Define fat/obese...

There is a scale can determine the % of fat in your body. I think if you're over %30, with a BMI over 30, you're obese.

I think if you go in for a physical and you have a severely high level of cholesterol, you should also have to pay more.

They'd have to use a previously determined measurement like BMI. And knowing insurance companies, they'd charge extra for anything over "normal".

( ......) fat
(........... ) obese

When theres a wingle in your walk and a jiggle in your talk.




Honestly though bmi was created to apply to the average, It works fine for insurance companies and the like. Infact i would think anyone outside of bmi enough to be obese is 9/10 on steroids. Carrying that extra weight will still strain the body.

Setting aside any legal implications of a blanket policy on body composition for a group-based policy (as opposed to a voluntary behavior, or a private/individual policy)...

The ideal would be body fat percentage, but that's fairly hard to measure accurately.

The practical number is what everyone uses - BMI. Not a very accurate way to measure health, but you can measure everyone in your insurance pool cheaply and those who are outside the "boundaries" can always be offered a body fat percentage assessment as an alternative.

So you catch 90% of people with the very inexpensive test, and the few athletes or other outliers of the BMI scale would be relatively inexpensive to test using a more useful metric.

OMG. I hope they would never use BMI. That doesn't tell you a damn thing. It's a weight to height ratio and nothing more.

Using that scale body builders are "obese". So they would have to pay more because they lift hellacious weights?

I don't think anyone should be required to pay more because they're obese. Obesity isn't a behavioral problem. It's from metabolic damage. They shouldn't be penalized for it.

And as far as "high cholesterol":
High cholesterol isn't a disease. It's a proxy for an underlying problem (inflammation). Cholesterol is the body's band-aid system. It's also critical to life and brain function. With a little help from the sun our body turns cholesterol molecules into Vitamin D. Our body uses cholesterol molecules to make sex hormones. 20% of the weight of our brain is from cholesterol. The body absorbs very, very little of the cholesterol we eat. It makes tons more cholesterol than we eat. And there is no connection (the cholesterol in animal foods isn't even the same kind our body makes) between dietary and serum cholesterol levels. You can't have a cholesterol level. LDL and HDL are just carriers because the cholesterol molecule is fat-soluble and cannot travel through the bloodstream by itself. And HDL is more cholesterol-rich then LDL (LDL sends cholesterol out to the "resuce" and HDL goes out and vaccums it back up to be either disposed of or recycled)
Neither saturated fat nor cholesterol cause heart disease.

So either pay more for high cholesterol or pay for a statin (that could give you cancer and won't make you live any longer). No thanks.

Get a small, medium and large wetsuit.

If you can get in small or medium your fine, large ones to get in the sea and if someone thinks freewilly has got stranded on the beach your FAT lol

The way I judge it I got from various sources of information, and all have to do with BF%. Mind you, there is no "overweight" section, just "acceptable."

For men: Over 25% BF is obese.

For women: Over 32% BF.

Yeah, you can look skinnier than the average person, but you will still be considered obese.

This.

There is a scale can determine the % of fat in your body. I think if you're over %30, with a BMI over 30, you're obese.

I think if you go in for a physical and you have a severely high level of cholesterol, you should also have to pay more.

The body fat I can understand but disagree on the cholesterol that isn't just an obese persons problem. My husband has high cholesterol but he is slim, doesn't smoke or drink, eats a very healthy diet, excercises regularly, in fact he recently completed a hundred mile bike ride for charity and he is 62 years old.

You can't judge a book by it's cover. Until recently I was obese, smoked, rarely excercised, can drink for England and yet my cholesterol and blood pressure have always been normal.

Just glad I live in the UK and we have our NHS glad to pay a bit from my wages for the security of knowing if I am ill (no matter what the cause) or how costly the treatment, I will be looked after.

When I couldn't tie my shoes without getting out of breath, I was obese. I'm still fat, maybe when I can run a mile without stopping I won't be anymore.

I can run (jog?) 10 miles with out stopping. Still fat. :laugh:

Yeah right. You're not fat, by any means of the word. What would real, corpulent people think?