Schooling for Nutrition and Training

Jay Guindon · 03-20-2010, 08:13 PM

I was hoping to get some input regarding becoming a nutritionist and a trainer.
I should mention that I live in Canada.
The problem I am running into is that the main nutrition schooling here is done by the Dietitians of Canada and they basically promote the disease pyramid. I really don't want to pay good money to get a bunch of schooling on how to eat low fat yogurt and whole grains, when I'm going to turn around and tell people something completely different because I don't believe what I was taught.
The next thing is regarding the training. I would again prefer to get schooling in the compound movements, bodyweight style stuff, things that are functional or transfer well to the real world than get a bunch of stuff on bicep curls, leg presses and lat pulldowns.
Does anyone know of any certs/schools that teach this kind of stuff? It doesn't have to be in Canada, just wanted people to know in case someone knows a good canadian school or cert program.

Donald Lee · 03-20-2010, 10:29 PM

Alan Aragon's first blog posts were on this topic:

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/

From what I hear, Australia seems to have good accreditation. I haven't heard of anything worthwhile anywhere else. I have a CSCS, but I'd probably equate that to having a 2-year college (Junior College/Community College) degree.

The IOC seems to have a pretty good Sports Nutrition accreditation program, but it's expensive and takes 2 years to complete:

http://www.sportsoracle.com/ioc/diploma-home

If you can't find anything satisfactory, you could always do your own independent reading/learning.

Jay Guindon · 03-21-2010, 08:00 AM

Ideally I would be able to do my own learning but I'm concerned about needing paper to call myself a nutritionist and personal trainer. I'd way rather just learn a tonne from Robb Wolf, Loren Cordain, Kurt Harris about nutrition and Mark Rippetoe, Greg Everett, and Coach Sommer about their methods of training and exercise, do a bunch of those certs, but I'm concerned about the lack of widely recognizable papers that most people look for when evaluating if you're good at your profession. People usually want to see NSCA or CanFit Pro (in Canada) for training and Dietitian of Canada or the equivalent for nutrition.
Maybe I'm overthinking it and could do these things and have an impressive resume of people I've studied from instead of national certifications.

Steven Low · 03-21-2010, 08:45 AM

If you're going to be offering nutrition advice out of a gym or as a self employed I think you have to have some sort of certification or something which sucks.

Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and do some things. I think one of the NASM or something offers a nutrition cert (I think Alan Aragon talked about it in the above link) so you may want to see if you can do that... or just get a masters in nutrition or something along those lines.

Garrett Smith · 03-21-2010, 08:55 AM

You should first find out what you legally need to have in the region you want to practice in, then decide if you want to do that or not.

Jay Guindon · 03-22-2010, 08:26 AM

I read Alan's post on this topic and his sentiment seems to be that you don't really need schooling to be a nutritionist. It was full of awesome anecdotes of his experiences and recommendations based on his journey and was super helpful so big thanks to the poster who linked me to it....huge thanks!
And Garrett, I think your point is the most valid right now as I believe that what is most important is know what certs/schooling I need to get an insurance company to cover me. Thanks to everyone who's participated in the conversation.