What exactly constitutes obesity? How is the diagnosis of obesity made? Obesity is a condition of having too much fat. It implies being “overweight” as a result of being “over fat.” Many overweight people are not obese, however. A study was performed on a group of superbly conditioned professional football players, twenty-five to be exact. All were measured for height and weight and compared with Selective Service standards, which are surprisingly generous in their latitude. Of the twenty-five, seventeen would have been rejected as unfit. These men were not “over fat” but “over muscled.”
It is a great fallacy to diagnose “ideal weight” on the basis of life insurance height-and-weight charts. It also is false comfort to be satisfied that a person of fifty weighs the same as when he graduated from school. In school his weight may have been muscle, and in middle age fat.
A person’s weight in relation to his height means little.
The important fact is to determine what comprises his bulk —fat or muscle. There is a great statistical hazard in being too fat; there is no such disadvantage in having too much muscle.
