See Where Houston Ranks In New Fittest Cities List

HOUSTON — The 2021 American Fitness Index has been released, with Houston in the bottom half of the 100 largest cities the American College of Sports Medicine included in its annual study.

The index rankings consider 34 health behaviors, chronic diseases and community infrastructure indicators, including smoking rates, the percent of people who bike or walk to work, fruit and vegetable consumption and sleep hours.

The fitness rank for Houston is No. 58 overall. The city ranks No. 40 in personal health and No. 87 in community health, the index states. Houston ranked third among Texas' major metropolitan cities with Austin first at 19th overall. Dallas ranked 45th and San Antonio 85th.

The 34 factors considered in the ranking included 17 that went toward Houston’s personal health rank, and the other that went to the city’s community health rank.

Among the personal health behaviors included in the ranking were the percent of people who smoke, walk or bike to work, and the percent with obesity and high blood pressure. Community health factors included air quality index, Houston’s walk and bike scores, and its number of recreational facilities.

Access to recreational facilities brought down Houston's community health rank as the city ranked below average in ball diamonds, basketball hoops, playgrounds, rec centers, swimming pools and tennis courts per capita. Also, 13.9 percent of people in Houston were found to be food insecure, slightly above the national average of 12.2 percent among cities in the study.

Arlington, Virginia, ranked No. 1 overall, earning the “America’s fittest city” distinction for the third year in a row, according to an American College of Sports Medicine news release.

In Arlington, only 3.5 percent of residents are smokers, 4.2 percent have diabetes and 24.1 percent are in poor physical health, the study found.

Arlington ranked in the top 10 for 19 of the 33 indicators in the index, including a No. 1 ranking in the lowest rate of adults with obesity and the highest rate of residents meeting aerobic and strength activity guidelines.

Authors crunched data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency and other sources. Read more about the methodology on Page 20 of the report.

Seattle; Minneapolis; Madison, Wisconsin; and San Francisco followed Arlington in the top five in overall fitness.

At the other end of the list, Oklahoma City ranked the worst overall at No. 100, followed by, in ascending order, Bakersfield, California; North Las Vegas, Nevada; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Memphis, Tennessee.

The study looked at the 100 most-populated U.S. cities.