College's Too Fat to Graduate rule under fire.

[pbear19]

Originally Posted by SydneyK

Honestly, I see it just as testing out. Students with below 30 BMI are exempt from the class just like, for example, students who score 36 in Math on the ACT are exempt from having to take College Algebra.

So they have the appropriate level of knowledge in health and fitness, because of their weight?

I guess I just can't see the logic in that. I've worked as a personal trainer and some of my thin clients were the least educated about health and fitness. They just took for granted they could eat whatever they wanted and get by because they'd always been thin. Then they started having health problems, or they got older and the weight surprised them, and they had no idea what to do about it. Whereas some of my overweight clients had all the knowledge in the world, but just couldn't get past their own barriers that kept them from applying it.

(And, for the record, my BMI is not 30+, lest anyone think I'm taking this too personally.)

ETA - I think I've just known way too many <30 BMI people who are extraordinarily uneducated about health to be unbiased about this one. There are *so* many people who are, for lack of a better word, just stupid about health, but outwardly appear to be healthy. I've got thin friends on more cholesterol meds than you would believe, thin friends who will down 10 sodas a day, thin friends who eat nothing but grease and junk... And some of them honestly believe they are healthy, even though their doctors would argue the point. But society tells them they are healthy because they aren't overweight.

[PeppyGPhiB]

Originally Posted by pbear19

So they have the appropriate level of knowledge in health and fitness, because of their weight?

I guess I just can't see the logic in that. I've worked as a personal trainer and some of my thin clients were the least educated about health and fitness. They just took for granted they could eat whatever they wanted and get by because they'd always been thin. Then they started having health problems, or they got older and the weight surprised them, and they had no idea what to do about it. Whereas some of my overweight clients had all the knowledge in the world, but just couldn't get past their own barriers that kept them from applying it.

(And, for the record, my BMI is not 30+, lest anyone think I'm taking this too personally.)

ETA - I think I've just known way too many <30 BMI people who are extraordinarily uneducated about health to be unbiased about this one. There are *so* many people who are, for lack of a better word, just stupid about health, but outwardly appear to be healthy. I've got thin friends on more cholesterol meds than you would believe, thin friends who will down 10 sodas a day, thin friends who eat nothing but grease and junk... And some of them honestly believe they are healthy, even though their doctors would argue the point. But society tells them they are healthy because they aren't overweight.

My brother is a master personal trainer and he repeatedly tells people that it's often the skinniest people that come to him that are the most unfit. They have no muscle. At least when a person is heavy, they tend to still have lots of muscle because the body has had to carry all of their weight around. You want to know who he says tend to have the worst muscle:fat ratio out of all the people he trains? Asian women. He calls it "skinny fat."