Body image and fitness are hot topics for both men and women. The Great Fitness Experiment is not a how-to guide but rather a fitness memoir in which Charlotte Hilton Andersen sifts through the morass of contradictory claims and information in today’s health- and fitness-obsessed world. Andersen tries a new workout each month for a year in an attempt to discover what works, what doesn't, and what’s just plain weird. She delves into such subjects as the Action Hero Workout, Cross Fit Training, Going Vegan, Double Cardio, and others. Interspersed between the chapters on the monthly experiments, Andersen offers personal essays on everything from her past experiences with eating disorders to testing the ugliest fitness shoes on the planet to lesson about, as she puts it "what I’ve learned from being a girl in our body-obsessed culture." She writes candidly about her history of anorexia, orthorexia, and "general-low-self-esteem-exia," including anecdotes about the effects of the health craze on her students, friends, and gym buddies.
The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Andersen spent one year testing the latest diets and workouts and chronicled her experience in a humorous and friendly way...she's sweet, funny and has a lot of great information to share."
—Abigail Cuffey, Associate Health Editor, Woman's Day
"I came across blogger and author, Charlotte Hilton Anderson, who writes about her experience trying every different fitness program out there and reports her results. How fantastic! Instead of trying to figure it out for yourself, read her experiences and see what has worked for her and her gym buddies who join in with her."
—Rachel Cosgrove, author, The Female Body Breakthrough
"The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything is a chatty and funny account of her trials, featuring a cover photo of the 32-year-old author in pink and black spandex, standing inside a huge lab beaker."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Month by month, you accompany Charlotte on a year-long experiment where she tests the latest workout and diet trends including CrossFit, veganism, Jillian Michaels’ fitness program and more. Her experiences are candid, laugh-out-loud funny, and—in some chapters—quite autobiographical."
—Jenn Walters, Fitbottomedgirls.com
"Charlotte is for fitness enthusiasts what Anne LaMott is for writers--her uncompromising honesty and ferocious humor give the pages within this book the kind of substance that's difficult to find on the exercise-and-fitness shelf. Her insight should be recommended reading for fitness professionals, while the rest of us can simply be entertained by her goofy antics and insightful essays. No subject is taboo for Charlotte, no fitness regimen too extreme. Her journey--while not one you may want to make personally--will leave you wishing you were one of her Gym Buddies."
—Kara Douglass Thom, coauthor, Hot (Sweaty) Mamas: Five Secrets to Life as a Fit Mom
"As a longtime fan of the irreverent Great Fitness Experiment blog, I was counting down the days until Charlotte's book hit the shelves. I can always count on her to make me laugh out loud while boosting my fitness IQ. Within 12 hours of reading The Great Fitness Experiment, I was in the gym, trying out the Celebrity Workout...and paying for it - in a good way - the day after."
—Leslie Goldman, author, Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth About Women, Body Image, and Re-imagining the "Perfect" Body
"Andersen's Great Fitness Experiment is far more than an exercise primer. She's created a new genre: the fitness memoir. I laughed, I cried, I grew vicariously sore & starving. Yet, more importantly, through her experiments Andersen reminds her readers exercise need not be about getting "skinny" or nailing a certain BMI. Fitness for her is much more about what we learn about ourselves than how we curl, crunch, cardio & cut carbs. Andersen's unique experience and raw, honest writing is simultaneously riveting and relatable."
—Carla Birnberg, award-winning author and fitness expert
—Abigail Cuffey, Associate Health Editor, Woman's Day
"I came across blogger and author, Charlotte Hilton Anderson, who writes about her experience trying every different fitness program out there and reports her results. How fantastic! Instead of trying to figure it out for yourself, read her experiences and see what has worked for her and her gym buddies who join in with her."
—Rachel Cosgrove, author, The Female Body Breakthrough
"The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything is a chatty and funny account of her trials, featuring a cover photo of the 32-year-old author in pink and black spandex, standing inside a huge lab beaker."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Month by month, you accompany Charlotte on a year-long experiment where she tests the latest workout and diet trends including CrossFit, veganism, Jillian Michaels’ fitness program and more. Her experiences are candid, laugh-out-loud funny, and—in some chapters—quite autobiographical."
