Fat Body

There is are minimum criteria for being allowed to ship out for USMC boot camp. You have to be under a certain weight, although not necessarily in shape, and you have to be able to do 2 pull ups, 44 crunches, and run 1.5 miles in under 13:30 minutes. Even some really skinny guys have trouble doing this.

Skinny guy getting screamed at for running slow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNBgKjLWVcw

If you pass these minimum requirements you get to ship out. If you are still overweight you get two red marks across your white PT shirt and are called a "fat body" your entire stay at the recruit depot even if you drop tons of weight as almost all who are "fat bodies" do. It's hard not to when they make you sweat relentlessly and feed you only skinless chicken and a scoop of rice for every meal. I had buddies lose 30 and 40 pounds in a 13 week period. That's an amazing diet program if you ask me.

I entered above par and not a fat body but by the end I had gained 20 pounds of fat. I was really into the weight room before I entered boot camp and so the PT was actually a step down for me. Plus my father and step-mother were vegetarians so I entered boot camp extremely ripped. I was 6' and 180 pounds. I came out 6'2" and 200 pounds and off balance because of the new weight. Rapid fat gain is much harder to get used to than rapid muscle gain. I've experienced both.

In the chow hall I would grab 6 to 10 pieces of bread with packets of syrup and eat them together as quick as I could along with the other food I was given to curb my hunger. I did not know at the time the danger of sugar and bread combinations. I just ate as much as I could.

I was also told by my now ex-brother-in-law that the military puts saltpeter in the food at boot camp. The claim is that it creates erectile disfunction in men. I am not sure if this was true but for 13 weeks it worked for me.

After boot camp, and I was allowed to lift weights again, I would gain 15 to 20 more pounds but transformed almost the entire 40 into muscle. In 1 year I went from 6' and 180 pounds to 6'2" and 220 pounds. My Physical fitness tests were better than when I was 180 pounds because I was so much stronger. Every physical fitness test I ever took in eight years in the Marine Corps was a first class PFT.

My highest was a 293 out of 300 and my lowest was a 245 out of 300. Most of the time I was in the range of 275 to 285. I could almost always do 20 pull ups and my strategy was that if you could do 20 pull ups you could walk the three mile run and still get a first class PFT. I always ran but the point is that if you could do pull ups you had it made. It always worked for me.

Believe it or not this is me near the end of my senior year and me with my future wife Ami at her graduation 3 years later. They were the closest pics I could find to each other of the difference in my physical change. I achieved these results in probably 1 to 2 years of going to boot camp.

Motivating team effort:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMP_--8mSJg