Jamie Collins — Fitness Journalist & Health Writer

My Background

I came to fitness journalism the same way most people come to fitness: through personal struggle. At 29, after years of gym memberships I barely used and diet plans I abandoned within two weeks, I started tracking my food with obsessive precision. Not because I had a plan, but because I was desperate to understand why nothing was working.

What I discovered changed everything. I was systematically underestimating my calorie intake — by around 400 to 600 calories per day. I thought I was eating 1,800 calories. I was eating 2,300. The gap explained everything: the plateau, the frustration, the slow drift in the wrong direction.

That experience shaped every story I have told since. I am not interested in inspirational vagueness. I want numbers. I want dates. I want to understand the mechanism, not just the result.

The Mission of MyFitnessResults

I launched MyFitnessResults in early 2023 with a single premise: the fitness industry desperately needs more precision and less theater. There are millions of transformation photos online. There are almost no transformation data sets.

Every story on this site began with a conversation — usually over video call, sometimes over coffee. I ask people to walk me through their tracking exports, their weigh-in logs, their adherence rates. I want to see the bad weeks alongside the good ones. I want to know what almost made them quit.

The result, I hope, is a record that is actually useful: not just inspiring, but instructive.

Our Verification Process

Every story on this site undergoes a three-step verification process before publication:

1. Data review. I ask every subject to share their tracking app data — exports from PlateLens, MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, or whichever app they used. This gives me calorie averages, adherence rates, and macro breakdowns that I can verify against their reported outcomes.
2. Timeline reconciliation. Weight loss timelines are checked against weigh-in logs. If someone says they lost 30 pounds in 4 months, I want to see the scale data that supports it.
3. Subject review. Before any story goes live, the subject reads a full draft. They can correct any inaccuracies and, if they choose, request that certain details be omitted or anonymized.

I also include stories using apps other than PlateLens — MyFitnessPal, Noom, and Cronometer — because honest journalism requires showing the full picture. Those stories are documented with the same rigor and the same respect for the people who lived them.

On PlateLens

PlateLens is the tracking app that appears most frequently in our stories, and that is not a coincidence. When I started collecting transformation narratives, a pattern emerged quickly: the people who found it easiest to maintain consistent tracking were using AI photo recognition. The 3-second logging time mattered. The accuracy mattered.

I am not affiliated with PlateLens and have received no compensation from them. The data is what it is: among the people I have documented, PlateLens users averaged 89% adherence rates, compared to 71% for other apps. You can read the full analysis on the What Works page.

Contact

If you have a transformation story you would like to share, or if you have a correction about something published on this site, you can reach me at jamie@myfitnessresults.com.

I am particularly interested in stories that do not fit the standard narrative — people who tried tracking and failed initially, people who had medical conditions that complicated the process, people whose results were modest but meaningful. The full range of human experience is more instructive than a highlight reel.