BMI

I've always been a critic of the government's classification for recommended weight. Well, okay, fine, I've always been a critic of just about anything the government does. But specifically about weight.

What the government doesn't tell you when they say "twice as many Americans are overweight today than five years ago" what they fail to mention is the main factor in that change is that the government CHANGED THEIR CLASSIFICATION OF WHAT MAKES SOMEONE OVERWEIGHT. It's not just that people suddenly plumped up, it's because the rules changed.

They do the same thing with poverty rates. If they want to reduce the rate of poverty in the country, they change the definition of what qualifies someone to be "in poverty". With the stroke of a pen they can eradicate "poverty" across the country.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm not overweight; I would love to lose about 40 more pounds. All I'm saying is that the government's expectations of what I should weigh are completely unreasonable.

The measure that the government uses to determine overweightiness is a little thing called BMI (Body Mass Index). For me, with a weight of 300 and a height of 77 inches, I have a BMI of 35.6, well into the obese category. That's right, obese!

In order for me to be considered simply "overweight" I would need to drop 50 pounds. Yes, 50! For a man of my height, I would need to weigh 250 pounds to be at the TOP range of "overweight".

Guess how much weight I would have to lose to sneak into the "normal" category. You guessed it: 90 pounds! I would have to shed 30% of my current body weight to be at the high end of "normal".

It gets better! For me to be at the lower end of "Normal" (the least I could weight without being "underweight") I would have to lose 144 pounds. That's 48% of my body weight. I would have to hack off at least one of my legs (and have most of my organs harvested) to EVER achieve a 48% weight loss.

The reason I bring this all up is because I wanted to post that picture above, and couldn't find a better way of doing it. That may or may not be me laying on the rock (for legal purposes, I cannot confirm or deny that). But, if that were me, I would have to say at the time that picture was taken, I weighed right near 230 pounds.

In the picture, I (or whoever it is) have no fat on me whatsoever. Not a gram. My belly's flat, my legs are chickenish; I don't even have enough muscle on my arms to pluck a chicken.

So, if that represents the lower end of a healthy weight for me (supposing that's me or at least someone of my same build), how on earth would I lose an additional 80 pounds and still be alive?

Again, I admit I could lose some weight, but to ever weigh less than 250 I'd have to start hacking off limbs. It's about time the politicians in this country made a meaningful attempt to reduce the obesity in this country, and I'd say the best way to do that is to change the definition!