That's kind of the point I'm trying to make, actually. Being of 'average' fitness doesn't make you 'healthy'. Average fitness can mean you don't exercise often, but you do exercise occasionally. If you have a flat stomach at 30 or can easily run 10 miles then you are not of average fitness, you are above average. Being 'healthy' or 'fit' is not 'average fitness' in my view. That being said, you could be right and it might have to do with age or even culture/location how people view fitness and health. It's also possible that if you are around people that exercise often or if you exercise enough that you have seen drastic change in your fitness that you could be blinded by the long period of time of being at where you are, and not quite remember or not quite realize that people on average are actually where you were at probably only 2-4 weeks into serious exercise and stagnate there for long periods of time without progress. As an aside, a lot of people equate weight to health as well, too. I was told by a doctor recently after I said that I was going to start exercising more that "Oh you look pretty good, though". I know for a fact that I'm not physically fit, and would probably be called "average", but since I eat well I tend to look healthy when you look at me with a shirt on.In my snooty elitist young-and-still-uninjured opinion, anyone "healthy" is able to run one mile (non-stop). I don't care how fast you run it. If you can't run one mile non-stop, you aren't in good physical condition.
If you are physically incapable of running one mile, something is wrong with your health. Health At Any Size - sure. If you can run one.
I carefully caveated for a number of factors, actually, with "healthy": anyone recovering from an injury, ill, or otherwise excusably unable to be fit is inherently discluded from the group I'm saying should be able to run a mile. Likewise, pregnant mothers who have to be on bed rest. If you have to be on bed rest, you're clearly not healthy, and so on. The average has absolutely nothing to do with the ideal or even the minimally acceptable standard. The average is simply a metric to represent the mid-grade of the current population, approximately. I would not want to be an American of average fitness; I imagine it would be equal to approximately no fitness. The average American woman is over twice my size. I would not find that an acceptable size to be, personally. And I don't think other people should simply because it so happens that it's the mean. I don't think we are necessarily disagreeing. I will say I think culture and location are probably significant factors in what the average or minimum standard of health are. French women don't get fat, and so on. I believe that humans are meant to run. It is that belief which drives my conviction that all healthy people should be able to run a mile non-stop, and my suspicion that if you cannot - hell I will be generous and even say you have a week or ten days in which to build up to an attempt - you are simply not healthy. This generally flies in the face of the Health at Any Size movement, which I don't usually go out of my way to disagree with - but obese, sedentary people (or obese people who are able to "walk long distances without being short of breath" - often populate the HAES movement, even using the above quote as a demonstration of health, when I consider it a requirement for life and not an acceptable baseline for health or fitness. I think being able to run a mile non-stop should be the bare minimum standard for anyone to claim they are fit or healthy. I don't even care what you weigh, to pull in your last point. If you are 250 pounds and can run a mile non-stop, I am willing to say you are healthy. But if you can't, I'm not. And god, if you're running a mile non-stop, at least you're trying. Being able to walk long distances is not trying.