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New rules allow more body fat with age

New body fat standards to be released in June will make allowances for increasing body fat as Marines age.

Current policy offers no adjustment for age, but does provide extra leeway for Marines who score a first-class physical fitness test.

Under the new policy, waivers will be eliminated, but allowable body fat percentages rise over time:

* Age 26 and younger: 18 percent for males and 26 percent for females.

* Age 27-39: 19 percent for males and 27 percent for females.

* Age 40-45: 20 percent for males and 28 percent for females.

* Age 46 and up: 21 percent for males and 29 percent for females.

The March 31 issue of Marine Corps Times, currently on newsstands, incorrectly reported the new standards as already existing. The mistake appeared in both the story and the corresponding chart.

The new policy, not yet officially announced, could take effect as soon as June.

The new policy will be tougher for Marines who don’t fall within their height-weight ratio, but easier on older Marines, a nod to the human body’s natural fat gain over time. As such, it is closer to the Army’s policy, although still stricter at every age.

The new standards also go well beyond body fat. Even those who meet the fat standards could be called on the carpet under a subjective new Military Appearance Program that gives individual commanders wide discretion over what a Marine should “look” like.

Once the policies are formally announced, commanders are expected to give Marines about 60 days to prepare for the new rules.

Policy shift

The new Military Appearance Program will likely affect Marines who don’t typically worry about body fat — the tall and lanky body types. It gives commanders a broad tool to call out Marines who may not be meeting common-sense criteria for fitness.

“There’s always been this expectation of what a Marine is supposed to look like. Now we are codifying what was once an unwritten standard,” said Lt. Col. John Armellino, who is overseeing development of the new fitness and health programs for Training and Education Command in Quantico, Va.

The best example?

“Excessive body fat in the abdominal region, doesn’t present the image that we want Marines to portray,” Armellino said.

Failing to meet either the body composition or military appearance standards could land a Marine in a remedial program with supervised fitness training and nutritional counseling classes. For career Marines, that’ll likely affect promotions and future assignments.

For years, these sorts of rules have received sporadic attention, depending on the commander. Officers and staff NCOs often got a pass. But that may change abruptly, as the new crackdown comes from the top.

“Commanders will enforce this,” said Commandant Gen. James Conway, during a recent interview. “A Marine should expect strict enforcement of any policy. That it hasn’t happened that way is unfortunate and problematic. But we will demand it, and we will oversee it if that’s what it takes.”

That alone will be a major shift in policy. A recent investigation by the Marine Corps inspector general’s office found that enforcement of the body composition standards has been lenient in recent years.

Last year, the IG launched a full-scale probe after routine assessments suggested a “lack of compliance” and the commandant asked investigators to quantify the trend. The investigators visited 19 units to assess the Marines’ body composition and the enforcement efforts of their commanders.

The investigators rounded up more than 4,500 Marines and actually weighed and tested 481 for body fat levels. They screened out Marines who scored higher than 200 on their recent physical fitness test and limited their detailed analyses to those who were expected to meet the lower body fat standards.

Marine Corps Times obtained a copy of the IG’s report under the Freedom of Information Act.

The investigators concluded that:

* About one in four Marines failed to meet the current standards and should have been in a remedial Body Composition Program, but were not.

* About one in three Marines who met the current height-weight requirements did not actually meet the body fat standards when tested.

* Only about one in three Marines found to be overweight was actually enrolled in a Body Composition Program.

* Marines who are sent to a Body Composition Program were disproportionately from the lower enlisted ranks. While Marines from all ranks failed the tests, 85 percent of those ultimately sent to the remedial program were sergeants or below.

* Half of the units visited had no Marines assigned to the Body Composition Program.

* Commanders were reluctant to place officers or staff noncommissioned officers into the body fat program because it might hurt their careers.

Under the new rules, however, commanders won’t have that option, at least as far as Conway is concerned. Likewise, younger Marines who are out of shape will need to shape up. And considering that PFT waivers are going away, even those PFT champs who don’t fit the classic height-weight ratio are at risk.

Fight the fat

The investigators weighed Marines in ranks from private to colonel, and found evidence that senior Marines were not held to body fat standards equally. Of the 19 units visited, 17 had no officers or staff NCOs in the remedial program, according to the report.

