Transforming Lives Through Holistic Nutrition with NANP, Following Your Gut Podcast #26

In this enlightening episode of the “Following Your Gut Podcast,” host Roland Pankewich sits down with Nicole Hodson, a pivotal figure in the world of holistic nutrition. Recorded live at HealCon, this episode delves into the valuable work of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals (NANP) in shaping the education and careers of holistic nutrition professionals. Nicole Hodson shares her insights on the transformative power of nutrition education, focusing on the distinctiveness of the NANP’s approach in comparison to other nutrition certifications.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone considering a career shift or expansion into the field of holistic nutrition. Nicole elaborates on the prerequisites and standards that NANP-approved schools meet, ensuring a comprehensive and rigorous educational experience that equips graduates for success. She stresses the importance of understanding bio-individuality, the interconnectedness of lifestyle factors with health, and the expanding opportunities within the nutrition industry. With her seasoned perspective, Nicole warns of the pitfalls of transient trends and underscores the enduring value of food as a fundamental element of health.

About the Guest:

Nicole Hodson is the Executive Director of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals (NANP). With nearly two decades of experience at NANP, she is dedicated to advancing the field of nutrition through education and advocacy. Nicole is deeply committed to the principles of holistic nutrition, emphasizing whole foods and individualized care. Her extensive background and strategic insights have played a critical role in shaping the NANP and its educational standards for holistic nutrition professionals, certified dietary supplement professionals, and natural chefs.

“The microbiome of our digestive tract is like the soil of our body." 

Transcript

0:00:02 Roland Pankewich: Welcome back to the following youg Gut podcast live at healcon. I’m here with the lady who’s making this whole thing happen, Nicole Hodson. Pleasure to have you here. I’m so glad we have a chance to sit down.

0:00:13 Nicole Hodson: Roland, thank you so much, and thank you for being here. We’re just so excited to have us enzymes here with us and. And a great, wonderful partner for us.

0:00:22 Roland Pankewich: Thank you. There’s so many alignments in terms of what you guys stand for and company values. But when I got into health, I wasn’t actually in the nutrition side of things. I started in the exercise side and naturally evolved into, oh, people ask you about health and nutrition all the time. I might as well get educated. And I knew of the NANP back in 2012, 2013, and your organization is helping a lot of people with finding either second careers, evolving their careers.

0:00:50 Roland Pankewich: I’d like to do a little bit of an episode for people who might be feeling called to want to evolve their life, because that’s really what you guys are doing. You’re trying to strengthen the holistic practitioners foothold in the industry through the program. Is that correct?

0:01:02 Nicole Hodson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

0:01:04 Roland Pankewich: Why don’t we talk a little bit about what the NANP does?

0:01:07 Nicole Hodson: Fantastic. So, national association of Nutrition Professionals.

0:01:12 Roland Pankewich: It’s pretty direct.

0:01:13 Nicole Hodson: It’s pretty direct. Right? What. What isn’t in our title is our focus on the holistically trained nutrition professionals. So we’re about whole foods, we’re about bio individuality. We’re about meeting our clients where they’re at. We take a little bit of a different approach than some, you know, dietitians or others in the nutrition space. We’ve been doing this for over 40 years. And, you know, you talked about, like, a second career.

0:01:42 Nicole Hodson: Right. Most of our members, even younger people, are coming from another career.

0:01:50 Roland Pankewich: Interesting.

0:01:51 Nicole Hodson: And I think we find it the same way. I found it the same way a lot of our members of the board of directors found it is, you know, life happens. You don’t feel so great. Maybe somebody you love doesn’t feel so great. You find your way to Whole Foods nutrition. They get better. You get better, and then you start to realize, oh, I want to do this. I want to do this every day. I want to help other people.

0:02:17 Nicole Hodson: And so if you’re in a life where you’re finding your way into nutrition and you’re finding that it’s kind of lighting a fire in you, this is the place to be.

0:02:30 Roland Pankewich: I love that. And what differentiates you from, say, I’m inspired. I’M going to take a weekend course, I’m going to become a health coach or I’m going to become a. I don’t want to insert a name but a quote unquote certified this through this organization. It took me three months. What’s the difference between an NANP program program and something like that?

0:02:49 Nicole Hodson: That is such an important and great question. Cornerstone of the NANP is our relationship with our approved schools. So we have a set of educational standards that have to be met for programs for holistic nutrition education, for natural chef programs, and for certified dietary supplement professionals. If those standards are not met, we won’t approve the program. So if you’re looking for a viable program, this is the place to look. We’ve vetted those programs. If it doesn’t meet the standard, it doesn’t get approved.

