- Time to qualify:6-8 weeks
- Entry requirements: no entry requirements
- Course style: online learning
Nutrition serves as an incredibly enriching discipline due to its potential to change the lives of clients. Nutrition serves as the foundation for our health and the fuel for our performance. However, to get to a balance in life, you need support, discipline, empathy, methodology and drive to positively change behaviors.
And as a Certified Nutrition Coach, you’ll learn the science of nutrition and use it to promote better health in yourself and others through smarter dietary choices, sustainable change, and a better relationship with food.
- Evaluate client nutrition needs and provide guidance on a healthy, effective diet that supports their fitness and wellness goals
- Learn & utilizethe latest evidence-based nutrition science
- Master & use behavior change strategies to develop long-lasting weight loss and healthful nutrition habits
- Help clients navigate realistic diet challenges like food labels, portion sizes, and fad diets
- Self-paced online program makes it easy and convenient to launch your new career from home in as little as 4 weeks
- CEU Value: 1.9 NASM
Course Overview
NASM-CNC
What You’ll Learn
The NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) Certified Nutrition Coach course is designed to provide comprehensive training and knowledge for those aspiring to specialize in nutrition coaching and wellness. Here's an overview of the course and what you can expect to learn:
- Role and Industry Overview
- Nutritional Science
- Client Assessment and Goal Setting
- Nutrition Programming
- Behavior Change Strategies
- Supplementation
- Special Populations
- Legal and Ethical Considerations
A high school degree and basic communication skills are required, along with an interest in health and wellness.
The CNC course is fully endorsed by NASM (1.9 CEUs).
Getting Started with Us
The NASM Nutrition Coach Certification Program provides in-depth training in nutritional science, behavior change strategies, and nutrition coaching. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have all the expert knowledge you need to help clients transform their relationship to food and guide them to make better dietary choices.
When you choose NASM to become a Certified Nutrition Coach, you’ll get access to:
- World-class fitness & nutrition experts
- Peer-reviewed content from the brightest minds in the industry
- State-of-the-art digital learning platform designed to meet multiple learning styles
- A curriculum that is consistently reviewed and updated with the most up-to-date material available
NASM’s online program makes becoming a Certified Nutrition Coach as easy and convenient as can be. By completing the self-guided study materials at your own pace, you can become a Certified Nutrition Coach and begin working with clients in as little as 4 weeks.
To become an NASM Certified Nutrition Coach, you simply have to:
- Register in the CNC program.
- Complete the self-guided online study materials in your own time from the comfort of home.
- Pass the certification exam.
After completing the study materials, you’ll take an online exam to become a Certified Nutrition Coach. This exam features:
- 100 multiple-choice questions
- 90 minutes to complete
- Open-book format
- 70% required to pass
- 3 test attempts included
NASM has over 35 years of experience training the world’s top fitness professionals, and we do it better than anyone else. NASM credentials stand out to employers and distinguish you as a highly trained fitness professional.
Since our formation, we’ve trained over 1.5 million fitness professionals in 100+ countries. In that time we’ve developed extensive partnerships with over 12,000 gyms and health clubs. That means we have the connections necessary to help you get in the door and gain employment from the fitness company of your dreams.
Customize your Payment Plan
All payment plans are 0% interest, with no fees, penalties or credit check!
starting at:
- Evidence-Based Program Designed and Reviewed by Leading Physique & Bodybuilding Experts
- 100% Online & Self-Paced Program
- State-of-the-Art, Digital Learning Platform
- High-Quality Videos Across 19 In-Depth Chapters
- Custom Infographics, Printable Handouts, and Knowledge Checks
- Comprehensive Practice Exam
- 1-Year Unlimited Access to Online Content
- 1.9 NASM CEUs
- Certificate Upon Passing the Exam
- Live Online Webinars
- Expert-Led Support
- Exercise Database and Library (+6000 exercises)
- FREE NASM CPDs
- Post-graduation Career And Business Resources: (Website Builder,client Management,client Calendar, Client Payments,client Communications,client Business Evolution,client Online Classes, Client Automation,client Bookings, Team Management,client Documents, Customized App,workouts Planner, Nutrition Planner)
Why Become a Certified Nutrition Coach
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Growing Industry:
The wellness and nutrition industry is expanding rapidly, creating numerous opportunities for specialized nutrition coaches.
