Fittest Cities: Here's Where Chicago Ranks

Despite our often crummy weather and penchant for deep-dish pizza, Chicago didn't do too poorly on a study comparing fitness in major U.S. cities, according to a new fitness index released by the American College of Sports Medicine. The index ranks 100 American cities based on their fitness and Chicago ranked 32 on the list.

The fittest city in the U.S. is Arlington, Virginia, according to the ACSM index. The index was calculated using 33 indicators and Arlington ranked No. 1 in “very good or excellent health” and in “low smoking rates.” The city also landed a spot in the top 10 for 11 other indicators.

The 33 indicators were divided by personal health and community/environment. The indicators were combined to create subscores for personal health and community/environment before a final score was tabulated. Personal health indicators took into account things like physical health, mental health, exercise and sleep while community/environment looked at things like how many acres of parkland was in a city.

Chicago received an overall score of 56.7. Arlington, the highest ranked city, scored 77.7.

For personal health, Chicago ranked 58. For community/environment rank, Chicago ranked 16.

Chicago also earned the eighth-place spot when it came to the city's walkability and was in the top 10 of cities that have parks within a 10-minute walk for most residents. The Windy City was also No. 3 on the top 10 list of cities for fruit and vegetable consumption.

However, the ACSM notes that though a city may be ranked low, it doesn’t mean that the city has low values across all the health indicators. The ACSM explains that the ranking simply indicates that relative to each other, some cities scored better than others.

You can see how Phoenix scored across all health indicators and how it compared to other cities here.

Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images