0:03:27 Nicole Hodson: And so it’s really important that when you’re looking for a program you understand what it is that you’re finding. There are a lot of fly by night pay to play and you get this certificate. But that doesn’t mean that you have the education that you’re going to need to truly, truly help people. And if you really want to help someone, you want a complete education period.

0:03:55 Roland Pankewich: What is it you look for in a school that maintains that kind of standard? Is it simply the length of the program? Is it the diversity of the information in the course? What are the standards that the NA NP demands?

0:04:06 Nicole Hodson: Yeah, absolutely. So we have 24 credits, semester credits that have to be satisfied for a number of different aspects of nutrition. Everything from pathophysiology to counseling skills to the legalities of practicing. These are all things that people need to understand. Anatomy and physiology, biochemistry. All of the programs have to meet those standards in order to be approved. It’s quite extensive.

0:04:34 Nicole Hodson: The minimum size of a program that we will approve is a little over a thousand hours. Now that’s a thousand educational hours. That doesn’t mean lecture, right? Lecture would be. That’d be a lot of time.

0:04:45 Roland Pankewich: That’d be a lot of time in front of a computer screen.

0:04:48 Nicole Hodson: Yeah, that’d be a lot. That’d be a whole lot. So that includes lecture time, study time, quiz time, writing, paper time, test taking time. All of those are considered educational hours. So each credit equals 45 education.

0:05:04 Roland Pankewich: Okay, and in that are there courses that you would say are emphasizing more on the clinical practice side or the things that are more so industry specific? Like how do you delineate where the scope of a profession can go after they’ve been re educated?

0:05:21 Nicole Hodson: Absolutely. So our Scope of practice is very clear. And by the way, all this information is on our website@nanp.org if you look for our educational standards, it’ll break them down and you can see what’s involved in that. And so when we’re looking for a program, every program is different. Right. So some programs are a little bit more Ayurvedic in nature. Some programs are lean a little toward traditional Chinese medicine.

0:05:49 Nicole Hodson: But if we are finding the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathophysiology, sports medicine, aging medicine, all of the different components that are needed to be able to serve and help a person reach optimal health through nutrition, if we can find those components in the program, then it will get approved regardless of whether it’s teaching, you know, traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurveda or just a standard, you know, approach.

0:06:21 Roland Pankewich: So something you said there is the key. It’s through the lens of nutrition. Right. So this could also be something that say someone was an allopathic physician and they realize that I want a more integrative or functional practice. They have an incredible amount of education behind them, but they may not have any actual schooling and nutrition. Because I think the average physician may get eight to 10 hours in a four year med school and that eight to 10 hours might be open to interpretation of if it’s really valuable or not.

0:06:51 Roland Pankewich: So you’re really bolstering the aspects of learning the art and the science of nutrition and therapeutic food as the focus,

0:07:00 Nicole Hodson: 100%, which I think is actually I

0:07:04 Roland Pankewich: want to accurately represent this. It’s under utilized and the weight of importance in nutrition in modern, even alternative health I think is not as emphasized as it should be.

0:07:17 Nicole Hodson: I agree with you. I completely agree.

0:07:20 Roland Pankewich: We do all these tests, we do all these cool functional tests and I can put together these mechanisms of this organic acid and indicates that this bacteria might be over cool. Person still needs to eat. So what do, what do you give them? And then they’ve tried everything and they don’t know what to do. How do you make life which is so intertwined with food? Yes, how do you emphasize that? Why do you think the industry’s moved away from promoting food is so important for nutrition?

0:07:45 Nicole Hodson: I should say it’s so. It’s so interesting that we’re having this conversation because from our perspective and from our members perspective, we always start with food. Food is the foundation. Because let’s face it, if you have a terrible, terrible diet, but you take a lot of dietary supplements, are those supplements going to work as well as if you have a dynamic, beautiful diet?

0:08:08 Roland Pankewich: It’s like spraying cologne on a body that’s not been showered in a week.

0:08:11 Nicole Hodson: Exactly. Great analogy. I love that.

0:08:14 Roland Pankewich: There you go.

0:08:16 Nicole Hodson: I’m going to use that. If food is not the foundation of what we do, nothing else will work properly. And I agree with you. I think the effects of food on health are grossly underestimated today, especially right now, where we have depletion in soil, we have air quality that isn’t great, the water. Right. So if you have a strong foundation of nutrients, nutrient rich foods that are appropriate for you. Because what might be appropriate for Roland may work entirely against Nicole.

0:08:57 Roland Pankewich: Yes. May actually be bad for you.

0:08:59 Nicole Hodson: May actually be bad for me. And so it’s important that we have the opportunity to meet the client, where they’re at, and to also understand what’s going to work for them specifically versus some, you know, work will just apply a general diet.

