Slimming Consultants' Course (Diploma) by home study

This course will enable you to become a well informed Professional Advisor able to help and support individual slimmers with real expertise. It is entirely distance learning and successful completion will result in the award of the Plaskett International College Diploma in Slimming Consultancy.

Aim of the course
This course will provide you with a detailed, systematic and scientifically-based training to help and support slimmers. If you want to do this work and to do it really well, this is the course for you. You will be trained to:

Provide individual slimmers with programmes best suited to their needs, making informed choices from a wide span of options.
Counsel slimmers mainly on a one-to-one basis.
Avoid the use of rigidly fixed methods, the same for all comers.
see your clients through every stage of the process, thereby maximising their chances of success.
Why is our training so much better? The main points of difference are:

Our consultants offer one-to-one sessions, rather than group sessions, since the latter do not favour the resolution of individual circumstances and problems.
A wide range of working methods is given in the training. Adjustment of the programmes to meet individual priorities and needs leads to programmes being more acceptable to slimmers.
Flexibility should mean higher success rates and more satisfied clients. That should mean more recommendations to your business.
Slimming is put into perspective with the factors that make it so important, including the medical consequences of overweight.
The course is fuller (in information provided and study time) than anything else we know in the field, giving you genuine expertise in the necessary techniques and the basis for building your confidence.
The training will not be mainly a preparation for selling proprietary products, as is often the case.
Your high level of knowledge as a successful student of this College tends to bring added respect as your work gets known.

The practitioner will work with diets and also with those nutrients and herbs that have shown up positive in the literature of weight-loss investigations and trials. This added dimension eases the clients burden of unrelieved dieting.
We teach how best to use exercise programmes where these will be acceptable.
The course includes relevant aspects of the psychology of slimming.
Quite unlike most other training, this course gives you key information for looking after your clients' health positively while slimming is being undertaken. Many slimming programmes out there neglect to protect health and a few are potentially rather dangerous. In your case your expertise and knowledge will provide the safety factor and also the ability to guard and protect health while slimming. In fact, health should often improve markedly on the programmes that we teach. This is a vital difference.
Will the business prospects be good?

Yes, we certainly think so, taking into account the huge interest in slimming expressed by the vast market for slimming products. Success will, of course, require some business ability in running and promoting your practice. If you can obtain, say, just 20 x 30-minute client sessions per week and charge, say, only 25, that would add up to 24,000 per annum for a 10 hour week plus admin time, in 48 weeks of the year. At 30 sessions per week this increases to 36,000. At 40 sessions per week it makes 48,000. Even this does not take into account the earnings from the sale of products. The trade margin on the herbs and nutrients could well add up to another 10,000 in a busy practice. Of course we do not know how many clients you will attract, so no guarantees are possible. It is up to you. You need initiative and enterprise. If we were to let our imagination loose, then very high earnings are perhaps possible.

Note that after taking the course you are not beholden to anyone else, certainly not one of the large national or international companies. In some other systems, you have to pay a high proportion of your earnings to a franchiser and work as they tell you. Not with this course. You can be independent and keep all that you earn: a vastly important business advantage.

How is the Training Structured?
You can join the course whenever you like. On enrolling you will receive a complete pack of distance learning materials. You work at these in the set sequence. There are 13 sections, including one that gives you the basic nutritional information to enable you to get started.

You do not have to worry about having any set level of knowledge before starting. We give you what you need. Where appropriate the sections include one or more self-assessments (check points), which do not have to be submitted to the College. There are three formal assessments to be sent in, at various points through the course and one major one at the end. There is no attended examination and the assignments are to be done at home. The college Diploma is awarded upon successful completion of all the coursework and the assignments. Please note that the course must be completed within 12 months from the date of commencement.

Course Syllabus Syllabus Outline Section 1
This teaches the basic science of the bulk nutrients, protein, carbohydrate and fat. These are the suppliers of food energy that decide an individual's fatness or thinness. You will need to understand these so as to manipulate them with skill.

Section 2
This comprises an introduction to the problem of overweight and obesity and comes in subsections called 'Understanding the Field' and 'The Nature of the Problem'. It reviews the known facts, sets out the scope and, through critical appraisal, offers ways to arrive at a definition of optimum or desirable weight.

Section 3
In this section 'The Theory of what Causes Overweight and Obesity' we explore the underlying reasons for the epidemic scale of the problem in developed societies throughout the world. Understand this and you begin to gain an insight into what needs to be done.

Section 4
In the Section 'The Health Consequences of Excess Weight', we look closely at the connection between overweight and ill health and the shortening of life.

Section 5
In the Section, called, 'The principles of correcting excessive weight', we begin to explore the available strategies of weight control, with the emphasis on the wide options that exist for dietary manipulation.

Section 6
This section is about reducing weight through diet, with the emphasis of changing dietary composition for the better, without necessarily reducing the amount of food. The section looks closely at understanding and measuring food energy.

Section 7
This section concentrates upon the value of individual foods as a contribution to a diet and upon selecting from each food class (eg dairy products, fruits, etc) the ones that will make the best contribution to an individual clients diet.

Section 8
Called 'Building your Knowledge of Foods into Individual Diets' this section gets down to the key job of building and structuring a diet to help each particular client.

Section 9
This section takes a first look at managing the consultation and structuring the activity to provide a satisfactory experience for the client and the basis for a good approach to weight reduction. Contains some sample diets.

Section 10
the method of calculating the calories;
the benefits of exercise to suitable clients and
the characteristics of the ketogenic diet.

Section 11
Designing slimming programmes that are not only effective at slimming but also promote good health;
Understanding the drug treatments given for overweight by doctors;
Guidelines for follow-ups after the first consultation.

Section 12
This deals with non-food substances (referred to generically as supplements) that help weight loss, especially by either slowing absorption or by accelerating utilization of the bulk nutrients. These include some micronutrients, herbs, enzyme inhibitors and sequestering agents.

Section 13
This rather substantial last section deals with

A fuller and final part on 'Managing the Consultations'. This further develops your consultation skills and objective setting in slimming practice;
The tricky question of compliance and weight regain and how to avoid it;
'Running your Practice as a Business' to ensure that you have a grasp of the business principles that you will need.

Course Fee £825

Credit & Debit cards accepted.
Please email the college for the details of our bursary offer on this course.