This review of the Nerd Fitness Academy is written from the perspective of my own personal fitness journey. I hope to offer insight into the program while sharing my own experiences and achievements. You can skip to the results here.
With that, let’s just get this out of the way: Nerd Fitness is awesome. Whether you are someone who is looking to lose weight, gain weight, or just learn how to live a healthier lifestyle, Nerd Fitness is a great place to start. Even if after reading this review you still aren’t ready to ‘bite the bullet’ and purchase the paid program, the free resources they have are incredible.
What is the Academy?
The Nerd Fitness Academy is Nerd Fitness’ primary product. It’s designed for those with limited to no fitness experience, and covers every aspect of healthy living from diet to exercise. Steve Kamb, the site’s creator, places a lot of value on building healthy habits over time. He specializes in presenting research-backed information in a way that is easily understandable and interesting to read for everyone.
I’ve always been somewhat active, participating in swim team in high school and going on several extended backpacking trips per year. However, that got harder after high school, and during that time I made many attempts at going to the gym that ultimately ended up failing. Nerd Fitness was exactly what I needed to teach me what I needed to know and to form lasting habits that would change my life.
That’s actually the entire premise of the site: Promote healthy living to nerds. Steve, who is a big nerd himself, teaches concepts in a way that’s fun to follow and isn’t intimidating. Whether framing the fight against sugar as a fight of heroes versus villains or presenting challenges as opportunities to “level up”, the site is always a joy to read. This carries over into the Academy, which basically turns healthy living into an RPG that has an actual point system to keep track of progress and level up your life.
The Nerd Fitness Approach
The program is organized into three main modules: Mindset, Nutrition, and Workouts.
Mindset
Once in the Academy, you create a character to represent yourself. You get to choose a class, such as Ranger or Warrior, and the site builds challenges for you based on your selections. For example, you might choose the Druid class, and you’ll see more yoga show up in your path. One challenge that really stuck out to me was where I was asked to find my true motivating reasons for going healthy, write them down, expand on them, and revisit regularly to keep my motivation up when things get hard. All challenges earn points, and help you “level up”.
In my case, I found three core reasons I wanted to level up my life:
- I want to make sure I remain healthy and attractive for years to come. When I bought access to the Academy, I was several years into a desk job and several years into fat gain and muscular atrophy. I didn’t even have that much muscle to shrink! But I want to be sure that I maintain my health despite the desk being a part of my life for the foreseeable future. Plus, I’ve always wanted to be muscular, but I didn’t believe it was possible… until now. I see it in my future!
- I want to feel confident that no matter the activity, I will be able to succeed. I had found in years past that when I tried new physical activities, such as climbing, they were really hard and I had no confidence in or even a real conception of what my body can or cannot do. I feel much more in-tune with my body’s capabilities nowadays.
- I want to be the best partner and future husband I can be. I love my partner Arlin, and I know that taking care of myself is one of the number one ways I can show that I haven’t “given up” and that I will still be healthy for our kids in the future. Health is important, and exercise is a big part of that.
Nutrition
The next section of the academy is Nutrition. Steve, and by extension Nerd Fitness, are huge fans of the paleo diet. While they never force it on you, they certainly encourage you to go that route as much as you possibly can. Say what you may about being “purely paleo” (I for one believe that a perfectly paleo diet involves way too much meat), but even stepping in that direction is a very positive thing for most people. At the time of starting, I had a bad habit of eating out and eating pretty much whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. While I never gained a ton of weight or anything, changing small things in my diet (like focusing on whole foods, more vegetables, etc) made a big difference in how I felt all the time.
The Academy, again, uses the Levels concept to help you evaluate your diet and challenge you to make incrementally better choices. Things like simply cutting sugary beverages from your diet can result in a huge difference! I like the Levels approach because it never makes you feel bad for choices you make. The mindset portion of the site teaches you how to look at failures as growing opportunities, and the levels give you something to always work towards. Building healthy habits makes for happy healthy people!
One thing I noticed which I think everyone considering this program should keep in mind: the site is really oriented at helping people learn how to lose weight and keep it off. In my case, the opposite was true. Sure, I wanted to (and still need to) drop some fat from my belly and cheeks and wherever else it had snuck in there, but my ultimate goal was to become stronger, build muscle, and gain weight. Luckily healthy eating is just that: healthy eating. You can lose weight or gain weight all with the same foods, it just depends on how much of it you eat! Nerd Fitness encourages people to start tracking their calories so that you can get an idea of your current intake and what changes need to be made. This has become a habit for me and has played a huge role in helping me achieve my goals. I highly recommend MyFitnessPal for tracking.
Workouts
The final section is Workouts, where the Academy lays out an entire workout plan personalized for you. No gym equipment? That’s fine, get started with bodyweight training (that’s what I did). Can only do two pushups? No big deal, get on the floor, let’s crank those out and get better for next time. You can already do 10 chin ups? Awesome, get started at a higher level.
No matter your skill level or available equipment, Nerd Fitness is ready to help you get started. After taking a fitness evaluation, you’re assigned a workout level to get started on. After working on those exercises for 4-6 weeks, you can challenge yourself to a “boss battle”. Test your wits (or more accurately, strength) against cleverly named challenges like Captain Jacked Sparrow or Barbellatrix Lestrange and see if you’ve done the work that will get you to the next level.
I personally loved this system. The workouts are simple and easy to follow, with fantastic videos demonstrating exactly how to do every exercise. The boss battles give you a specific goal to work towards, and let you know when you can safely move up to the next phase in your workout plan. Through this process I went from someone who acts nervous at the gym and has bad form into someone who actually knows what they are doing.
Did it Work?
I spent a year working through the 12 bodyweight workout levels before finally biting the bullet and getting a gym membership. At the start of that experience, I promptly lost ~10 lbs of fat and my body started to get a more athletic look. I could feel myself getting stronger, and started to look forward to my time working out.
My friends started to comment on how I was looking stronger. I could see a difference when I looked in the mirror – not just from the changes to my body, but from changes to my mental health as well. I started to feel more confident in myself in all things. I looked happier. I am happier. It’s amazing what a little exercise can do for your brain.
But it wasn’t until March of 2018 that I finally got a gym membership. I had reached the end of the bodyweight module and felt a need to do more. This is when I started to see some serious growth. I started on gym level 6 and over the next 4 months gained 10 pounds! The picture in this article shows the difference between my start of the program and the end.
I’ve always wanted to be muscular, and I didn’t believe it was possible… until now.
Nerd Fitness doesn’t promise some end goal, like 6 pack abs or immediate weight loss. They teach that health is a journey, an important part of every day until the day we die. I’m proud of myself for what I was able to accomplish with the Nerd Fitness Academy, but it’s just the beginning of a lifelong journey. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.
