Why Do We Need To Exercise In The Military

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Pages: 4

Imagine for a moment that you are a member of the United States Navy and you are attached to an expeditionary unit forward deployed in the Middle East. Today’s activities consist of a drill where you run and conduct simulation activities in full gear to prepare the unit for a real world scenario. Now, how do you envision yourself? A lean, mean, fighting machine, or someone who is ten to thirty pounds overweight and couldn’t possible complete the drills? Most people that are honest with themselves picture the lean, mean, fighting machine instead of the person with extra pounds. For those people who are a part of the military no matter which branch, reservists or active duty status are provided with poor nutritional options and various fast food restaurants on military installations. With poor physical fitness greatly affecting today’s military personnel, changes need to be made to eating establishments found on military installations and the culture enabling poor nutritional choices made by service members. …show more content…
This is an alarming number considering these personnel are serving and defending our country’s interest. Our country as a whole has an image of our military force as the biggest, toughest, and strongest military in the world. However, the reality is, there is a large population of our military who struggle to maintain the fitness standard which originate from fairly obvious problems. The problems stem from a few factors including places for personnel to purchase food, attitudes toward fitness, and nutritional education. Many of our service members have a lackadaisical approach to fitness, little to no knowledge of maintaining a nutritional diet, and make poor decisions on food choice due to an abundance of fast food options