Posted on 10/20/2023 1:23:21 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
I was in the Marines as well. I was two pounds obese. 5’7” and 165 pounds. I wore small shorts tops and bottoms. They did a body fat test on me and I had 12% body fat.
I did not do any extra weight lifting. Just the regular PT.
You weren’t obese, you wouldn’t be obese by BMI at 5’7” until 192 lbs. The Marine Corps height/weight standards allow you to go to 175 lbs at 5’7” so at 165 you were still 10 lbs away from the maximum. I believe you were at 12% bodyfat but in no case would you be considered obese by any metric.
“Most people claiming they’re muscular as a reason are full of crap.”
I don’t disagree, but there are outliers like the driver I talked about. Some people, like myself, put on weight because of medication. I was on simvestaten for cholesterol. After years of taking it I had to quit because it was putting my neuropathy into overdrive. I also started losing weight.
I didn’t realize one of the side effects was weight gain. I’ve dropped thirty pounds just by going off the statin. Makes me wonder how many other people have that problem.
Then there are the lard asses who won’t get off the couch for any reason.
Medicine can certainly cause someone to put on weight. I’m not throwing stones at anyone, I’ve been obese on and off all my life. I’m currently not thanks to Mounjaro but spent the last 25 years overweight. I was also overweight as a child and was told by my mom I was “big boned”. Nah, I was just fat. I certainly am not going to criticize anyone for being fat, I’ve spent a good portion of my life overweight and know how hard it is, people treat you like dirt if you’re fat.
My point is that as a overall rule BMI works pretty well, obviously it doesn’t work for everyone and there are outliers but most people claiming they’re outside the normal range because they’re athletic really aren’t, they just don’t like what the data is telling them so they claim it’s bunk. It’s not, but people don’t want to hear it. We’re not a nation of bodybuilders, we’re a nation with a screwed up food supply that’s full of sugar and preservative laden processed crap that’s screwing up our endocrine system. There are a whole host of reasons we’re fat and I’m not assigning blame, calling people lazy or anything like that, I know how hard it is to fight it. I’m just saying denying the reality that 70% of the US is overweight by claiming we’re all Mr. Olympia isn’t true.
I was fortunate most of my life. I was one of those people who could eat as much as I wanted of anything and never gain a pound. But I grew up on the farm eating home cooked meals that came from our garden and pastures. Everything we ate was what we had produced, no sugar added. Most of the people around me were the same.
Thinking back, the obesity problem in this country didn’t really kick in until the food stamp program changed what it would pay for. As long as it paid for only essentials there were very few morbidly obese people walking around. And the people not using food stamps ate fresh produce and kept away from processed snacks.
It was when food stamps started buying everything from chips to candy to soft drinks that we started seeing porkers walking around every day. If we were serious about “fighting the fat” then we would go back to public assistance buying only essentials; meats, produce and milk.
Weight control is political, when the Korean war started all the troops in Japan sent over there, along with active, Reserve, and National Guard from the states got whipped into shape real quick in combat.
Not by Nifster’s standard.
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