Flex Diet Podcast

Episode 210: Flex Diet Certification Frequently Asked Questions

Episode Summary

On today's episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I answer the most frequently asked questions I receive from people who are considering enrolling in the Flex Diet Certification. The Flex Diet Certification is open for enrollment now through midnight on June 12, 2023. In the course, I cover eight interventions to increase your performance and to have better body composition. Go to flexdiet.com now. If you get there after June 12, you’ll be able to sign up on the waitlist then.

Episode Notes

Episode Transcription

[00:00:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Hey there, what's going on? Dr. Mike Nelson here, back again with the Flex Diet Podcast. And coming up in the future on the podcast, we've got a ton of amazing guests. I know I'm gonna leave some people out of this list, but Julius Starret, Michael Easter, Dr. Andy Galpin, and many more. Coming up very soon including just chatted with Jordan the other night.

[00:00:32] That was amazing conversation and many others. So stay tuned. We'll have a lot more podcasts coming your way very soon. Today wanted to let you know that I had a bunch of questions about the Flex Diet certification, which is now open until Monday, June 12th, 2023. If you want more information and all the details, go to flexdiet.com for all the information.

[00:01:03] If you're listening to this after that time point, you can still get on the wait list for the next time that it opens. Right now it's only opening twice a year, so this'll be open now for June and we might have it open in fall. If not, it might be January of next year, but sometime around there, I haven't quite decided yet.

[00:01:21] Go to flexdiet.com for all the information. Today I wanted to answer a rapid fire way, a few of the main questions that I've been getting about the Flex Diet certification. 

[00:01:34] Number one, if I were to use macros for coaching, how is the Flex Diet cert helpful? Which is a great question.

[00:01:42] The Flex Diet Cert itself does not use macros per se. I decided to design it more on using habits and a little bit different system. That doesn't mean that I don't like macros. I think they can be very useful. But I think there's a lot of other, good courses that kind of cover that.

[00:02:01] And in my experience working with clients, I think you definitely can use a macro's approach. For my one-on-one clients who are usually more advanced, then I do use more of a macros based approach or kind of a hybrid approach. But for the flex diet cert, I wanted something that would cover things that are beyond macronutrients.

[00:02:20] While we do talk about proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, they are covered in a one hour technical lecture. We do talk a lot about how fats and carbohydrates fit into the concept of metabolic flexibility, how to use the right fuel for the right time. And then we also go in depth on things like micronutrition movements such as exercise and walking, sleep, intermittent fasting, keto, and much more.

[00:02:48] We do talk about macros, but it goes beyond that because what I've found is even if you're just using macros as a baseline for coaching, which is great that you're gonna get questions about. What micronutrients is it? Can I just eat fast food? As long as I hit my macros, is that gonna be okay?

[00:03:06] And sometimes you get all the macros set up correctly and clients are doing well, but they're not getting the results that you would expect. And then you realize that they're sleep. It's a disaster. And. Their butt looks like a couch cushion, and they're not doing any exercise or any walking. I always find that it's a good start, but you are gonna end up usually answering other questions and working around other things related to lifestyle nutrition and recovery, which is why I wanted a complete system that would include all of those.

[00:03:38] Next question. Is the flex diet cert too technical for me? I'm afraid I won't understand any of the material or what you said. So this is one of the questions we get, and I will admit that I am not the person to try to dumb everything down so that it's untrue. But it's also not my goal just to use technical words to sound super important and leave you confused and think that I actually know what's going on. 

[00:04:07] So we do use technical words, but only when needed. It's because it's just the common language with some of the things. But my whole goal is to elevate people up to a higher level. And when we do use technical words, we explain what they are in English.

[00:04:22] So that way if you wanna do some more advanced work, or you wanna read some research on your own, you'll have a background and a better vocabulary to understand what they're talking about. But you'll also understand how to use common language for clients because they think it's best to understand both.

[00:04:40] I totally agree that you don't need to use highly technical language. A clients, they don't really care. Just speak to 'em in common language. It's gonna be totally fine. It's actually gonna be way better. But if you do wanna understand some of the research on the new advances, it is beneficial to understand a background and to understand the technical language.

[00:05:01] Also the certification is a hundred percent online. You can go through at any pace you want. You can shocker repeat sections if you would like. I've had a few people that have gone through and said that, some of the te technical areas, they had to go through a couple times. And their background wasn't necessarily initially in the fitness field.