—Jenn Walters, Fitbottomedgirls.com
"Charlotte is for fitness enthusiasts what Anne LaMott is for writers--her uncompromising honesty and ferocious humor give the pages within this book the kind of substance that's difficult to find on the exercise-and-fitness shelf. Her insight should be recommended reading for fitness professionals, while the rest of us can simply be entertained by her goofy antics and insightful essays. No subject is taboo for Charlotte, no fitness regimen too extreme. Her journey--while not one you may want to make personally--will leave you wishing you were one of her Gym Buddies."
—Kara Douglass Thom, coauthor, Hot (Sweaty) Mamas: Five Secrets to Life as a Fit Mom
"As a longtime fan of the irreverent Great Fitness Experiment blog, I was counting down the days until Charlotte's book hit the shelves. I can always count on her to make me laugh out loud while boosting my fitness IQ. Within 12 hours of reading The Great Fitness Experiment, I was in the gym, trying out the Celebrity Workout...and paying for it - in a good way - the day after."
—Leslie Goldman, author, Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth About Women, Body Image, and Re-imagining the "Perfect" Body
"Andersen's Great Fitness Experiment is far more than an exercise primer. She's created a new genre: the fitness memoir. I laughed, I cried, I grew vicariously sore & starving. Yet, more importantly, through her experiments Andersen reminds her readers exercise need not be about getting "skinny" or nailing a certain BMI. Fitness for her is much more about what we learn about ourselves than how we curl, crunch, cardio & cut carbs. Andersen's unique experience and raw, honest writing is simultaneously riveting and relatable."
—Carla Birnberg, award-winning author and fitness expert
About the Author
Charlotte Hilton Andersen runs the popular health and fitness website, The Great Fitness Experiment, where she specializes in exercise, body image and over-sharing. She also writes for iVillage, blogs for The Huffington Post and has been featured on ABC's 20/20 and Fox's morning show. Her writing has appeared in the online content of the Washington Post, USA Today, Fox News, and Livestrong, among others. As these ventures pay mainly in notoriety, her night job is grading the SAT essay where she gets to grade 500 high school essays each answering the same prompt, causing her to curse any time The Scarlet Letter is mentioned in her presence. She is the mother of five children and lives in Minnesota. This is her first book.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
54 of 54 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The idea behind this book (and the author's blog, The Great Fitness Experiment) is that the author spends a month testing twelve different diet and exercise programs to let us know what works and what doesn't--thereby saving us from using a diet or exercise plan that doesn't work. Sounds good, right? I thought so too, and it was with considerable excitement that I picked up this book. I was very curious to see if Jillian Michaels's plan was worthy; if the kettleballs I keep seeing at Target are something that I should be messing with; if karate would float my boat; if there was some magical 10-minute, eat-what-you-want-and-lose-weight program out there that I'd somehow missed.
However, I discovered that the book wasn't quite what I anticipated. Here is a bit about what I liked and didn't like.
What I Liked
* Charlotte is hysterically funny. (After reading her book, I feel I can call her Charlotte. She is that kind of writer.) She has a wonderfully irreverent sense of humor that endeared her to me immediately. I dare you to keep a straight face when reading about how her experiment with the TRX suspension system ended up with her looking like she was having a gynecological exam at the gym. Even if you have zero interest in reading about fitness, her sense of humor and snarky pop culture references makes this book a fun, fast read.
* Charlotte is brutally honest. A variety of personal essays (dealing with topics such as body insecurity and making peace with your tummy) are interspersed with the chapters on the various experiments. In these essays, she shares some very personal information (including her experiences with eating disorders and past sexual abuse) that add some balance to the book's overall light-hearted and fun tone.
