Dixie’s Fighting Weight

We need to have an honest chat. File this one under tough love and fraternal correction.

Take a look at the following two graphs. In an embarrassingly obese nation, Dixie leads the way…and dangerously so.

A normal BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9, (green and yellow). A BMI between 25 and 29.9 (orange) is classified as overweight, and a BMI above 30 is classified as obese. Dixie is 35+, the purple one. Forty is morbidly obese.

If you try to cope and adjust by race, it’s still not looking good. It is what it is. 

While BMI isn’t a perfect assessment, it’s good enough to get in the ballpark. Check yours here and report back. 

Ignore the <18% being underweight. For active people and athletes, the BMI range can be as low as 5 to 13 percent for men, and 12 to 22 percent for women. However, optimal values by people who challenge the frankly elevated BMI range (and who make the case to not settle for the “normal” ranges), are 12 to 18 percent for men and 16 to 25 percent for women. That might be tough, but if you’re under 40, aiming for low 20s should be your goal.

Now, not all body fat is the same. The type that builds up in your abdominal wall and around your organs is far more dangerous than the fat just under the skin at your hips, thighs, and belly. 

A quick way to check how you’re doing in these critical areas is to measure your waist. Greater than 40 inches if you’re male (35 inches for female) means you have dangerous deep-abdominal fat and a high risk of chronic disease, things like metabolic syndrome.

But it gets worse.

Obesity is a leading cause for sexual dysfunction and negatively effects sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) as well as your free testosterone levels. Further, your BMI is inversely proportional to your serum total testosterone concentrations and free testosterone concentration. Translation: being overweight lowers your testosterone, weakens your sex drive, your ability to have sex, plus:

• Reduces energy levels
• Increases body fat while reducing muscle mass
• Causes depression
• Impacts ability to concentrate

Now, we can point fingers at seed oils and the havoc caused by estrogen mimicking micro plastics in the environment all we want, but the brutal truth is far too many of us are eating too many low quality simple carbs and washing it down with too much booze and soda. It’s not the brisket and pulled pork making you fat, but the double portion of mac and cheese and liters of Mountain Dew.  

This poor diet coupled with the physical activity that a man in traction a generation ago would at least try and surpass, and we have a recipe for disaster.

Looking at the compounding effects of obesity on our health, intellect, fertility and virility, and then considering that our youth are more obese now than ever in history, do we really think we’re ready for the hardships and physical trials headed for us? Are we capable of defending Dixie, let alone repopulating it with our own? 

What prompted this was this recent video making the rounds. The music and its sentiments aside, and accepting that they are from Florida, these young men are not physically presenting the Southern man very well. We need to do better. By contrast, take a look at Skynyrd and Duane and Gregg Allman when they were in their mid-twenties. Even the hippies and rockers were in better shape a generation or two ago.

“He was lean and mean and big and bad, Lord pointing that gun at me…”

According to the late Civil War historian Bell Wiley, whose work focused on the common soldier, the average Civil War soldier was a White farmer, Protestant, single, and between 18 and 29. He stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed about 143 pounds. That’s a BMI of 21.74. Again, what’s yours?

An 1861 letter from a Virginia cavalryman sent to his family included this detail: “I weigh the same as I did when I left home, 125 pounds, but all there is of me is bone and muscle, very tough and very active.”

For your own good today and your ability to be in top form when called upon in the future, let’s help each other get to our ideal loving and fighting weight as soon as possible. Make it a pride thing. 

The South is already saddled with plenty of negative stereotypes. Let’s not let our physical fitness and appearance in general become one of them.