Trump’s recorded weight has fluctuated from 236 pounds in 2016 to 244 pounds in 2020 before falling to 215 pounds in 2023 and rising to 238 pounds this year.
His doctors have advised weight loss, dietary changes and sustained physical activity, while outside physicians have highlighted the health risks associated with excess body fat.
Doctors say BMI is useful for screening but does not by itself show how healthy an older person is or where body fat is concentrated.
President Donald Trump has prompted fresh concern among doctors over a possible 23-pound weight gain since his 2023 presidential campaign, with physicians pointing to the health risks associated with excess weight at his age.
According to The Washington Post, Trump has also faced questions about bruising on his hands, swelling in his ankles and apparent drowsiness. When he was charged in Georgia in an election interference case in August 2023, his booking record listed him at 215 pounds. A White House medical report in May put the figure at 238 pounds. Based on those figures, Trump may have gained 23 pounds, although it remains unclear where the 2023 booking weight originated; at 6-foot-3, he is roughly 1.6 pounds short of being classified as obese under BMI calculations.
The administration said he had gained 14 pounds between his most recent annual medical check-ups, while photographs have shown him looking heavier than during the campaign.
White House physicians have advised the president — who has made little secret of his love for McDonald’s and his distaste for intense exercise — to concentrate on weight loss, a better diet and sustained activity. Some outside doctors have expressed greater concern.
Scott Kahan, director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness and a George Washington University physician, said: “We know that obesity is a strong risk factor for numerous health issues — as well as premature disability and death. Addressing obesity to protect the president’s health should be a priority similar to ensuring Secret Service protections for his life.”
The White House has pointed instead to Trump’s energy and stamina. His weekly schedule regularly includes intense meetings, press events and public remarks, and he spends many weekends playing golf. Physicians have repeatedly said they are impressed by his energy, cognitive fitness and other positive markers for his age. Ronny Jackson, who served as Trump’s physician in the first term, wrote in a 2022 memoir: “I told him he could do a better job with his diet, and he would be a little healthier if he exercised and lost some weight, but other than that, he was in outstanding shape for his age.”
The Washington Post reported that more than 40 per cent of adult Americans are obese and an additional 30 per cent-plus are overweight, according to federal data. Many Americans struggle with similar challenges. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other senior officials have identified reducing Americans’ weight as a priority under the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.
Trump has repeatedly raised weight — his own and others’ — in public remarks, using it as a taunt against opponents such as Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and former adviser Chris Christie. “I would never call anybody fat,” Trump said in a speech at last month’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where he mocked the idea of Christie and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York) fighting over a cheesecake. “I have my own problems, you know?” He has joked that he avoids bulletproof vests because they could make him look fat and has defended his diet in the Oval Office: “Maybe junk food is good and the other food is no good. I know many, many people that all they do is watch their weight, their this, their that, and they kicked the bucket, and here we are. I feel great.”
In a statement, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said: “President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, relentless work ethic and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats and the legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people. President Trump is the sharpest and most accessible President in American history who is working nonstop to solve problems and deliver on his promises.”
The White House did not respond to further questions about the president’s health, including this year’s advice that he address his weight or whether he has ever taken a GLP-1 anti-obesity drug. Trump has said he has never taken such a medication.
Trump’s diet and weight have been scrutinised throughout his political career. Pressed by Barbara Walters in 2015 on whether there was anything they would change about their father, Trump’s children eventually conceded that they did not like his diet. “I want him to eat healthier,” Ivanka Trump told Walters.
On The Dr. Oz Show in September 2016, a letter from his personal physician put his weight at 236 pounds. Trump said he wanted to lose 15 to 20 pounds, adding that his lifestyle made it difficult: “The one thing I would like to do is be able to drop 15, 20 pounds.” Mehmet Oz, the show’s host — now the Medicare and Medicaid chief in Trump’s administration — had determined he should lose weight. Trump later reflected: “I went on his show and he determined that I should lose weight. He said, ‘I think you should lose weight.’ I said, ‘I don’t need you saying that in front of millions of people. You don’t have to tell me that.’”
Contrary to that goal, he grew heavier during his first term. Jackson said in January 2018 that Trump weighed 239 pounds, about one pound shy of being classified as obese under BMI calculations. “I think a reasonable goal, over the next year or so, is to lose 10-15 pounds,” Jackson told reporters that month. “We talked about diet and exercise a lot. He’s more enthusiastic about the diet part than the exercise part, but we’re going to do both.” It is unclear whether Trump adopted any changes to his diet or began more exercise during his first term, and spokespeople for the White House and Jackson did not respond to questions about it.
Sean Conley, Jackson’s successor, said Trump weighed 243 pounds in February 2019 and 244 pounds in June 2020, figures that put him in the obese category under BMI calculations. Four months later, Trump contracted a serious case of COVID-19, an illness whose outcomes have been linked with obesity. He received a then-experimental antibody cocktail produced by Regeneron, which he credited with helping save his life. He left office in January 2021.
He appeared noticeably thinner when he announced another campaign for president in 2023. A doctor’s note released by the campaign in November stated he had “reduced his weight through an improved diet and continued daily physical activity.”
Questions about his weight returned in the second term after Stat News reported that the administration had worked with Eli Lilly to expedite access to a new weight-loss medication for an unnamed patient who was 79 at the time. The White House has denied that Trump received the drug, retatrutide, which is more powerful than traditional GLP-1 medications. Eli Lilly said it could not comment on any individual patient’s medical prescription, including whether Trump had ever been prescribed retatrutide, a GLP-1 or other drugs.
Some doctors, who declined to comment specifically on Trump, differed on how to interpret a hypothetical 80-year-old patient with a body-mass index of 30.
Gitanjali Srivastava, a physician specialising in obesity who has treated patients in their seventies and eighties, said weight could be a secondary issue to other markers of health: “BMI is a great screening tool, but it’s not everything. At that age, it’s less about a number, but more about, what is the percent body fat? What are we trying to improve including overall health, function, body fat?”
David Kessler, who served as head of the Food and Drug Administration under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, said he was deeply concerned about Americans’ excess body fat, which he said contributes to premature death: “That fat around the midsection — that visceral adiposity — is fat around our liver, pancreas, our heart where it doesn’t belong.”
The Washington Post reported that Trump has said he is wary of growing heavier, invoking former president William Howard Taft, who weighed more than 300 pounds. “He was our heaviest president, and I have to be careful because I don’t want to supersede his record,” he told second lady Usha Vance on a podcast posted last month. “And a thing like that would be possible if I allowed it to happen.”
