Average American Male is 5'9" and 195 Lbs - New Report

HeyDumb*** wrote:

Manzano, Meb, Bekele, etc.

laughing wrote:

F***** all of you tall guys. I'm 5'5". Notice how this is a running website, and that in the thread stating the average height as 5'9", all but 2 are taller than that. Most of you would be nowhere in your running ability without your height.

You should have added Haile before writing "etc." I also notice that you didn't mention any white guys in there, either, which is curious. At any rate, I'm aware of Kenenisa, Leo, Meb, etc. That's why I said most, and, more importantly, I also said you, as in the guys on this forum...which is mostly guys from the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and the U.K. -- i.e. mostly NOT born & raised at altitude, mostly NOT having excellent (east-) African genetics, and likely NOT including world-class athletes because they almost never post on this forum.

I challenge you to find 10 non-African-descent American guys who went even sub-18:30 in the 5k (or equivalent distance performance for 3000m on up) at any point in their lives after age 18 and are 5'5" or shorter. You will eventually find them, but in your search you will find that they are dwarfed in number by tall guys by at least 1 order of magnitude, if not more.

Or maybe relax the height requirement to 5'7" & shorter, but change the 5k time to sub-17:30 (or equivalent), and still try to find 10 of them. How many sub-17:30 non-African guys would you have to survey to do find 10 short guys? 100? 500?

Where are the math guys? Let's plot the heights & 5k pr's of guys on this forum. The results would be VERY telling.

I don't know if he's as short as 5'5", but lack of height is why Jacob Riley is one of the most under-rated runners on the American scene right now.

Dress shirts have to be super slim fit because nothing else fits us. Plus have to go to a tailor to get rid of the parachute of fabric

Iagree wrote:

Man, I'm a 5'4.5" woman and weigh 125, and I'm not even considered uber thin. I would be straight up obese if I weighed 160 something. This is sad. On a related note, it drives me crazy how we can't say anything even remotely critical about overweight people, buts it's fair game to rip on skinny people. Sometimes we go too far with the "celebrate curvy" bit when people are just straight up overweight/unhealthy/obese.

Mike Rossi loves to rip on skinny people

Bdndndnd wrote:

Dress shirts have to be super slim fit because nothing else fits us. Plus have to go to a tailor to get rid of the parachute of fabric

This x1000. Plenty of shirts fit in the shoulders, but it's like they become conical on the way down. WTF, fashion industry?

An increase in average weight by 15/16 pounds (men/women) in only 20 years is shocking.

The increase of 13/7 pounds for 11 year old boys/girls also means that average weight will probably continue to go up as these kids become adults.

Especially as all of these fat people reach retirement age, the costs to society will be crushing because these people won't necessarily die sooner given modern medicine - they will just linger on in bad health and at greater expense to society.

Get ready to pay wrote:

An increase in average weight by 15/16 pounds (men/women) in only 20 years is shocking.

The increase of 13/7 pounds for 11 year old boys/girls also means that average weight will probably continue to go up as these kids become adults.

Especially as all of these fat people reach retirement age, the costs to society will be crushing because these people won't necessarily die sooner given modern medicine - they will just linger on in bad health and at greater expense to society.

Yep. There's no incentive to do the right thing when the help is guaranteed. It's already hurting America through decreases in standard of living due to the taxes to pay for this, the devaluing of the dollar through quantitative easing and foreign borrowing necessary to pay for massive budget deficits that large-scale social programs require, and inflated insurance premiums and out-of-pocket care costs

I say, either:

(1.) cut or kill the benefits, or

(2.) have a similar theme to social security, in that what you get out is based on what you put in. So if, say, you have documented evidence of regular exercise, then sure, Medicare/Medicaid/insurance will pay for your bypass surgery. If not? Well, sorry.

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The biggest problem, though, is that IT'S GETTING HARDER AND HARDER TO FIND A HOT WIFE.

We need to start a GoFundMe to teach English en mass to foreign women to combat this problem. I know this makes for a great laugh, but I'm kind of being serious, too.

