List of the 10 Heaviest Women That Ever Lived

Many of us fear gaining an extra pound or two, but for some people, their weight struggle is a life or death situation. For many people that are extremely obese, they are usually aware that their extra weight could cause their deaths, but it can be a real challenge for them to stop eating. Others simply are genetically predisposed to obesity. Obesity can cause many other health problems, including diabetes and cancer. 

So, which are the ten heaviest women that ever lived? The ten heaviest women that ever lived are:

  • Donna Simpson
  • Mayra Rosales
  • Terri Smith
  • Rosalie Bradford
  • Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty
  • Pauline Potter
  • Carol Yager
  • Catrina Raiford
  • Alayna Morgan
  • Renee Williams

Since there isn’t much information available on the Internet today about the ten heaviest women ever, we created this article to help you out. Below we’ll share with you a list of the ten heaviest women ever. Many of these women publicly shared their stories of obesity to shed light and knowledge on the disease. 

The 10 Heaviest Women

So, who are the heaviest women in the world, and how much do they weigh? Below we list the stories of the ten heaviest women in the world and their struggles with obesity. 

#1 Donna Simpson

Donna Simpson, now forty-five years old, lives in the United States and, in 2008, decided she wanted to break records as the heaviest woman in the world. While not a good idea health-wise, Simpson was determined and decided she wanted to weigh 1,000 pounds. To encourage her weight gain, she made a website and had fans pay her to watch her eat and pack on the pounds. Simpson weighed 630 pounds at the time, but managed to lose weight by 2010, falling to 602 pounds. 

Simpson earned the honor of being the Guinness World Record keeper as the heaviest woman to have a baby. In 2010, she delivered her daughter, Jacqueline. After the birth of her first child, Simpson went on a diet, realizing obesity was causing her massive health issues. She now weighs 370 pounds. 

#2 Mayra Rosales

Mayra Rosales became famous when accusations became public that she had killed her sister’s son. However, the court felt that Rosales was too large to have caused the murder, and she got off. According to Rosales’s defense team, she was too large to have lifted her arm to harm her nephew. At the time, Rosales weighed 1091 pounds. Rosales said she fell onto her nephew, and that’s what caused the untimely death of two-year-old Eliso Jr in 2008. 

Later, the police learned that the boy’s death was caused by a head injury. So, Rosales admitted she invented her story because her sister Jamie had hit the boy earlier in the day. Jamie was found guilty of injuring a child and received fifteen years in prison. Unfortunately for Rosales, the situation has created a lot of stress and negatively impacted her health. 

#3 Terri Smith

When Terri Smith learned she weighed 698 pounds, her doctor told her she needed to go on a diet or prepare to die from her obesity. At the time, Smith was experiencing terrible headaches and needed to get an MRI, but she was too large to be placed in the machine. She wound up spending the next several years in bed and needs help from either her husband or her daughter to accomplish anything. 

Smith said she was always large, even as a child, and grew up on “soul food.” Since everybody around her ate that food, she never thought about how it was impacting her health. By the age of thirty-two, Smith’s arthritis became so bad, and she could no longer walk far. That caused more weight gain. 

However, Terri Smith is currently trying to lose weight, and she is dieting and exercising. Her goal is to qualify to receive gastric bypass surgery. 

#4 Rosalie Bradford

Rosalie Bradford reached a weight of 1200 pounds in January of 1987. Bradford struggled with her obesity for years and was rushed to the hospital in 1987 because of congestive heart failure. After that, doctors forced her onto a controlled diet to curb her obesity and heart disease. By 1994, she weighed 282 pounds. Bradford passed away in November 2006. 

#5 Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty

Born in 1980, Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty lived in Egypt and was the heaviest living woman in the world. She was also considered the second heaviest woman ever, falling behind Carol Yager. However, Eman was almost a foot smaller than Yager. That means Eman had the highest recorded BMI in history at 251.1. At her heaviest, Aty weighed 1100 pounds. She died in 2017. 

#6 Pauline Potter

Pauline Potter is one of the latest world record holders for the heaviest woman alive. However, after Potter earned that title, she immediately decided she wanted to take on a more active lifestyle. Potter, who is from Sacramento, California, weighs 643 pounds. Potter decided to reach out to Guinness because she wanted to shed light on obesity and find somebody that would help her lose the pounds. 

#7 Carol Yager

Carol Yager weighed 1,189 pounds in 1993. At that time, she had to go to the hospital. A team of firefighters had to come in to move her since she hadn’t left her bed in nine months. When Yager was hospitalized, she managed to lose five-hundred pounds

#8 Catrina Raiford

Catrina Raiford was considered the heaviest woman in the world at one point and weighed 955 pounds at that time. By the time she was fourteen, she already weighed nearly five-hundred pounds. She wound up being placed in a psychiatric home by her family, and she stayed there for eight months. As she grew older, Raiford continued to gain weight. She also struggled with severe emotional issues, so she was unable to hold down her job. 

In December 2003, Raiford finally found the inspiration to lose some of the weight after calling for emergency assistance because she was having problems breathing. She had stayed in bed for five years at that point. When emergency workers came, they had to bulldoze her out of her house. Three years later, Raiford lost 300 pounds. In 2005 she was able to get a gastric bypass, and she has now lost nearly 500 pounds. 

#9 Alayna Morgan

Alayna Morgan lived in Santa Rosa, California, and was once known as one of the world’s heaviest women. At that time, she weighed almost 700 pounds. She appeared on an episode of the show Supersize vs. Superskinny. She died in 2009. 

#10 Renee Williams

When Renee Williams was twelve-years-old, she was already considered to have super-morbid obesity. That means her BMI was well over fifty. She experienced a car wreck in 2003 that resulted in the inability to walk. After that happened, she gained another 420 pounds in four years, which nearly doubled her previously 460-pound body. 

After gaining weight, Williams was stuck in bed, and she started eating often. Both before and after the car wreck, Williams would eat until her stomach physically hurt her. She could eat as much as eight hamburgers in a single sitting. By the time she was twenty-nine years old, Williams had weighed an incredible 880 pounds. She continued to gain around eight pounds each year. Although she didn’t qualify for gastric bypass surgery, doctors knew she had less than a year to live because of her weight.

So, the surgery was performed. Unfortunately, Williams passed away twelve days later.

Scroll to Top