For renown protein researcher Stuart Phillips, Examine is a signal in a sea of scientific noise
Very nice! Easily readable, searchable, and (as always) information is spot on and easily understandable... Examine.com does it again! Nice work!!
The Examine Fitness Guide: A blueprint for optimizing nutrition and supplementation
The problem — when it comes to fitness — is that too many people just focus on building muscle or losing fat. But those are only two parts of a much bigger picture!
Fitness is about optimizing systems of the human body to work well together. That means understanding everything from optimal sleep quality and hormone regulation to joint health.
And years of research have taught us this: fitness is usually oversimplified. For many people, it is all about muscle and fat, weights and cardio; but to solve a puzzle as complex as optimal fitness, hammering the same routines over and over will not work.
You need to figure out your personal bottlenecks among the six main fitness factors and take advantage of the most recent evidence to remove them, or even turn them into strengths!
Healthy joints allow your body to deal with the strains of exercise, sports, and normal everyday activities. A lack of pain should be your everyday state!
Deep, restful sleep lets your body recover from the day’s activities and wake up energized.
Muscle is one of the two obvious fitness factors, but optimal muscle mass isn’t just for looks: it helps keep testosterone levels high and lets you enjoy physical activities.
Fat is the second obvious fitness factor: high body fat leads to lower testosterone, lower self-esteem, and accelerated aging.
Optimal testosterone levels have far-reaching benefits, including more muscle, greater mental clarity, and better mood.
Cardiovascular health grows in importance as you age: improving it now will not only boost your recovery but also help prevent future heart complications.
It’s all interconnected:
Here’s a real-life example: your knees.
Every pound of excess weight you carry means about 4 pounds of extra pressure on your knees when you walk, 8 when you run. In other words, if you’re just 10 pounds overweight, that’s 40 to 80 pounds of extra pressure on your knees with every step you take!
And yet, if you’re overweight, the first thing friends told you was likely to run, either outside or on a treadmill. Miles of running every day. Hours of running each week. “No pain no gain!”
That’s a recipe for disaster.
Instead, you could alternate between running, swimming, and lifting, so that your efforts don’t all put pressure on your knees. You can also decrease your knee pain with smarter nutrition, supplementation, and body positioning at work.
The Fitness Guide gives you a comprehensive approach at fitness, realizing that you should not just improve one facet, but all facets.
We also provide you with free lifetime updates to the Fitness Guide. Originally launched in 2018, we have spent over a thousand hours updating it with the latest research.
Nutrition research never stops — we are always learning something new, and we make sure to pass it on to you.
The Examine Fitness Guide is the best of both worlds: it ensures you have a handle on the big picture of interconnected fitness, and it is meticulously research-backed
Diet the right way
Learn why most diets fail. Understand the psychology of dieting to find the regimen most likely to work for you.
Build muscle
Muscle doesn’t just look good. It promotes healthy aging, hormone balance, and metabolic health.
Take the optimal combination of supplements
Discover how to best combine supplements based on your situation and goals — and save money by avoiding the supplements that don’t work.
Protect your joints and eliminate pain
Implement research-backed lifestyle and supplementation changes to keep your joints healthy.
Lose fat and keep it off
Dieters who keep fat off in the long term have one important trait in common.
Save yourself time and stress
Jump straight to implementing the changes that will revolutionize your fitness. Our expert researchers have already reviewed the evidence!
Get quality sleep
Good sleep is crucial to your health, especially when you’re under stress. Tune up your sleep hygiene to ensure you get deep, restful sleep every night.
Get the evidence behind healthy habits
10,000 steps and 6 meals per day? Find out which habits give you the most bang for your buck, and focus on those.
The Fitness Guide is the culmination of years of research and experience - we’ve distilled thousands of studies into practical steps you can take right now.
Stop wasting your time and money on supplements that don’t work.
Stop getting information from biased sources trying to sell you supplements.
Start taking the supplements that will help you achieve your fitness goals.
For "cleaning up the dirtiest business in the fitness industry," Fast Company recognized Examine as one of the most innovative companies in health and fitness.
