Army Soldiers Have 90 Days to Get Measured Under New Height-Weight Rules

Under the new policy, an assessor will measure a soldier’s waist circumference at the navel in inches and divide that figure by the soldier’s height in inches. Anything below 0.55 passes.

It is good to see somebody officially dump the BMI.  Medical research didn’t validate BMI as an indicator of overall health, and common sense didn’t either.  A muscle-bound jock could fail for being too muscle-bound.

BMI held on so long because it was simple, objective and ‘BMI’ is easy to say.

What do we call the waist-to-height ratio?  WTH sounds pretty good.

If it hasn’t been done already, research should be conducted to verify that WTH is a valid indicator of overall health and to determine the appropriate ratio for relevant factors like age, sex and race. 

Vanity and self-esteem should not be relevant to medical assessments, but the WTH is less daunting than the BMI.

Having a WTH of 0.7 is above the 0.55 Army limit, but it doesn’t seem like it’s too far over.  Getting fit seems achievable.

In reality, that could be 8 inches off at the waist. 

More organizations should follow the Army, and dump BMI.