Are You Living in One of the Top 10 US 'Couch Potato' States?

United States Lifestyle
by Alex Scola Jun 16, 2015

Americans have got a pretty bad rep as being “a bit on the heavy end” when compared to other international travelers abroad. And sure, we’d like to espouse that this reputation stems from a mostly-false stereotype (informed by our love of cheap and ubiquitous fast food which, let’s be honest, barely counts as food to begin with). But we can’t exactly deny that roughly one in three men and women in this country are obese, planting us firmly in the highest echelon of chubby nations around the world.

Yesterday, real estate search engine Estately published a series of US maps chronicling the top 10 US “couch potato” states. Yes, their findings may be riddled with excessive judgement and questionable statistics, but (taken with a grain of salt) the trends Estately found do offer some interesting insight into the general habits of the good ol’ US of A.

Estately used Facebook trends, Yellow pages listings, Google and Gallup analytics, and American Time User Surveys to assess the ‘states based on the following parameters:

Hours per day spent watching TV.

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Okay, I don’t think anyone could argue that this might be a fairly legit metric for studying a state’s couch-potato-ness.

Laz-E-Boy retailers per capita.

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Though this map doesn’t illustrate whether or not people actually shop at those Lay-Z-Boys around the country.

Fast food restaurants per capita.

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“Nevada had the most (1 for every 881 people).” Yikes.

Frequency of exercise.

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West Virginia is also the “second poorest state in the US,” so it’s only fair to say that “paying for a gym membership” is probably not a priority there.

State obesity rate.

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Taken with the previous map, it’s hard to deny that there’s a bit of a problem in those darker states. Though this is certainly a “chicken or egg” scenario.

Fewest hours of work per day.

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Really? Frankly, I think all of those folks in Maine are livin’ the dream.

“Expressing interest in daytime soap operas.”

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There’s a bizarrely strong correlation between “daytime soaps” and obesity rate/lack of exercise.

Video game rental-related Google searches.

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Nevada: apparently the land of the most fast food and video games per-capita. Having grown up there myself, I could definitely see that as being the case.

Bonus: Google searches related to “frozen pizza.”

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There’s a reason why this statistic wasn’t included in the rankings. My guess is Estately couldn’t really conclude anything based on the fact that Wisconsin seems to be obsessed with Googling “frozen pizza.”

So, which were the top 10 “couch potato” states based on these metrics?

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10. Delaware, 9. Missouri, 8. Tennessee, 7. Oklahoma, 6. Kentucky, 5. Louisiana, 4. Arkansas, 3. West Virginina, 2. Alabama, 1. Ohio

Find out how your state stacks up in the complete chart of all 50 states:

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Dang, way to go Hawaii.


h/t: someecards, Estately 

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