0:09:16 Roland Pankewich: Yeah. And that’s the true art of the client practice side of it. When you’re counseling with someone. I remember when I was young, everything was idealistic. Come up with this great plan, and the research says it should be this. And in my head, this should be the way it is. And the person goes, I don’t want to do this. You have to learn the ins and outs of actually connecting with someone and understanding them. Which is a lost art nowadays when it comes to health practice.

0:09:43 Nicole Hodson: Yes.

0:09:43 Roland Pankewich: Because we’ve been conditioned. You go to the office, you had a quick assessment. Okay, here’s what you do. Go away. And the person doesn’t get better or not to the degree that they could.

0:09:51 Nicole Hodson: Yes. And that’s why I think the holistic approach is so important, because we do spend time, you know, you go to your doctor, you spend five, ten minutes with them at most. Right. I mean, they’re in, they’re out. The insurance demands that they don’t spend a lot of time with you. When you meet with a nutrition professional, they’re sitting down for at least an hour with, with you and, and they’re talking with you, they’re looking you in the eye, they’re getting an assessment of your community status, your emotional status.

0:10:22 Nicole Hodson: They understand your spirituality. They’re looking at the whole person. It’s not just, what do you eat? Tell me what you eat, right? Tell me about your environment, tell me about your sleep. Do you exercise?

0:10:34 Roland Pankewich: How do you eat?

0:10:35 Nicole Hodson: How do you.

0:10:36 Roland Pankewich: Do you watch horrible YouTube videos as

0:10:38 Nicole Hodson: you’re stressed out while you’re trying to enjoy a beautiful meal? Or, you know, are you eating in the car, fast food on your Way someplace else. Right? Yeah.

0:10:49 Roland Pankewich: That’s such a wise. And those simple things are really what moves the needle for people.

0:10:53 Nicole Hodson: Absolutely.

0:10:53 Roland Pankewich: It’s the food choice is just the percentage of the shift.

0:10:56 Nicole Hodson: Absolutely.

0:10:58 Roland Pankewich: So let’s say that someone is listening to this and they’re saying, you know what I’ve wanted to be do this. This is helping me understand the scope of what I may be getting into. Can you set some expectations of what new graduates or people who are getting into this field, what can they expect from the programs that they choose, from the process of getting into practice? What are some obstacles, some challenges, things that you’ve seen because you’ve been at this, what, 17 years on the board.

0:11:26 Nicole Hodson: My 19th year at NANP. Next year I hit 20 years at NANP.

0:11:30 Roland Pankewich: So you’ve seen a thing.

0:11:31 Nicole Hodson: I’ve seen a couple of things here. You know what I would say is first of all, choose your program carefully and make sure that you’re selecting a program that not only resonates with you philosophically, but that also provides you with the kind of support that you as an individual need. I’m a self starter. I did an online program. I met with my mentor once a month. Worked out perfectly for me. Some people need a little bit more support.

0:11:57 Nicole Hodson: So make sure that you interview your school very, very carefully and you go with something that’s perfect for you once you graduate. Have an understanding of what is it that you want to do. Not everybody wants to go into clinical practice. Okay.

0:12:13 Roland Pankewich: It’s not for everyone. I will say that.

0:12:15 Nicole Hodson: It’s not for everyone. I will say to you I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t for me. Look at what you’ve done in the past. If there is an opportunity to meld your skills from another career, maybe that’s something perfect for you. Maybe that’s what you want to do. So kind of have a, have an understanding of what is it that you want to do with your career in nutrition and how you want to help people and, and pursue that.

0:12:45 Nicole Hodson: I absolutely think the community within the industry is critical. The connections that you make with others in the industry will shape how successful you can be. This isn’t something you do by yourself. You’re going to need some support.

0:13:02 Roland Pankewich: There’s an old saying, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. That’s what’s resonating as you say that.

0:13:08 Nicole Hodson: Absolutely. Listen, by ourselves, we’re a drop together, we’re an ocean kind of thinking. Right?

0:13:14 Roland Pankewich: Yeah.

0:13:15 Nicole Hodson: Same logic is, is there’s. So there are so many aspects to this industry. Trying to go it alone is just cutting your nose off. Despite your face.

0:13:26 Roland Pankewich: What do you see as some upcoming trends, patterns and evolutions in the industry? Because in the last few years, and there’s a part of me that’s happy about this, people have gotten more into health because health has become popular, but because it’s become popular, it had to in order for people to become aware of it. I wish that people would make place more priority on health regardless of how vogue it may be in society. But what do you think are the upcoming trends, insights and patterns that people should look for?

