Posted on 10/20/2023 1:23:21 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
Nearly seven out of 10 US service members are considered either overweight or obese — which may compromise the nation’s military readiness and undermine national security, according to a new wide-ranging study.
The American Security Project, a Washington-based nonprofit, found that 68% of US troops qualified as either “overweight” or “obese” under the Body Mass Index, which takes into account a person’s age, height and weight.
It also determined that the number of troops in the “obese” category have more than doubled over the course of the past decade — from 10.4% in 2012, to 21.6% last year.
The trend poses a “dire threat,” according to the report released last week.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Mandate Ozempic!
Swollen valor.
I remember the old Navy and there were people in there that were so obese they had apron’s hanging down from their beltline, but the chow never changed until just the last decade or so.
When the military introduced the PFT, there were people who were eating themselves out of the military because they didn’t like the military, and it was an easy way out.
Maybe it’s just water weight or menstrual bloating... Just saying.
Big is beautiful!
/s - for the slow.
At least they know their pronouns.
This is what happens when the focus of recruiting is on knob gobblers and carpet munchers.
I graduated in 1964 and remember one fat guy and one fat girl. Neither would qualify as obese today.
EnderWiggin1970 :” I can believe this, but I want to pose a sanity check: BMI is simply a comparison of your weight to your height.
Meaning you can get a high BMI (obesity) either by being very fat... or very muscular.
Seems to me soldiers toting 80-90 lb. gear kits might score a high BMI just due to muscle mass.
Is this accounted for?
Occasionally, the health community adjusts the standards of what is the approved BMI index.
To observe and understand the real standard change of BMI index, you need to maintain consistency of the standards.
The health care community has changed the goal posts of the ideal BMI index over time.
Want to change your BMI index ? .. eliminate "high fructose corn syrup " from your diet - hint -> its in everything as a cheaper sweetener substitute than sugar.
The body stores "high fructose corn syrup" as brown fat, which is the last fat that the body will burn off
Two things we can do. Mandate a soda tax. And require more P.E. Maybe we should require two credits of P.E. in high school in order to graduate. In many states, you just need one semester to fulfill the requirement. Sometimes they teach health so you’re not always getting the exercise because you have to be in the classroom when you’re taking health.
These are just round figures.
There is a problem but the stats are not accurate. My son is “calculated” as obese in the Navy. He is 6’2” and 230 pounds. He needs a waiver because he is “not on the chart”. However, he has 10% bodyfat and can do their 1.5 mile run in just over 8 minutes.
When there is a hatch to lift, he is one of the only ones that can do it solo. He is an ox (with some speed too). So yes, he counts towards their overweight and obese.
Meanwhile, the vegetarians onboard cannot life a hatch without him (the girls can’t either) or properly man the ropes. Even though he has a “desk job” (AEGIS systems on a Destroyer), he is one of the fittest on his ship (even though “obese”.
Yes, there are huge fitness gaps (they stopped testing fitness during covid and they won’t sep anyone over fitness now because it “takes time”). But there are also measurement problems.
Obese, overweight, or trannies now make up Brandon’s military.
While I don’t dismiss the entire article, BMI is a horrible way to measure obesity. But measuring fat requires “maths” and that’s hard for a lot of folks.
“Meaning you can get a high BMI (obesity) either by being very fat... or very muscular.”
Exactly.
I once saw a truck driver having a hard time getting through his physical. His BMI was showing him as being extremely obese. Only problem was he was a bodybuilder who had about 3% body fat. It took him two days to get his physical straightened out.
Concur. The BMI made sense in 1900 when few lifted weights and protein was expensive. In the 1980s at the Recruit Depot in San Diego, the first step for determining whether a recruit was over weight was the BMI and the second step was for a corpsman would actually look at the recruit. That second step prevented a lot of mislabels
I'm a former Marine and have had my battles with weight. I never claimed it was because I was too muscular. If you fall outside the height/weight charts they break out the tape measure and calculate your body fat percentage. It takes 5 minutes and if it turns out it really is because of musculature then they write you a waiver and send you on your way.
Most people claiming they're muscular as a reason are full of crap.
The left will say the solution is for us to have a war to send our troops to burn off those calories. Oh wait, Ukraine needs help, what timing!
Ping.
death from within...
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