LL - the right decision?

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I understand what the 178cm guys are talking about regarding feeling short in central Europe.  In Serbia the average young man is 6 feet tall.  When I'm there I see short people from far away, and when I get closer I realize that they're the same height as me at 178.  That's how tall a short guy is in Serbia.

The guy on here who's already over 6 feet tall and still wants more, I think is totally nuts and needs therapy rather than LL.  But I don't have a problem with you 178 guys.  In fact, I'm considering doing 5cm femurs.  Not because I really need the height as an American, but to balance out my leg ratio.  Being 6' would be a nice added bonus though.

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Gotta love the tall guys trying to convince everyone they're not crazy by claiming that the studies of average height are all wrong and that they're shorties who need lengthening to escape discrimination. So many mental gymnastics needed to reach their conclusion.

What's far more likely to be true is that you're all overstating the heights of these people by a whole forehead in height because you're looking at the tops of their heads and comparing them to your eye level XD

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Quote from: axelf on January 03, 2016, 11:27:03 PMbut what I can report is that my estimation is that the average height will dramatically increase within the next  years (among young people). It's not uncommon at all that I see 14 year old male teenagers above 180cm. And usually a lot of the young girls at let's say 16-18 (within the legal limitations  ) are around my height ( ~178cm).

Average height hasn't changed much in America in the last 50 years. "Data collected from the federal Centers for Disease Control show that average height for Americans has stabilized in the past 50 years to about 5 feet 9 inches for men and 5 feet 4 inches for women. " Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98438&page=1

Average height is increasing in countries where malnutrition used to be a problem and is not so much anymore - like Asian countries. But the problem with your estimation is that you have confirmation bias - meaning you are seeing more of what you want to see: tall, young males.

Girls usually reach their full height at 16-18 due to an earlier puberty, so it's not a surprise if some are around your height. I've lived in America all my life and I don't see many 178 cm girls.

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What we are trying to argue is that the average height for the students at (top) universities as well as for the employees of the most ''elite'' companies such as the investment banks, management consultancy, law firms, people in these areas are a good 3-4 cm taller than the average for the country as a whole And there are no statistics for that, just random observations.

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Oh and something else. Because the high birth rate of many Latinos that immigrate to the US, the average height more or less do not move. Statistically, that can be case for Western Europe, where we do observe very tall young white people, but the average remains the same. The reason being, the immigration from the Middle East and Africa.

Now, the case with Eastern Europe is profoundly different. A good 95% of the population is and has always been white caucasian. These countries are highly reluctant to accept new immigrants. I guess you all have heard how Hungary treated refugees. In formal Jugoslavic countries (Serbia, Croatia to name a few) there is pretty high sense of nationalism and people are proud with their Christian heritage and believe that immigration from the Middle East will harm their societies, so they don't accept any.

Because pretty much only white caucasian people participated in the sample, the increase in the average height is so evident in Eastern Europe. The same increase is also evident in Western Europe as well, however, the societies are so much more diverse and this diversity brings the average down.

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It's different days for me and also location strangely enough. For some reason I get dwarfed at the local supermarket and the train station of all places. However when I just walk through town I usually feel slightly below average -just like the statistics have it.

I won't argue that students appear very tall but I think it comes down to socioeconomic status, posture and perhaps differences in spinal shrinkage with age. I've read or heard no credible sources report anything about the overall average height increasing, I believe it has been reported to reach a plateau though which makes sense.

Also many of these eastern europeans statistics are doubtful, more often than not they have a small sample size measured at university -the difference between the educated and the overall populace is usually a few cm, in EE the disparity might be larger still- and give quite varying results. The Serbian average has been reported from 179-182 with the larger studies tending towards the lower end, of course the internet blows things out of proportion as per usual and hence the laims that serbians are 6 feet tall on average.

Good ol' Denmark has yearly measured studies of over 30 000 conscripts from all over the socioeconomic spectrum. Since the 1990's the danish average has been steady at about 180-181 cm and this is for 19-20 year olds.

There was a self-reported smaller study in Denmark that gave 182,5 cm and it's telling of our sensationalist nature that I've seen that number quouted far more often than the real average.

Basically the average white european is 178-182 -excluding the dutch, those really seem to be giants.

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Quote from: Madmax_01 on January 03, 2016, 03:44:36 AMDo you guys think that going from 5'4'' to 5'7'' will make a difference in ones life? I sometimes think that being 5'7'' would still feel being short, and I am not quite sure if this would "cure" my height neurosis.

My son went from 5'4" to 5'7" and I can tell you that it is a huge difference. 

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I agree with upland , I read the Norwegian, the danish nd the swiss studies which seems reliable as they have measured thousands men.
If I remember well , danish young males average 180.5 cm , norwegian almost average 180 cm, and it hasn't changed for 2 decades.The swiss average 178 cm .
I have created an account on meetic which is a famous dating website in Europe, I'm going to do statistics by using the search engine and I will post the results

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Having said that , I still believe that I'm not tall enough, 185 cm is the magical boundary, at 183 cm you can feel short a lot of time , and you re still below average in a couple of countries.

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Quote from: endomorphisme on January 04, 2016, 12:13:23 PMHaving said that , I still believe that I'm not tall enough, 185 cm is the magical boundary, at 183 cm you can feel short a lot of time , and you re still below average in a couple of countries.

But we can at least establish that if you are at least 180-183 you shouldn't be considered short in europe -again excluding the netherlands.