{"id":8461,"date":"2010-12-15T00:45:19","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T05:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=8461"},"modified":"2013-10-06T23:15:20","modified_gmt":"2013-10-07T02:15:20","slug":"overweight-soldiers-a-national-security-issue-like-dadt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/15\/overweight-soldiers-a-national-security-issue-like-dadt\/","title":{"rendered":"Overweight Soldiers a National Security Issue like DADT?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/2010\/12\/army-extreme-weight-loss-120510w\/\"><em>Army Times<\/em> covers<\/a> (and <a href=\"http:\/\/pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com\/2010\/12\/10\/fit-friday-how-army-is-turning-to-lipo-sports-not-giving-kids-cardio\/\">CNN repeats<\/a>) the lengths to which Army troops are now going in order to avoid discharge for being overweight:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They\u2019re increasingly turning to starvation diets,\u00a0 weight-loss pills, laxatives and even liposuction&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Soldiers write about wrapping themselves in Icy-Hot, Preparation H treatments, popping stool softeners, going to saunas to meet the Army\u2019s requirements.\u00a0 Many of the comments say the military should reassess its weight standards.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Keep in mind this has nothing to do with the military&#8217;s rigorous <!--more-->standards for their physical fitness tests &#8212; only <em>weight<\/em> standards:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>About 24,000 soldiers were discharged between 1992 and 2007 for failure to comply with weight standards&#8230;In comparison, the Army discharged less than a tenth of that number \u2014 2,342 soldiers \u2014 for failing the physical fitness test between 1999 and 2007.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So soldiers who otherwise have the skills to perform the mission and meet standards are struggling <em>only<\/em> with the issue of weight.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, far more soldiers were discharged for weight than homosexuality, which has received far more attention.\u00a0 In fact, weight is <em>worse<\/em>, since the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2010\/HEALTH\/04\/20\/military.fat.fight\/index.html\">propensity for obesity in the population<\/a> &#8212; from which the military recruits its members &#8212; is far greater than homosexuality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Army Times covers (and CNN repeats) the lengths to which Army troops are now going in order to avoid discharge for being overweight: They\u2019re increasingly turning to starvation diets,\u00a0 weight-loss pills, laxatives and even liposuction&#8230; Soldiers write about wrapping themselves in Icy-Hot, Preparation H treatments, popping stool softeners, going to saunas to meet the Army\u2019s requirements.\u00a0 Many of the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[88,219,1237,442,2,1236],"class_list":["post-8461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-army","tag-dadt","tag-fitness","tag-homosexual","tag-military","tag-weight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}