Is the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) Worth It?

Melissa, integrative nutrition health coach & founder, Four Wellness Co. // Four Wellness Co. For Health Coaches // Business resources for health coaches and wellness professionals

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I trained to become a health coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN), the world’s largest nutrition school, and a leader in health coach training and certification.

IIN gets mentioned here on our website a fair amount, because:

Four Wellness Co. is quite literally structured around the four pillars of “primary foods” we speak of in integrative nutrition—those key things that keep us healthy in addition to the food we eat: physical activity, relationships, career and spirituality.
I share a lot of resources for starting and growing an online health coaching business, and one of the first steps of doing that is to get trained and certified as a health coach!

Here in our health coach resources, I also have a link where prospective students can ask me questions about the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and my experience there. I’ve chatted with quite a few aspiring health coaches regarding IIN, what to expect from it, how to prepare for it, and whether or not it’s the best fit for their particular health coaching needs and career goals.

One of the themes that comes up a lot in these conversations is: Is the Institute for Integrative Nutrition worth it? Is it a good health coach training and certification program? I’ve heard some negative reviews of IIN.

I, too, have heard from some IIN grads that they regret it. That the program is a scam. That they didn’t learn anything they didn’t already know, that it wasn’t worth it, and that it didn’t set them up for a successful business as a health coach.

Here’s my honest assessment of whether (or not) IIN is helpful for becoming a professional health coach, if it’s worth the investment, and if there are certain cases it’s not a good fit for launching your own health coaching career.

Is the Institute for Integrative Nutrition worth it?

It’s tough to give a simple answer to the question “Is IIN worth it?” because that requires knowing what you specifically are intending to get out of your training and experience there.

There’s also no one, clear-cut answer to whether IIN is beneficial for starting a health coaching business—it really depends on your personality, your learning and work style, your health coaching career goals, and how you intend to use your health coaching certification.

With that in mind, here are some tips for assessing whether IIN is worth it for you and your particular health coaching career goals:

Know your health coaching goals + career path

You don’t have to have it all figured out at the beginning, but you should have a general sense: Why do you want to become a health coach? What are your health coaching career goals?

Do you want to own your own health coaching business and work for yourself, finding your own clients and choosing who you take on and what your schedule looks like? Or, do you envision working in a doctor’s office or other clinical setting, as part of a healthcare team?

If you work for yourself, on your own terms, you don’t legally need a health coaching certification—though it can certainly be useful for credibility when you’re trying to attract and book new clients.

However, if you’d like to work in a healthcare setting, you’ll likely need some form of formal training and certification to practice as a health coach. It’d be best to check with any local clinics or organizations you’re interested in working with to learn about their requirements in this area, and if IIN’s certification would suffice.

Explore IIN's health coach certification →

Understand the barriers to health coaching success

Here’s the reality of starting your own health coaching business:

It’s hard.
It’s challenging.
It’s really tough.

Haha, not kidding (it is really hard), but there’s more to it. Here are some of the things to know about starting a health coaching business:

→ You absolutely must practice and grow confidence in your craft. Feeling comfortable and valuable as a health coach doesn’t just happen overnight or upon graduation from IIN. Even if you’d consider yourself “confident” in other areas of your life, you’ll likely need to specifically work to become confident in your professional health coaching services—there’s a lot that goes into it other than just knowing about health and wellness.

→ If you’re not confident in your health coaching services, you will loathe to promote them. If you loathe to promote them, you will not promote them as much (or as enthusiastically) as you should. And you will struggle to find and book clients.

→ It’s very challenging to grow a health coaching business as a side hustle, while working full-time elsewhere. People do it, it’s possible, but you need to be at a place in your life that you reasonably have the mental energy needed to take on this new endeavor. Personally, I did my health coach training on the side while working full-time as a healthcare marketing manager. But I quit my job before starting to build my business.

→ IIN is not going to set up your business for you. It seems their business resources have perhaps expanded since I was a student there, but I still wouldn’t count on them to have all the business strategy and answers. Expect to set up your business yourself. Expect to learn some business lessons the hard way.

→ Nobody buys $2,000 coaching packages from someone they’ve never met and never interacted with before. Expect that most of your work as a health coach, especially at the beginning of growing your health coaching business, will be to create and share free content. Writing blog posts, creating free workout videos, hosting a Facebook wellness challenge. This is a necessary part of building rapport and credibility as a new coach.

→ It’s really hard to book premium clients (those who will spend thousands on your health coaching packages). They exist, they’re out there, but they’re not everybody, and their road to purchasing a health coaching package from you can be a long one. I think a lot of health coaches set ourselves up for failure by starting out too big and expecting too much—listing our premium services on our website and expecting people to book them immediately. Expect that growing a successful health coaching business will likely be a long process, and there are no guarantees.

