has anyone else heard about the new wieght requirements for missionaries. I heard this from a First Counselor in the Bishoporic last night. I was wondering if anyone else heard this.

Apparently it's 280 lbs. Here's a clip from the New Era, I believe (don't puke):

One hundred and twenty pounds separated Neil Bridenstine from his goal of serving a mission, but he wasn’t about to let that stop him.

“Nothing in this world, not even a T-bone steak, could taste as good as it will feel to wear a missionary name badge. Nothing tastes that good.”

That thought gave Neil Bridenstine constant motivation to stick to a demanding weight-loss program. He had one goal in mind: serving a mission.

Just before his 19th birthday, Neil, then weighing about 400 pounds, learned he’d have to lose more than 120 pounds to drop to the recommended maximum weight for a missionary his height. The weight requirement from the Missionary Department helps ensure that young men and women will be able to live the physically challenging lifestyle of a missionary.

At first Neil felt the weight requirement would be impossible for him to meet. After all, his previous attempts to lose weight had been unsuccessful.

“I was a little discouraged when they said I needed to lose 120 pounds. I was feeling pretty down, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m not going on a mission then.’ ”

After a month of feeling discouraged, Neil came to an important realization. His current weight was unhealthy, and he did need to make a drastic change.

“Being 400 pounds, I was at the end of the rope. I needed to lose the weight anyway.”

To lose weight, Neil enrolled for six months at a full-time weight-loss center in St. George, Utah. Once he got there, he began to realize that his goal of a mission might not be impossible after all. “I went there with the wrong frame of mind, that I was going just to lose some weight, but then I turned around and said: ‘I’m going to do this so I can go on a mission.’ ”

The kid weighs 400 lbs. He needs to lose weight regardless.

280 lb. plus offensive linemen go on missions all the time. 280 can't be a firm limit.

Wow I wonder if the God is embarrassed by large people. Or is the church worried about medical issues or lawsuits.

I just heard this about the wieght last night 08082011

I don't think there's a real weight requirement. Think about a 6'5" Tongan that weighs 300 lbs. Odds are, he goes. That article is old. I think the requirment is that your are healthy and can walk and ride a bike and stuff.

Ron

Since when can a 300lb person ride a bike?

Ana

Also, a good friend of mine was 6'5", 320 when he started his mission (he got down to about 280 by the time he went home). He biked for a good portion of his mission.

Since this past Sunday.

300 pounds here and ride a bike all the time, thank you very much.

WOW there seems to be a lot of hostility. I know the kid needs to lose some wieght but why the hostility I was just wondering if anyone else heard this or not

I heard this awhile ago, about a year ago I think. I knew a girl from the local ward, she was wanting to go on a mission but said she had to lose some more weight. She had already lost about 50 pounds, I think she said, and needed to lose about 30 more. I don't know how much she weighed at the time but my guess would be around 250. I could be totally off on that however. I really doubt she weighed as much as 280. Anyway, as far as I know she never went because she never lost the weight. She seemed sad and frustrated by the weight requirement. She was always going on splits with the local sister missionaries here. Anyway, she's the one that told me about the weight limit so I think it's been in effect for at least a year, maybe more.

This is absolutely true, though I don't know the hard rule for calculating the limit based on height etc. About a year ago, I heard of a kid in a ward in Utah that had been turned down for a mission. He had to diet and work out for 6 months, and then he resubmitted the paperwork and got to go.

A kid I used to babysit was told that he couldn't serve a mission unless he lost a substantial amount of weight. He was extremely overweight (like over 700lbs)-- both his parents also. He died of heart failure during bariatric surgery.

It's not the church's fault. He probably would have had the surgery anyway. He had such an incredible personality and his quality of life was really diminished by his weight struggle. But the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I have a friend who considered it (they wouldn't let her though because she's on a lot of medication and it would interfere with her body's ability to absorb that medication) and they told her the death rate is quite high (by medical standards -- it wasn't like every other person, just high enough that doctors were really screening candidates carefully to keep from negative impacts on their surgery record). I think a lot of the problem is that those of us who are morbidly obese are already taxing our bodies and any kind of invasive surgery is going to place us at greater risk. Plus, some people don't follow the guidelines after the surgery for eating and end up hurting themselves. It's sad. I'm using diet and exercise myself -- but I'm terrified of being unconscious in a room full of strangers.

from what i've been told, the death rate is 8-10%.

surgery in general has a 1% rate across the board. a c-section is a 4% death risk (according to all the stuff i signed to have one).

