Army raises weight standards for women

[kurth]

Army raises weight standards for women
Officials say new limits take body type into account
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes

ARLINGTON, Va. — In a move officials say acknowledges the fact that women come in different body shapes, the Army has raised its weight standards for females across the board. The new regulations, which went into effect Monday, allow female soldiers to weigh anywhere from six to 19 pounds more than was previously permitted, depending on their height and age.

The standards for the maximum percentage of body fat women soldiers are permitted to carry, however, remain unchanged, according to Army regulation 600-19. The new rules “are trying to be more reflective of actual women’s body types,” Army Lt. Col. Norman Wade, an Army spokesman, told Stripes on Wednesday... Army officials decided to take a look at the weight charts because they were “hoping to reduce the soldiers being put into the Army weight control program,” according to Master Sgt. Charles Timms, a senior enlisted adviser in the Army’s personnel division.

Some of these women, Timms said, were not necessarily fat or unfit. They just had body types that gave them the appearance of being overweight...

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=39575&archive=true

[Stand and Fight]

1. Interesting. n/t

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

2. I'm fine with raising the weight limits to allow more muscular women but..

with those percentages of allowable body fat, they're allowing overweight women and that's lowering standards.

[Rosemary2205]

5. 6-19# overweight won't last long in basic

[NeedleCast]

9. They'll lose the weight

In nine weeks of basic they'll lose the weight. I went from 22% body fat to about 15% body fat in nine weeks, eating 6000+ calories a day in basic.

I just thought of it as having personal trainers at a gym who really took their job seriously.

[NeedleCast]

6. The BMI

the army uses is a joke. I and several people like me expierienced it all through our military careers. I am - at a very fit 12 to 15 percent body fat during my military career - 5'10" and about 220 pounds. In my age group, that put me about 30 pounds over the maximum allowable for my height. Of course I always passed my tape tests, but there's a certain stigma attached to having to be taped. It was particularly funny because I was in garrisoned intelligence units for most of my career and they took fitness much more seriously than the ground pounders to fight the "intel weenie" preception. When I was attached to special forces groups over in Afghanistan, there were a lot of heavy (muscular) dudes in the unit. The major who was in charge of us told some pentagon staffer light colonel to go fuck himself when the colonel suggested that some of his troops might not make weight standard and asked if the colonel would care to challenge any of the SF guys to the army physical fitness test.

Some of us can't help the fact that we more closely resemble a barrel than a human.

[Ezlivin]

3. They are not fat - they are just big boned

When I was in the Navy one of the guys on my boat gained an extraordinary amount of weight so he could get a medical discharge.

Even though we were on a submarine, we had some hefty sailors huffing up and down the ladders.

[Marr]

10. Nobody puts on 30 pounds of bone!

:)

Pardon me, just kidding around.

[trogdor]

4. Appearance is probable cause.

According to AR 600-9, if the commander think's you're fat just by looking at you, he or she can order that you be weighed and taped about as often as he or she wants.

[Solo_in_MD]

7. The real issue is how to have metrics that work with all body types

Its not just limited to women. The diversity of body types is such that having a single empirical standard is well nigh impossible. This is a move to accomodate those who are indeed fit but whose numbers are outside of the current standards.

[NeedleCast]

8. Exactly

n/t

[Marr]

11. That's so true- even when my body fat is at about 8%, I'm 30lbs.

over what the charts say I'm supposed to be. I'm 5'6", too- so it's not like it's spread over alot of real estate.

I've always enjoyed athletic activities though, and I'm not bad at them- things like mountain biking, long distance kayaking, wrestling, that sort of thing. I'm not fat at all, I just don't fit into their charts. It's like they're made for another species or something.

[Mythsaje]

12. I'm generally fifteen to twenty pounds heavier than I look...

Dense bones seems to run in my family. I can't float, for example. Or, rather, I should say I float about two inches under water. Which, as you can imagine, is hardly useful.