Do you want to start a weight loss clinic but you want to go for a unique niche? If YES, here are 50 best weight loss business ideas & opportunities.
According to the Food Research and Action Center, more than 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese. Breaking down that statistic, 73% of men in the United States are overweight, while 63% of women are struggling with their weight.
This goes to show that a whole lot of people should be losing weight, and industries that would help them achieve this feat are inching their way steadily into profitability.
It is worthy of note that the weight loss industry as a whole was a $64 billion market in 2014. Within the industry, the commercial weight loss services that focused on specific diet plans, meals and support networks, earned $6.3 billion in 2015.
Even with this level of growth, more industry advancement is still expected. This goes to show that the weight loss industry is indeed a big industry and an entrepreneur can decide to help people lose weight as well as make profits at the same time.
If this is you, we have outlined quite a number of weight loss business ideas that would indeed launch you into the industry. Feel free to choose anyone you feel is within your niche and help the population get back to their desired weight.
Best Weight Loss Business ideas
One good way a person can launch into the weight loss industry is to become a personal trainer. A lot of people who have weight issues have found out that they need personalized exercise regime to be able to lose weight. This is where you come in.
Your job is to provide weight loss training that is tailor-made to suit your clients. Note that you may not always have to visit your clients in their homes. You can either create online courses, or you can work out with your client via video call to deliver training no matter where they live.
Personal training isn’t just for those who want to get buff. Many personal trainers work with teens to help them improve their competitiveness in sports, and others work with seniors who want to protect their bones and prevent injury, both common side effects of aging.
Personal fitness trainers earned a median income of $39,210 a year in 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You’ll have to get certified by a reputable fitness organization, then you can develop your personal training service plan. There’s a large risk of injury involved in exercise, so you’ll want to make sure you have the proper insurance coverage as well.
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Become a Health Coach
Health coaching goes beyond fitness. These coaches provide guidance and support to help people lose weight and gain total body health. Exercise and weight control are indeed part of what a health coach does, but it also involves proper nutrition, relaxation, stress control, and overcoming barriers to losing weight.
The median income for health coaches is $45,255 as of 2018, according to PayScale. There’s no requirement for education or certification, but you can increase your marketability by having one or both. A certification in personal fitness or nutrition will give clients confidence that you have the required training to help them.
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Become a weight loss massage therapist
Massage therapy continues to be a profitable field, helping people to manage stress, anxiety, tension, and pain. Today, you can choose to start a massage therapy business that is focused on helping people lose weight. Starting a weight loss massage therapy business would give you a foothold in the industry as this is not yet a very popular niche.
Most states regulate the massage therapy industry, so you’ll want to check your state’s regulations on the requirements. You’ll probably be required to take a course and get a license. You’ll also need to purchase equipment such as a massage table and decide if you’ll see clients in your home or at their homes or workplaces.
Again, check zoning rules if you decide to operate in your home. The median annual salary of massage therapists was $39,990 as of 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but you are free to charge based on the services you offer.
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Sell Health and Wellness Products
Much, if not most, of the income in the health and wellness industry, comes from product sales. This includes foods, such as gluten-free and vegan offerings, as well as vitamins, supplements, and weight loss tools. Getting into this profitable market is easy because so many network marketing and franchise companies offer health and wellness products.
You’ll want to research them first, however, to ensure they meet all government regulations. You might have to meet certain requirements as well if you plan to sell food or items you create because of the potential health hazards inherent in the products.
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Create Weight loss Courses and Info Products
Many people prefer to research and learn at their own pace before investing in products they want to use to lose weight. This can make offering information through a book, home study course, or another type of information product a great way to get started in the weight loss industry. You can also use books and courses to add additional income streams to your service.
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Become a Personal Weight loss Chef
It is an established fact that losing weight has a lot to do with eating right, but a lot of people still struggle with this very essential element. This is why they tend to hire people that would make these meals for them when they are not able to. You can start offering your services as a weight loss chef to people.
To start this business, you must know every meal that nutrition that is helpful to losing weight, and you must know how to plan your client’s diets. But being a personal chef can be an enjoyable home business option if you have a knack for creating healthy food and you can find clients in your area. If not, you have to go to their houses.
You can cook in your client’s homes, or prepare food at your own home then deliver the meals to your clients. You might even consider specializing in certain dishes or catering for groups and events. This type of business will most likely also be regulated by your state’s occupational licensing agency, so you’ll want to do some research before getting started.
Yoga is a good exercise for people who are trying to regulate their weight. If you’re a passionate yogi, who wants to teach others how to do yoga safely and regularly, you could consider training as a yoga teacher. Most yoga teachers work with students in person, via 1:1 or group classes.
This can be tricky for a home-based business unless you happen to have an area of large, free space available to you, but nothing says you can’t teach clients in their homes. You can start with renting out an area for classes, or contracting with a local gym or community center to use their facilities.
