Oh really? I can bench press around 130 lbs, dead lift 155 lbs, and squat… Well, I don’t know how much I can squat. The highest weight I’ve done yet was 155 lbs, and at that weight I easily managed 3 sets of 12 reps and could have done more, so I clearly could have gone higher. “Pudgy but strong” would seem to describe me fairly well, in fact.
And so does “big but healthy,” as my resting heart rate, blood pressure, and fasting blood sugar level are all normal.
They are as easy or as difficult to predict as they are in thinner people, actually.
It can in some cases, but not all. I fit into airplane seats and can sit in normally-constructed chairs without having them collapse. Other very heavy people cannot. Someone who weighs 225 lbs may have a BMI of 40+, but they are different from someone who weighs 600 lbs. why assume they are the same?
Female, age 50. 5’ 2" tall, current weight about 220 lbs (when I was at my slimmest, in college, I weighed 115, just for comparison). None of the figures I gave were 1-rep maxes; I work out with a trainer, and she prefers three sets of 8-12 reps with lower weights over higher weight single lifts. I’ve never actually tried to max out on a lift (being somewhat wary of injuries which might heal slowly at my age).
I’m not claiming to be a bodybuilder at all; I’m not. But I AM claiming that most people would regard a middle-aged woman who can lift 155 lbs off the floor as reasonably strong, and someone who can hike for several miles without stopping as reasonably mobile. The image most people have of someone who is in my BMI range is rolls of fat everywhere, and barely walking (probably with a cane) or using a scooter. And in my case (and the case of many others like me) that is simply an inaccurate picture.
Good that you know your limits. That’s a lesson that a lot of folks fail to learn. That being said, others with different bodies and different skills from you can do the job. If the BSA can not afford such staff for the jamboree, then the unfit would be out of luck for such an activity, still leaving many activities in which they could participate (watching the entertainment, trading patches, playing with lego, messing about with computers – all of these are on the jamboree’s list). Too bad that the BSA has set its policy on the belief that a child can have an arbitrarily selected BMI that is too high to play with lego or mess about with computers, or walk to the tent and activity areas, rather than base their decision on the child’s doctor’s recommendation.
Yes, if you are female you are strong. I agree. I just didn’t know which gender you were. Hence my questions. I didn’t mean to sound like I was scoffing at you or anything.
I concur.
Being obese is “fixable” ( unlike a genuine disability ) by eating less/ exercising more and if excluding obese kids encourages them to slim down it’s a good thing.
People now are too PC to say it like it is, but obesity causes loads of health problems, and as a nurse, why should I have had to endanger my own back to look after someone that couldn’t make the effort to be a reasonable weight.
BTW, don’t give me the old “it’s hormones” or some other rubbish excuse that they can’t lose weight. In the vast vast majority of cases it’s purely not engaging the discipline neurone before stuffing the junk food down.
Perhaps, but if they are concerned about scouts who are too heavy to be carried by a helicopter, then why have the restriction in terms of BMI? Why not just have a weight limit?
Besides, that’s not the justification offered on the web page.
If the Boy Scouts are going to have some kind of weight-based rule, they should be clear about the purpose of the rule and they should narrowly tailor the rule to serve that purpose.
Turning back to the Disney analogy, imagine if Disney flat out prohibited pregnant women from entering the park?
I’ve never seen any proof of the “hormones” excuse.
On the other hand thermodynamics is fairly well understood. Consume fewer calories: lose weight. It’s dead simple.
edit: All of you arguing that they should test every fat person to determine their abilities seem to think that the BSA has plenty of resources to throw at testing these people that wold not be better used elsewhere. BMI isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a convenient guideline that is wrong less often than people seem to think. Especially at the ridiculous BMI 40 level.
Lifting is a dangerous activity. People that have to do so as part of their occupation are specially trained, and modern nursing requires the use of mechanical hoists for the overweight.
If some of the “helpers” damage their backs doing something they are not a/ big enough to do b/ trained to do, they could be permanently injured for the rest of their life. Also, the Scouts would be liable to be sued for allowing it.
Your idea is misguided at best and dangerous at worst.
Why can’t it just be plain old hostility? It’s not as though the Boy Scouts never make poor financial decisions. In fact, it looks to me like this new facility is a big boondoggle.
The Scouts aren’t in the business of running weight loss camps.
Could they even afford to employ all the specialist adults to look after fat kids that need special attention?