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Personal Fulfillment:
Experience the satisfaction of helping clients improve their health, achieve their nutritional goals, and boost their overall well-being.
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Specialized Knowledge:
Gain in-depth expertise in nutritional science, behavior change strategies, and dietary planning, setting yourself apart from general fitness trainers.
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Career Flexibility:
Enjoy flexible career options, including private coaching, online consultations, corporate wellness programs, and content creation in the nutrition field.
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Competitive Edge:
Equip clients with personalized nutrition plans and guidance, enhancing their health and performance, which can distinguish you in the wellness industry.
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Client Impact:
Make a profound impact on clients' lives by improving their nutritional habits, mental health, and long-term wellness.
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Professional Growth:
Continuously learn and evolve in a dynamic field, staying updated with the latest research, trends, and techniques in nutrition and health coaching.
Get Certified In 4 Steps
1
Register & Prepare
Choose your package, register, and start your self-study with the course materials and gain the theoretical knowledge to support the practical skills learning taught in the live course.
2
Attend the Course
Attend the live course (in-Person or virtual) and apply your knowledge while learning high-performance practical skills, and getting expert advice, feedback, coaching.
3
Pass Your Exams
You have 365 days from enrollment to complete the final exam, which has 100 multiple-choice questions. The exam lasts 90 minutes, and you need a 70% to pass. You get 3 attempts, with additional retests available for purchase.
4
Download Your Certificate
Welcome to the world of Fitness Professionals.
What are the Objectives of this course?
- Nutritional Science and Physiology: Understand the fundamentals of nutrition, including macronutrients, micronutrients, and their effects on the body.
- Nutrition Program Design: Create personalized nutrition plans tailored to clients’ goals, lifestyles, and health needs.
- Behavior Change Strategies: Learn and apply techniques to help clients adopt and maintain healthy eating habits.
- Specialized Nutrition Guidance: Provide targeted nutritional advice for various populations, including athletes, older adults, and those with chronic health conditions.
- Client Assessment and Progress Tracking: Conduct and utilize assessments to evaluate and adjust clients’ nutritional plans and progress.
- Recovery and Wellness: Emphasize the role of nutrition in recovery, stress management, and overall wellness.
- Client Communication and Motivation: Develop skills for effective communication and motivation to support clients in reaching their nutritional goals.
- Professionalism and Ethics: Adhere to ethical standards and build a reputable practice as a Certified Nutrition Coach.
Curriculum
There are no prerequisites for the Certified Nutrition Coach. A fitness credential or a bachelor’s degree could be helpful. This specialization is intended for fitness professionals, fitness nutrition coaches, fitness nutrition coaches, and wellness coaches.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Learn about the role of a Nutrition Coach and how the NASM Nutrition Certification can help enhance your career.
Chapter 2: Scope of Practice
Understand a Nutrition Coach's scope of practice, professional expectations, and differentiate among related nutrition professions.
Chapter 3: Evidence-Based Nutrition and Practice
In this chapter, you'll learn the importance of evidence-based practice as a nutrition specialist, the difference between basic scientific principles and methodology, and how to define scientific research processes.
Chapter 4: Food Preference and Influences
Understand the effects of nutritional intake on individual health, identify the role of dietary habits in overall health, and describe factors that influence dietary patterns. You'll also be able to recognize the dangers of a one-diet-fits-all approach and identify how different factors can influence eating patterns.
Chapter 5: Energy Balance and Metabolism
This chapter explores how macronutrients fuel activity and bodily functions, as well as how to balance the energy in versus energy out equation. You'll understand the First Law of Thermodynamics, energy balance, and energy systems.
