So, this may be in the wrong category. I'm not sure but hello everyone, I am a 20 year old female with a height of 5'3 and weight of 220 (based on my last weigh in). I've been told that I don't look my weight and I'm more in shape than I think but that doesn't relieve my unavoidable insecurities for this fall. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe I'm roughly 70 pounds overweight which is possibly morbidly obese. About 2 weeks ago I enrolled into AROTC, MSI. Class starts in 20 days. I've been looking into other forums and seen that it seems like 95% of Csdets are already fit for ROTC. I have the motivation to complete it but I'm worried that I'm so out of shape and overweight that my motivation won't be enough. Has anyone seen someone or themselves make it through while being as fat as I am? I would never want to ruin the experience for other cadets because I'm slowing them down. And yes, I've already started working out. I've lost 5lbs in 8 days. Telling me to, "get off my fat ***" won't help my question because I'm already off of it.
As a former NROTC instructor (though I've been off the deck for a couple years)...
If you have the motivation to continuously work hard and lose the weight...you can make it through.
The good news is that the Army has the lowest standards and takes anyone with a pulse and a hope of commissioning. They don't cost them anything until they get contracted after going to FTX (third-year, IIRC), and you never know, they may work out. Plus, the Army always has the hard imposition of having the largest number of slots to fill (they have to fill both active Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard billets-AFROTC and NROTC only commission active-duty). The other good news is they have enough people in their units that they can get people extra help, and they will work with people.
Your life is going to be significantly harder than the average cadets, and I believe you won't be eligible for a scholarship until you are with PFT standards. But it's doable, if you work hard enough. That's not a guarantee per se, but it does mean you can give yourself a fighting chance.
From my experience, most (I'd say 90%) people joining the program were in "good shape" compared to the average student, but most also ended up on Remedial PT their freshman year anyway, largely because of form. It was always fun seeing people try and bang out 100 push-ups in two minutes, only to stop them after 10 for poor form.
Protip-diet is the key. You can't outrun your fork.
Protip number two: when working on PFT scores, don't forget push-ups and sit-ups. It's hard to gain that much speed on the 2-mi run (barring large amounts of weight loss, which would be the case), but you can get as a lot of points with relatively small increases in push-ups/sit-ups.
So, good luck, and Hua, as the Army types say.
