The Army Body Composition Program

The skin caliper method of measuring body fat is where 3, 4, or 7 specific parts of the body called sites, usually the chest, arm, abdominals, and thigh, are pinched and then the thickness is measured by skin calipers. The practitioner then plugs the numbers into a formula to estimate the body composition. Some pros for this method are that it is the most accessible, inexpensive and quick out of all 5 methods in the article, they are common in gyms, who also usually have staff that know how to use the skin calipers. You can even buy a pair of calipers and test your body composition yourself, with lots of practice to get a more accurate result, of course. Some cons of the caliper method are that getting accurate results can be hard because you

I serve in the military where healthy is required because if you are overweight or underweight that can affect you on the battlefield and could not only harm you but it could harm the soldiers around you. In the military the way they measure what are weight is supposed to be is measured by are height. For myself I am 76in/6 foot 4. The most I can weigh is 212LBS. Now you will see a lot of soldiers fail there weight stander due to a lot of reason. The Army sees a lot of females fail there weight standards. The Army will then measure your Body Fat Percentages, for males they will measures the necks and the stomach three times All three of those numbers are calculated together and give your body fat percentage. Now if you fail your body fat

In 2016 the Pentagon released statistics that revealed the number of Soldiers who are considered to be overweight. That data immediately cast a spotlight on the military which in turn raised questions about our ability to be combat effective and mission ready. However, the statistics revealed by the Pentagon in 2016 should not be much of a surprise. There has been a 61% increase in clinically overweight Soldiers since 2002. One must understand there is a medical difference between a Soldier being overweight and being obese. To be diagnosed as clinically overweight an adult body-mass-index (BMI) must be 25 to 29.9. While obesity ranges are divided into categories to be considered medically obese, one must have BMI of 30 or higher.

Obesity does not discriminate, it is a condition that effects all genders, races, ethnicities, and ages. Across the United States millions of people suffer from health issues related to poor nutrition, a lack of exercise, and excessive weight gain. These problems can be remedied or avoided with a proper diet and exercise to reduce body fat, eliminate chronic illness risk factors, and improve quality of life. With extreme obesity comes an increased risk of insulin resistance, heart disease, and some cancers. When a person’s body mass index (BMI) is between 30-39.9 they fall into the category of obese, any BMI over 39.9 is considered extreme obesity. This method for calculating an ideal body weight based on height can be flawed as it does not give the percentage of body fact, nor does it account for those with excessive muscle weight. Despite that fact BMI is still widely accepted throughout the nutrition community as an acceptable first step at categorizing individuals based on height and weight.

Problem: Body fat measurements are traditionally used during weight loss interventions to ensure individuals are losing body fat and not muscle. While tests such as dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and hydrostatic immersion are the gold standard for measuring body fat, both are expensive and have limited accessibility.1 Additionally, devices such as calipers may be obtrusive and ineffective for some, especially those morbidly obese. Bioelectrical impedance (BIA) has also been used in weight loss settings, but some devices are expensive and require multiple points of contact with the individual. However, a hand-held option is also available that is inexpensive, easy to use, and much less invasive.

However, we do have outliers that do not fit the Air Force standards on weight. Since the standards are clearly written and understood by all individuals that serve, the Air Force shows little leniency towards those who do not meet the standard. We are tested once each year, every twelve months on our fitness. The test includes, height and weight, abdominal circumference, push-ups and sit-ups, and finishes with a 1.5 mile run for time. The standards are quite strict, but not impossible to maintain. The methods for measuring are strictly maintained too, this helps to ensure the testing remains the same for each individual. I often hear complaints about the testing from individuals, but in the long run the Air Force is promoting a healthy lifestyle for all those who serve. Those individuals who do not meet the standards of the testing are placed in a program that will monitor exercise and nutrition to help the individuals succeed. If the individual does not show improvement during this time they will be released from the Air Force. It is interesting how many people struggle with the fitness standards, and how few take advantage of the program designed to help them succeed. If the Civilian world would use the same approach they could possibly bring down their healthcare costs while helping employees enjoy a longer more productive

