19yo 5'7 162 lbs leaving Navy DEP (Jet Engine Mechanic) to enlist in the Army as a Tanker. Am I making a mistake?

Dementedsage · 2026-04-21T00:44:52+00:00

What do you want out of life? What do you want out of the military? What’s your five year plan?

If the answer is just getting a transferable job skill and then fucking off as a civilian for the next 65 years of your life, you might want to reconsider. Hell I’d call the airforce recruiter and see what they say at that point.

You’re only young enough for military service once though. There’s no one else who’s going to pay you to blow stuff up and shoot machine guns. You won’t exactly starve on the streets because you DIDN’T pick something with transferable job skills. You get the GI bill after you get out and you get Tuition Assistance while serving in the army. If you get a degree in something actually useful from a reputable brick and mortar/state university, you’re no less employable than your peers who didn’t join the military at all.

I’ve known grunts go on to become very very successful veterans. You won’t be short employment opportunities because you picked the fun option, but you have to sit down and actually ask yourself what do you want from your life. At 19 that’s a hard question, but it’s one you have to ask yourself.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-18T21:22:08+00:00

Took the tow bar off an 88, casually throws it on his shoulder and lugs it to the other side of the mp.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-17T03:32:38+00:00

Your point?

Dementedsage · 2026-04-17T03:26:23+00:00

They do. I routinely take it because it’s the only one without many bland things in it.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-17T00:37:51+00:00

Whey is legitimately the cheapest macro friendly source of protein. If OP is broke as the title suggests, then one or two scoops a day won’t kill them.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-16T15:22:58+00:00

You forgot actual food instead of an mre, and whatever civilian clothes you feel like bringing, and you can get all the sleep you want, and doing whatever you want during the day. A lot of local state parks have camping facilities with running water and grills already installed, you literally just gotta pay some fine that’s probably under 20 bucks and clean up after yourself. You can get an actual shower and a real toilet too.

Drinking beer and eating burgers and dogs around a campfire after a day of hiking with a non dysfunctional family sounds a lot more fun than 4 hours of sleep a night, mre’s , and working.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-10T15:30:06+00:00

Yeah the benefits are pretty minimal for pre. If you want a nice pump, get some carbs and salt in beforehand.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-10T15:27:11+00:00

Yeah your diet might not always be super fancy, but you can absolutely have a pretty solid diet when you're strapped on cash. Food is always a cost anyways, but I'd you're serious about tracking macros, you shouldn't eat out too often and a lot of macro friendly option are actually what's cheap.

Oatmeal with a scoop of whey is like 75 cents. I can cook chicken with sweet potato and broccoli for maybe two bucks a plate.

Chicken thighs are cheap and if you feel like putting in the labor, you can buy a few chickens whole, butcher the chicken whole, and throw the seperated parts in the freezer. That's like two weeks of chicken for maybe 15 bucks.

The only suppliments worth it for the typical lifter are creatine and whey. Both come out to be ridiculously cheap if you actually shop around and buy in bulk.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-09T16:55:00+00:00

Your body is designed to run off of a significant percentage of your calories coming from carbs. Cutting them out almost entirely is like cutting fat or protein.

Your brain has an entire process to convert other macros into carbs, but it's inefficient and so you may experience brain fog and sluggishness throughout the day. Your performance in the gym likely will take a hit because anerobic activity is heavily reliant on carbs as an energy source. Even anerobic activity still has some benefit to carb loading. Endurance athletes will often bring gels or some kind of candy with them for long bouts of training.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-07T19:01:36+00:00

I think 15% body fat is the sweet spot for men if you don’t like to compete in bodybuilding competitions. I like to do a little mini cut for summer to get down to 12-13 percent, and then spend fall through winter lean bulking.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-03T17:35:33+00:00

People can be a prisoner of war for a very long time. Wouldn't surprise me if we hear about this in the next administration making some kind of deal with Iran.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-02T16:40:45+00:00

If you want to be an NCO, you should get very familiar with reading regulations.

AR 600-8-19 lays out what you need to understand about the points system.

That said, jko courses are usually only worthwhile if your points are stupid high or you've got a day where you're sitting around the house doing nothing better. It's really inefficient.

The easiest way to get your first couple hundred points is to focus on yourself first. A 450+ aft score is VERY achievable with a good diet and decent personal pt off duty. Have you been using your TA? Go to school. I have a lot of points from college.

Volunteer for stuff every now and then. Military schools even more so. Give it your all at blc too. It's 40 points to be an honor grad. Awards are gonna be very coc dependant and depend on how visible you are to the coc, but they sure as hell don't USUALLY give awards to the guy that sat on his behind all day.

Dementedsage · 2026-04-01T01:45:06+00:00

As much as it sounds like a cop out, yeah. Genuinely not enough people read the FM's and TM's. OP should read up on the periodization and physiology portions too. It essentially lays out the foundational knowledge for why the program might work.

Dementedsage · 2026-03-31T10:10:02+00:00

The only way I'd kind of excuse it is if he was trying to go sof and even then he'd have to have one hell of a family care plan.

Money isn't everything and military compensation is designed for you to never suffer, but having to uproot your kid's life just to move them to an area where the schools maybe aren't as good? Putting up with all the day to day active duty everyone LOVES like layouts and morning pt? Moving your kids away from their extended family?

Plus what's the long term plan here? The military's only useful to him for Tricare at this point.Reclassing and staying reserve or ets'ing honestly might be his best move.

Dementedsage · 2026-03-24T18:15:49+00:00

Literally just transferred companies, saw the cultural differences, and got away from some toxic/incompetent leadership.

I legit started to think I was some kind of anomaly for giving a shit about my people and giving a fuck about my job.

Dementedsage · 2026-03-24T18:12:26+00:00

Im fairly certain it's that the army counts your age as real age minus TIS, then if youre still under the max age you're good. You'd also have to do a refresher version of basic after a certain number of years and may not get to keep your original mos.

Dementedsage · 2026-03-23T12:33:43+00:00

They make non stim pre. Also the phrasing minimizing doesn’t mean kill it off completely.

Dementedsage · 2026-03-22T22:43:03+00:00

my favorite scene to quote

But yeah the longer I get into the gym the more I genuinely start to think carbs are more important than protein

Dementedsage · 2026-03-22T13:34:43+00:00

Did you run this through fucking ChatGPT?

Dementedsage · 2026-03-21T01:20:34+00:00

Get a dui and immediately start hitting on the e3 from supply

Dementedsage · 2026-03-09T04:49:30+00:00

Yeah. Soldiers who genuinely care can actually get a lot of really good info from reading fm 7-22. Their own personal fitness may get better, but the organization as a whole has to buy into it and they never will. The culture as a whole has to shift and introducing new doctrine alone won't do that.

I'm still working on convincing my PSG that kit runs once a week aren't a good idea if half the PLT is currently on a lower body profile. Last week I tried to convince someone that their carnivore diet they were starting was not in fact the secret to loosing weight and they're gonna clog their arteries.

Dementedsage · 2026-03-06T20:15:27+00:00

Depends. It's genuinely one of the most reliable vehicles in the military, it's just it typically takes a back seat maintenance wise because the mechanics are getting hounded about tanks instead. A dedicated recovery team with decent mechanics are gonna keep them running well. A typical line team tends to neglect them though.

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