[00:05:20] They were coming in from other fields. So they didn't necessarily have that background. So it's primarily geared at an intermediate level. And if you want to go really deep, we do have interviews with researchers where we do go. Much more in depth and you can get a lot more information from there.

[00:05:40] And like I said, right now, you'll still be able to email me any questions. So if you get stuck on a certain area and you're like, I don't know what you were talking about in this module, you can literally get my private email, send me an email and I will help you with it. Cause I want you to understand the material at the end of the day and I want you to go out and apply it and help people with their body composition goals. 

[00:06:07] How long is a Flex diet certification? I am afraid I don't have enough time to complete it. This one is a little bit trickier because everything I know is becoming shorter online and there are definitely pros to that. But the flex diet cert right now, if you count all the expert interviews and all of the modules, so there's eight interventions. 

[00:06:32] There's three portions for each, so that's 24 modules, plus about 10 interviews. So that's about 30 plus in, oh, I can't count. Yeah, well over 30 modules. It's about 28 hours in total. But like I said, it's broken up into different interventions, actually, eight of them. So let's say you're doing the intervention on Micronutrition, so you'll learn about the concepts of metabolic flexibility.

[00:06:58] You'll have a one hour lecture, I guess you could say on Micronutrition lecture, makes it sound like it's horrible, but try to make these somewhat entertaining. And then you will have five explicit action items of how to implement micronutrition, and we'll show you in the complete system of how to do that.

[00:07:15] You'll know more about Micronutrition and you'll know exactly what you need to do with that information. The cool part is that these are then arranged in the higher priority items are first. So actually the first intervention is dietary protein. So you could literally be working with clients or yourself do the dietary protein section.

[00:07:41] Make sure you understand that there is a quiz for comprehension after it. And then once you're done with that, which will probably take you maybe three hours or so, including the big picture lecture and the specific action items, and if you wanna do one of the interviews, so maybe three-ish hours, four hours.

[00:07:59] You can actually start coaching people on dietary protein at that point, so you don't necessarily need to complete all of the hours or all of the modules before you can work with people. Now, again, to be completely certified and to get CEUs. You do have to complete all the modules and, pass the quizzes.

[00:08:17] But if you wanna break it up and work with clients as you're doing it, which is actually my recommendation you can do that. You don't need to do the entire certification before you actually start getting practice. And again, like I said, if you get stuck you can just email me. So usually what I would tell people is, actually get a couple clients that you're trying to help and as long as you're just ahead of where they're at.

[00:08:42] Let's say they're gonna work on protein for maybe two weeks. It's gonna take you a week with your schedule. Does it get through about the three to four hours on protein? Cool, you're already a week ahead of 'em. If it takes you a little bit longer, if something comes up, totally understand. You'll still be ahead of 'em.

[00:09:00] That's generally my recommendation. I know some people do want to go through and do the entire course first. And you can definitely do that. 

[00:09:10] Next question, is this all theory or does the Flex diet certification actually show me how to apply it? Yes. This was one of kind of my gripes with other systems that are out there, especially after I went and looked at what was actually going on in general, they fell into two camps.

[00:09:29] The one camp was highly technical, probably, in my opinion, overly technical. And I like technical shit. But it didn't tell you what to do. So I didn't find that was all super useful. Now again, if you're an academic and you want a deep dive on something and you're not necessarily having to apply it or to coach anyone, totally fine.

[00:09:51] But most people want to know then what do I do with that information? Some of the other things I saw was pretty good on the items of what to actually do, but they didn't have any context or theory as to. How did they come up with those items? What if that particular action item doesn't work? I was clueless on what else to do cause I didn't really understand the system that they were using all that well.

[00:10:18] That was the biggest problem I had to solve with a flex diet cert was how do I get across a big picture some details about each intervention, and then make it explicit so you know exactly what to do for yourself or for your clients. So I ended up splitting it up into three things.

[00:10:37] Now, the first part is the big picture. It's the glue that holds all the eight interventions together. This is the concept of metabolic flexibility. How does your body use the two main fuels, both fats and carbohydrates? And this is combined with the idea of. Flexible dieting as we all know, that a flexible approach is gonna be much better.

[00:10:59] So big picture walks you through the concept of metabolic flexibility and flexible dieting, and you don't need to have a background in either one of those topics. We start from ground zero and build upon that. For each intervention, there's a detailed one hour video of everything you would need to know about that.

