health/Exercise Offers

I doubt that making exercise videos and telling people to
lay off the pancakes requires certification.

But if whatever you are doing is regulated, then you need
to research that and ensure you are in compliance and
that you use appropriate disclaimers.

Disclaimers are statements such as "I am not a licensed
physician," "I am not a registered dietician," "This advice
is opinion only."

You might want to consult an attorney.

Someone who doesn't have credentials does not represent themselves as credentialed.

You can have knowledge and experience without certificates.

And there are ways of doing it that do not require certificates.

For instance, if you are a man who weighs 250lbs, want to weigh 200 and all of that be muscles, well, if you got yourself to lose the weight and gain the muscle, you could talk all day long about how you did it and promote all the products you used to do it.

You could present yourself as a person who's studied and researched the pants off of xyz topic on your own and based on your studies, you think that a product is a great one.

The "trick" is to let people know accurately where you're coming from, so they can decide on their own how much weight they can put on your words.

If you go talking about things that most people accept only from someone with a degree in medicine, you'll probably have a harder time establishing yourself as a reliable source without the required degrees.

Your credentials don't matter. What matters is that you have a compelling story, a great offer, and you are being seen by people who are highly likely to be interested in your offer.

What credentials did Charles Atlas have? A great build, and a great story.

The only way you can get in trouble...is if you claim credentials you don't have.

All good advice here and true. You don't need to be credentialed in order to offer clear, good, true, helpful offers & advice.

From the other side of the fence - I just retired last month from a long career - 17 years - as Fitness Director/Instructor at our local medium-sized YMCA facility. In addition to administrative responsibilities, I was also teaching 9-12 group classes per week - Dance Fitness, Zumba, Step Aerobics, Spin, HIIT, TRX, and Strength Training. My certs over the years included IFA, NASM, and specialized as needed for offered classes in order to use their branding i.e. fad stuff.

Over the years I met many wonderful people and was honored to help them along their fitness journeys. I gained many friends and built a good following. Once in awhile I would give out printed handouts of interesting fitness articles and we would discuss them in class. Folks would often come to me with fitness & nutrition questions and concerns. If I didn't have an answer then I would research and find it for them.

About 5 years ago, I began to see a change - people weren't asking questions as often as before and seemed overall less concerned about their fitness than before. The handouts & discussions were becoming less popular. More & more, whenever I would answer a question or concern, the person would say something like "But I read online that bla, bla, bla....". and then I began to realize the problem.

The internet is a double-edged sword. Offers & information both good & bad abound at every turn and the sheer volume of it is mind-boggling. But the thing is that all of this freely instant & available information makes everybody an expert on everything. All folks now have access to information which was formerly available mostly to academics & students. There are fewer and fewer true professionals and those who remain have far less respect. Certifications these days mean little to nothing. Ditto college degree(s) unless in a highly specialized field. These things serve mostly now to help prevent or slow down potential litigation.

So I began to get discouraged because of all of this and decided that it was time to move in a different direction. Thank goodness my wife has been supportive.

This probably has little bearing on your original question but thanks for reading. Felt good to type it out.....

So by all means, if you have good fitness offers & advice then please add it to the big pool .

I think most people add disclaimer for that, they are not certified but they are experienced

I work almost exclusively in the health/fitness/nutrtion space and I agree with a lot of what has been said previously. A big part of my business is creating daily workouts and the other is creating meal plans tailored to users needs.

I'm neither a certified personal trainer or a registered dietician, although I'd say I'm knowledgeable about diet and exercise. I "get around" creating workout programs and meal plans by doing things like these.

1. I'm not the focus of the business. I don't make any claims about myself. In fact, I would guess 99% of users don't even know who I am.

2. The claims that I do make, for example, "daily workout created by a personal trainer," or "nutrition plans tailored to your goals" are true. I contract personal trainers that create our workouts on a rotating schedule based on our program. For nutrition, the user inputs their goals (such as weight loss, weight gain, intake target of carbs or protein, or their caloric goal, etc) and info (age, weight, lifestyle, etc) and our system identifies their caloric needs based on their input as recommended by the government. From there the system creates a meal plan or they can do it manually.

3. In terms of the nutrition information we provide with our recipes and meal plans, I contract a registered dietician who reviews every recipe and adds her thoughts on it, then tags it as appropriate (low fat, vegan, high protein, etc). We market recipes as "dietician approved and/or reviewed".

To me it's a bit of whether you're working IN your business or ON your business. I prefer to put processes in place so that I can focus my attention on marketing while the product that's produced is likely significantly better than I could do myself, which is only possible by leaning on certified professionals and utilizing their abilities.

Just my opinion, but this space is highly competitive so unless you have a captivating story to tell (like how you lost 150 lbs or something), have a VERY unique product, or are an influencer with a large following, competing without any credentials will be very, very difficult.

Health/fitness/nootrishn is such a highly competitive space.

At one enda the scale, you gaht a zillion guroos of all kindsa persuasions, rollin' out their wares on persona an' story.

Flip more exactin', you gaht qualified expoits maxin' expertise an' high level insurance to be certain YOU AIN'T GONNA DIR OR BE POISONED OR LOSE NO LIMBS.

That is why it much easiah to sell pet products, or hooman products you kinda jus' USE, than anythin' involvin' ingestion or persnl growth.

General Information: If you decide to share workouts and dietary tips, frame them as general information rather than personalized advice. This helps mitigate legal risks. Use disclaimers stating that individuals should consult a healthcare professional before starting any new fitness or dietary program.
Focus on Education: Instead of offering specific plans, consider creating content that educates your audience about health, fitness principles, and nutrition basics. This can include blog posts, articles, or resources on your website, like mercymentalhealth.