Good News If You're In The Military And Have A Fat Neck

The military is changing the way it measures their officers. Apparently they're getting rid of the neck measurements and sticking to the abdomen for men and hips for women. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good news. If you're in the Army and have a
fat neck. From the military times, no more neck or
hip tape test to measure body fat.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Got the smallest andest neck I've ever seen?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Well, that'd be okay. There are several things about this
story that are real head scratchers, but anybody who's ever
served in the military knows there are things that happen
in the military that are kind of head scratcher.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
If you can reach your head around your thick, thick neck.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Oh indeed, yeah, if you can even discern where your
head begins and your neck ends. Army jym goers may
soon see shorter lines to use neck exercise machines, as
the service announced Monday that it will phase out the
current system for measuring body fat by midnext tier neck
exercise machines.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
You're telling me there's something called a neck exercise machine,
than if I have used it.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
My neck size would go down. We'll see. There are
two very serious things wrong with that sentence. Number One,
if you do use a neck exercise machine, because they
use it in football all the time. That's why those
guys have those big, thick bull necks. What's it makes
your neck bigger? What's the what's the how's it work?
Last time I saw one was years ago, and it's

(01:13):
kind of a pulley thing. It's like, you know, a
pulley machine that you use for your arms or whatever,
but for your head. Anyway, where was I? Oh? So,
two fundamental problems with that sentence. Number one, if you
use a neck exercising machine, your neck gets bigger. And
number two, you can't target the fat in one area
of your body by exercising that part of your body. Right,

(01:36):
That's not the way fat.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Works, Right, I need a bigger neck. I'm gotta get
one of those machines that changed my life.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
You and Adam shift pencil necks anyway, But don't throw
away that measuring tape just yet. The Army is changing
how it tapes soldiers to calculate their body fat. New
formulas call for only body weight and abdominal measurements. The
previous test calculated fat by measuring multiple side. Both men
and women were taped around the abdomen and neck, though

(02:03):
the formula for female soldiers required a hip measurement. However,
the legacy tape test was inaccurate. More than a third
of men and a quarter of women inaccurately passed or
failed when they did a true body fat scan using
a scan device.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
A oh god, how could that be? I mean, that's
a pretty big deal, especially with the shortages we've been
running for a long time in our military, whether or
not somebody gets into the military or not. And it
was not good at measuring the fat content. I mean,

(02:39):
how could that last a day?

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Five percent inaccuracy? How could that last a day, let
alone years? Well, now this is I suppose it has
to do with recruiting too, But this was the you're
in the military and have to, you know, live up
to the standards thing. But women disproportionately faced false failures
under the old test, which critics attributed to the hip

(03:02):
measurements equally punishing those with excess fat and those with
strong hamstrings and glutes. Wow or just the badonka donk,
there's a little cake going on?

Speaker 3 (03:12):
What what plus plus? As anybody, as any heterosexual male
can tell you from a lifetime of observation, different women
have different breadth.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Of their hips, right yeah, Some some will look like
a twelve year old little boy would add a booty
of theirs, and some much less so. Uh. What they
used to call on the prairie. Don't look at me.
This is what they called it. Good burthen hips. Wow, anyway,
they're changing their methodology, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Couldn't help, but nothing. Notice your burthen hips. Would you
like to go out sometime?

Speaker 1 (03:54):
You look like it'd be easy burthen with you. Would
you like to get together sometime?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Wow, that's me asking someone out on the prairie. In
the eighteen hundreds, Jack Armstrong's Prairie Dating Theater that was
really enjoyable.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Oh boy,