I’m currently doing a personal trainer certification from ACSM. We have been advised that personal trainers are not supposed to do meal planning. In this regard, should I do a nutrition certification?
If your state doesn’t allow trainers to do meal plans, they won’t let you do it with a certificate either. Nutrition/dietetics is a regulated profession in most states that will require a degree plus a year of supervised internship practice to be legally allowed to see clients/patients. Without that, many states will restrict you to only general nutrition advice, and won’t allow you to do personal nutrition recs.
Nutrition “certificates” are completely unregulated and should be viewed as opportunities for personal growth, not anything that carries any legitimacy in terms of what you’re legally allowed or competent to do.
(And if you had this training, you’d know that meal plans are an ineffective tool for improving diet for most people, which is why few RDs will make them for people.)
It can depend on what your state/local laws say you can do as a fitness trainer. That said I do feel a nutrition cert can help answer questions clients will ask you. Here are a couple of things I put together that may help: