Submission Guidelines — In Fitness And In Health (IFAIH)
What we publish and how to submit your story
Last Updated — 2nd December 2023
Welcome to IFAIH!
We’re a vibrant community filled with passionate individuals striving for happier and healthier lives and inspiring others to do the same.
We share our personal experiences, lessons, opinions, and tips to aid our readers in their journey toward greater well-being.
We also (try to) share IFAIH’s best articles with our 83k+ Quora audience.
We believe in the power of honest personal experience, storytelling, and factual correctness—and our objective is to provide as much value to our readers as possible.
Our #1 mission? Become Medium’s go-to source for trustworthy fitness & health advice.
We’re thrilled that you’re interested in joining us. Read on for our official submission guidelines.
1 — What Do We Publish?
We’re looking for well-crafted articles that are science/experience-backed and focused on health, fitness, & overall wellness.
Health awareness. Personal transformations. Habits/Mistakes/Lessons from self-experiments, your fitness journey, and/or coaching. Research findings (only if extremely well-crafted or you’re a certified expert)
Your article's welcome as long as it’s science/experience-backed, honest, and well-crafted with genuine effort.
We believe Quality >> Quantity — so we publish only 3–5 articles a day.
Here are a few examples of what we’re looking for:
1.1 — We ENCOURAGE You to Bring Your Best Work to IFAIH
Privileged to be part of Medium’s inaugural Boost program, we have the power to nominate high-quality articles for a platform-wide “Boost.”
If accepted by Medium’s internal Boost curators, such nominations can get anywhere between 500 to 50,000 extra views!
But we have a rigid monthly cap on the number of articles we can nominate — hence, only the top of our top articles get nominated.
One Boosted article can earn and gather WAY more views than 10 subpar articles!
So, focus on quality over quantity and bring your best to IFAIH — so you stand a chance to be nominated (and even accepted).
To understand what Boost curators seek, browse IFAIH’s (regularly updated) Boost archive.
Also, study IFAIH’s Editor-in-chief Neeramitra Reddy’s Boosted articles archive for patterns:
1.1 — What Do We Reject Outright?
Our mission is to provide genuine value to our readers — anything that doesn’t align will be rejected.
- Click-bait articles meant to “game” the system — and trick our readers.
- Rehashing the same old cliches — we all know the benefits of cold showers, waking up early, eating healthy, and exercising.
- Poorly formatted or sloppy articles — excessive grammar mistakes, bad structure, formatting errors.
- AI-generated content. Disclosed or undisclosed, we will reject it.
- Pseudo-science or misinformation — back your claims with legit research & anecdotes.
- Advice or lessons you’ve not implemented yourself. If you lack personal experience, you shouldn’t give advice (unless you’re a certified expert).
- Promotional/sponsored content meant to drive solely external clicks. No click-farms, “SEO-optimized” generic content, promotional product reviews, etc.
Be authentic. Put effort into your submissions. Genuinely desire to improve readers’ lives — you’ll NEVER be rejected at IFAIH.
1.2 — We Might Also Ask You to Resubmit…
Even if the content aligns with our mission, we might ask you to resubmit if the article…
- Is poorly formatted — here’s a detailed formatting guide by Casey Botticello. Think of formatting as gift-wrapping — put loving effort into packaging your article well.
- Makes claims without relevant hyperlinks — even if you’re a certified expert with multiple PhDs, hyperlink your claims to relevant research papers, meta-analyses, and other credible sources.
- Is filled with grammatical errors — run your submission through Grammarly.
- Uses unlicensed/copyrighted images — here’s a list of 24 sites to find stunning copyright-free photos. AI-generated images (if disclosed) are also welcome.
- Looks like a first draft — polish and edit your articles perfectly with the 2-ART editing framework.
We don’t get paid to edit — we all write, have full-time day jobs, and families to care of.
So please cooperate, make the requested changes, and resubmit to us.
2 — Before Submitting Your Article…
Read through this section carefully — adhering to our guidelines is the best way to guarantee getting published in IFAIH.
2.1 — Formatting Is CRUCIAL
Follow Medium’s curation guidelines to ensure that you format your story correctly.
- Craft a click-worthy title — “My Weight Loss” is not compelling. “How I lost 15 lbs in 6 months without dieting or tracking calories.” is.
- Beautify your articles by fully using Medium’s rich editor — big “T” for section headers, small “T” for subheaders, & … dividers to separate sections.
- Just bolding the text isn’t acceptable as a section header.