* The workout were varied. Although I hadn't heard of every plan she uses in the book, I was somewhat familiar (and curious about) Jillian Michaels, the workout devised by trainer to the stars Tracey Anderson (who gets mentioned in almost every issue of US Weekly) and High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), which I had high hopes for before I really knew what it was. She also explores veganism, double cardio, karate, kettleballs, CrossFit and something called the Primal Blueprint (which involves eating and exercising like our caveman ancestors).
* The highs and lows of each diet/workout is explored. As she says in the introduction, the key to a successful diet/workout plan is finding one that fits your needs. What works for me might not work for you and vice versa. (Just for the record, nothing has worked for me. Just saying.) For each experiment, Charlotte provides detailed information on what the workout involves, who it might appeal to, and what type of results to expect (e.g., this workout bulks you up, this workout focuses on overall toning).
What I Didn't Like
* Charlotte is a self-professed overexerciser. Charlotte writes candidly about her lifelong problem with exercising too much. When she described how she views exercise as "fun" and something she'd do up to 4 or 5 hours a day, I realized that we were not coming from the same place. If this is a woman who regularly lifts weights and does 45-minutes of cardio each day at a minimum, how can I trust her assessment of a workout? (After all, I'm out of shape and starting virtually from scratch as far as exercising so her take on a workout and my take on a workout would be like comparing apples to oranges.) When she writes that a particular workout pushed her to the point of seeing stars and vomiting, that was enough to convince me that I could not even CONSIDER that particular program. Once I realized where she was coming from, it occurred to me that perhaps none of these programs were feasible for me. Once I realized this, I started reading more for entertainment purposes and less for information.
* Writing about the workouts without proper training or equipment. Several times, Charlotte says that she "modified" the program to fit her needs or didn't learn proper techniques. In fact, for the HIIT experiment, she misread the intervals and did the workout wrong for the entire month. She also evaluates a workout that uses a special type of slider thing without buying the actual sliders and ends up using plastic plates instead. Although this makes for some funny writing, it did make me question how effective these experiments were if she wasn't doing them as designed.
* Getting results for someone who has a very low BMI. Throughout the book, Charlotte shares the results of the experiments as far as pounds and inches lost. She then writes about how she was in the throes of an eating disorder while writing this book and that her BMI was dangerously low. (In other words, she barely has any body fat.) To me, this skews her results. How can she accurately judge a diet/workout when she really doesn't have weight to lose in the first place? Although I think her brutally honest sharing about her exercising compulsion and "disordered" eating is something that SHOULD be discussed and shared, it made me leery that the information she is providing isn't coming from the healthiest place.
My Final Recommendation
Although I think Charlotte has a wonderfully funny approach to writing and life, I'm not sure I would be so quick to accept her judgment about dieting and exercise programs, which, of course, is what this book is about. By her own admission, she is a compulsive overexerciser who has struggled with eating disorders her entire life. Although I applaud her for sharing her struggles and attempting to get healthier, I'm not sure she is the best person to get advice from on this topic. This led me to have conflicted feeling about this book and prevents me from recommending it as a diet/exercise book. I do think she is darn funny though. In fact, I wish that she would write about more general topics as I enjoyed her take on life.
It also makes me wonder if someone like me (a chubby, out of shape middle-aged woman who hates exercising and has little or not willpower) has written a book in this same vein as I would LOVE to read it. If not, perhaps it is something I should work on myself.
However, I discovered that the book wasn't quite what I anticipated. Here is a bit about what I liked and didn't like.
What I Liked
* Charlotte is hysterically funny. (After reading her book, I feel I can call her Charlotte. She is that kind of writer.) She has a wonderfully irreverent sense of humor that endeared her to me immediately. I dare you to keep a straight face when reading about how her experiment with the TRX suspension system ended up with her looking like she was having a gynecological exam at the gym. Even if you have zero interest in reading about fitness, her sense of humor and snarky pop culture references makes this book a fun, fast read.
* Charlotte is brutally honest. A variety of personal essays (dealing with topics such as body insecurity and making peace with your tummy) are interspersed with the chapters on the various experiments. In these essays, she shares some very personal information (including her experiences with eating disorders and past sexual abuse) that add some balance to the book's overall light-hearted and fun tone.