Of the 72 Marines who were assigned to a program, only 10 were staff NCOs and one was an officer.

In practice, Marines who meet the height-weight standard are not routinely tested for body fat levels. But when the IG’s investigators tested all Marines for body fat despite their height and weight, they were surprised to find that the height-weight ratio was not a good indicator of body fat percentage.

Among the 268 Marines who met the height-weight standard, more than half, or 151, failed to meet the body fat standard when tested, according to the report.

Follow the MAP

The Military Appearance Program is not adding any new requirements for Marines. All the standards — for body fat, for grooming, for uniforms — are already on the books.

“It’s nothing new, nothing novel,” Armellino said.

But the biggest effect of MAP may be that commanders will have a tool to prevent Marines from “hiding in the tables,” Armellino said, referring to the charts that determine height-weight cutoffs.

In other words, it could target those Marines who have been passing the height-weight requirement but are still in danger of failing the body fat standards.

The MAP isn’t that standard, however. Because it is subjective, and at the commander’s discretion, even such mild offenses as dark circles under the eyes could trigger a military appearance evaluation.

“The guy who stays up to three in the morning playing Xbox, drinking beer and ordering Domino’s Pizza and trying to get up at zero-five for PT, that is not a Marine who really exemplifies the true warrior-athlete that the commandant desires his Marines to be,” Armellino said.

It remains unclear whether Marines identified as having a military appearance problem will be automatically tested for body composition, officials said. But it’s possible. Commanders always have discretion to give a body composition evaluation at any time.

The remedial program itself will operate at the unit level and likely involve elements such as mandatory PT and dietary and nutritional counseling.

The consequences for Marines placed in the MAP remain unclear. It will not, however, involve any threat of separation.

“The commandant has not yet decided the consequences for being placed on MAP,” Armellino said. “If we go to the far end of the spectrum, it could definitely have promotion, retention and assignment implications.”

Testing methods

One of the recommendations from the IG’s report that the Corps is opting not to adopt is a change to the method for measuring body fat.

The Corps will continue to use the same method, the so-called “taping method,” which takes circumference measurements from the neck and midsection (or for women, the midsection and hips), then calculates body fat based on a mathematical formula. The method is mandated by the Defense Department and adopting an alternative method would involve an elaborate bureaucratic approval process.

The taping method gives an advantage to body types with bigger necks, and also is vulnerable to inaccuracy because midsection circumference can vary if a person makes an effort to hold in his stomach. As a result, the taping method has been a longtime source of complaints.

In 2004, a recommendation from the sergeants major symposium said: “A policy allowing Marines to have their body fat tested professionally if they fail the tape test would compensate for any individual body differences.”

Professionals typically use calipers and the “skin-fold test,” which is considered by many health experts to be a good combination of low-tech and high accuracy. The best methods — such as displacement, which requires submerging a person in a water tank and measuring the water-level rise — can be very costly.

While the IG called the taping method “adequate,” it did recommend that Marines who fail to meet standards should be given an alternative test.

“Medical personnel can easily give a Marine a more adequate body fat percentage using a set of calipers than unit training personnel who use the DoD taping system,” the report said.

Truth hurts

Tighter standards? More enforcement? That will be a shock to the Corps’ health and fitness programs, some Marines said.

A key component of the enforcement efforts will be to streamline the paperwork needed to assign a Marine to the Body Composition Program. The new programs beginning in June will allow commanders to place their Marines into a formal remedial program more easily.

“It’ll probably double the size of the BCPs,” said one staff NCO, who oversees fitness programs.

But Conway said he does not expect a large increase in the number of Marines placed into remedial body composition programs. Instead, he expects most Marines to get into compliance during the coming months.

“Commanders will be involved, but because this is going to be a transition for us, we are going to be very lenient at first. It’ll be a staff NCO-run program or an [executive officer]-run program,” Conway said. “The commander signs off on paperwork and you don’t want the paperwork in your record if you can help it.

“I think people understand the negative association with paper as it relates to weight control. I think Marines will do what they need to do to avoid that. We are giving them sufficient transition time.”

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