- Don’t embed research links, external blogs, or older articles in between — hyperlink them instead, like this here. YouTube embeds, if relevant, are fine.
- Type the title in Title Case, i.e., with all the major words capitalized. You can use the Title Case Converter.
- Split massive paragraphs into chunks of 2 to 4 lines for significantly better readability.
- For the subtitle, use sentence case with no punctuation at the end.
- Use a suitable high-resolution featured image and credit the owner/creator. Here’s a list of 24 sites for stunning copyright-free photos.
- As highlighted before, check Casey’s excellent Formatting guide:
2.2 Hyperlinks are CRUCIAL
Even if you’re a certified viral industry expert with multiple PhDs, you must support your claims with relevant research and/or credible articles.
Another thing we encourage is using hyperlinks to direct readers to your other articles — and also hyperlinking other writers’ articles wherever you see a value addition.
We reserve the right to add hyperlinks to relevant research, articles, YouTube tutorials, and other helpful places in places we deem necessary.
2.3 The Language
Ensure your article has no grammar errors — you can use the free Grammarly extension to glance through your story before submitting it.
We will ask you to resubmit if there are too many grammatical errors.
2.4 Word Count
We’re looking for value-packed articles that educate, inspire, or inform readers.
So, the ideal word count can range from 700 to 2000+ words.
If you’re confident that the takeaway for the reader is clear, don’t overthink the word count.
2.5 Use Proper Tags
All submissions should include five tags — we prefer Health, Fitness, and Wellness.
Based on your article’s topic, you can also use tags like — Muscle Building, Fat Loss, Strength Training, Bodybuilding, Running, etc.
Medium shows only the first tag in previews — so use specific tags first. The last 2–3 can be broader tags.
2.6 Regarding Affiliate Links
From Medium Rules:
You must disclose affiliate links or payment for a post. Affiliate links, such as link out to Amazon with your code, or any other link out where you will receive a commission or other value, are allowed in posts. But, you must disclose somewhere in the post that it includes affiliate links.
Failure to disclose affiliate links or promotional product reviews may violate the law.
2.7 Be Careful with CTAs
Only one 2–3 line Call to Action (CTA) at the bottom of your story — refer to best practices for CTAs. We might add IFAIH’s CTAs if you don’t have any CTAs of your own.
2.8 Click”Worthy” is OK — but No Click”Bait”
Consider what Medium Staff says about this:
We explicitly do not want to distribute misinformation, stories with clickbait headlines, stories that are primarily marketing a product or service, stories that use photos that the author doesn’t have the right to use, or stories with excessive typos and errors.
2.9 Few More Guidelines
- We only accept unpublished drafts.
- We accept members-only content because it’s subject to distribution and thus has the potential to bag a larger number of views. This also helps you earn money for your work!
- Once a story’s published in IFAIH, we’d like it to remain here. If you want to remove the piece, please let us know first.
- Please be respectful. Follow the rules. Encourage thoughtful discussion. Be positive. Maintain civility and decorum. Refer to Medium’s Terms of Service if you have additional questions.
- As highlighted before, for every draft you submit to us…
Ask yourself, “Is this honest? Is it factually correct? Will this educate, inform, and/or inspire the readers?”
3. Apply to Become an IFAIH Writer
Once you ensure your draft meets our submission guidelines, you can fill out the form below — or click here.
DO NOT APPLY BEFORE THOROUGHLY READING THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES — you will be rejected.
And if you “spam” us with poor-quality submissions, you’ll be banned from even applying again.
P.S.: This is a Google form that will take you outside Medium.com
We check this form’s responses every Sunday — if you don’t hear from us within 7 days, you can assume the submission wasn’t a good fit for us.
Email us here with questions.
4. Submitting Articles (for Accepted Writers)
Once you’re accepted as a contributor, you can submit your drafts to IFAIH directly:
- Click the “…” button near the top-right corner of the page.
- Select “Add to publication.”
- Choose “In Fitness And In Health” from your publications list. Then click “Select and continue.”
- Click “Add draft” to submit your story for review — don’t forget to meter your story and add relevant tags.
- Give us 3 days to review your draft—we’ll either publish, reject, or leave a private note asking to resubmit.
If you adhere to our guidelines above and Medium’s — you’ll have a high chance of getting published here and distributed to a large audience.
Any more questions, doubts, or thoughts? Leave a comment below and we’ll be happy to resolve them.
Happy writing!
