Ask ten people “What does it mean to be fit?”, and you’ll get ten different answers.
Moreover, what fitness means to you today can change tomorrow. Case in point: Kamal Patel, Examine.com co-founder (i.e., me!).
A decade ago, my main goal was to pack on muscle. Forays into powerlifting, strongman competitions … muscle was all I cared about. I had a 430-pound deadlift, and both my squat and bench were above 300. I was roughly 175 pounds at 12% body fat, and my goal was to be consistently sub-10%.
(Note that I hail from a family of rail-thin Indians and was among the naturally skinniest of them. My max bench was a shaky, grind-it-out 65 pounds after my freshman year of college. Suffice it to say that my fitness journey took quite a lot of time, effort, and learning.)
Fast forward to today, and my definition of fitness has completely changed. I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disorder that affects connective tissue throughout the body. I’ve had well over a dozen MRIs and multiple joint surgeries. I still research fitness on a daily basis, but now with a broader understanding of interconnected factors such as joint pain and sleep.
And years of research have taught me 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.
Importantly, each factor affects all the others. So don’t focus on just a couple and let the others become roadblocks in the years to come!
Imagine you found a VW Beetle from the 1950s and upgraded the engine, and only the engine, to something from 2019. What would happen?
The drivetrain would underperform. The shocks would fail pretty quickly. The wheels would not be able to handle the speed.
By focusing on one component and neglecting all the others, you’ve only marginally improved the performance, and at the same time created new risks.
This is what happens if you don’t focus on the big picture.
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.
As your pain decreases, you can exercise more and thus lose more weight, thus lessening the pressure on your knees, thus reducing the pain even more. More exercise and less pain make for better sleep, thus better recovery, allowing you to exercise harder. The harder you exercise, the more your cardiovascular system improves, making it possible for you to exercise longer, thus lose more weight, thus decrease the pressure on your knees, and so on and so forth.
In short, as you improve one fitness factor, the others improve too. This synergistic process is the virtuous circle of fitness.
Too many books focus on just one fitness factor. But most people don’t have time to read six different books and figure out, for each of them, what’s true and what’s just good salesmanship. The job of our Fitness Guide is to translate all the most recent scientific evidence about the six main fitness factors so you know which diets, supplements, and lifestyle approaches work, which don’t, and which might but don’t have enough evidence yet.
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.
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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.
Take advantage of Examine.com’s expertise. We’ve distilled hundreds of studies into practical steps you can take right now.
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Lindsay Langford, MS, RD, CSSD | Sports Dietitian, Indiana Pacers
Whenever I want unbiased, meticulously researched, and scientifically credible supplement information, I turn to my friends at Examine.com. They review thousands of studies and give bottom-line supplement recommendations better than anyone else in the industry. For me, my team, and my colleagues, they’ve become a trusted resource.
John Berardi, PhD, CSCS | Co-founder Precision Nutrition | Advisor to Apple, Nike, and Equinox
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Stuart Phillips, Director, Physical Activity Centre of Excellence (PACE) | Director, McMaster Centre for Nutrition, Exercise, and Health Research | Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Skeletal Muscle Health
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Ramsey Nijem, Head Performance & Strength Coach, Sacramento Kings
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John Meadows, IFFB Pro Bodybuilder
I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with high performance athletes at all levels. The majority of my athlete clients are not only looking to maximize performance through diet but also through safe and effective supplementation. With over 50,000 supplements on the market, it’s difficult to keep up with the latest research, which is why I lean on the brilliant team at Examine.com for the most current evidence-based data on dietary supplements.
Tavis Piattoly, S, RD, LDN | Co-Founder, My Sports Dietitian | Former Sports Dietitian for New Orleans Saints & New Orleans Pelicans
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Michael Easter, Lecturer - Journalism, UNLV | Journalist, contributor to Men's Health, Outside, and more
Examine.com is the most trusted resource on the internet for making intelligent decisions regarding your health. I visit it daily and frequently suggest to my patients to visit Examine.com before purchasing any supplements or making any dietary changes.
Mike Hart, MD
With Examine.com, never again will you need to worry about knowing whether the claims of the billion-dollar supplement industry are true or false. You’ll have the truth right at your fingertips. Use this encyclopedic resource as your go-to-guide and you’ll never have to waste time searching google and wondering whether what you found is evidence or (biased) advertisement, you won’t have to waste your money or risk your health on personal trial and error, and you won’t even have to sort through the real research (pubmed) because the guys at Examine have spent years doing it for you. Maybe the best part is that, finally the evidence-based trustworthy information we need is all in one place, and is smartly organized so you can find the answers you need in just minutes. Whether you’re a consumer or a fitness pro, this is a no-brainer must-have for your library.
Tom Venuto, Bestselling author, Burn the Fat
The supplement industry can be tremendously confusing for a number of reasons. First, the margins are incredibly high — so there are a lot of unethical weasels with no scientific background making bold and unsubstantiated claims to separate you from your money. Second, it’s a dynamic industry, as new products, brands, and research emerge every single day. Fortunately, the guys at Examine.com have streamlined the process of educating us all by providing an incredibly up-to-date resource on the supplements we encounter on a daily basis, as well as some of the more obscure ones that are out there that might “stump” us. This is an excellent product not only because it’s a completely research-backed, unbiased perspective without any financial conflicts of interest, but also because it’s exhaustively thorough and well written. I highly recommend it.
Eric Cressey, MA in Kinesiology, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
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Dr. Bryan Chung, MSc in Rehabilitation Science, MD, PhD
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Founded in 2011, Examine.com is an education company led by a team of experts — PhDs, researchers, medical doctors, pharmacists, and more. With over 2.5 million visitors each month, our website is the trusted resource on nutrition and supplement research.
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.com 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.com does not accept donations, third-party funding, or sponsorship of any kind. One hundred percent of our revenue is generated through our information products: The Examine.com Fitness Guide, the Examine.com Research Digest, the A-to-Z Reference, and the Supplement Guides.
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All Examine.com purchases are risk-free. Our Fitness Guide PDF 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.