* The workout were varied. Although I hadn't heard of every plan she uses in the book, I was somewhat familiar (and curious about) Jillian Michaels, the workout devised by trainer to the stars Tracey Anderson (who gets mentioned in almost every issue of US Weekly) and High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), which I had high hopes for before I really knew what it was. She also explores veganism, double cardio, karate, kettleballs, CrossFit and something called the Primal Blueprint (which involves eating and exercising like our caveman ancestors).
* The highs and lows of each diet/workout is explored. As she says in the introduction, the key to a successful diet/workout plan is finding one that fits your needs. What works for me might not work for you and vice versa. (Just for the record, nothing has worked for me. Just saying.) For each experiment, Charlotte provides detailed information on what the workout involves, who it might appeal to, and what type of results to expect (e.g., this workout bulks you up, this workout focuses on overall toning).
What I Didn't Like
* Charlotte is a self-professed overexerciser. Charlotte writes candidly about her lifelong problem with exercising too much. When she described how she views exercise as "fun" and something she'd do up to 4 or 5 hours a day, I realized that we were not coming from the same place. If this is a woman who regularly lifts weights and does 45-minutes of cardio each day at a minimum, how can I trust her assessment of a workout? (After all, I'm out of shape and starting virtually from scratch as far as exercising so her take on a workout and my take on a workout would be like comparing apples to oranges.) When she writes that a particular workout pushed her to the point of seeing stars and vomiting, that was enough to convince me that I could not even CONSIDER that particular program. Once I realized where she was coming from, it occurred to me that perhaps none of these programs were feasible for me. Once I realized this, I started reading more for entertainment purposes and less for information.
* Writing about the workouts without proper training or equipment. Several times, Charlotte says that she "modified" the program to fit her needs or didn't learn proper techniques. In fact, for the HIIT experiment, she misread the intervals and did the workout wrong for the entire month. She also evaluates a workout that uses a special type of slider thing without buying the actual sliders and ends up using plastic plates instead. Although this makes for some funny writing, it did make me question how effective these experiments were if she wasn't doing them as designed.
* Getting results for someone who has a very low BMI. Throughout the book, Charlotte shares the results of the experiments as far as pounds and inches lost. She then writes about how she was in the throes of an eating disorder while writing this book and that her BMI was dangerously low. (In other words, she barely has any body fat.) To me, this skews her results. How can she accurately judge a diet/workout when she really doesn't have weight to lose in the first place? Although I think her brutally honest sharing about her exercising compulsion and "disordered" eating is something that SHOULD be discussed and shared, it made me leery that the information she is providing isn't coming from the healthiest place.
My Final Recommendation
Although I think Charlotte has a wonderfully funny approach to writing and life, I'm not sure I would be so quick to accept her judgment about dieting and exercise programs, which, of course, is what this book is about. By her own admission, she is a compulsive overexerciser who has struggled with eating disorders her entire life. Although I applaud her for sharing her struggles and attempting to get healthier, I'm not sure she is the best person to get advice from on this topic. This led me to have conflicted feeling about this book and prevents me from recommending it as a diet/exercise book. I do think she is darn funny though. In fact, I wish that she would write about more general topics as I enjoyed her take on life.
It also makes me wonder if someone like me (a chubby, out of shape middle-aged woman who hates exercising and has little or not willpower) has written a book in this same vein as I would LOVE to read it. If not, perhaps it is something I should work on myself.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By Melle12
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Let me start off by saying that this is my first exposure to Charlotte- I don't read her blog, but I ordered the book based on my general interest in health and fitness along with how efficiency and variety can benefit my routine.
Charlotte is utterly charming and often laugh-out-loud funny, and she did provide some interesting reviews of various exercise regiments- Jillian Michaels, Cross Fit, Veganism, and HIIT to name a few. It could be considered a plus or a minus as Charlotte points out, but she often modifies the programs based on what she has available to her (occasionally not buying the book but basing her routine on what she can find on the internet and patching together equipment- example: using paper plates as slides)- this could help those looking to try these routines on the cheap or it could mean that actual routine didn't get a fair assessment. In any case, there were some good take aways- reminding us all their are no short cuts to fitness, and even short intense workouts are still awful intense (really enjoyed the HIIT chapter).