[00:11:16] For example, intervention one is dietary protein. I have a one hour video on what are amino acids, how many amino acids do you need to build a new protein, or what's called muscle protein synthesis response or mps? What is the role of leucine essential amino acids? What are the mechanics of all of those kind of things?

[00:11:38] It is definitely more on the technical side. But when I was designing the system, I purposely constrained that to only one hour, which in reality, it'd be way easier for me to do a lecture for four to six hours on protein than it would be to do a lecture on one hour, making sure I included everything you would need to know about it.

[00:11:58] The carbohydrate one I do confess, ran a little bit longer. I think it's an hour and 17 minutes. I think I redid that one five or six times to get it down to that. In hindsight, maybe I could get it down a little further, but they're all pretty darn close. The nice part about this is you'll have a large portion of information.

[00:12:22] You won't have a hundred percent everything, but you'll have all the big PO components that you need to know within one hour because that's way more useful to you, although harder for me to do. To make sure you actually understand it, because if you wanted to know whole classes about protein, you'd probably go take college class about protein, then you wouldn't be taking it into certification.

[00:12:42] The third part is you get the explicit action items. So for eight interventions, there's five action items for each part. So for example, if you're doing protein, which is intervention one, there's five explicit action items for protein. So within the system, we'll show you exactly how to know. Which one of those action items is gonna apply to you or your clients?

[00:13:04] The nice part is the flex diet cert combines all the science. We've got expert interviews, we've got all the references there. You would need the theory and the explicit action items all into one complete system. And I started looking at the concept of metabolic flexibility and working with clients on it well over 15 years ago now.

[00:13:24] It definitely has been tested for a long time. 

[00:13:28] Which gets into the next question. Has any of this been used in the real world or is this all research mumbo jumbo that's never been tested? So the concepts of metabolic flexibility were part of my PhD dissertation, which I started work on actually over 15 years ago.

[00:13:45] It was actually 16 years ago as of this recording. And I've since applied it to everything from one-on-one clients friends my wife, I've given a presentation to DARPA Defense Advanced Resource Project Agency on the use of metabolic flexibility for soldiers elite tier one operators, and pretty much everybody in between.

[00:14:06] The good part is all of these concepts have been tested over time. The Flex Diet Cert has been out now for several years. I do go in every year or even twice a year. And update anything. Make sure everything I'm saying is still backed up and is still true via the research because research will change over time.

[00:14:26] It is still all up to date. So it has been fully tested and shown and supported by research. Next question. What if I don't like it? Am I stuck with it? Do you actually have 30 days to test everything out in the course? There is a quiz after each section. But within those 30 days, if you're not happy for any reason, I'll give you a full refund.

[00:14:51] So far to date, I've only issued two refunds. One was from somebody who tried to go through the course in four hours. I don't. And when we look, cuz we can look on the backend to see what they're doing. They're all over the place. And then we had one other person never opened any of the modules and wanted to refund.

[00:15:15] Other than that I haven't had many other refunds. But if you find that it doesn't work for you or is not what you expected I have no problem giving you all your money back because I want you to be happy and I wanted to work for what you are doing. Next question.

[00:15:30] Does this help me market any of my skills?

[00:15:34] The flex diet cert will definitely elevate your skills as a nutrition coach but is not primarily designed as a marketing course. Having said that, I think the best marketing is just getting better at your craft period. So that's gonna be to me, marketing number one. Can you deliver on client expectations?

[00:15:55] But having said that, we are adding more marketing material to it. So as of this recording in June, my goal is to have more of that information in there by the end of June, 2023. So right now we do have a partnership with Coach Catalyst. Once you graduate from the Flex Diet Certification, just email me and if you use the Coach Catalyst software with full disclosure, I am an affiliate for Coach Catalyst.

[00:16:23] I've known Mr. Trevor and Kane and all the guys there for many years now. Really awesome group. Really great stuff. What they do really enjoy their program there. And so when you graduate from the Flex Diet Cert, email me and if you sign up through Coach Catalyst we'll give you all 40 of the action items that are used in the Flex Diet Cert.

[00:16:44] We'll give them to you preloaded into the Coach Catalyst software. So literally all you'd have to do is add your clients and then add whatever action items would be most useful for them, which you can just drag and drop. We are in the process of probably adding even more stuff to it to make it even more user friendly and even more done for you.

