"He told me I'd have to lose a little bit of weight," said Schoenherr, who dropped 50 pounds to qualify.

Besides terrorists, germ warfare and nuclear weapons, military officials increasingly worry about a different kind of threat — troops too fat to fight.

Weight issues plague all branches of the military, from elite Marines to the Air Force, often lampooned as the "chair force" because of its many sedentary jobs.

Thousands of troops are struggling to lose weight, and thousands have been booted out of the service in recent years because they couldn't.

Moreover, nearly 2 out of 10 men and 4 out of 10 women of recruiting age weigh too much to be eligible, a record number for that age group.

"This is quickly becoming a national security issue for us. The pool of recruits is becoming smaller," said Col. Gaston Bathalon, an Army nutrition expert. Unless weight rules are relaxed, "we're going to have a harder time fielding an Army," he said.

But at an obesity conference in Las Vegas last fall and in interviews since then, Bathalon and other military officials detailed the heavy burden that excess pounds are causing for some troops and taxpayers.

Weight problems add stress to already stressful jobs, costing many soldiers promotions and leading some to try desperate measures like rubber suits and risky pills to shed pounds.

Problems don't end when active duty does, either. The Veterans Affairs health system increasingly is strained by vets piling on pounds and developing weight-related diseases.

Ironically, the big concern used to be soldiers not weighing enough. Congress passed the school lunch program after World War II, worried that too many high schoolers were malnourished and unfit to fight.

"This is the same deal in reverse. We've got young kids who are not going to be qualified for military service. They're either unfit or overfat," said Col. Karl Friedl, commander of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine at Natick, Mass.

Marines can be as much as 10 percent over weight standards to ship to boot camp.

"The Marines say, 'Send us anybody and we'll turn them into a Marine.' They're pretty successful at it," Friedl said.

Schoenherr, the Wisconsin Army recruit, was pretty successful, too. After weighing in at 215 pounds, he did his own boot camp during his senior year in high school, going to the recruiting center for 6 a.m. workouts, then downing a boiled egg or two and orange juice before heading to class.

Lunch would be "tuna fish right out of the can" or a low-carb wrap at school, he said. After school, he'd lift weights. He's now a svelte 165 pounds and about to join a Special Forces unit.