We’ve always wanted to build a company that we would trust and like to deal with. In fact, Examine was founded in 2011 because of how frustrated we were with the quality of available nutrition information.
So if you’re unhappy with your purchase, we offer a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee. No questions asked. It’s how we wish other companies did business.
We want what you want: unbiased and trusted information on nutrition and supplements. That’s why we focus on nuance and context, not sensationalism and quick fixes.
We’re very open about our company and what drives us, and we’re confident that not only will you find the Examine Fitness Guide extremely insightful, but that there’s also nothing else so focused on research out there.
We guarantee you’ll find our information useful. If, for any reason, you want your money back, just contact us and we’ll send you a prompt refund, no questions asked.
Respectfully,
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Kamal Patel Co-Founder, Examine |
Over 400 pages. Nearly 1000 references. Hundreds of informative tables, graphs, and infographics.
You won’t find a more research-backed guide to help you improve your fitness.
Learn which supplements to take, when, in what form, in what dosage.
Learn how to best combine the various supplements depending on your personal situation and goals.
Explore the psychology of dieting, not just to learn why most diets fail, but so you can select the right diet for your needs and personality — the diet most likely to work for you. We provide you with the latest evidence on the most popular types of diet, and we answer the diet-related questions we’ve been asked most often over the past seven years!
Learn to assess your fitness and measure your progress. Learn about movement and body positioning (not just for the gym, but for the many hours you spend at work) to keep yourself healthy and pain-free.
We do not sell supplements or provide consulting to supplement companies. We do not accept donations, sponsorship, or advertising. All our recommendations are based strictly on the latest scientific evidence.
The evidence evolves. New studies change our outlook on known supplements, and bring new supplements to the forefront. Which is why your Fitness Guide comes with free lifetime updates.
You’ve tried high-reps, low-reps, pyramids, drop sets, supersets, jogging, HIIT, and all the rest. So why aren’t you getting any faster, stronger, leaner? Are there supplements that could help you break through your plateau?
We’ll see which ones are best supported by the evidence; we’ll even see which forms to take, in what dosages, and in what combinations. But more importantly, we’ll examine fitness factors that are routinely neglected yet are often the real causes behind a plateau.
This is the year you’re getting back in shape! But where to start? Are there supplements that could help you lose fat and give you more energy to exercise? Certainly, and here again we’ll see which which forms to take, in what dosages, and in what combinations, based on the evidence.
But supplements are the cherry on the fitness cake; there are many other factors to consider first. So many, in fact, that fitness can seem an overwhelming puzzle! But we’ll break it down and guide you.
Whether you’re overweight and find dieting and exercising difficult, or you’re just out of shape and wish to start an exercise regimen, we’re here to help. Whatever your age, it is never too late to get fit!
Fitness is a journey. You don’t want to be muscular today but a wreck in ten years. Page by page, we’ll guide you through the basics that make lifelong fitness possible.
Not just how to lose fat, but how to keep it off.
Not just how to pack up muscle, but how to stay pain-free.
Not just how to improve your sport performance, but how to be fit enough to enjoy life and your favorite activities at any age.
Whether you’ve just turned 20, are in your 40s, or have retired and want to stay healthy, our Fitness Guide can help.
We’ll explore dietary habits, sleep hygiene, body positioning, and yes, even supplements — which forms to take, in what dosages, and in what combinations. All based on the latest evidence.
Please note that none of the following individuals were provided any kind of compensation, either directly or indirectly.
Very nice! Easily readable, searchable, and (as always) information is spot on and easily understandable... Examine.com does it again! Nice work!!
Stuart Phillips PhD | Director, Physical Activity Centre of Excellence (PACE) | Director, McMaster Centre for Nutrition, Exercise, and Health Research | Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Skeletal Muscle Health
When I was a grad student, it was easy for me to keep up with the latest research in exercise, nutrition, and supplementation. Of course, staying current was essential to my development as a scientist, writer, and coach. Nowadays, though, with the epic rate of research output in our field PLUS everything going on in my life (i.e. parent of four young children, founder of two businesses, author, competitive athlete) staying up to date feels impossible.