I struggled a little in the middle of the book as Charlotte starts to delve into her abuse of exercise and her eating disorder- again, her candor and style is refreshing, but I am reading a book written by a person that fought a doctor's recommendation that she take 2 weeks to rest after a test revealed hypo-thyroidism. I laugh at her commentary and then read sections where she reports her body fat percentage as below what is considered healthy while she complains about her fat thighs and belly over hang or how she fainted after running 26.2 miles and following up the run with a fitness class. I am sure she helps a lot of women in talking about her struggles, but it seems wrong to know she was abusing herself while entertaining me with her silly side bars and exercise reviews. I really enjoyed the book, because it is a fun easy read, but it's also sad knowing Charlotte over-exercised and starved while writing parts of it.
Charlotte is utterly charming and often laugh-out-loud funny, and she did provide some interesting reviews of various exercise regiments- Jillian Michaels, Cross Fit, Veganism, and HIIT to name a few. It could be considered a plus or a minus as Charlotte points out, but she often modifies the programs based on what she has available to her (occasionally not buying the book but basing her routine on what she can find on the internet and patching together equipment- example: using paper plates as slides)- this could help those looking to try these routines on the cheap or it could mean that actual routine didn't get a fair assessment. In any case, there were some good take aways- reminding us all their are no short cuts to fitness, and even short intense workouts are still awful intense (really enjoyed the HIIT chapter).
I struggled a little in the middle of the book as Charlotte starts to delve into her abuse of exercise and her eating disorder- again, her candor and style is refreshing, but I am reading a book written by a person that fought a doctor's recommendation that she take 2 weeks to rest after a test revealed hypo-thyroidism. I laugh at her commentary and then read sections where she reports her body fat percentage as below what is considered healthy while she complains about her fat thighs and belly over hang or how she fainted after running 26.2 miles and following up the run with a fitness class. I am sure she helps a lot of women in talking about her struggles, but it seems wrong to know she was abusing herself while entertaining me with her silly side bars and exercise reviews. I really enjoyed the book, because it is a fun easy read, but it's also sad knowing Charlotte over-exercised and starved while writing parts of it.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By C. Lakhani
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
What a disappointment! I thought this would be an inspirational book about attempting different fitness trends, instead it read more like someone's diary, and the experiments were often half-heartedly done.
To give you an example: the author tried out the Tracy Anderson method. She makes several jokes throughout the book about being a cheapskate, so she doesn't actually buy the Tracy Anderson materials, she just cobbles a workout together from information she finds on the internet. (Which, granted, I think you can actually do with Tracy Anderson BUT it seems like it's not really trying the real, full method if you make up your own workout based on the trainer's ideas. ) She actually says "I took a workout that Anderson gave to the Daily Mail newspaper and combined it with the Lotte Berk Method developed by an actual ballerina" Sure, you can do that...but selling a book where you discuss the pros and cons of a trainer's workout when you're not really doing the trainer's actual workout? The workout she describes is NOT the TA Method.
She does this another time in the book where the program is XYZ, and she ignores the program's recommendations and continues to do her favorite cardio. She does the same thing for Action Hero Babe by Valerie Waters, just following along with what workouts she can find for free on the web.
Then, each chapter ends with a personal essay, often about her experience as a rape survivor, or about her eating disorder or body issues. The back of the book does mention she will cover some diets, but I wasn't expecting a discussion of an eating disorder...I was expecting a review of a diet! (She does review veganism and the primal blueprint diet.) I would rather that she stuck to more fitness information then the intimate personal essays. And her tone was so flip for most of the book, the contrast with these dark topics made them seem even more completely out of place.
