A commentary from CGI member SkyHoop.

(Lynda note - Yes! Add to that sugar, soy-estrogen producing products in nearly everything, and growth hormones in meat, & dairy)

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Besides personal responsibility, I believe that a very big part of the problem with an overweight military is the food that is served.

When I went into the Army in 1969, I was 5'9" and 135 pounds at my entry physical. Basic training was all physical activity, marching to and from the rifle ranges, PT, hand-to-hand combat training, etc., even doing double-time to and from the mess hall, so no weight problem, there, but at Fort Monmouth's Signal School and especially my first duty station at Fort Benning, I could see and feel the weight coming on.

Even in Vietnam, where as a Signal Corps photographer, I did all my eating in mess halls, I still carried some extra weight. In fact, going by their standards at 5'9" I should have weighed even more, but I wasn't comfortable with it. Between meals, grabbing my favorite snack, coffee and donuts at a snack bar didn't help.

Since I was normally very thin, when home on leave I was told that the extra weight looked good on me, but it wasn't comfortable to carry.

Fortunately, it didn't take long after leaving the service for my mother's and grandmother's cooking to bring me back down to my normal weight.

My grandmother's old style of cooking, especially, meant that just about everything had a lot of fat and butter in it, and that turned out to be not such a bad thing if you take keto into consideration.

Yes, another factor in the overweight problem, I believe, is the push to turn fats into a health villain while putting 'more healthy' seed oils into everything, as part of the flip of what's good and bad throughout our culture.

Turns out keto is healthy and carbs and especially seed oils are not. And this, I believe, is a big part of the problem both in the military and in society in general. That, and high fructose corn syrup, especially in soft drinks, that will prevent your sense of being full from shutting down your desire to eat.

Our food has been industrially sabotaged in so many ways that weight gain can't be helped unless we recognize what is happening and make changes in what it is that we eat.

Clif High did an interesting take on seed oils and weight gain a while back, which a believe was posted, here.