The Benefits of a Data-Driven Approach to Health and Fitness

Finding the best ways to stay healthy, both mentally and physically, can be a real challenge, especially these days. With so many brands and influencers out there promising to have the “ultimate solution,” it’s hard to figure out who’s for real and who’s just trying to make a little cash at the expense of our desperation. And those who are earnest in their endeavors just might not have the right solution for you.

If you’ve tried all the different diets and workout routines and still haven’t gotten to where you want to be, or you’re still feeling tired and sluggish, then perhaps you would benefit from a data-driven approach to health and fitness. Your body’s status isn’t merely the result of just exercise, or diet, or sleep, but an amalgamation of everything you intake and experience. Keeping track of it all is difficult to do alone, which is why it’s important to find an all-in-one companion to help you along the way.

Every person is different, and the problem with a lot of the noise we’re hearing on social media and YouTube ads is it assumes we’re all the same. We’re being told what our goals should be, rather than how to maximize the potential of our own personal system which is our body. Things like height, weight, gender, and ethnicity play a huge role in our physiological metrics, and yet most products and experts are only targeting a single type of person.

You can tell a lot about your body from your blood alone. From vitamin deficiencies to allergies to kidney function, your blood gives you a sneak peek at everything going on throughout your system. Everything you eat and do has an effect on your blood, both long-term and short-term. And if you were able to get up-to-date readouts on not only your blood at any given moment, but how certain things affect or don’t affect it, then you’d have a better idea of how to manage your system, visualize your goals, and maximize your potential.

DNA, unlike blood, doesn’t change. While it has an effect on what your goals should be and how you might go about achieving them, it won’t determine your destiny if you know which adjustments to make along the way.

Knowing what’s going on with your blood and DNA can inform you on how much sleep you should be getting, how much you need to exercise, how much caffeine you should be intaking (and how often), and how stressed you actually are in life, among other things. Once you have that information, you can better figure out what you need to change or keep the same. But it’s daunting to do it alone.

This is the aphorism we’ve been hearing for years, but for good reason. Optimizing your vitamin and nutrient intake can have a favorable result on your mood, sleep, recovery, focus, and immune system. We may have been told that carbs are bad and protein is good, but if you talk to someone else, they could tell you the exact opposite. Each person reacts to certain foods in different ways, and it’s important to know how each type of food affects you and how you should moderate and navigate the different food groups. Just because you’re gaining a little weight doesn’t mean that other aspects of your health aren’t thriving. Conversely, it’s possible to reach your target weight and still be tired and sick all the time.

Looking at your blood can help you figure out what you need to add to your diet or what you need to scale back on. Should you take certain supplements each morning or replace one of your meals per week with something else that will help fill in the gaps? Trial and error can create bad habits and guessing can only get you so far.

Just like your diet, staying active helps your brain, heart, and muscles function at their maximum potential. But finding moderation in your exercise is just as important as doing it to begin with. Running on the treadmill for 2 hours a day might not be the best solution for everyone. If you’re becoming more stressed out because of all the time you spend at the gym, that’s not good for your health either. Optimizing which workouts to do and for how long can help you achieve peace of mind as well as physical health.

While diet and exercise are important, improving the quality of our sleep and our environment is equally as important. While our diet does play a part in our sleep, we can do other things to help out, such as turning screens off earlier or refraining from certain substances or foods late at night. If heartburn is an issue, it may be affecting how well we’re sleeping as well. And if we’re more restless, that can have a significant impact on our mood and focus, and also our immune system.

Not everyone needs eight hours of sleep per night. Some might do well with less, while others might need a little more. By tracking your sleep and looking at your biometrics the next day, or after a string of days, you can notice trends and figure out what or what not to do from then on.

Stress is the most difficult thing to manage for most people since it often depends on external factors such as work or our environment. However, we can do our part by improving every other aspect of our lives that we can control in order to reduce our stress as much as possible.

We are living in the technological age, and it’s easier now than ever to utilize biometrics and data to help us reach our goals and maximize our health potential for a longer, more productive life. Each person responds to diet, exercise, sleep, and stress levels at different rates, but the key is figuring out how your one-of-a-kind biological system does so, and to what degree. For some, diet may have a bigger impact than exercise. For others, getting more sleep may be the greatest X-factor for achieving optimal health. The only way to know is by looking at your bloodwork and DNA, paired with your habits, and figuring out what needs to be done differently or the same in order to reach your personal goals.

InsideTracker

Eliminating the guesswork, InsideTracker is a mobile health companion that looks at every aspect of your life, from your blood to the inherent information provided by your DNA to your diet, fitness, and sleep habits, in order to figure out a way to get you to your healthiest self. Instead of recommending that you change your entire life around, this handy tool figures out the best way for your lifestyle and health goals to find some common ground.

While other health regimens seem to be averse to compromise, InsideTracker recognizes that we each have different habits simply because we’re each predisposed to certain ways of living, not always the other way around. And if we figure out how to make all of these elements — diet, exercise, sleep, and stress — congruent, then we can give our bodies their best chance.

Never before has achieving optimal health been so straightforward and expedited. InsideTracker tells you what to eat, when to eat it, and why you’re eating it, giving you meal recommendations and recipes to help. You can look at your blood sugar levels and caffeine optimization on the app, which also provides real-time feedback on caloric intake and fitness progress. It pairs with Apple’s ProTips feature to help monitor sleep duration and resting heart rate so you can better understand your body inside and out.

InsideTracker is compatible with any smartphone, FitBit, and Apple Watch, with Ultimate Plans starting at $589.

Right now, you can get 20% off of the entire InsideTracker store with the discount code: HICONSUMPTION.

Purchase: $250+