Light-Sport Aircraft Yahoo group Weight to Height Ratios

Sorry,

But from a nutritional and fitness standpoint, being "all muscle" at 300 lbs. sounds like a miracle. Even Heavyweight boxing champions and bodybuilders do not achieve/reach such a ratio, not only due to competition standards (eg. http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Weight_class_(boxing) ), but also because there is a limit to how much muscle one can pack on ( http://www.Weightrainer.net/potential.html ), whereas the limits to what one can gain in fat are much higher (the biggest man in the world is a Mexican who weighs nearly 500 kg, over 900 lbs). The numbers for weightlifters and boxers apply to people in their prime who train professionally or semi-professionally. The best of them get their body fat down to 3% - 5% during competitions and manage to stay below 10% in between, with 7% - 8% being considered as excellent.

Showing off 300 lbs at only 6 feet with a waistline of 42 inches (mine is 35 at the same height and my trainers would be more than interested in recipes and techniques of how to pack on 300 lbs of "pure muscle" :), it can hardly astonish that people "jumped to the assumption" of overweight. Be that as it may, the important thing is, as previous contributors pointed out, that the overwhelming majority of people who punish the scales with 300 lbs are not "all muscle" ( http://USgovinfo.about.com/od/healthcare/a/tallbutfat.htm ). Consequently, it is only natural that the answers were based on the average rule rather than on a rare exception.

Now, since two thirds of all civilization diseases stem from overweight and what leads to it (wrong nutrition, dropping pills against what results from it, etc.), it is a good thing that medical exams might direct people towards a more healthy lifestyle, because the costs for society that are induced by health problems that stem from obesity are tremendous. It may only be 1% of accidents that are health-related, but every plane that crashes for whatever reason results in a couple hundred pages more rules, regulations, requirements and hassle for everybody else, simply because it is in the news and the non-flyers will demand sharper regulations, be they reasonable or not. It may not be necessary, it may not be fair, it may not even have anything to do with the pilot, but politics are about satisfying the financial greed of the few and the bloodlust of the many, not about what makes sense in the long run. This is the reason why even 1% of accidents is one too many -- it will spoil the fun for all the others.

All this does not mean that I wouldn't agree with previous contributors, although one cannot help but to wonder whether an intelligence test should be required, too, if a whopping 17% are too dumb to manage their fuel. The problem is: as in other aspects of life, from hunting to scuba diving to outdoor activities and dog ownership, those who do neither practice nor understand it will put pressure on lawmakers, demanding exaggerated measures -- and since they are so many and we are so few, it's an easy popularity goal to score for those in office. It is therefore best to learn from large corporations and their lobbyists: accept, live with and even introduce small steps voluntarily BEFORE politicians and administrations see themselves forced to show they are doing something. If that means eating healthier, exercising a little and shedding some pounds, I am willing to pay the price -- also helps against suffering from clogging and other accidents the day after the exam.  :)

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