Chapter 6: Protein
Protein is an important macronutrient that many bodily functions depend on. Learn the structure and function of protein, total daily protein requirements, and methods for establishing protein requirements in a dietary program.
Chapter 7: Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates provide energy for the body. Understand their structure and function, the digestion and absorption process, daily carbohydrate requirements, and more.
Chapter 8: Fats
Dietary fat has many important functions. In this chapter, you'll learn about the function and intake recommendations, healthy versus unhealthy fats, as well as key myths and hot topics related to fat.
Chapter 9: Alcohol
This chapter explains the digestion and absorption process of alcohol, as well as the physiological effects and methods for accommodating alcohol in a dietary program.
Chapter 10: Micronutrients
Micronutrients help maintain the metabolic processes required to produce energy. Understand the difference between water-soluble vitamins, fat-soluble vitamins, and minerals, identify common food sources, and learn to calculate daily recommended intakes and the values for each micronutrient.
Chapter 11: Hydration
In this chapter, you'll learn the compartmental aspects and shifts of water in the body following significant sweat losses. You'll also discover methods to help decrease excessive hypo- or hyper-hydration and learn about proper hydration strategies.
Chapter 12: Nutrient Timing
Discover appropriate nutrient-timing strategies for performance and for altering body composition, as well as the role that nutrient timing plays within an overall nutrition strategy.
Chapter 13: Supplements
Understand the role of supplementation across various goals, explain the strength of the evidence base for commonly used supplements, and learn to communicate with clients about the pros and cons of supplementation.
- 110 Infographics
- 14 Videos
- 53 Knowledge Checks
- 1 Printable Handout
Chapter 14: Psychology of Weight Control and Behavior Change
In this chapter, you'll learn how psychology affects fitness and wellness. Identify barriers to diet and exercise, common eating disorders, and common client types used to develop customized programs.
Chapter 15: Coaching and Communication
It's important for Personal Nutrition Coaches to communicate in a way that positively influences adherence to their programs. You'll identify strategies for building rapport and use effective communication skills to elicit behavior change.
Chapter 16: Motivational Interviewing
This chapter explains motivational interviewing and strategies that are used to help clients understand the underlying reasons for their own change while affirming their motivation.
Chapter 17: Goal Setting
Understand different types of goals, the benefits of effective goal-setting, methods for providing feedback and tracking progress, and identify obstacles commonly encountered when setting goals.
- 18 Infographics
- 11 Videos
- 16 Knowledge Checks
Chapter 18: Dietary Assessment and Body Composition Testing
In this chapter, you'll discover a step-by-step approach to assessing dietary intake and monitoring body composition. You'll compare body-composition assessment methods and understand the importance of consistency and accessibility.
Chapter 19: Food and Supplement Labels and Portion Size
Learn about the labeling standards for food and supplement products, as well as portion size recommendations.
Chapter 20: Helping Clients Navigate the Real World
This chapter explains strategies that can help clients make healthy food choices in everyday situations, such as at the grocery store or dining out.
Chapter 21: Navigating Diets
Learn the latest facts regarding diets and how they impact health, body composition, and athletic performance. This chapter explores many different diets and provides details regarding their safety and effectiveness.
Chapter 22: Nutrition Hot Topics and Controversies
An in-depth approach to explaining the science behind many of the nutrition hot topics and controversies faced by clients today.
Chapter 23: Managing Weight-Loss Plateaus and Maintaining Weight Loss
This chapter examines the science and psychology of weight-loss plateaus and how to help clients avoid this vicious cycle.
Chapter 24: Programming - Putting it All Together
Nutrition Coaches must have a foundational level of knowledge regarding nutritional science and behavior psychology. However, knowledge without action is virtually useless, especially when helping clients achieve their health-and-wellness goals. This chapter puts all of this knowledge into practice and details a step-by-step process for nutrition programming.
