 2x with moderate gain	6

• In the Framingham Heart Study, women with obesity had 2.12 times the risk of heart failure of women with a normal BMI, and each 1-point rise in BMI raised women’s risk by 7%.²⁰
• The sleep apnea figures are for moderate to severe sleep-disordered breathing, estimated from a Wisconsin cohort and national BMI data. Rates rose 14% to 55% over two decades as obesity climbed.²¹
• A 10% weight gain predicted about a 6-fold increase in the odds of developing moderate to severe sleep apnea.²²
• 13 types of cancer are linked to overweight and obesity, making up 40% of U.S. cancers. In 2022, more than 495,000 of these cancers were diagnosed in women and about 220,000 in men. The CDC notes these counts are by cancer type and don’t estimate how many obesity caused.²³
• 40.1 million Americans (12.0%) had diabetes in 2023, and 115.2 million adults had prediabetes.¹⁹

Physical Activity and Keeping Weight Off

The National Weight Control Registry tracks people who lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year. A 10-year study of 2,886 members (78% women, average age 48) shows what long-term success looks like:¹⁰

Time point	Average weight off
When they joined	31.3 kg (about 69 lb)
5 years later	23.8 kg (about 52 lb)
10 years later	23.1 kg (about 51 lb)

• More than 87% were estimated to still be keeping off at least 10% of their weight at years 5 and 10.¹⁰
• Drops in leisure-time physical activity, dietary restraint and how often people weighed themselves were linked to more regain.¹⁰
• Keeping weight off seems to get easier with time: once people have maintained their loss for 2 to 5 years, their odds of long-term success go up a lot.¹¹
• In the 29-program meta-analysis, six studies found that people who exercised more kept off significantly more weight.⁷
• The Diabetes Prevention Program’s lifestyle goal was at least 150 minutes of activity a week, about the intensity of brisk walking.¹²

For how active women really are at each age, see my women’s exercise statistics.

What These Numbers Mean for You

Here’s my take as a coach: the data is tougher than the ads, and more hopeful than the “95% fail” crowd. Most women gain weight slowly across adulthood, midlife is when it peaks, and regain after any method is common.

But a 5% loss already changes your blood sugar and insulin numbers, and the registry members who kept their habits going (moving most days, keeping an eye on the scale, eating with some structure) kept most of their loss for a decade.

So aim for the first 5% before you think about a big number, lose it at a pace you can live with, and plan the maintenance habits from day one, not after you’re done.

If you’re using a GLP-1, build strength training and protein into your routine now, because the medication won’t keep the habits in place for you. A good starting point is my weight loss guide.

How to Cite These Statistics

Sources

1. Emmerich SD, Fryar CD, Stierman B, Ogden CL. Obesity and Severe Obesity Prevalence in Adults: United States, August 2021–August 2023. NCHS Data Brief No. 508, September 2024 (NHANES).
2. Fryar CD, Afful J, Saif NT. Prevalence of Overweight, Obesity, and Severe Obesity Among Adults Age 20 and Older: United States, 1960–1962 Through August 2021–August 2023. NCHS Health E-Stat 111, February 2026.
3. Sun JY, Huang WJ, Hua Y, et al. Trends in general and abdominal obesity in US adults: Evidence from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2001–2018). Frontiers in Public Health, 2022;10.
4. Martin CB, Herrick KA, Sarafrazi N, Ogden CL. Attempts to Lose Weight Among Adults in the United States, 2013–2016. NCHS Data Brief No. 313, July 2018.
5. Gallup. Half of Americans Want to Lose Weight. West Health-Gallup survey of 1,321 adults, November 3–25, 2025.
6. Zheng Y, Manson JE, Yuan C, et al. Associations of Weight Gain From Early to Middle Adulthood With Major Health Outcomes Later in Life. JAMA, 2017;318(3):255–269.
7. Anderson JW, Konz EC, Frederich RC, Wood CL. Long-term weight-loss maintenance: a meta-analysis of US studies. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2001;74(5):579–584.
8. Look AHEAD Research Group. Eight-year weight losses with an intensive lifestyle intervention: the Look AHEAD study. Obesity, 2014;22(1):5–13.
9. Wilding JPH, Batterham RL, Davies M, et al. Weight regain and cardiometabolic effects after withdrawal of semaglutide: The STEP 1 trial extension. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 2022;24(8):1553–1564.
10. Thomas JG, Bond DS, Phelan S, Hill JO, Wing RR. Weight-Loss Maintenance for 10 Years in the National Weight Control Registry. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2014;46(1):17–23.
11. Wing RR, Phelan S. Long-term weight loss maintenance. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2005;82(1 Suppl):222S–225S.
12. Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group. Reduction in the incidence of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention or metformin. New England Journal of Medicine, 2002;346(6):393–403.
13. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP). U.S. National Institutes of Health.
14. Magkos F, Fraterrigo G, Yoshino J, et al. Effects of Moderate and Subsequent Progressive Weight Loss on Metabolic Function and Adipose Tissue Biology in Humans with Obesity. Cell Metabolism, 2016;23(4):591–601.
15. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Losing Weight.
16. KFF. KFF Health Tracking Poll: Prescription Drug Costs, Views on Trump Administration Actions, and GLP-1 Use. November 14, 2025 (1,350 adults).
17. Gallup. Obesity Rate Declining in U.S. National Health and Well-Being Index, October 2025.
18. Gallup. In U.S., GLP-1 Usage Reaches New High. National Health and Well-Being Index, survey of 5,065 adults, May 28–June 5, 2026 (updated September 2026).
19. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Diabetes Statistics Report.
20. Kenchaiah S, Evans JC, Levy D, et al. Obesity and the risk of heart failure. New England Journal of Medicine, 2002;347(5):305–313 (Framingham Heart Study).
21. Peppard PE, Young T, Barnet JH, et al. Increased prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing in adults. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2013;177(9):1006–1014.
22. Peppard PE, Young T, Palta M, Dempsey J, Skatrud J. Longitudinal study of moderate weight change and sleep-disordered breathing. JAMA, 2000;284(23):3015–3021.
23. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity and Cancer.
24. Stunkard A, McLaren-Hume M. The results of treatment for obesity: a review of the literature and report of a series. A.M.A. Archives of Internal Medicine, 1959;103(1):79–85.

Frequently Asked Questions

This page summarizes published research and government data for education only. It isn’t medical advice. Talk with your doctor before starting a weight-loss plan or medication, especially if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, have diabetes, heart, kidney or thyroid disease, take medicines that affect blood sugar or blood pressure, or have a history of disordered eating.

Get medical help right away if you have chest pain, severe shortness of breath, fainting, or severe stomach pain or vomiting while taking a weight-loss medication. Unexplained weight loss or gain should be checked by a doctor. This page is not a substitute for personal care from a qualified professional.