I have read quite a few "blog to book" books, and this is one is so poorly done (compare it to Julie and Julia or the one by Heather Armstrong aka Dooce "It Sucked, I Cried..). It's like the editor took a vacation. Make up your mind, are you editing blog entries into a book or are you just cutting and pasting?
Ugh! I was so frustrated with this book! It had SO MUCH potential!
To give you an example: the author tried out the Tracy Anderson method. She makes several jokes throughout the book about being a cheapskate, so she doesn't actually buy the Tracy Anderson materials, she just cobbles a workout together from information she finds on the internet. (Which, granted, I think you can actually do with Tracy Anderson BUT it seems like it's not really trying the real, full method if you make up your own workout based on the trainer's ideas. ) She actually says "I took a workout that Anderson gave to the Daily Mail newspaper and combined it with the Lotte Berk Method developed by an actual ballerina" Sure, you can do that...but selling a book where you discuss the pros and cons of a trainer's workout when you're not really doing the trainer's actual workout? The workout she describes is NOT the TA Method.
She does this another time in the book where the program is XYZ, and she ignores the program's recommendations and continues to do her favorite cardio. She does the same thing for Action Hero Babe by Valerie Waters, just following along with what workouts she can find for free on the web.
Then, each chapter ends with a personal essay, often about her experience as a rape survivor, or about her eating disorder or body issues. The back of the book does mention she will cover some diets, but I wasn't expecting a discussion of an eating disorder...I was expecting a review of a diet! (She does review veganism and the primal blueprint diet.) I would rather that she stuck to more fitness information then the intimate personal essays. And her tone was so flip for most of the book, the contrast with these dark topics made them seem even more completely out of place.
I have read quite a few "blog to book" books, and this is one is so poorly done (compare it to Julie and Julia or the one by Heather Armstrong aka Dooce "It Sucked, I Cried..). It's like the editor took a vacation. Make up your mind, are you editing blog entries into a book or are you just cutting and pasting?
Ugh! I was so frustrated with this book! It had SO MUCH potential!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
more of a cautionary tale than an exercise book
This book is billed as a fitness book about the results of trying different workout and diet plans. Instead it is a memoir about the issues of the author with orthorexia (a... Read more
Published 5 months ago by A. Nelson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Honest and Hilarious
Loved this book so much and am eager for a follow up!
I gather from a few of the other reviews that some people were looking for a straightforward report on various... Read more
I gather from a few of the other reviews that some people were looking for a straightforward report on various... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Jan Graham
2.0 out of 5 stars
Love the concept, not necessarily the execution...
As someone who has pursued a number of health and fitness "experiments" myself and as a fitness junkie, I was drawn to this book when it popped up in one of my Amazon searches. Read more
Published 8 months ago by K. Walters
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Great Fitness Experiment Is A Success!
Recently I've had the privilege of collaborating for Shape Magazine's website with fitness writer and fellow FitFluential Ambassador Charlotte Hilton Andersen. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Michael J Schiemer
2.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly Executed Experiment
This book has the kind of literary talent and fitness expertise that you would expect to find by reading a random mommy blog or fitness blog, which is to say, barely average. Read more
Published 15 months ago by G. Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book isn't exactly what you think it is
I got this for Christmas as I had been intrigued by the title and put it into my Amazon wish list to look into later. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Paul M. Molnar
5.0 out of 5 stars
For those addicted to fitness
I totally love the concept behind this short fitness book. It's based on a blog and for the book Hilton summarizes twelve fitness experiments she ran on herself with friends. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Kasem Kharsa
1.0 out of 5 stars
The book is unreadable
I hate this book. It is one of those self written/edited/published books that is full of authors hilarious (not!) personal observations and sarcastic comments. Read more
Published 19 months ago by the stein
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Idea Executed By The Wrong Person
I really wanted to like this book. I love to read and learn about fitness; it's been a hobby of mine for years. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Aiyaruk
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love love love this book!
I love the basic premise of this book which is that all exercise is good, there is no magic exercise for every person only the ideal one for you that you love doing. Fantastic. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Jennifer Paretchan
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