- 62 Infographics
- 16 Videos
- 29 Knowledge Checks
- 10 Printable Handouts
After the completion of the course, you will take an online final exam from the comfort of your own home, or wherever you prefer to take tests. The test is 100, multiple-choice questions. You are allowed to go back and reference the course while taking the exam. The exam is timed and cannot exceed 90 minutes. To pass, you need a score of 70% or higher and you have up to 3 attempts to pass.
The course includes:
- Evidence-Based Curriculum Designed and Reviewed by Leading Nutrition Experts
- 100% Online & Self-Paced Program
- State-of-the-Art Digital Learning Platform
- High-Quality Videos Across Multiple In-Depth Modules
- Custom Infographics, Printable Handouts, and Knowledge Checks
- Comprehensive Practice Exam
- 1-Year Unlimited Access to Online Content
- Online Practice Exam and WLS Final Exam
- 1.9 NASM CEUs
- Certificate Upon Passing Exam
Certified Nutrition Coach FAQs
As one of the most trusted sources of fitness training certifications in the world, NASM is a distinguished name that will stand out to fitness employers. Joining the NASM community grants you access to a job guarantee program for select programs, your top choice of gyms to work for, access to world-class fitness experts, and much more.
- Peer-Reviewed Content from the Brightest Minds in the Industry
- State-of-the-Art Digital Learning Platform
- Programs Designed to Meet Multiple Learning Styles
- 35+ Years Of Experience Training Fitness Professionals
- 1.5M+ Fitness Professionals Trained
- 100+ Countries with NASM Fitness and Coach Professionals
- 12K+ Gym & Health Club Partnerships
You can complete your Certified Nutrition Coach Certification in as few as 4 weeks. In addition to its interactive multimedia-rich content, learning tools, resources, and comprehensive study-planning guide, you can also receive assistance from NASM experts when questions arise.
Absolutely! You can complete the NASM Certified Nutrition Coach program while also working full-time. The study material is 100% online and self-paced, and can be accessed on a computer, or a mobile device such as a phone or tablet.
A Nutritionist is different from a Nutrition Coach. With the foundational knowledge you’ll gain as a Certified Nutrition Coach, you’ll have the expertise needed to help clients make smarter nutrition choices and create sustainable change in their lives.
When you sign up to become a Certified Nutrition Coach through NASM, you’ll learn how to assess your client’s nutritional needs and ensure they’re met through three unique yet equally important modules:
- Nutrition Science: From proteins to fats, energy balance to counting macros, get a comprehensive look at the scope of your practice as a nutrition leader.
- Behavior Change: Learn how to use motivation and communication to enhance the psychology behind how we eat.
- Nutrition Coaching: Put everything together to create a personalized course of action for your clients. Whether it’s weight loss or weight gain, bulking up or maintaining where they’re at, you now have the keys to nutritional success.
A Certified Nutrition Coach (CNC) works with a more general clientele to develop strategies that address issues like obesity, body composition, aging, and lifestyle approaches to disease management.
A Certified Sports Nutrition Coach (CSNC) digs a little deeper, working specifically with athletes to educate and provide coaching around performance nutrition within sports.
While these two roles differ in the audience they serve, they do work hand in hand to provide a well-rounded understanding of nutrition.
To that end, our CNC program sets down an effective foundation in nutrition to build from, helping through a fundamental understanding of how to serve clients’ nutrition needs. From there, our CSNC program takes what you learn throughout CNC and builds upon it to target a specific client base to focus on strategies that impact performance and recovery.
The final exam is administered online within your student portal. There are 100 multiple-choice questions and you'll have 90 minutes to complete it. A score of 70% or better is required to pass.
You will have 3 attempts to pass your final exam. If needed, you can purchase additional retests by calling Member Services at 1-800-460-6276.
Renewal of the Certified Nutrition Coach (CNC) is required every two years through completion of the CNC Renewal Exam. The CNC Renewal Exam will offer three exam attempts and will have an enrollment duration of 365 days. The CNC Renewal Exam will recertify the credential for another two years from the new completion date.
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