Skinfold thickness is one of the common locations used for assessment of body fat composition in human (Reilly et al., 2007). The amount of body fat and skeletal muscle can be assessed using a combination of measurements of the thickness of cutaneous folds and body circumference. In this experiment, although high body mass index (BMI) was used to measure the increase of total body fat, it may be inaccurate enough. Therefore, It may be a good solution use BMI followed by triceps skinfold (TSF) should be beneficial for correctly identify excess body fat (Himes & Dietz, 1994). It can be seen from table 1, the triceps skinfold (TSF) of the student is 20. This mean that the body fat of this student is neither too low nor too high. As can be seen

The definition of the obesity has changed over time but many researches and clinical providers are in agree that the obesity is an excess of body fat. There are many methods to measure the obesity and overweight but the more used on clinical environment are the Body Mass Index (BMI), waist circumference, and skin fold thickness. However, some of its fails to distinguish between fat and fat free mass, that

Pre-diabetes and sedentary measures, in research, have increased according to the Centers of Disease Control, 2015. Working in a military community setting, the rates of co-morbidities of obesity has increased and people are getting lost in the system without any follow-up of prescription to nutritional staff, exercise physiology, behavior health, and disease management.

The most accurate measures are to weigh a person in the water or to apply an X-ray analyze called Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA). However, these techniques are not effective for the average person, and are completed only

Nevertheless, BMI actually not directly measure body fat instead it predicts risks for current or future medical complications of obesity. Hence, the available methods claimed by WHO (1990) to determining the obesity among children is according to abundance of standard value in which based on defining a weight-for-height (p.71). Obesity also known as an accumulation of excess amount of body fat actually detected as a seriously factors of the widespread medical problems in public health view and affecting the world population. Before 20th century the obesity problem is rarely occurs, but nowadays the obesity problem is keep rising globally every year and in Pasquali and Cohen (2008) article, approximately 31% of children in the United States are overweight or obese.

PHYSICAL READINESS PROGRAM CHANGES. NAVADMIN 178/15 announced changes to the Physical Readiness Program (PRP). To assess an individual Sailors health and mission readiness, Physical Fitness Assessments (PFAs) are being redesigned. The current PFA model enforces maximum body fat percentages and minimum physical readiness scores, but falls short on evaluating a Sailors overall health, does not adequately reflect the challenges unique to sea duty, and the increasingly technical nature of sea duty positions. The PRP changes will create balance between physical readiness and health.

There are many people struggling to keep their weight ideal. An ideal weight according to the medical definition is the weight that provides an individual with lowest health risks (Wicks, 2016). There are many different ways to figure out if an individual is considered to have ideal weight; one of which is by measuring the body mass index, also known as BMI (Wicks, 2016). BMI can be measured by weight in kilogram divided by height in meters squared. Ideal weight is above 18.5 and below 24.5, anything below 18.5 is consider underweight and above 24.5 is considered overweight (Wicks, 2016). Although BMI can be easily calculated, it does have some concerns regarding the fact that it does not take into consideration body composition and distribution (Wicks, 2016). To reach their ideal healthy weight some individuals turn to changing their diet while others seem to turn to exercising. Those who turn to changing their diet take kilocalories into consideration. Kilocalories is the unit used for measurement of energy, and to determine one’s weight, energy balance equation is used; this equation is energy input minus energy output equals either positive or negative energy (Wicks, 2016). People who are overweight consider these kilocalories in everything they eat and drink. Although there is more than one way to achieve a healthy weight, exercising seems to be more beneficial for various reasons.

The review of literature provides background for these variables by exploring the following topics: mass customization, body scanning technology, precision, accuracy and interobserver error, body shape, age, fit, fit problems, fit preferences, and clothing benefits sought.

The third instrumentation that will be used in this study is the Anthropometric assessment sheet. This type of instrumentation is a physical