U.S. soldiers using diet pills, liposuction to meet standards

US soldiers and fitness

According to the Army Times, the US soldiers are resorting to extreme measures -- taking diet pills and laxatives, even starving themselves and getting liposuction -- in order to meet the military’s weight standards.


More than a third of uniformed men and women do not meet the Army’s weight standards, according to a 2009 military fitness report, and those officers are subjected to dreaded tape measurements to determine body fat percentage.

If soldiers exceed the body fat limits, they cannot earn leadership roles or promotions, the paper said. Officers can even lose their jobs if they do not shed a significant amount weight in two months -- a very real threat, considering about 24,000 soldiers were discharged between 1992 and 2007 for failure to meet weight standards, according to a report published in Military Medicine.

A soldier based at Fort Riley in Kansas told the paper she recently saw an advertisement for liposuction at the post gym. The Army Times also found ads for the cosmetic procedure in base newspapers at Fort Hood, Tex., Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Campbell, Ky.

Meanwhile, military leaders and doctors continued to warn against the risks of unhealthy weight loss methods.

View the original article here