Wondering whether or not to get certified.

No.

Yes this is a great career path for you to follow. You can do so much with obtaining your masters degree in counseling and getting certified in nutrition. In order to get in the right state of mind with wanting to get healthy a lot of people need counseling to work through the emotional and mental aspect of things that have held them back.

According to me certificate is not only way to accept more you need average knowledge about your profession.

Any education, certification, training, and the like is going to benefit your career and life goals. The challenge is to weigh the "risk vs reward" and what this certification means to you. If it is something that you feel will continue your journey to good health while also giving you a vehicle to make money in a professional role then it may be worthwhile in pursuing. The key is researching the actual career and perhaps volunteering at a gym, asking to job shadow a current fitness/health trainer, or interviewing a fitness professional. You want to be fully informed as to the actual job since the new found health interests may not necessarily correlate to liking the training aspect. Chances are, if you are in pursuit of the counseling field, working in a field that helps people achieve their fitness goals may be a good fit. Once you do the position research it will be time to research the best certificate programs and what fits your budget. Also, make sure you can get certified and continue your masters degree, both time wise and economically wise, so that you don't get overburdened or burnt out. My expose to both industries suggests that you can likely pursue both schooling and a certification, as they both offer flexible scheduling in today's environment. Lastly, and depending on your career goals and networks within both fields, you will likely supplement your role in the counseling field with your health/fitness certification, at least at the outset. My advise to anyone that is pursuing any career/employment interest is to network as much as possible and be involved in as many activities as possible that are directly related to your career interests.

Good morning, when thinking of getting certified have you considered what it would take to be get certified. Are you paying for this expense out-of-pocket or obtaining financial aid? If you will need financial aid most of the time, if I’m correct, you can only receive financial aid from one school at a time. Although, adding certification would be a plus to any education just consider the whole package before you decide. I hope this helps.

Hello Barrett, I think that learning about nutrition would be something very useful one can learn for themselves. In a role where you would be counselling others after you obtain your degree, you are also helping, guiding and listening to others which is highly rewarding and a place where you can be of great service to many others. Self care is also an important task in our own lives because we cannot serve from an empty vessel, so there are plenty of nutrition education certifications that give you very grounded information and basics of nutrition, I am a nutritionist myself too but I also worked in different roles before where I still continued to invest in nutrition education. This would be something you could invest in for yourself and make time for because it will relate to you and your own health! I would recommend some basic nutrition certifications first and see, there are plenty out there! Feel free to msg me if you have any questions!

I'm not sure what kind of nutrition certification you are talking about, but specializing in counseling is a great idea. I know of a counseling student who double-majored in nutrition and psychology in undergrad before getting her Masters in counseling because she wanted to specialize in eating disorders. I also know that there is an entire field of "health counselors" where they use counseling techniques such as Motivational Interviewing to help people lose weight.

I definitely second Joseph Young's answer as well--be careful of overburdening yourself with schooling. Making a niche does not always require being enrolled in a whole other program. Find a professional doing what you want to do and ask them how they got there before you make any commitments. In some cases, you just need the experience rather than any official certifications, and you can get that through internships, volunteering, or other means.