How I studied for the ACLM Lifestyle Medicine board exam (and passed!).
I had a lot of questions heading into my lifestyle medicine board exam. Being generally familiar with how board exams work (this was my third), I was surprised when I struggled to find answers to my questions online. I thought my experience might be helpful for others to have access to.
A bit of background info: I am a Physician Assistant who worked for about 5 years divided between family medicine and urgent care. During that time, I found I was really interested in helping my patients with preventative medicine and creating lasting health change. I decided to get a health coaching certification in 2022, and shortly after realized the lifestyle medicine certification was my next goal.
I actually took my National Board Certification for Health Coaching a month almost to the day before taking the Lifestyle Medicine board exam. Super busy way to end a year. Although by the end it felt like a solid accomplishment. ;-)
Overall Exam thoughts:
This exam is very much about details
I read through the review manual from front to back in sections x3
I used different color pen to underline key points each read through
I watched the videos a minimum of 2x
My ACLM exam was December 2, 2023
Here is the breakdown of how I studied:
Note: study times in here are estimates and obviously we learn at different paces - I think I’m a slightly above average speed learner.
Last week of Sept 2023: Signed up for LM board exam and purchased access to the Foundations of Lifestyle medicine Board Review course. Link is on the ACLM website. Waited for the review textbook to arrive. Watched the “Getting started” section of the review course.
1st week of October 2023: began studying in earnest for the Coaching boards. I had read “Changing to Thrive” before October - which I highly recommend to anyone serious about coaching with their patients/clients to achieve goals. This gives a great overview of the Transtheoretical Model of Change and makes coaching in practice much easier. I did not study for the ACLM board until:
Last week of October 2023: first real studying from ACLM review book; Sections 2 and 10.
Read through sections 2 (Fundamentals of Behavior Change), and Section 10 (The Role of Connectedness and Positive Psychology)
Watched videos with the book out - made margin notes on things not in book.
Spent about 8ish hours that week reading through, underlining, and memorizing sections.
Much of this was review for me, so I would give yourself more than a week/8hrs if possible if this is new information.
First week of Nov: My health coaching exam was Nov 6. I spent the first 4d doing a coaching review and then took the day before the exam off. I did not study for ACLM exam on the 6th or 7th and then jumped into LM materials again.
By this time, I had reasonably well reviewed Sections 1, 2, and 10. I also was familiar with topics from Sections 9 and 7 from medical experience and coaching.
For the rest of November, I divided the remaining sections by the weeks remaining. I think I spend about 10-20 hours/week prior to Thanksgiving, and more than that during the last full week (so starting the Friday after Thanksgiving, I think I probably studied 8-10hr+/day Friday-Sunday after Thanksgiving).
I, as rule, never study the day before a big exam, so I did not study Dec 1.
My schedule looked like this:
Nov 8-12: Section 3, Section 7 and Section 9. I reviewed all reading, videos and did quizzes until I passed reviewing the book if I didn’t pass the first time. My process looked the same for each section: read chapter, watch video while taking notes, read chapter with notes again, take quiz. Review as needed.
Nov 13-19: Section 4 and 5 - very heavy on Section 5. I needed a lot of work here and spent easily 15-20hrs this week on this. A lot of the specifics of nutrition were new to me and they ask specific questions on the exam.
It is well worth spending time on Section 5, although not completely at the expense of the other sections.
Nov 20-22: Section 6 and 8 with the same process as above.
Nov 24-30: Review, I read through each section a final time and watched the videos quickly. Every time I watched a video, I had my book out reading along.
I also intermittently read through the journal articles - these I did make flashcards with in the last week and I would recommend doing that - in hindsight, I might have spent a bit more time on the journal articles, but I did well on my exam so it worked out.
My pearls:
DON’T skip the psychology stuff.
Don’t skip the nutrition specifics.
Think about where you might need to do a calculation or two (METs for example).
Re-read the manual as many times as you can
I was glad I spent more time re-reading, less time flashcarding
Start studying in Sept/Oct if possible
How many hours did I study for the lifestyle medicine board exam?
By my best guess I studied about 100+hrs for this exam, however I did feel solid on a few sections prior to really starting to study as noted above.
Thoughts on other study materials:
One of the things I wish I had had access to, and did make some of my own during the process, was more practice questions. I looked at statpearl but they seemed pricey and really challenging. I have looked since and I wouldn’t say they are in line with the difficulty and scope of the actual exam from what I recall…stat pearls is much more challenging in my opinion.
I decided to make a bank of questions for extra practice. If you are interested in extra quiz practice, check out the 50 question practice exam I created here.
The Lifestyle Medicine Board exam is not easy for sure but it was in line with what I expected based on taking other board exams.
Hopefully some of this information is helpful!
Good luck!