4.5 billion pounds of fat ~= 30 million people

The nation’s roughly 4.5 billion excess pounds still skew heavily to the Southeast, with eight of the nation’s 10 most obese states clustered near the Gulf and Atlantic coasts and along the southern Appalachian Mountains. Among the top 10, only Oklahoma and Michigan — which had a 1.2% increase in adult obesity in the last four years, the largest of any state — are outside the South.