For a person with a BMI of 25-28.9 kg/m2, the relative risk for coronary heart disease is 1.72. The risk progressively increases with an increasing BMI; with BMIs greater than 33 kg/m2, the relative risk is 3.44. Similar trends have been demonstrated in the relationship between obesity and stroke or chronic heart failure.

Overall, obesity is estimated to increase the cardiovascular mortality rate 4-fold and the cancer-related mortality rate 2-fold. As a group, people who are severely obese have a 6- to 12-fold increase in the all-cause mortality rate. Although the exact magnitude of the attributable excess in mortality associated with obesity (about 112,000-365,000 excess deaths annually) has been disputed, obesity is indisputably the greatest preventable health-related cause of mortality after cigarette smoking.