The Air Force will allow recruits to have a greater percentage of body fat in an effort to reach more Americans as the service expects to fall short of its recruiting goals this year.

Male recruits are now allowed to have up to 26% body fat, and women are allowed 36%, Air Force Recruiting Service spokesperson Leslie Brown confirmed to Military.com on Tuesday. That's up from the previous requirement of 20% for men and 28% for women.

The change comes at a time when an increasing number of Americans are overweight, with that weight serving to bar many from service. The obesity epidemic, along with criminal histories for young Americans often tied to drug usage, means that only about 30% of young people are eligible to serve, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While recruits will be allowed to join with greater body fat percentages, they will still be expected to meet the same fitness standards as everyone else to stay in the service, Brown stressed. That means meeting the waist-to-height ratio requirement the Air Force announced in January and implemented this month.

"I can't stress enough: We are not lowering our standards, but rather we are aligning our standards with the overall DoD policy," Brown added in an email, citing a Defense Department instruction on fitness and body composition programs released last year.

The change in body fat standards for recruits is the latest effort to open up avenues to serve or to provide more incentives to attract recruits as all branches of the military struggle to meet their recruitment goals.

While the Air Force last year met its active-duty recruiting goal, it had to dip into its pool of delayed-entry applicants and so started this year at a deficit. This year, the service expects to miss its active-duty recruiting goal by 10%, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last month.

The Army last year started approaching the obesity problem facing recruiting by offering pre-boot camp physical fitness classes to potential recruits who do not meet weight standards, a program officials have touted as a success. The Navy recently followed suit by offering its own physical fitness prep course to potential recruits who don't meet weight standards.

The Air Force expects its new increased body fat limits to allow 50 to 100 more recruits to join the service per month, though Brown added that estimate is based partially on anecdotal evidence.

For recruits who come in on the high end of the body fat standard, the Air Force's "medical community will ensure education and resources are in place to help these airmen reach a lower [body fat percentage] and meet the [body composition program] standard," Brown said.

The change in body fat standards for recruits stems from a team the Air Force announced last month that is looking into how the service can update recruitment policies. The team is led by Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin.

The Air Force has already made several changes to widen the pool of recruits, including allowing hand and neck tattoos and launching a pilot program for recruits who test positive for THC to retest.

The service is also trying to entice more people into joining by offering new incentives such as up to $65,000 in student loan debt repayment.

https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/y2th6n/a_kid_loudly_asked_his_mom_in_line_at_the_store/?sort=controversial

https://camas.unddit.com/#{%22author%22:%22Pathos_Pothos%22,%22searchFor%22:1,%22resultSize%22:1000}

all his posts are photos of him being a disgusting blob with made-up stories

dude bussy lmao

Fat extinction soon?

Husband secretly hates “fat” people

Hello , I’ve been married for 5 years I got married very young…when I first got married I weighed 180lbs I was considered obese but honestly I was happy with my body. I’ve always been a plus size person like no matter how much weight I lose that’s just how my body carry’s the weight. Saying that when I met my husband and I found out about the girls he used to date I was confused as to how he’s was interested in me. All the girls he would date are tall, thin and tan me on the other hand I’m short , thick and pale. That should have been my first red flag. So after we got married I gained a little weight and went up too 205lbs I was still happy with my self until one day we got in a fight and he called me “fat” fyi I hate that word. That was the worst feeling ever having someone I loved call me fat. I got so mad and completely degraded him and called him every bad word I could think of and also made fun of his insecurities. Needless to say it was the last time he would ever call me something like that. A year later we have a baby and that’s when my weight really skyrocketed and I gained 50lbs. This is when my husband started acting weird. Sometimes when a plus size person walks by us he’ll make a rude comment or if he has a family member who is plus size he’ll be rude about their weight. Sometimes when I’m scrolling through Instagram, and there is a video of someone being made fun of for being plus sized his like will be under the post. And also recently, my daughter has been calling me fat and saying I have a big stomach because I eat to much, when I ask her who told her that she’ll say that it was her dad but I don’t know if she’s telling me the truth or because she’s a kid she just comes up with those things.. I can tell that he’s no longer even remotely attracted to me anymore. But it pisses me off more than anything because he met me like this. I’ve always been a plus size I’ve always been considered chubby. Also, I’ve had his family members make rude comments about my weight and he never defends me. I don’t know I just wanted to rant about this. See if anyone else has had something similar happened to them or have experienced this. And yes if things continue like this, I will definitely leave this marriage.