Bishop's son had to defer a few months to get his weight down. I get it, though. The life style is physically demanding. Too many issues otherwise. They only want slim, trim, good looking ones to apply, since it's all about looks.

a lot less than 280, eh?

Sounds Like God does not Love all of his Children After all.
So I guess you can not join the Church unless you are with in the wieght limits and good looking

http://lds.org/ensign/2007/03/missionary-health-preparation?lang=eng&query=missionary+medical+conditions

According to the link above, in the section marked healthy eating habits, it states that the bmi must be 37%>. It doesn't list an actual weight range.

Body-mass index is the person's mass in kg divided by their height in meters squared. (Or if you prefer Imperial units, that's 703 times their mass in pounds divided by their height in inches squared.)

So by height, a BMI of 37 corresponds to:

5'0" 189 lbs
5'3" 209 lbs
5'6" 229 lbs
5'9" 251 lbs
6'0" 273 lbs
6'3" 296 lbs
6'6" 320 lbs

Tyson

Virg Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> http://lds.org/ensign/2007/03/missionary-health-pr
> eparation?lang=eng&query=missionary+medical+condit
> ions
>
> According to the link above, in the section marked
> healthy eating habits, it states that the bmi must
> be 37%>. It doesn't list an actual weight range.

Wow, this another strike against the church IMO. How can they not know that BMI is a horrible indicator of health, if they are inspired? Bodybuilders frequently have BMIs way over the recommended numbers (due to muscle mass). If they were really trying to have an accurate assessment of a person's health through weight, they would be better to use body fat percentage. So I guess a bodybuilder w/a BMI of over 37 at 13% body fat is considered unfit to go? What a shame, lol.

The Peace Corp does too. I remember this from a Peace Corp application I got over 20 years ago when I was considering going. I don't recall why I remember it so specifically, it might have been emphasized in the brochure that people needed to be of a certain normal weight (which I was at the time). I've always said that anything and everything the Mormon church does is copied from somewhere else.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080724095419AAYthu3

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1995-1997 and was then and am now kind of fat. I did get a nastygram from the Peace Corps about my weight, though they only recommended that I lose weight. It wasn't required. I think the weight requirements depend on where they want to send you, how heavy you actually are, and whether or not you already have any health issues.

I was not then and am not now morbidly obese, but I was then and am now quite a bit heavier than the charts say I should be. I did lose about 25 pounds over the course of about six weeks during training. Unfortunately, it came back. But I was reasonably healthy during my tour and have suffered no long term ill effects from my service.

And how was it?

I served teaching English in the Republic of Armenia. I was in the third group to go to that country. It was a very interesting time to be there. The two groups who were there before mine had a pretty tough time.

The first group arrived about a year after the Soviet Union fell. They got there in the dead of winter and there wasn't enough kerosene. The currency was changing from rubles to drams and no one wanted to accept the new money. A lot of folks quit because it was too hard.

The second group had it a little better. Their group was smaller and things were falling into place, but they still had a lot of people quit or leave early because of sickness.

By the time my group got there, a rhythm was becoming established. We had no power or running water a lot of the time because there was an energy blockade between Armenia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. A lot of people were stealing power from the metro stations and hospitals. However, my second year the Armenians reconnected with Metzamor, Armenia's nuclear power plant, which had been closed after a major earthquake back in 1988. That changed things for the positive because we finally had power 24 hours a day. That led to a lot of new businesses and organizations moving to Yerevan, the capital, which is where I was posted.

I believe the 19th group is currently serving and I know that things are a lot different than they were in the 1990s. When my husband and I were in Germany with the Army, people from his office went to Armenia to work with their Army. I've heard that Yerevan has gotten so cushy that no one gets posted there anymore.

