Experts fear new military fitness rules may worsen disordered eating among troops

From the American Homefront Project:

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brought hundreds of generals, admirals, and senior enlisted troops together at Marine Corps Base Quantico in September, his message was simple: get fit or get out.

“It’s tiring to look out at combat formations — or really any formation — and see fat troops,” he said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon… It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”

Much of what Hegseth proposed are things the military branches already are doing. Troops already must take fitness tests and meet body composition rules. But his overhaul would harden those expectations by requiring daily workouts and adding more tests. For combat jobs, it would scrap male and female minimums in favor of one standard based on today’s male requirements.

For Sarah Rondinone, a dietitian who served in both the Navy and Army, Hegseth’s strong rhetoric raises concerns. She agrees troops need to be functionally fit, but worries that scolding and shaming them will worsen a longstanding issue in the military: fad dieting and disordered eating.

“It’s known that when height and weight [measurement] comes around, everybody doesn’t eat for three days,” she said. “The culture surrounding it is just not what it should be.”

A 2023 Defense Department study found that eating disorders in the military are growing at a substantial rate. That includes conditions such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder.

Rondinone has also seen service members engage in other forms of disordered eating that don’t meet the criteria for a medical diagnosis – such as subsisting on chicken broth for days before a measurement. Other troops apply hemorrhoid cream and wrap their waists in plastic wrap to sweat out water weight.

“People will consume laxatives to completely get everything out of their system. Then, oppositely, I have seen people with anorexia nervosa put rocks in their uniform to make weight, because the weight standards go both ways,” she said.

Rondinone now works with SEA WAVES, a nonprofit organization focused on military eating disorder support and mental health. She says Hegseth’s message ignores a range of medical and personal factors that can put service members outside weight standards, such as medications, surgery, or postpartum recovery. She also points out that the standards often rely largely on body mass index, a measure developed in the 19th century that does not account for muscle, genetics, or individual health history.

“You have people that compete in body builder competitions who have 6 percent body fat that are failing these standards because they’re overweight technically,” she said. “But body mass and body composition are not the same for everybody.”

Some experts point to tools like Bod Pods, which use air displacement to measure body fat and lean mass, as more accurate alternatives, though the military has not widely adopted them. Others say fitness and body composition standards should be aligned with a service member’s specific job.

“The military does need to have standards,” said Leah Stiles, founder and CEO of SEA WAVES. “But we need to be concerned with how we’re meeting and reaching those standards. It shouldn’t just be pass or fail, green check mark or red X.”

She said that binary mindset, along with limited prevention and support programs for eating disorders, can push service members toward unhealthy behaviors, which in turn hurt readiness. For instance, she said troops who restrict their calorie intake and increase exercise can reduce their bodies’ available energy.

“The consequences that come from getting into the state of low energy availability are things like brain fog, delayed decision making, delayed recovery after injury, and the list goes on,” she said. “Those aren’t the people that we want beside us on the battlefield or in tense military operations.”

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that about 19 percent of active duty personnel are obese, but broader analyses suggest far more fall outside ideal weight ranges. Weight-related health conditions  cost the Defense Department about $1.5 billion a year and lead to an estimated 658,000 lost workdays annually, according to the CDC.

“Something is clearly wrong. Something is broken in the system,” said Katherine Yusko, a research analyst with the American Security Project who studies military readiness issues. “They aren’t getting the resources they need. They don’t have the time to maintain the lifestyle they need.”

Yusko said military life itself can make meeting fitness and body composition standards harder, with many troops spending long stretches behind screens, getting poor sleep, and having limited access to healthy food on base. She said those factors make it especially important to approach obesity as a medical condition.

“The military, if it really wants to treat this problem, has to acknowledge that obesity is a chronic disease and not a laziness problem or a lapse in discipline,” she said.

She argued that diet and exercise alone often aren’t enough, and that the military has yet to fully adopt a continuum of evidence-based obesity treatment, including medications like GLP-1 drugs.

“These are relatively new solutions to the obesity epidemic that are showing promising results, provided they’re administered by a licensed physician, in combination with nutrition, dietary changes, and behavioral therapy as well,” Yusko said.

Retired Brigadier General Stephen Cheney, now President Emeritus of the American Security Project, spent more than 30 years in the Marine Corps, with much of that time spent overseeing recruit training and recruiting. He said the military has been grappling with overweight recruits since at least the 1970s, and he stresses that fitness and weight struggles reflect broader national trends — with implications for both the existing force and future recruiting.

But he warned against approaches that emphasize discipline over support.

“These young men and women need a lot more support than just cutting their food intake and making them run more miles. We’ve been doing that for 50 years and it didn’t solve the problem,” he said.

The Defense Health Agency says nutrition counseling, weight loss classes, or medication may be available after a medical evaluation, but they aren’t automatically provided to troops who don’t meet standards. Agency officials added that prevention and lifestyle programs are led by the service branches.

Pentagon officials didn’t answer questions about additional support, but said a review of fitness and weight standards is still underway.