The Best Holistic Nutrition Programs To Fit Your Personalized Needs

Holistic nutrition goes beyond calorie count and fatty acid structure to explore how foods make us feel—and how this varies from person to person based on genetic makeup and lived experience. If you want to learn more about this functional approach to food, enrolling in an online nutrition coaching program is a great first step.

Graduating from a holistic nutrition program will equip you to guide clients toward their individual food and lifestyle goals. You can work as a nutrition coach in a health clinic or employee corporate wellness program; integrate nutrition principles into your current practice; or open a new business seeing clients one-on-one.

Dr. Sears Wellness Institute offers an online health coach program that teaches nutrition fundamentals. It features a flexible lesson plan that allows you to take classes at your own pace—a major plus for those with busy schedules. Expect to spend about eight to 10 hours a week on self-paced coursework.

One unique feature of the Dr. Sears program is students choose a particular specialty within health they want to pursue: Families, Pregnancy, or Adults & Seniors. Your chosen specialty will dictate what you learn in the program, which might feel limiting to some people who want a more well-rounded health overview. After six weeks, you can also choose to enroll in their 24-week Master Course, which trains you to become an NBHWC-Certified health coach.

You can graduate from this program in as little as six weeks, and it costs $975. New cohorts begin every month.

This cutting-edge nutrition program offers a deep dive into holistic nutrition and eating for longevity, taught by 20 leading experts in the functional health space. Over the course of the eight- to 10-week program, you'll learn about the keys to gut health from Vincent Pedre, M.D., the link between nutrition and brain health with Mark Hyman, M.D., how food impacts your hormones from Amy Shah, M.D., and much more.

The most comprehensive option on the list, when you sign up for FNT, you'll receive 30+ hours of online lessons and 660+ pages of in-depth study guides—all of which are yours to keep for life—for $1,999. You'll also get access to quarterly speaker series with registered dietitians and other nutrition experts in the field.

You can take FNT on its own, but many opt to take it in conjunction with mbg's Health Coach Certification, an NBHWC-approved interactive health coaching program.

While Precision Nutrition Level 1 training takes a less holistic approach than other options on this list, it gives a solid overview of nutrition science basics. When you sign up, you get all the materials for this virtual course upfront, making it easy to take at your own pace (though those who want a more interactive experience might find this limiting). The course is open to applicants twice a year, so the waitlist can be a bit lengthy.

It ladders up to more advanced programs like Precision Nutrition Level 2, an approved NBHWC program. This 20-week program costs $999 (one-time payment) or $119 per month over 12 months.

The Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) is a trusted name in the health and nutrition coaching space, and over the years, they've expanded their course catalog to cover specific topics like emotional eating, gut health, detoxing, and more. Their Health Coach Training Program™ delves into the power of using food as medicine and how nutrition impacts mental and emotional health. It also zooms out to explore how factors like our relationships, friendships, and environment "feed" us and shape our health.

The course takes between six and 12 months to complete, and you can expect to spend five to eight hours a week on coursework (or 10 to 16 hours if you're hoping to complete it within six months). Along the way, you'll learn from leading holistic nutrition experts like Maya Feller, M.S., R.D., and Zach Bush, M.D. This longer-term program comes with a higher price tag of $5,995.

Created by Chris Kresser M.S., LAc, author of The Paleo Cure and Unconventional Medicine, this 40-hour Functional Nutrition Mastery course focuses on how to make diet changes that stick. It focuses on the Paleo diet, so it may not be as helpful for vegan or plant-based eaters. Once you sign up for this course, the Kresser team makes it very easy to absorb the information by providing written lesson plans and audio recordings you can listen to on the go.

You can take this flexible program at your own pace: If you commit to one hour a day, you'll finish it in six to eight weeks. If you prefer to take your time, spent two hours a week on it and you'll finish in 24 weeks. You'll have access to course materials for one year, and the program costs $1,995.