The Comment Factory

Fat fighter... Retro WWF wrestler, Earthquake

Nothing is likely to put Al-Qaeda at ease more than the thought of a waddling phalanx rumbling towards them in Iraq. But as the War on Terror got underway, standards in the US military relating to body fat and fitness were seriously relaxed: as the recruiting pool has shrunk, the waistlines of soldiers has got bigger. In fact, the US soldier today weighs 37 pounds, or 25%, more than his ancestor in the Civil War.

It makes sense that the military should seek to reenfranchize the overweight. In 2005, according to an Army report, one-third of 18-year-olds who applied to the military were overweight. That share increased 6% from 1996 to 2005. The military knew that maintaining harsh policies on body fat was seriously shrinking the pool of prospective soldiers: weight is by far the most common medical reason for rejection.

The rules had to change. The military introduced ARMS, or Assessment of Recruit Motivation and Strength, that aims to give overweight soldiers a second chance physical test if they are above the body-weight limit. It grants an automatic waivers to men with 30% body fat (men) and  36% (women). Once in, these new chubby recruits are made to do various physical tests to see if they are fit enough, but their weight by itself is no longer a bar.

The Boston Globe reported on an 18-year-old who in 2006 wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father and enlist in the Marines. Problem was he was 250 pounds. That was 35 pounds over the cutoff for a Marine his height. But there was hope for him. He went to Westover Joint Air Reserve Base in Chicopee and became one of the first New Englanders to take advantage of the ARMS scheme, taking fitness tests as a way around his weight problems. Medical waivers generally are still going up. In 2007 they constituted 30% of all Army waivers and 25% of those for the Marine Corp.

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Normally weighted soldiers who put on the pounds after they’re enlisted have also been given a reprieve. In 1998, 2,224 soldiers were discharged from the army for not meeting body fat standards. In 2006 that figure had fallen to 589-–a 74 percent drop in eight years.

“These statistics should be seen against the background of the army trying very hard to maintain its overall numbers,” said Dr. Russell Pate, professor of health sciences at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina and a military adviser on obesity. In his opinion: “They’ve been granting waivers to the weight exclusion program in the interest of meeting targets.”

Nathan M. Banks Sr., spokesman for the Department of the Army, dismisses such charges. “Soldiers realize how important it is to stay in shape. Especially in time of war, the heat in Iraq can get up in the 100s, soldiers carry body armor that weighs over 60 pounds.”

Whatever the reason, Lynn McAfee, of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, is ecstatic. “I think it’s great that they finally understand our value in society,” she said. “Now they finally understand that everyone can play a part in defending our country.

“It’s absurd that as desperate as we are now for soldiers,” she continued, “even though it’s declining we’re still kicking out people of worth and people of value because of how they look. But I’d like to think this is a turning point.”

Recently $6 million of federal money was granted to the Troop Recruit Improvement (TRIM) program run by the Nutrition Research Council, which hopes to “improve recruit readiness and fitness by determining and combating the causes of childhood and adolescent obesity.”

Dr. Andrew Young, Chief of the Military Nutrition Division in Natick, Mass., was involved in constructing the TRIM project. “We definitely have seen that soldiers are not immune to the obesigenic environmental factors of this country and the rest of the world,” he said. “The military now recognizes that some of the soldiers in the army and probably other services are having trouble maintaining healthy body weight.”

Despite the decline in the numbers of discharges for obesity, Young claims obesity is rising in the army. “The environmental pressures are growing,” he said. “More and more soldiers have duties that are not as active, not all soldiers have very physically demanding jobs. Some have a relatively small physical component. The environment promotes fat gain unless we are aggressive to counteract those pressures.”