About the Program
CEUs: 1.9 NASM, 19 AFAA, 2.0 ACE, 10 CIMSPA Endorsed CPD Points
With the all-new edition of NASM's Weight Loss Specialization (WLS), we unlock the secrets to long term weight loss success through lifestyle change by integrating the science behind losing weight with a vast understanding of real-life situations. Helping clients lead healthier lives.
This immersive online experience shows you how to apply the most up-to-date evidence-based information on exercise, nutrition, and behavior change to help clients reach their health goals and lose weight as part of the process. You'll gain access to robust tools, methods, and insight that will help you hit the ground running from Day 1.
This course is 100% online and features our new, high-end and easy-to-use digital course portal. You'll have 1 year from enrollment to complete your final exam, however most learners complete the course in as little as 8-10 weeks.
Course Overview
Section 1: Introduction to the NASM Weight Loss Specialist
Chapter 1: Introduction
Review the course structure, program objectives, and meet the client personas that will be used as case studies throughout the course
Chapter 2: Scope of Practice
This chapter provides an overview of the landscape of healthcare and describes where a Weight Loss Specialist fits into the healthcare continuum. Develop an understanding of how to best serve your clients while ensuring you follow best practices.
Section 2: The Obesity Epidemic
Chapter 3: The State of Obesity
Understand the scope of obesity and how it impacts society and ultimately clients. Learn the primary reasons for obesity and how clients may become obese. These insights are important for understanding clients at a fundamental level and how key drivers of obesity can be addressed by a Weight Loss Specialist.
Chapter 4: The Physiology of Obesity
Learn what changes occur in the body due to obesity and how that can affect the health and physical properties of the body, including the organ systems, hormones, metabolism, and neurobiology. All of these aspects can affect the way people with obesity respond to exercise.
Chapter 5: Psychosocial and Obesity
This chapter will discuss three critical domains of the psychosocial components of obesity: mental health, social influences, and eating disorders. Learn about self-esteem and body image, and how to empathize with your clients over these aspects of mental health. Social influences and social determinants of obesity will be explored in depth and potential solutions to addressing these issues will be provided.
Section 3: The Science of Weight Loss
Chapter 6: Metabolism
Understand the metabolism and how it relates to obesity, including energy balance and energy needs as well as the role of environment and genetics. Learn about the primary theories of what causes obesity from a metabolic standpoint and how a Weight Loss Specialist can operationalize those theories in practice and provide solutions to clients who have difficulty losing weight.
Chapter 7: Nutrition and Supplementation
Understand nutrition, supplementation, and dieting as it relates to obesity. Popular dietary schemes and archetypes have been used to address obesity for decades. Review these diets in detail as well as their efficacy and utility.
Chapter 8: The Impact of Exercise on Weight Loss
Exercise is most commonly thought of as one of the critical components to weight loss; however, exactly how it affects weight loss is often misunderstood. This chapter will provide an in-depth review of how exercise affects weight loss from a calorie expenditure perspective, a metabolic perspective, a health perspective, and the effects of exercise on mental health.
Chapter 9: Psychology of Weight Loss
The psychological effects of weight loss are as important as the physiological ones. This chapter will review five key components of the psychology of weight loss: coping, dieting, will power, adherence, and ambivalence.
Chapter 10: The Client Intake Process
A critical component to achieving success as a Weight Loss Specialist is developing a clear, consistent, and thorough intake process. Individuals who require weight loss have specific needs when it comes to assessment. This chapter will review the fundamental components of developing a proper intake process and will provide a set of robust tools for Weight Loss Specialists to use.
Chapter 11: Conducting Fitness Assessments
Understanding the readiness and fitness of a client is imperative for Weight Loss Specialists. These assessments and tests (like calculating calories for goal weights) help the Weight Loss Specialist understand the current state of a client and determine where the appropriate starting point is using a thoughtful, systematic approach.
Section 5: The Weight Loss Coaching Process
Chapter 12: Nutrition Coaching Strategies for Weight Loss
Learn how to create a weight loss program, how to use strategies to increase adherence to the plan, and how to apply various assessment tools to make modifications during the plan to ensure ongoing success for the client. Learn about behavior change models that have been shown in research to be effective.
Chapter 13: Fitness Coaching Strategies for Weight Loss
Understand how exercise for the individual client differs, how intensity can affect overall energy expenditure via the constrained energy model, and the role of NEAT in the context of fitness coaching and weight loss.
Chapter 14: Integrating Nutrition and Fitness with the Weight Loss Client
Nutrition and fitness coaching are often part of an integrated plan. This chapter will utilize client personas to help you learn how to integrate the nutrition and fitness plans developed for a client. This chapter will provide a straightforward, defined process for how to set up, implement, and evaluate an integrated program for a client.
Chapter 15: Weight Maintenance and Sustainability
Sustainability and setting clients up for long term success is one of the most important aspects for a Weight Loss Specialist to consider. This chapter will review key aspects of how to ensure clients have sustainable results.
Final Exam
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, that consists of 100 questions. Each question will be multiple-choice. The exam is timed and cannot exceed 90 minutes. To pass, you need a score of 70% or higher. Don’t fret though, if you score below that, you have up to 3 attempts to pass.
Program Includes:
✔ High-End, Easy-to-Use Digital Course Portal; Access on all Devices
With our interactive learning platform, you'll have all the resources you need to study for NASM's Weight Loss Specialization anytime, anywhere.
✔ 15 In-Depth Chapters and Corresponding Chapter Quizzes
✔ Four Client Personal Journeys to Serve as Case Studies
- Steve - 30s; BMI 40-42; Understands exercise but not nutrition
- Angela - 40s; BMI 31; Doesn't exercise; has tried various diets in the past
- Jose - 40s; BMI 52; No history with exercising; Hypertension and pre-diabetes
- Vanessa - 40s; BMI 28; Not consistent with exercise; travels a lot for work; needs help with habits surrounding food intake
✔ 13 Course Videos
- Introduction to WLS
- Persona Introductions
- Scope: Coaching vs. Counseling
- The Growing Importance for WLS
- Psychosocial Effects on Obesity
- Popular Diets for the WLS
- Physical Activities that Promote Weight Loss
- 5 Factors to Weight Loss Success
- Nutrition Intervention Strategies
- The 5 A’s of Coaching Framework
- Factors that Impact Weight Maintenance and Sustainability
✔ 4 Complete Coaching Process Videos with Workout Demonstrations for personas
- Treats weight loss, not as the problem to overcome, but instead, the behavioral strategies required working an array of different weight loss clients
✔ 2 Animation Videos
- The Physiology of Obesity
- Metabolism
✔ 30+ Downloads and Templates That Can Be Used Directly with Weight Loss Client
✔ Up to 15 Custom Graphics and Infographics per Chapter
This course is available in English only.