[00:17:05] We do have all the basic stuff in there. The caveat is you do have to graduate from the flex diet cert first before you can get access to that. That way we can verify that, hey, you actually know the system and you know what you're doing. If you don't want to use software you don't necessarily have to.

[00:17:23] The system is set up where software is not a requirement. So I wanted to do something where software would make your life easier but is not necessarily a requirement for it. So you do not necessarily have to have software. I do find though, if you are trying to scale a lot of your clients, having software will make your life much easier.

[00:17:45] Trust me, I tried not to do that for a while. I wish I would've used software like Coach Catalyst sooner than what I did.

[00:17:56] Next question, what if I really want to dive deep into the topics? Is there more advanced material if I want it? Yes. We do have expert interviews in the Flex Diet certification. Everything from, protein metabolism with you, probably the premiere protein researcher in the world, Dr. Stu Phillips, Dr.

[00:18:15] Jose Antonio of the Issn, talking about protein overfeeding Dr. Dan Pardi talking about metabolic flexibility and sleep. We've got Dr. Mike Ormsby talking about protein before bed and the use of fat as a fuel. Dr. Hunter Walman talking about metabolic flexibility. Dr. Steven Guyanet about the neuro regulation of appetite.

[00:18:42] Dr. Eric Hems on flexible dieting and we've got more experts even on things like micronutrition from mushrooms. And many other things. So we've got about over 10 expert interviews in the program right now, and those take a couple of specific topics and then we go on a deep dive with them. Now those particular interviews are not necessarily required for you to complete the Flex Diet Cert but we would highly encourage them.

[00:19:09] Like I said, if you have any questions, you can email me next to last question. The price seems expensive. How the heck would I make any of my money back on it? So let's do some simple math. So let's say you add one extra client that you do coaching with, and it's a very cheap price. Let's say you're just doing nutrition recovery and you only charge them $150 a month.

[00:19:38] After four months, so 150 times four, that would be $600. So after five or six months, you would literally pay for the course of the entire certification. So it is a little bit more expensive upfront. I do agree with that, but you can literally pay it off with one client over a six month contractor, get pretty darn close to that.

[00:20:06] Now again, you can work with more than one flying at a time. That's the beauty of the Flex Diet cert is initially set it up. To work with one trainer who's at kind of a CrossFit type box or gym where they may have 80 to a hundred clients that they're doing active nutrition with. That one person could be doing literally semi customized nutrition work.

[00:20:29] With that many people and not completely lose their hair. Now, is that super easy to do? No, it's gonna take some work. But it's definitely doable. We have had people do that. Now, again, if you only have a couple people, that's even easier. So you have one person, they can do it for six, seven months.

[00:20:49] You're already at your breakeven point. Anybody else you add at that point you would be in the positive. So it is an expense upfront, which I totally understand and get but it is something that, in my biased opinion, you can make your money back from relatively easy. 

[00:21:08] Last question, is a Flex Diet Cert approved for CEUs?

[00:21:12] Yes. We have CEUs currently from the nsca, national Strength Conditioning Association, Nam. Ace and Af f aa. So if you are looking for CEUs we do have credit hours from those four organizations, nsca, Nam, ACE, and af aa. Now, if these organizations are not listed there, you may have the option of asking for approval for the Flex Diet cert as a one-off.

[00:21:44] So I have written up different testimonials and sent. Supporting documents for people who have requested that their other organization recognize the flex diet cert for CEUs. In all honesty, most of the time it passes, but obviously we can't guarantee that a lot of times. What other organizations do they look to see?

[00:22:03] Do you have credits through the main organizations? If you do, a lot of times, they'll allow it again. We can't absolutely guarantee that, but we do have it for nsca, Nam, ACE and AF aa, so you can get credit for your CEUs at that point. So there you go. There was some FAQ questions I got on the Flex Diet certification.

[00:22:29] It is now open through. June 12th, 2023. Go to flexdiet.com for all the information. If you have particular questions for me, you'll be able to contact me there, or you can hit me up through Instagram if you like, or email me. Instagram is Dr. Mike T. Nelson. This Dr. R m i k e t n e l s o n. So thank you so much.

[00:22:55] I'm super excited for this to be open, and I would love to see you there. Thank you so much. Go to flexdiet.com before the end of the day, June 12th, 2023 to enroll. We'll talk to you very so