Recent rankings of the fittest and fattest cities in America (by Men’s Health) and the most and least active cities (by WalletHub) indicate that Atlanta is significantly fitter and more active than its reputation for sweet tea and sitting in traffic would suggest. Our fair city placed in the top 10 in both studies. Even better, the trends across the nation are encouraging: According to the WalletHub report, the level of inactivity among Americans aged 6 and older, which has been steadily rising since 2008, fell from 28 percent to 27.6 percent and health club memberships are at an all-time high.

Using the 50 most populous cities in the nation, Men’s Health says they “compiled and studied statistics in several health- and fitness-related categories. Among them were air quality, access to healthy foods, general wellbeing, the quality of parks and so-called ‘urban forests,’ as well as bike- and walk-friendliness. We also sorted through data on how active citizens are, from their weight training habits on down to how many are bike commuters, and the effect it has on their body composition—fit, overweight, or plain fat.” Based on those criteria, Atlanta comes in at number 9 on the fittest list:

WalletHub used twice as many cities in its rankings, and Atlanta still placed in the top 10. Go, us! They calculated their list using two dimensions, “budget & participation” (things such as the average monthly fitness club fee and the percentage of people who participate in physical activity regularly) and “sports facilities and outdoor environment” (factors like number of swimming pools, tennis courts, ball fields, bike lanes, and basketball courts per capita as well as each city’s walk score). Atlanta ranked 10th in the country in the first category, due to plenty of inexpensive fitness amenities, and 18th in the second because we could apparently use a few more facilities around here. That said, only Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and D.C. have more pools than us.

In the end, the most and least active cities were:

Here it is in interactive map form if you’re into that sort of thing:

Keep up the good work, Atlanta!