How fat and out of shape can any one person (officer or enlisted) get in the modern military and not be kicked out or retired. In older movies and other media you see lots of representations of some fairly obese generals, admirals and officers. Would this fly today?
Can’t say about top brass but for Noncoms not very fat or out of shape at all. The old terms was Riffed (Reduction in Forces) but the 300lb quartermaster is a thing of the past.
Which raises a second question in my brain; has anyone lately gotten out of combat or out of the service by porking out? As a way to a sort of medical discharge?
I was given a general discharge at the end of Army infantry AIT for failing the PT test back in 1992. I could run more than fast enough, do more than enough sit ups, but I COULD NOT do the required amount of push ups. At the time I was 6 foot tall and about 180 pounds.
I was in the Army National Guard, and once upon a time it was one of my duties to routinely record soldiers’ heights and weights to ensure that they fell within the Army’s standards. If a soldier was too heavy, I would then take various body measurements (neck, chest, and abdomen if I recall correctly) to determine if the soldier was obese or on the way to obesity. If he or she (but mostly it was a he as I served in combat units) was simply heavy due muscle mass, then all would be well. Body builders were regularly determined to be “too heavy” until this was done. However, if the soldier was simply overweight due to an excess of fat, he or she would be counselled to lose weight, and he may or may not have been put on a special exercise and diet plan. There is a fancy name for this, but in the units in which I served it was simply called the “Fat Boy Program”–soldiers can be rather sensitive and understanding, you know. Anyway, after a certain amount of time, the soldier was told the excess weight had to be gone or he would be discharged. As it happens, though, I don’t think anybody I knew or tested was ever kicked out of the military for being overweight, though I’ve heard of this happening (I know a guy who knows a guy . . .). That said, some of my “Fat Boys,” as they were called, who just couldn’t lose the weight were under a lot of stress about it, it held up promotions, and so forth. I’d also like to note that when I first discovered that the soldier weight control program was among my duties, I was unofficially given to understand that getting an important member of the unit, a senior NCO, or an officer put on the Fat Boy Program might not be the best thing I could do for my (so-called) military career.
Regarding your “fairly obese generals, admirals and officers” . . . typically these will be older people, and in the Army at least the weight standards are adjusted for age, just like the PT tests . . . the older you are, the more leeway you are given. Of course, these folks might (I speculate) also receive more lattitude because they are important folks with quite a bit of influence. If I, a lowly enlisted medic, was afraid of making my captain, a relatively insignificant person in the larger military picture, look bad I sure as hell wouldn’t risk doing that to a colonel or general.
Things might work a little differently in the “real Army,” and I haven’t been in uniform now for around a decade . . . things could be different now.
Here’s a United States Army chart.
Here’s a .pdf manual on the subject: http://www.army.mil/USAPA/epubs/pdf/r600_9.pdf
Sorry for such a long–obese, if you will–reply to a relatively simple question but it’s been a long, stressful day and these things happen when I’m tired.
Have a good evening. 
Going by memory from my time in the Coast Guard in the 1980s, they instituted a weight measuring program in the early 1980s. They would measure your height and the wrist on your dominant hand. The wrist size was divided into three groups. Bottom line for me being 6’2" and largest wrists, I had to be under 235 pounds. There was one E-6 who was kicked out for being fat but I suspect he wanted to get out. With the exception of one E-7 at another unit (who had an unflattering nickname because of his weight), I didn’t see that many fat people. I don’t remember anything about allowing older people to weigh more, since I was in when the program was started it may have been added later after I got out. But in general they wanted to work with people to get them to lose weight.
Once we passed boot camp, there really weren’t any physical standards testing. I had one CO
who tried some kind of “Olympic testing” with 1 1/2 mile runs, start-and-go running but he gave it up after a year telling us it was our responsibility to keep fit.
Hmm, actually that link makes me want to ask a related question. It says if you’re underweight you go for immediate medical evaluation. What does that entail? (I mean do they take you in to make sure you’re not ragingly sick?)
How tolerant the “military” would be depends on the branch (Army, Navy, etc.) as well as upon your value to the service. The Navy, for instance, would be more likely to tolerate a few extra pounds on a nuclear engineer aboard a sub than would the Marines a 0311/Grunt.
My last year in the Army I had a 76 lb waiver for muscle mass. (1987) But I was constantly harrassed for being overweight and had to beat the fat test dozens of times, many times in the same quarter. My E7 promotion was held up for three days while I went once again to the clinic to be evauluated. I had just been 3 weeks before. I finally just gave up and got out. My final PT test in 87 was 77 pushups in 2 min, 89 situps in 2 min, and a 15:30 2 mile run. The worst part was I was a computer programmer, not a combat troop at all. I could have barely been able to move and still do my job.
I did get a 300% raise in my first civilian job and I went to work exactly one building over.
Nope, that pretty much sums it up for the “real” Army from 2006-2010. The single biggest factor though was your unit. The Army weight control program is administered at the Company level, so in my Regiment you had 18 different companies, and 18 different standards for what would actually get you put on the weight control program.
I was on the fat-boy program for a while. I was 6’2", 210 lbs., and the limit for my age was (IIRC) 190 lbs. The company clerk (who did the measuring after the PT tests) ETS’d, and the new clerk wasn’t measuring anyone’s necks correctly, so a lot of got put on extra PT, including our master sergeant. At the next PT test, they found someone else to do the measuring.
Today? Yeah, I’d fail. I’m trying to get back to 210, though.
I realize this is the worst answer in the world but . . . it depends.