I can’t tell you how many coaches I’ve met who are so disappointed that, straight out of IIN graduation, nobody is lining up to work with them.

I think there’s sometimes confusion among IIN students that you get trained, get your certificate, and the rest is a piece of (gluten-free) cake.

But the certificate is the easy part. Building a functioning and viable health coaching business is the hard part, and it’s important to know that going into it all. (I think it’s important to know why it’s hard, so you know if you’re up to taking on that challenge.)

Take ownership of your health coach training + career

There are definitely some critiques of IIN as a training program for health coaches (and I’ll elaborate on that more below!), but I often see IIN grads complaining about how useless the program was for them when, from what I can tell, they’re not holding up their end of the deal:

They didn’t do all the work in the program.
They weren’t willing to invest in a professional website, so their online presence was pretty meh.
They didn’t offer valuable free content to build relationships and rapport, and simply expected clients to pay the big bucks anyway.
They expected health coaching success to come quickly and became disillusioned when it did not.
They weren’t interested in doing the back-end work to optimize and professionalize their health coaching practice.
They thought they would be getting a more comprehensive nutrition/health training… a cheaper version of medical school.
They were more likely to blame IIN for their health coaching business failing than to look inward at what they could improve in their business operations to attract more clients, or expand their value as a health coach, etc.

Not to bash anyone here, but I’ve come across some health coaches who seem to feel pretty entitled to health coaching success.

But the reality is: a certificate from IIN does not entitle or guarantee anyone health coaching clients.

You can be very successful as a health and wellness coach. But it’s not guaranteed by any means, and you most certainly have to take the lead and work for it.

How IIN relates to health coaching success

Here’s the thing: Some IIN graduates go on to establish very successful wellness businesses. Some go on to be moderately successful health coaches. And some never get their business off the ground.

All of these people received the same health coach training and certification, so what’s the difference? What they personally do with it.

The biggest piece of advice I have on this question about “Is IIN worth it?” is to reframe the question to: “Can I make IIN worth it?”

You can go through the program and end up doing nothing with it. Or, you can go through the program and build a successful and fulfilling health coaching practice (or other wellness business). The difference between those two end results is what you do with the training. How much initiative you take in building and growing your business. How much you work to solve your business problems and turn them into opportunities.

So, I find that IIN itself doesn’t impact health coaching success as much as the mindset and work ethic of the individual health coach.

Understand the limitations of IIN

Just like anything, there are definitely some limitations to what you’ll get from IIN’s health coach training.

I don’t think most IIN graduates are fully prepared for the reality of starting and growing their own health coaching business. (I know I wasn’t!)

Starting a business is a lot of work, it’s incredibly hard and confusing (sorry, just being honest!). And, having started multiple businesses myself, I can say that starting a business in the wellness industry is the toughest of them all—there’s just more to be on top of regarding legal and ethical requirements when you’re dealing with someone’s health.

Here are some of the critiques I have of IIN & its limitations to be aware of:

I don’t think IIN’s marketing materials give an accurate depiction of what prospective health coaches should expect from yourself in and after the program. The program is a starting place, but students should definitely expect to do the hard part of building a health coaching business themselves.
It’s pretty easy to not do the “homework” of practicing your real, live health coaching sessions. This is an absolutely essential part of becoming a successful health coach, and I think IIN could emphasize this aspect of the training more. Skimping on the hands-on practice is one of the biggest issues I see in health coaches not feeling confident when they graduate… and then not ever fully promoting or growing their business.
IIN is not medical school. Don’t expect to learn all the details of the human body and all possible ailments it could have and the best natural remedies. I think some people enroll in IIN thinking it’s more than it actually is.
IIN is also not business school. I didn’t find the business resources to be that useful. They were primarily focused on in-person coaching, but didn’t help much with setting up or running an online health coaching practice. IIN has updated their business content since I was a student, so I’d assume there’s more online content now. But, they’re a nutrition school, not a business school, so I’d expect to supplement your business education elsewhere.

So, I can answer for myself:

Did I do all the homework as an IIN student? Mostly. 😁

Am I currently a practicing health coach? No.

Do I use my IIN training in my current job? Yes.

Did IIN provide value in my personal life? Yes.

Did IIN provide value in my professional life? Yes.

Am I glad I attended IIN? Yes.

Was IIN was worth my investment? Yes.

Institute for Integrative Nutrition health coach training + curriculum

All of that said, if you’re interested in exploring whether the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) is right for you in your health coach training and certification, you can grab their curriculum guide, or even take a sample class!