Paul+M’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

“You need to lose weight.” A phrase a nurse told me just last week, along with every other annual physical I’ve gone to since I can remember. A phrase that has hit me at home many times, a phrase I worked years to never hear again, a phrase I can’t escape. There is a problem with how fitness is taught in america, a problem that has never been addressed during the 17 years I've been alive. This problem is America's infatuation with wanting to lower the child obesity rate at whatever cost, but then tripping and falling over their own over simplicity. The government groups together every adolescent into the same fitness test, taken three times in total, and required to be passed every time or they would implement consequences. Now this seems innocent enough, but it can ruin kids self-esteem to the point of destroying their body just to meet government standards. Therefore, in effect, it does exactly the opposite of the goals they are trying to reach. This happened to me, as this test considers me currently obese on the BMI scale, and since I am pretty much the least flexible person I know I get two strikes against me, just enough to make me fail this test. This is an incredibly unfair example of whether one is fit or not, and it made me, as well as people with a similar body type, become even more depressed about being considered not as fit or as impressive as our peers in the eyes of the government, something no kid wants to be told, especially when it’s not true.

This ideal has treated me unfairly my whole life, but it is not only me who has been negatively affected by this excuse of a test. My mom works with students from all over the state, and multiple students have told her that after these tests are taken, all of their weights, as well as their BMI results, are posted up onto a wall in their school gym, and broadcasted to the entire student body. This is so humiliating to every student in the school, especially those who are treated unfairly by the system. This can lead to even more bullying for certain adolescents and makes the test based off of humiliating kids until they start trying to meet the standards. Is this the type of system you want your government using? Public body shaming?

In elementary school and the beginning years of middle school I was obese and deserved the title. I would eat whole boxes of Joe Joe's every day, and when I ran out I would eat masses of solid sugar filled cinnamon buns. That was just about my diet, with no exercise thrown in there at all. I couldn’t even do one pull up or push up, and never considered that I was destroying my body one bite at a time. During this period, every visit to the doctors included a “you need to lose weight,” and rightfully so, but when threats of inforced diets and exercise routines started being thrown out by the nurse I knew it was time to change something. So I took a fitness class instead of normal PE in seventh grade, and turned my body around. I started weaning off of the awful food I was putting into my body and started really focusing on fitness. Yet while one does lose fat weight when changing their body, naturally muscle weight takes its place, and it is much more dense than the fat. My plan then backfired on me when the fitness test rolled around that year, I was still considered obese as I had a mixture of the two weights, and failed the test. I received a note sent home from the School District after that that had a giant FAIL on it, a note that was sent directly to make my parents disappointed in me. A note sent home to every family of kids who didn’t meet what the government expects, a note enforcing the idea of body shaming.

After that was sent home I became even more determined to become fit enough for the government to recognise me as “healthy”, so I kept working out and tried to get as fit as possible. Yet no matter how much I tried, I was always considered obese or overweight. It was humiliating, every time I visited a health specialist for anything that required me to be weighed I was told to lose weight. I had to lie on my 9th grade fitness test just to pass it so I wouldn’t have to take extra PE classes in addition to sports. I physically can’t lose any more weight in the state I’m in right now without starving myself, but with everyone from school administrators to health specialists telling to do just that it leaves very little options. During Fall of my sophomore year I tried to do just that, and lost 20 pounds in one season, but yet it just led to my performance dropping and my doctors still not being happy. There is no way for kids with my body type to please doctors and school health professionals, and in my vision of America I want these fitness tests made more accurate and much less humiliating to anyone who doesn’t meet the standards set by our government. Thank you.