Standards are a funny thing. You either agree with them or figure out a reason why they don’t apply to you. I attended the United States Air Force Academy for my undergraduate degree and I remember dreading one particular standard every semester… Male cadets were required to complete seven pull-ups as part of our mandatory twice a year physical fitness test (PFT). Although I never failed to meet the standard, I would have to put in a ton of prep work and still struggle to pass every semester.
As a result, I loathed the test in general and pull-ups specifically. Failing this test meant 6 months of athletic probation which would inevitably translate to six months of embarrassment and confinement. So this was a high stress event for me twice a year that I took very seriously. But what’s funny is that the standard didn’t really motivate me in any constructive way. I actually hated it. To make matters worse, most of my classmates seemed to have no problem meeting and surpassing this particular minimum requirement.
So what was my problem? The only rational answer was the hundred or so reasons I could come up with as to why it was more difficult for me to meet the standard and how unfair it was for me to have to be accountable to it. As a result, I despise pull-ups to this day and have vowed to only maintain the ability to do one pull-up, in the event of a catastrophic emergency wherein I am required to pull my own body weight up in order to rescue myself from a dire predicament…
In short, I now have a life-long obsession against a particular standard because of the stress it caused me. Therefore the standard itself has been counterproductive to compelling me to want to achieve it.
Let’s follow that line of thinking with what has become a de facto health standard. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Body Mass Index (BMI) is a "reliable indicator of body fat ratio for people." It is an inexpensive way for clinicians and individuals to compare their status to that of the general population. That being said, when the BMI standard was raised in 1998, 25 million Americans became overweight overnight. Some of these individuals being professional athletes.
To be clear, I’m not here to attack the BMI. But with obesity rates climbing, you have to wonder: has a healthy BMI become unattainable for most Americans and therefore irrelevant?
Understanding both the benefits and shortcomings of the actual measurement… I think that this is a very important question. I’m not suggesting that standards be lowered because the calculations themselves were created based on actual health data. People within specific BMI ranges have a higher/lower likelihood of specific medical conditions. However, I think its important to ask whether or not the standard is motivating people in a positive or negative direction. When used as an individual guide, is BMI actually motivating people with weight problems to be healthy? Or is the opposite true?
Is the BMI standard that we use to measure our health actually keeping us from becoming a healthy society? Would love to get your take in the comments below.
photo by: sylvar
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