Well someone needs to study the best ways to encourage fat people to slim down. I have a feeling that the best approach is somewhere between the extremes of (1) total accommodating non-judgmentalism; and (2) flat out exclusion.
I’m pretty confident they could. After all, they just dropped 300 million on this fancy new facility. They apparently have the resources to accommodate scouts in wheelchairs and with other disabilities. And someone said upthread that people with BMI over 40 are pretty rare in the population. Probably they are even far rarer among children of scouting age.
It’s a free world (supposedly ), but if someone makes the choice to be excessively overweight for whatever reason, they shouldn’t complain if other people refuse to help them if they need lifting, or that a voluntary organisation like the Scouts puts restrictions on them.
Side topic- yes and no.
I’ve worked out hard at different times in my life, and controlled calorie intake rigorously.
Basic training for the Army was one such time. Later, I got into martial arts for some years.
I never got skinny.
Fit, firmer and less jiggly. Somewhat ripped even, I had actual abs.
But my shape never even came close to ‘standard normal’.
For my height, my target weight is well below what I weighed coming out of Basic.
Ain’t no way I can get there on my own if 11 weeks at Ft Sill didn’t do it.
OTOH, getting one’s BMI from 40 down to 35 seems like a goal which could be reached.
So how many BMI 40+ Scouts have protested this decision so far? How many kids with such a BMI are seriously bummed out that they’ve been restricted from strenuous outdoor physical activity alongside typically developing peers?
And how many parents of BMI 40+ Scouts will threaten to sue or make a media stink about this? How many parents of BMI 40+ kids want to have their parenting skills called into question by the media? It won’t be the BSoA who is raked over the coals for limiting their child’s life, abilities, and experiences.
It’s really fucking simple. If the criteria were about health, then the criteria would test for health. There are fucking athletes with a BMI of 40 or higher. BMI is 100% useless when used on individual. And if it were about health, then every other health problem would similarly be barred, which is not.
It’s not rocket science here, people. This is like saying you want to keep out poor people by discriminating against black people. If X is your primary concern, X is what you discriminate against. If you assume a priori that someone with Y is X, that’s fucking prejudice, and, thus, bigotry.
There is no non-bigotted argument that this isn’t bigotted. And if you think there is, I don’t want you anywhere near my kid. Racists and homophobes think they are being “realistic” too.
And, no, it doesn’t matter one iota if fat people are a protected class. Homosexuals aren’t either.
IN what world does practicality have anything to do with whether something is bigotted? Do you think the fact that slaves had no way of protesting their own slavery means that slavery wasn’t fueled by racist bigots?
If this is the best you’ve got, you’re making my argument for me. You admitted that you see a fat kid and not only are scared of what will happen, but are also immediately think about how horrible said kid or his parents are. You see something and jump to a fucking stereotype. THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF PREJUDICE. And if you cling to your prejudice instead of informing yourself, that’s bigotry.
The default amongst non-bigoted people is that you include everyone. You only don’t include someone because you can prove you have a good reason. You do not have a good reason to not include a kid whose doctor says it’s okay for them to participate.
Seriously, I weep for our country that this question needs to be asked. What a bigoted cesspit we live in.
Then you haven’t been keeping up with the latest studies. It’s been linked to a freaking gene that produces a certain hormone that makes you hungrier. And, even before that, we had study after study showing that the simple answer wasn’t correct.
Seriously, this shit is starting to be like the scientific racists–you ignore the new studies that show that your perception is flawed because you don’t want to let go of your world view that fat people deserve to be fat. IT would be one thing if you just weren’t informed. But you claim to be informed and yet clearly didn’t even do a basic Google search to see if you were out of date. That gene was discovered in 2007!
I for one consume more calories that I ever have, and I’ve lost at least 70 pounds. Why? Because I can’t absorb the nutrients anymore (hence, why I have to eat more). That alone–the fact that different people absorb different amounts of nutrients–disproves the basic caloric model. It assumes that human beings are 100% efficient energy converters, when we aren’t.
Did I just break the laws of thermodynamics? Hardly. No more than that gene does. Yet you assume that such is impossible because of one law. Just like creationists assume abiogenesis is impossible.
It’s funny how all the pseudoscience makes the same errors, isn’t it?
It should be remembered that significant muscle can throw off the simple BMI calculation. I have a feeling most 11 year olds with a BMI of 40+ don’t work out with a trainer multiple times per week. Out of curiosity, would you say this picture represents you very well: 5’2" & 220lb