I won't lie... there were many times I got very discouraged. I was young, naive, and very inexperienced. I knew very little about how government agencies worked and I was suffering from depression. I was ready to go home at the end of my tour. But I learned a lot about the world, saw a lot of interesting things, met some great people, had the chance to use all of my talents, and caught the travel bug. I spent a month riding a train around Europe on my way home. A friend and I took a bus from Yerevan to Istanbul and Sofia midway through our service. It was a rough trip, but one I will never forget (and probably will never repeat).

I'm glad I was a volunteer. It wasn't something I ever planned to do-- I mainly did it to escape living with my parents. I miss being an expat. But I think serving once was definitely enough for me. I still fantasize about serving again-- nostalgia does that to you-- but then I remember some of the crappier aspects of Peace Corps life and start hoping we move overseas again due to gainful employment.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2011 09:07AM by knotheadusc.

Not what I would normally associate with the Peace Corps!

Well, I happened to join at a time when our government was pushing to send volunteers overseas. After the fall of communism, there were a whole bunch of countries that were ready to invite volunteers to serve. When I was in the Peace Corps, most eastern European countries and former Soviet countries were accepting volunteers. I could have gone to the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Russia, one of the Baltic states... Now, most of the Eastern European countries have ended their programs because they don't need them anymore.

When I was a volunteer, Armenia was isolated in the area where it is and was supposedly a "hardship" post. Georgia and Azerbaijan now have programs, but I'm sure the travel difficulties we experienced haven't improved much. We couldn't go south because that's Iran. We couldn't go east or west because the Armenians don't get along with the Turks or Azeris. We could go to Georgia or take a very expensive flight to Europe on scary Armenian Airlines, which is now mercifully defunct.

Anyway... I'm sure I'd be shocked by all the changes in Armenia over the past 15 years. I could tell stories about the mid 1990s in Armenia all day.

What is the weight requirement for:
Prophet
Apostle
General Authority

And senior missionary couples, what's the bar set at for them?

The article doesn't point out he was 5'2".
Well, that's what I heard.

Missionary work involves a lot of walking, and time spent outdoors, often in hot climates. Seriously overweight people have considerable trouble both with physical exertion, and in shedding excess heat.

When I was draft age, back during Vietnam War, I "won" the 1970 draft lottery. I thought it would be nice to be a pilot (in fact I eventually got a SEL pilot license on my own), however, there was a height limit of 6'4" for military pilots. There was also a height limit for being drafted - 6'6". I am 6'5". I guess you would say I fell into the "window of vulnerability".

People 6'6" and above could still enlist, but if you were 6'6" or above you would not be drafted. It was just too expensive to stock clothing for people that tall, and there were limitations on beds, vehicles, all sorts of things. That was also the reason for the height restriction on pilots. The bigger the airplane cockpit, the more the plane cost to build and operate. They had to draw the line somewhere. They drew it at 6'4".

For enlistees 6'6" and above, the military would custom make uniforms for them, and there were restrictions on what jobs they could have in the military, but most jobs were still open to them. There were also weight restrictions for draftees and military service in general. I don't know what those were/are.

Getting back to weight restrictions, BMI is not perfect. For one thing, mathematically, the exponent should be about 2.6, not a simple 2. This means it gives unrealistically high BMIs for tall people (::raises hand::). But, the error is not huge, and most people would not have a clue what to do with an exponent of 2.6. Of course, most people would have no idea what to do with even the simpler formula, but that's another thread.

Admitting its shortcomings, BMI is generally pretty good. 30 is considered obese. 40 is considered morbidly obese, where serious health issues are quite common. Drawing the line at more than 2/3rds of the way between "obese" and "morbidly obese" seems to me like a reasonable compromise. If you are claiming there should be no line at all, you are kidding yourself. We would all draw the line somewhere.

well this is not manufactured outrage at all.
1. This is not the military.
2. This is a religion.
3. Does God Love all of his children or does he only Love the slim and trim good looking one's.
4. So Heavy People can not get into Heavy.
5. Do people have to get wieghed and measured before they get to get baptised (guess Michael Moore would not cut it if he wanted to join).
These are things that I think about.