Am I overweight? Well, that might depend on the century.

Another interesting one from A Hundred Years Ago.

I'm 5'6".  I maybe topped out at 5'7" when I was younger.

I weigh about 160 lbs.  Usually slightly under that. Every now and then, a little over that.  If I ever get to 165 I worry.  On rare occasion my weight will drop to 155. This has been the case for a long time, but if I go back to about the time I got married, I weighed about 145 then.

Apparently in 1919 the normal weight for somebody my height was from 119 to 165 lbs.  165 to 174 was overweight. 

Now, the normal weight for somebody that height is 118 to 155.  Overweight is 155 to 186.

Shoot.

I'd be okay if I was still 5'7".

Well, in all honesty I do feel that I need to loose a little weight.  

But then, I'm a middle aged lawyer (and stockman, however).  And I'm not keen on the modern gym attendance model of exercise.  I sort of agree with Henry Fairlie on that.

But I'm definitely not fat.  And at least up until recently, I was holding my own really well for my age.  I say, up until recently, however, as recently some of those miles, and a whole pile of injuries have been frankly catching up with me.  

At least in that latter category, I'm perhaps a bit more like men of a century ago than most men now.  Or so I'd guess based on some data from the prior, 19th, Century.  While I'm in good shape, I've endured a lot of physical insult.  I've broken both lower bones in my right leg, fingers, toes, two vertebrae, my nose, ribs and my skull.  I've punctured a lung and I've had pneumonia.  And that doesn't count asthma as a kid and teenager and I've had the flu numerous times as well as the dread chickenpox.  Many of those would have been routine for my generation, but not all of them.  

So the fact that I'm only 160, normally, when I don't get that much exercise, and for that matter that I have all my hair, and its only now just starting to turn gray, seems more or less a pretty lucky break, really.

Still, it's interesting in context.  Why am I overweight a bit now (and I agree I am), while I would not have been a century ago.

Perceptions might explain all of that. 

But muscle density might as well.  

Indeed, according to the folks who track such things men my age are generally more densely muscled than men who are in our twenties.  No doubt this is true.  When young, we worked outdoors and in physical labor a lot more than many men do now do.

And if this was true of us now, how much more true may that have been a century ago?  Quite a bit, I'll bet.

Having said that, the concept of how much bulk around the margins a person should carry has in fact varied over the years.  In the 1940s the recommendation was to carry a bit of a spare tire, in case a person became ill, probably more of a concern then than now.  At the same time, however, it was probably more of a struggle to get up to 160 for a man my height than it is now.

Oh well, I probably could stand to drop five pounds.