0:13:56 Roland Pankewich: Those are practicing, those who want to get into it, or those who just wanted to take the health more seriously?

0:14:00 Nicole Hodson: Yeah. I’m going to say something that’s probably not terribly popular, but I have to say I have a responsibility. Beware the social media influencer.

0:14:11 Roland Pankewich: Oh, I think that’s what I mean. Yes, yes.

0:14:14 Nicole Hodson: Beware.

0:14:14 Roland Pankewich: Yes.

0:14:15 Nicole Hodson: Many times they have no credentials. They don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about. So I would say be careful there. I think trend wise, I’m kind of happy that, that people are waking up to the benefits of a strong diet. I think what to be careful of are things that are just trendy. Again, it’s so critical to talk with a professional who understands biochemical individuality and who can recommend a diet that’s right for you.

0:14:51 Nicole Hodson: Trying to go with a trend can sometimes be dangerous. And I’ll give you an example. Ketogenic diet was very popular, so it probably still is in some subculture. Yeah. But if you have problems digesting fat and you’re eating mostly fat, what do you think that’s going to do to your body?

0:15:12 Roland Pankewich: I have a little bit of a crude example I use about relating bowel habits to a Japanese bullet train.

0:15:19 Nicole Hodson: Right. And it can actually be dangerous if you have gallbladder issues. For goodness sakes, please don’t do a ketogenic diet. So I think be cautious of trends, being cautious of people who maybe don’t have the credentials that you’re looking for. I always recommend that folks look for a professional who’s board certified in holistic nutrition. If you’re seeking recommendations on dietary supplements, go to somebody who’s a certified dietary supplement professional.

0:15:48 Nicole Hodson: They’re going to know what they’re talking about. They’re going to get you the right products right away out the gate. You’re not going to waste a bunch of money.

0:15:55 Roland Pankewich: And all of that is in the scope of what the NANP stands for. And if someone and this may be an ignorant question, but if someone has graduated from a program that you’ve proved, what do they have to do to become a member of the nanp? Do they simply apply? Is it a rigorous process?

0:16:10 Nicole Hodson: Or we just need to know that you graduated from one of our approved schools. If you didn’t graduate from one of our approved schools, then we can do an independent education review and make sure you meet our standards to be a professional member. Once you become a professional member, you qualify to sit for our board exam. And right now we have a little over 400 people who are board certified. I’m very proud of that.

0:16:33 Roland Pankewich: And what does the NANP do for their members in terms of resources, support continuing ed? I know I could probably go on for an hour about that, but maybe like the things that you think are

0:16:43 Nicole Hodson: most valuable, we have a beautiful career preparedness program that is so chalk filled full of resources. Just last month I did an hour long interactive workshop on how to write an effective resume for the nutrition industry. We have, I mean, we have so many resources, it was kind of silly. We have continuing education courses, everything from one unit to, you know, 40 units that you can get. We have discounts available.

0:17:15 Nicole Hodson: Members get discounts to come to our conference, discounts with our vendors. We have, you know, so many different ways certifications, which we’ve already talked about. So many different ways that we provide support, career center, you name it, we’ve got it.

0:17:32 Roland Pankewich: It’s very well rounded. Where can people go to find out more? Is it simply the website? Is there a lot of social media presence? Do you guys have any ongoing webinars, lectures for students or clients?

0:17:46 Nicole Hodson: Absolutely. So we do. Once a month we do our Scoop masterclass, which for our professional members is also worth credit for continuing education. And yes, I would say go to our website, nanp.org there’s so much information there. You know what, set 10 minutes aside, get a cup of tea, sit down and just spend a few minutes looking around and seeing what’s available. There’s so much information.

0:18:16 Roland Pankewich: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for giving us a crash course on this because most of the time we’re talking about topics in health and we’ve never done an episode for someone who might actually want to get into this field. And I think there’s a lot to navigate through. Correction. I know there’s a lot to navigate through. When I was thinking about going back to school, I didn’t know the first place to start and I got wind of the fact that there’s a school in Toronto that is approved by you guys. Institute of Holistic Nutrition. They got me on my way with learning about nutrition and biochemistry and it’s been a life changing catalyst for me. So, you know, I hope this episode resonated with anyone who might be wanting to start a second, a third career or even adding to what it is you do. I think there are a lot of people here who still have their bread and butter job and they help their friends or their family or they have a side business because they’re wanting a little bit more passion in their lives rather than just punching a clock.

0:19:06 Nicole Hodson: Absolutely.

0:19:07 Roland Pankewich: Well, it’s been amazing. Again, hope you guys enjoyed. We’ll see you next time on the following your Gut podcast. Live from Healing.