[mouse120]

What type of training do the consultants at the center go through? Do they have particular college degrees, etc? What's their background?

I'm just wondering about the people I'm taking all this advice from. Not saying I disagree with anything they've said or anything!

[GoalAug2010]

That's an excellent question, I've been trying to pry an answer out of several people. At the beginning, I had a consultant who had a nutrition degree, which was great, I trusted what she said a bit more even though she was fresh out of college and it was her first job, but... as you'd imagine, she was 'promoted' to run a different center i think.

From what I can tell about the rest, they hire based on willingness to learn, sell, and people skills, not any particular background. One that I see often used to work for a vitamin manufacturer (sales) and another used to work as a bank teller. I would imagine they go through basic on the job training and given the lack of sophistication in the marketing materials MRC provides them to explain things to us (ie the flip boards, the brochures, the class hand outs), I doubt the materials they use to train their own employees are a) thorough and b) includes scientific data.

Example, I did the hormone testing for $200 a while back after several of them said i should because my losses didn't make much sense. So frustrated during a plateau, I did it and when they walked me through the results, it sounded like a very shallow understanding of the hormones without any background of how they work together and the answer to a lot of it was 'our cream will help with that'.

So, overall, I hate to say it but I don't trust or take advice from them regarding my overall health or something that I would expect a person be trained on before they speak. I DO however trust their anecdotal information like "lots of people I talk to find that.." because they do talk to an awful lot of us every day, so I would imagine it's easy to see some patterns and get ideas.

Hope that helps. I think it's a bit hit or miss, you may find some have nutrition degrees but most don't.

[msjjb]

I agree with the above. It seems that at our center the girls who work there are former clients and the program worked for them....they needed a job...you know the story.
I have a friend who joined before me, and is also going to nursing school so she's very interested in exactly how the corisol and hormonal therapy worked. She wanted a scientific explanation and was frustrated that no one was able to give her detailed information.
But they have all been very helpful and knowledgable about general information.

[Hvnlymzic]

I have a friend who was a former client that worked for my center for a while. She said there were training sessions just like with any job but that it is a very shallow ammount of training and that most of what she knew, she learned from being on program. My first time on plan, I was offered a job as well by the district manager...so I think they go for former clients because really, who wants to weigh in with a little bitty girl who you just know could eat in one day what we eat in a week and not gain even in her pinky finger.

Out of the the women working at my center, I know more than half of them have a nutrition/dietician degree of some kind. One is a former client and one is new...i know zero about her...she didn't even introduce herself :|

I have had some consultants that I really felt like I knew more about being on plan than they did, and some of them are gold mines of helpful info. Mostly I think that if I wanted to be at a place where I was getting pure scientific info I would have sought a referral from my doctor to see a nutritionist and gone that route. I knew this program worked from friends and family who had been successful, so I chose this road. I haven't been disappointed, but I didn't expect scientific excellence either.