In my first unit, I was basically the only medical guy around (scary thought!). There I would have reported it to my company commander, but I suspect some other medics just wouldn’t bother with it unless there was something very seriously wrong. That’s just based on my experience with apathetic slacker medics in my second unit. In that outfit we had access to a physician, and when us medic types discovered something wrong with a soldier some of us would pursue it rather aggressively and some would just shrug things off and not worry about it. Sad but true. It’s been sad (by Collin Powell?) that the military is full of the best and the brightest, and certainly some of the best and the brightest I’ve met have worn military uniforms. As it happens, however, the worst and the dullest also have found homes in the military.
Anyway, what to do when a soldier weighs too little? I’m sure there’s a manual on this somewhere. Like I said, in my case, I would have sent the problem up the chain of command somehow and followed up with the soldier(s) involved.
Really? So if I joined your unit–let’s call it the 1st Straight Dope Regiment/Airborne (para-dopers!)–and could only weigh 200 pounds in Alpha Company, it would be possible for me to transfer to Bravo Company and weight 210 pounds, but I could get gigged for the same weight in Charlie Company, etc.? That seems . . . weird. Now, I believe you, given what a strange world the military can be. Of course, you said these tests were *administered *at the company level. I wonder if there wasn’t a strict standard set on high to which all hypothetically had to adhere, but that people at the company or battalion level were doing things incorrectly, perhaps misunderstanding the rules or fooling around with the numbers for some reason (retention levels or whatever)?
Wrong. The U.S. Navy actually got fairly strict about weight control and physical fitness since at least the early 1990s.
Body-fat measurements and a physical readiness test are administered every six months. After one failure (either for body-fat or the PRT), you get put on a mandatory PT program at 0600 in the mornings. IIRC, if you get two failure in a given time period (18 months?), you cannot be promoted or transferred to another duty assignment until a subsequent PASS on the test, and the failures are noted on your next fitness report (which is the kiss of death for officers and senior enlisted). After two failures, you may also be sent on a temporary assignment to a weight-reduction camp (aka “Fat Boy Camp.”) After three failures in a given time period, the sailor is generally processed for discharge, IIRC.
I knew lots of people, including officers and nuclear-trained personnel who got kicked out of the Navy for body fat issues. In particular, I remember two reactor operators (nicknamed “Tweedledee” and “Tweedledum”), who were so overweight that they actually broke the steel chair at the submarine’s reactor plant control panel. This was when the Navy was starting to crack down on out-of-shape personnel, and these two guys apparently didn’t take the crackdown seriously. They were both quite surprised when they both got kicked out of the Navy about the same time (leaving the sub understaffed for reactor operators).
The Navy’s program was fairly consistent between different commands, IME.
I’m not saying that the actual standards were different, everyone had the same copy of AR 600-9 sitting on the desk of course. It was just that one CO wouldn’t care much and so the weight control NCO would let some people slide, while another CO would start paper work if you were 1% over on body fat, no matter how good a soldier you were.
In my time a lot of people (myself included sometimes) were allowed to stay above our weight/ body fat allowances for quiet a while. I think it was probably because we were in the middle of the “surge” in Iraq, so they were keeping everyone they could in. Towards the end of my tour as things were winding down in Iraq word came down from on high to start cracking down, but I got out before I could really see if they followed through.
Of course my company kicked so many people out for drug abuse that there would hardly have been anyone left if we kicked out all of the fat kids too, and rumor had it we were one of the more disciplined companies.
I was a medic too, so I had to deal with everyone getting kicked out, since they all had to get physicals. In four years I saw a couple dozen go down for drugs, a few for other discipline issues. But I never saw anyone actually get kicked out for being overweight. They would threaten a lot, but usually they would just move the person to a new company and hope his new platoon sergeant was more focused on PT.
AmunRa, thanks for the clarification. Yeah, what you say makes sense and jibes well with my suspicions and various things I’ve heard.
Have a good one. 
It had slacked off again towards the late 90s early 2000s. Well, at least in my division/workcenter.
Our PT tests were administered in such a way as to make it impossible to fail. IF we actually ran it, it was still self reporting, so we’d do push ups, then gather together and tell Chief, MM1, or whoever happened to be recording them. If you threw out a number that was wildly improbable, they’d call bullshit and you’d pick a lower number.
Many times we’d just show up at muster one morning and chief would inform us we ran the PT test the day before and he had forgotten to get our scores.
I don’t recall anyone ever getting tested for fat, or being put on a fat boy program.
So it depends.
Huh–I actually got out in 2002, and didn’t notice any slacking off as of that point. There sure seemed to be lot of emphasis from BUPERS/NAVPERS, with the PRT instruction constantly being revised at the time.
If I’d known they were going to slack off like that, I might have joined a drilling reserve unit. 
Just as a side observation: PT on a deployed sub sounds like one of the most boring things imaginable. How many times can you run up and down the same passageway?
The early-morning mandatory PT usually only applies to those on a shore-based command. Someone assigned to a submarine might be required to attend so many PT sessions per week on the base when the sub is in port, and to do so many exercise sessions per week on their own when at sea.
At sea, besides than the large ballistic missile subs, you really can’t jog very easily. Smaller attack submarines generally have a Stairmaster, an exercise bike, and a rowing machine–for 135 or so sailors.
Besides room to jog (in the missile compartment), the large missile subs additionally have treadmills and other exercise equipment, such as a weight bench.
The real key is to eat less. People at sea often compensate for the isolation and stress by eating, and there are four hearty meals available per day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midrats (midnight rations)). It’s very easy to gain weight at sea.
The fear of getting kicked out of the Navy for body fat helped keep me within standards, but I always struggled.
We have PT testing every year, if you fail, you are put on remedial PT and brought up to standard. Re-test is min 3 months later. If you fail at the re-test your reprimand can vary but can include discharge.
Certain units/trades are much stricter and have their own standards.
We have something called “universality of service” but it basically means that everyone is a soldier first.