So it turns out that I'm really, really lean.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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(Note: the following is not meant to disparage anyone whose body is not similar to mine. I simply think that it’s kind of interesting. Certainly mundane and pointless.)

Those of you who have met me know that I’m pretty skinny. Not scrawny, but there’s not much fat on me. Off and on over the last few years, I’ve been wondering what percentage of my body is fat. Not much, obviously, but I’d like something a bit more precise. Saturday night I looked up “Body fat percentage” on Wikipedia, and plugging in 31" for my waist (which was a rough and stupid guess) and 130 pounds for my weight, I got something like 13%. That’s not right, I thought, and looked into the way the Army does it, since the military was explicitly mentioned in the last paragraph of the article.

Using a shoelace and an online ruler (which worked really badly, unsurprisingly, though that didn’t occur to me at the time), I got about 33" for my waist and 19" for my neck, which for someone 66" tall resulted in about 15% body fat. At this point I said “screw it, that’s obviously way off, but I don’t care enough to pay for the proper tests to tell me what I already know” and went to sleep. The next morning, I was motivated to try it again, but this time I used my mother’s tape measure. With a 28.5" waist, 16" neck, and 66" height, the Army calculated that I have…well, the Army has a table. Height is the column index, and waist-neck is the row index. The smallest difference for 66" that has a value for body fat percentage is 14.5", which is 2" more than I have, and that’s 9%. I looked at 16.5" and 18.5", which had increases of 4-5%, and extrapolated from that that (by the Army’s experience in these matters), I have ~4-5% body fat. Actually, I suspect it’s less than that, since these tables were most likely built from people with normal builds, which I do not have, but 4-5% seems reasonable.

So yeah. I have a ridiculously small amount of fat in my body, and muscle isn’t as good a cushion as you might think.

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dude, I know. I’ve never been close to my max weight army wise. (I just made the minimum weight standrards when i joined. At chow the drill sergeants made me eat EXTRA stuff to put on weight.) I’ve put on a bit of extra fat since hitting 40 several years ago, but as you say, theres no cushion.

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Oh, that reminds me, I also looked at that table. They expect a 66" 20-year-old to weigh 166. I’d need to gain around 36 pounds to make that. Apparently I’d be referred to a doctor if I tried to enlist. Well, I’d be referred to a doctor because of my low weight; there are a few other things as well that I think would catch their attention.

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Hrmm. My 66" boyfriend weighs around that much, lifts weights, bikes, has plenty of muscle - and has a goodly amount of fat he’s trying to lose. 166 seems awfully high to be an ideal weight for a guy that small.

Just checked a BMI calculator…it would actually put him in the overweight category.

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It sounds like you are almost exactly like my husband. He is 5’7’’ and weighs 133 lbs. The bathroom scale says he has 12% body fat. It’s kind of nauseating to live with him.

(Just kidding. I think he’s great. It’s just that I’m not very, very lean. I am 5’2’’ and weigh 158, and even though I’m losing pounds, I will never, ever be that thin. And you should see how often he eats. Ugh. Makes a girl insecure.)

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I used to be that scrawny - especially unusual for a girl - until I hit that mid-20’s weight gain, at least. You’re right, there isn’t much cushion, or much insulation either!