John Berardi PhD, CSCS | Co-founder Precision Nutrition | Advisor to Apple, Nike, Equinox, and Titleist
Examine’s updates help me to stay on top of current research on supplements and diet trends. Their in-depth summaries are a great way to get “the lay of the land” quickly and efficiently.
Jennifer Sygo RD Cleveland Clinic Canada | Performance Toronto Raptors
I tend be really busy these days which makes it really challenging to keep up with the latest research. If you know science, you know that reading and evaluating research is not as simple as reading an abstract. There is a great deal of nuance involved. Put more succinctly, I just don't have the time to do it justice.
John Meadows IFFB Pro Bodybuilder
I turn to Examine.com for quick, reliable data on a whole host of health topics. It’s rare to find such guidance that is meticulously researched yet easy-to-digest, but Examine manages to deliver on both. I strongly recommend it as a trusted resource.
James M. Gaylor James M. Gaylor, MD | Health Policy Fellow, Georgetown | Attending Physician, Department of Emergency Medicine
It is designed for anyone who wants to meet their individual fitness goals using clear and concise guidelines. We bring an evidence-based approach that helps you maximize all facets of fitness.
The Fitness Guide combines 6 guides (sold individually for $49 ) we’ve been updating with new evidence since 2014:
Yes.
If you own the Supplement Guides bundle, you can get the Fitness Guide for just $19.
Simply login and the price will automatically be updated to reflect the discounted price.
Yes. As we create new Supplement Guides, we’ll add the fitness-related ones to your Fitness Guide.
We will update the Fitness Guide the same way we update our Supplement Guides. Our goal is to update our Supplement Guides with new scientific evidence at least once a year.
We will notify you of each major update via email. With that said, you can simply download a new copy from the Member’s Area and it will be the latest version of the Fitness Guide.
We offer an unconditional 30-day money-back guarantee on all our products. Should you be unhappy with the Fitness Guide PDF for any reason, simply email us at support@examine.com and we will refund your purchase.
Examine started because we were frustrated.
We were frustrated with supplement companies misrepresenting scientific research. We were frustrated with social media “influencers” peddling products they didn’t use themselves. We were frustrated with famous doctors and mainstream media disregarding context to produce sensationalist headlines.
This frustration drove us to create what we sought and couldn’t find:
Examine is a 100% independent company that lives or dies solely by the accuracy and usefulness of its analyses.
Since our founding in 2011, we’ve been working for you, and only for you. We don’t sell or advertise supplements and don’t accept sponsorship or donations — not from companies, not from organizations, not even from individuals. You are our sole source of income, so there is no conflict of interests: the only interests we serve are yours.
Or to put it another way, you empower Examine to keep providing unbiased information about nutrition and supplementation — two topics rife with misinformation and disinformation.
Back in 2014 Men’s Fitness called us game changers for bringing an evidence-based approach to nutrition and supplements.
In 2020, Men’s Health UK had us #1 on their Most Influential list.
Today, the hundreds of free articles on our website are read by 2.5 million visitors each month, and over 50,000 people have bought our publications. Medical doctors, dietitians, coaches, and personal trainers entrust the health of their patients, athletes, and clients to our analyses.
We are the experts other experts rely on. And like the health professionals, each time you purchase any of our publications, including the Examine Fitness Guide, you purchase thousands of work hours from a dedicated team of experts with degrees in nutrition, exercise science, public health, pharmacology, toxicology, microbiology, biophysics, biomedical science, neuroscience, chemistry, and more.
Zero conflict of interest
Examine is an unbiased resource on nutrition and supplementation. We are not influenced by commercial interests, product manufacturers, or any other organization, and we will not advertise products or brands. Examine does not accept donations, third-party funding, or sponsorship of any kind. One hundred percent of our revenue is generated through our information products.
100% money-back guarantee
All Examine purchases are risk-free. Examine Fitness Guide comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee — no questions asked. If you don’t like what you see, just email us via support@examine.com within 30 days for your full refund.