Dat truth wrote:

Clocking in at 6'1" 145# here.

Exact same here man

I'm right there at 5'9 and 195 per my physical yesterday. I'm 38 years old. I little thick around the middle. I have muscle under the chub. I run 30 to 40 miles a week, and do a few P90X/ yoga workouts each week. I ran a 1:34 half marathon last year and can still go on the track and run 5:53 for 1600 by myself.

I was 5'9 155 my senior year of high school when I ran 55, 2:06, and 4:40.

I'd love to drop 15 to 20 lbs but my diet isn't great and I like beer.

Also, BP was 116/68, heart rate was 56 at my physical.

Tubby wrote:

I'm right there at 5'9 and 195 per my physical yesterday. I'm 38 years old. I little thick around the middle. I have muscle under the chub. I run 30 to 40 miles a week, and do a few P90X/ yoga workouts each week. I ran a 1:34 half marathon last year and can still go on the track and run 5:53 for 1600 by myself.

It's actually really impressive that you can run those times with all of that extra weight. You obviously still have some fitness under there. Not tempted to drop 25 or 30 and see what you can REALLY do?

Chrome autofill settings wrote:

I'm not sure what's worse. Being obese or being 5'9".

I don't get it what's bad about being 5'9''? (I am 5'8'')

Five years ago, at 33, I dropped to 172. I ran a 19:35 5K (hilly course), a 1:35 half, and a 3:30 full (I was on 3:28 pace but cramped at 23 miles).

I didn't capitalize on the fitness to see what I could run after the full. I got a vasectomy and then spent a month in the hospital with my youngest son.

I'd be curious to see what I could do if I dropped more weight and got a coach though. I doubt it would be terribly impressive.

In college, I was 6'0" 160-165. Then I graduated, joined the military, started doing lots of pushups and carrying heavy backpacks around and went up to 185-190. I was actually surprised at how fast I could be at that weight--ran a 10:13 2 mile and a 27:24 5 mile, and even won a trail 50k.

I kept lifting and went up to 205, which was too heavy. Running at that weight is miserable, so now I'm cutting it back to 190ish. Heavy enough I can still keep up with work requirements, light enough that I can still enjoy running.

I never realized how skinny I was in college until I happened across photos of myself from back then. Runners are extremely thin, and have an expectation of thin-ness that isn't necessarily healthy.

That said, we are definitely headed down a dark road. The only solution to this--and I'm being completely serious--is fat shaming. I know a lot people think it is just mean, but that is what fixed littering and smoking.

I'm not saying that everyone needs to be a distance waif or a jacked CrossFit nerd, but they shouldn't be obese.

height? wrote:

Chrome autofill settings wrote:

I'm not sure what's worse. Being obese or being 5'9".

I don't get it what's bad about being 5'9''? (I am 5'8'')

Don't even worry about it bro. You can always drive a huge truck.

Not trying to be funny, but the MADD drunk driving shaming campaign didn't work that well. And how about all the pot shaming?

6'2", 155lbs.

Tubby wrote:

I'm right there at 5'9 and 195 per my physical yesterday. I'm 38 years old. I little thick around the middle. I have muscle under the chub. I run 30 to 40 miles a week, and do a few P90X/ yoga workouts each week. I ran a 1:34 half marathon last year and can still go on the track and run 5:53 for 1600 by myself.

So, if just by weight loss you can run 20 seconds per mile faster for every 10 pounds you lose, if you dropped down to running weight, so lost 50 pounds to 145, you could do like a 1:12 half marathon on 30 to 40 miles a week. That's pretty good actually.

Bdndndnd wrote:

the parachute of fabric

Oh man, yes. Those of us making slightly under 450K can't afford to take every shirt to a tailor, so tucking the extra belly fabric around the sides sorta kinda helps. But not really.

I highly recommend these guys:

https://www.blanklabel.com/

Custom tailored shirts, high quality and very reasonably priced. I have them make mine extra slim fitting around the waist and it's truly night and day as compared to anything off the rack.