Compete & Win In The Weight Loss Market

by Matt O'Neill, BSpSc, MSc(Nut&Diet) (Founder of SmartShape.com.au)

Can fitness centres effectively tackle obesity and profit in the weight loss market?Here�s how to take on the challenges and find innovative solutions.

The Australian population spends millions of dollars every day in an attempt to lose weight or get into shape. Despite this, overweight and obesity levels continue to rise and now peak at rates of around 59% for women and 66% for men.

You may feel frustrated with the results the weight loss industry is achieving. This is a broad industry which fitness and recreation businesses are part of. An effective weight management program has been seen as the 'Holy Grail' for many fitness centres. But combining best weight loss treatment practices in physical activity, nutrition, motivation and social support is a big challenge. And one you may have more success tackling indirectly than head on with a stand-alone weight loss program.

Don�t compete head-to-head with weight loss programs
Fitness businesses that help customers lose weight or get into shape compete in a highly saturated, largely unregulated marketplace that notoriously over promises and under delivers. Many products either have little or no scientific evidence of efficacy or are totally unsuited to the individuals buying them.

When potential customers think about losing weight they can purchase products or utilise services as diverse as weight loss books and magazines, self-help and at-home kits, low-fat and diet foods, meal replacements, over-the-counter slimming pills, obesity drugs, exercise equipment, commercial weight loss centres, doctor or dietitian consultations and community support groups. The choices are endless and highly confusing.

To the consumer, most of these options are easier to try than fronting up to a fitness centre or personal trainer to sweat and parade an out-of-shape body in front of strangers. If your club advertises 'weight loss' as a product, you�ll be placing yourself up for comparative shopping against the 'quick-fixes' that seem to win customers again and again.

Integrate nutrition into your personal training
This is the first reason why I believe that fitness businesses should incorporate nutrition and weight management into existing personal training or member packages. Adding value to what you currently offer with nutrition and weight loss resources can still provide a point of difference without going head-to-head with giants like Weight Watchers.

Help your customers stick at fitness
The second reason is because unlike single-sale items like slimming pills, potions, lotions gadgets and gizmos, real success for a fitness business is contingent upon repeat business. Unless of course, you churn though new members as an alternative to keeping customers.

We have to get customers to stick at the habit of regular physical activity and eating well to get results. When they do, they'll come back and maybe bring their friends. This places a clear emphasis on behaviour change and the skills of all staff to provide weight loss information, advice and motivation.

The top three frustrations:
In my seminars and training, I have quizzed fitness professionals on their top three frustrations and rewards experienced when working with clients who want to lose weight or get into shape. This crude written survey of over 300 professionals provides important insight regarding the type of staff training required to get better weight loss results.


Their top three frustrations are:
1. Clients not listening to advice or taking instructions
2. Clients lacking motivation and willpower, and
3. Clients wanting a 'quick fix'

The top three rewards are clients experiencing positive changes in attitude and self-esteem, clients getting results and reaching their goals and clients improving their health and lifestyle.

The number one frustration can be partly explained by a lack of knowledge, resources or confidence in providing simple nutrition advice. After training over 10,000 fitness professionals about nutrition, I've picked up that many feel they shouldn't give nutrition advice. Although prescribing diets is clearly the realm of dieticians nothing should stop fitness professionals selling general healthy eating concepts to customers.

Make advise simple, but effective
Food industry market researcher, Liz Dangar recommends, "whatever advice people receive the guiding rules are 'keep it simple', make it interesting, be positive and practical." Promoting these principles throughout your organisation will make an immediate impact. Keeping advice uniform among staff will also minimise the dietary confusion that can mentally constipate consumers and prevent them making positive changes.

The second frustration that clients lack motivation or willpower is a common but incorrect initial reaction to client failure. A young, fit highly motivated personal trainer may not have the necessary knowledge, skills and life experiences to understand why clients fail to adopt healthy eating and exercise habits.

Learn from the gurus
There is a lot to learn from motivational gurus in this area, as they are very talented at getting people to make lifestyle changes and most of their claims are grounded in good behavioural research.

For example, hypnotist and speaker Paul McKenna states in his new book Change Your Life in 7 Days that "the key programs of human behaviour are habit and imagination, and they are far more powerful than logic and willpower."

Learning the process of habit changing and how to develop positive thinking in clients would directly address the most concerning frustrations of fitness professionals working towards weight loss.

Seeing clients improve their attitude and self-esteem were the top professional rewards in my survey. Perhaps skill development in this area would make staff more empowered and motivated to get results for more members.

Weight loss by stealth

"The Challenge has given me a great kick-start to train for a fun run!" ... "Achieved 32 laps of the pool, now going for 40." and "Did I say rest day. I couldn't resist training!"

These are just three participant comments we systematically elicited from eighty people in a physical activity challenge. Over 90% of participants returned record forms each week, perhaps because they had a weekly chance of winning a pair of $160 sports shoes. It may have also been due to social pressure of the team competition, or perhaps the holiday for best overall effort.

We all love winning a free prize. Challenges and incentives can provide strong external motivation to start and stick to a fitness program, until an individual's internal motivation kicks in.

Incorporating nutrition and weight loss advice into challenge events may be a more realistic and cost-effective approach that achieves indirectly what you could attempt by offering a stand alone weight loss program. Participant comments on their successes can also provide staff with a morale boost when they see their work delivering results.

Keep customers whether they lose weight or not
What is your strategy when a member doesn't reach their weight loss goal and wants to leave to try a competitor? The likely personal blame on willpower means they may not give you any warning they are going. Calling lapsed members in an attempt to get them back can amplify their feelings of failure.

To combat this, establish an early warning system that triggers extra coaching for members at risk of dropout. Members with weight loss goals only are at highest risk because if they don't lose all the weight they want there may be nothing to keep them as your customer.

Results from Psychology Today's still relevant 1997 Body Image Survey emphasise this point. Of the 4,500 respondents, more than 60% of women and 40% of men indicated that at least half of their workout time is spent exercising to control their weight. And for 18% of women and 12% of men, all exercise was aimed at weight control. While around 80% of these people were dissatisfied with their appearance, only a third among those who exercised for weight control 25% of the time were dissatisfied with their appearance.

Increasing the percentage of exercise benefits related to wellbeing and not weight loss stacks the odds for adherence and helps you keep customers even when they can't drop kilos.

Ideas for action
While we try to come up with solutions to the national obesity problem, here are a few suggestions whereby you can provide a better weight loss service for your customers.

- Survey your staff on their rewards and frustrations and ask them how as a business you can reduce the negatives, increase the positives and integrate a weight loss solution into their current work.
- Invest in training that develops skills in behaviour change and empowers staff to help more clients stick to their programmes.
- Hold a challenge and incentivise activity to provide external motivation while your customers' internal motivation and enjoyment of regular physical activity is still building.
- Ask your members to tell you about their successes, highlight great efforts and report these back to members and all staff to show what a great job everyone is doing.
- Establish alternative health and wellbeing goals such as mood and energy levels for each new member. Measure and monitor these along with weight or body measurements to increase the odds of success.

Matt O'Neill provides instant resources and training on nutrition, weight loss and fitness challenges for fitness businesses at www.SmartShape.com.au

Matt has been a member Australia�s National Health and Medical Research Council Overweight & Obesity Working Party, the Weight Loss Industry Code Administration Council and Nutritionist for the Australian Consumers� Association. In 2000 he was awarded the Australian Fitness Network�s Presenter of the Year and Author of the Year in 2005.