Also I have gone through various weight, loss journeys, and every time I try to lose weight, he never supports me it’s like he always tries to sabotage me losing weight which confuses me even further. Sometimes I think that he wants me to be overweight because he knows how insecure I am I don’t know it’s just very confusing. I do want to lose weight because my health has been declining because of my weight gain but I don’t want to lose weight for him or make him think that I’m doing it for him in anyway so sometimes that also stops me from losing weight.

Fatty is 585 and often shits himself because he can't get to the potty in time.

I weigh 585 pounds and it's hard to keep myself clean.

I can barely walk. The fat holds me down. Just walking across the street or down a hallway winds me.

Taking showers are pretty hard. I have to use a scrubbing tool to clean between my fat rolls. Also, I can barely stand up long enough in the shower, so sometimes I sit down. Cleaning between my butt and legs is even harder. I have to jam the scrubber in there and then scrub really hard. Otherwise I won't get very clean.

Using the bathroom is hard to. Most of the time, I am too slow to get there in time, and I go in my pants. I always just leave it in my pants, too, because it's very hard to take off my pants, get it out, and then put them back on. When I do get there, though, it's hard to get my pants down. When I'm finally on the potty, most of the waste doesn't actually go in the potty. It gets stuck in my fat rolls and I have to get it out.

I did wrestling in HS and enjoyed it, nearly broke a kids shoulder because I couldn’t stop putting him in Full Nelson’s… lost that match because of it

Pinging @Aevann for visibility

Scooters everywhere, wheelchairs all over, and worst of all—grown-butt children who are like 11 years old being pushed around in fortified, oversized strollers.

When did parents start pushing around their able-bodied, older children like this? These future braps and heart disease patients are being carted around while they pig out on candy and zone out on their iPads and I don't understand why parents encourage this behavior. It's over for whatever generation this is

I hope the government starts treating childhood obesity as a national security threat and starts making these little piglets take care of their health

Less and

More and

Fat People: Raise your hand if you've been told to "eat less and exercise more" by a healthcare provider who hadn't bothered to ask what you eat, or how much you exercise. Even if dieting did work (and it doesn't) practicing stereotypes instead of medicine would still be wrong.

— Ragen Chastain (she/her) (@danceswithfat) September 24, 2022

White straggots are 67% more likely to be overweight than a bussy-rider. Latinx and Asian straights are 150% more likely. Smaller (11%) but directionally same effect among Blacks. (All computed from table 3 for "current age.")

Why can't you straights put the fork down even when it's killing you?

Just try two weeks to flatten your curves. Wearing a mask can protect against compulsively shoving calories in your mouth. Get a close-fitting one without space for fries on the side! Don't forget that obesity is contagious, so this isn't just about choosing your own risk.

1000 British men and 1000 women were asked about what they thought the average measurements were for men and women. These were the results: pic.twitter.com/ukD3bWYxQg

— seb (@sebjenseb) December 30, 2023

!thin

I live in a different state feom my parents and I'm visiting for a couple of weeks. I have recently put on weight trying to eat intuitively, and because of stress, so a lot of my clothes are tight. Today she kept trying to tell me that my shorts looked bad riding up, and I ignored her until she pulled me aside. I told her I don't want her making comments about my body and how things look. She tried to apologize later by reasserting how bad those shorts looked. Then she started asking about a mark on my face (a pimple). Later my 46 year old sister (who has a 26 year old daughter) told me that she was giving "the look" when she was standing around eating too many potato chips at a party.

It's hard because I'm trying to remain body positive, and the 3 of us are going on a trip this week, and I'm really excited to eat food I don't usually get to because I'm gluten free, so I intend to enjoy.

I know she's fighting her own battles, and is taking them out on us, it just seems like a thing we should be past at this point, that I have my own bodily autonomy to make my own choices.

As a fat person who has been fat most of my life, I think that the Anti-Hero video being edited to remove the word “fat” on a scale is the one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in my life

— Loey (@Loeybug) October 27, 2022

Kinda cucked tbh.

pic.twitter.com/BomLc8vDPU

— Fats posting Ls (@FatsPostingLs) July 13, 2022