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Become a Corporate Wellness Coach
Corporate wellness is a booming niche market. Organisations are trying to make sure that their workers are fit and healthy and so they now contract wellness coaches to come and train their staff. This is an especially good option for aspiring wellness entrepreneurs who are transitioning from a corporate day-job into entrepreneurship.
Companies realize that improving the health of their employees is good for business (fewer sick days, lower stress, happier employees etc) – and they’re ready to invest in workshops, programs and coaching.
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Become a Nutritionist
Like has been said before, nutrition plays a major role in weight loss. So, if you want to set up a business in the weight loss industry, then you can go ahead and become a nutritionist so as to help people plan their meals so they can lose weight.
Although it takes a bit more schooling, becoming a nutritionist is a well-proven path to working in health and wellness. Nutritionists are in-demand at hospitals, wellness centers, gyms, spas, corporations and more. It’s a well-known profession that allows you to work as an employee or entrepreneur.
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Become a Weight loss Herbalist
A lot of people have lost weight by using root, herbs and spices. Herbalists help their patients improve their health using medicinal herbs and foods. You can focus on putting together those medicinal foods and herbs that are good for weight loss and selling them to people in need of them.
This career may require extensive schooling, but if you’re passionate about plants and health, it is a great option. Typically herbalists would work in person with their patients, but it’s also possible to create online courses or write books. Study your clients and know which area would suit you best.
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Diet Meal Delivery
People who are in weight loss programme need to take meals according to the diet charts. However, this demands time and energy which a lot of people do not have. You can help them by delivering diet meal at their doorsteps everyday, or as is demanded.
This business has the potentials of being big in a short time if you know how to market your services and keep with industry laws.
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Become a Weight Loss Coach
Weight Loss is the main motivation for many people to get serious about their health and fitness, so working with clients to lose weight never goes out of style.
From our statistics, we have seen that quite a number of people need to lose weight, so you can make good profits in this industry. There are many certifications you can acquire to help you in the business, from personal training to health coaching to nutrition and more.
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Become a Weight loss Massage Therapist
es, there is such a thing as a weight loss massage therapist. While other businesses do ordinary massage, you can set up your massage parlour to target heavy set people. Massage therapy is a hugely popular route into the wellness industry. Massage therapy complements many other modalities, such as aromatherapy or health coaching, and you can also delve into these areas with time.
Dance is first of all an exercise before you start talking about its entertainment benefits. The dance studio is a self-rewarding and wonderful venture to start.
You can start a dance studio where you target those that aim to lose weight. There are indeed certain dance steps that can help can help them stay in shape, so you can look into these too. However, you must have organization management expertise, business sense, and dance expertise to get success in this venture.
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Organize Weight loss Retreats
Running health and wellness retreats is a huge trend this year, but how about a weight loss retreat? At a retreat, you invite a group of people for a multi-day experience which often includes their accommodation, delicious healthy meals, classes, workshops, treatments, tours, experiences and more.
As a retreat leader, you can choose to run your retreat at a center around the world, giving you the opportunity to travel while you’re working.
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Sell Essential Oils
Essential Oils are hugely popular to support natural health and for massages. You can join a popular essential oil company and sell these oils either as your full business, or as a complement to your other weight loss business. Selling essential oils is especially popular for health and wellness coaches and massage therapists.
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Sell Dietary Supplements
It is also a fact that people who are overweight take more of certain nutrients, and leave others out, so they would benefit immensely from dietary supplements. If there’s a dietary supplement which has personally helped you to achieve your weight loss goals, then you can sell it to others as well.
Each company has their own way of handling this, from a multi-level marketing approach to being a reseller or distributor. You could also partner with a company or scientist to create your own supplement brand.
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Specialize in selling workout clothing
Workout enthusiasts always need new clothing to support their practice – and you could provide it! You can either partner with an existing brand to sell their products, or you could manufacture your own products and sell them.
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Specialize in selling workout paraphernalia
Similar to workout clothing above, there’s always a need for more specialized or better quality gear to support our health and fitness habits. You could choose to sell an existing brand’s product, or you could manufacture and sell your own workout gear.
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Sell Healthy Food Products
From breakfast bars to shakes, chia seeds to teas, wellness enthusiasts, and people who are interested in shedding the excess weight are always looking for new healthy food products. You could either sell an existing product, or manufacture your own.
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Become a Meal Planner
It is a fact that most people are overweight because they are not eating healthy meals. To help reduce this scourge, you can start a business as a meal planner for households so they can start eating healthy. What you will be doing is to use your knowledge of health and nutrition to create menus for groups and individuals who may or may not have specific eating requirements.
You can work for bigger companies, like Weight Watchers, or start your own business. To do the latter, you’ll probably want a website and a decent amount of marketing knowledge to make yourself stand out.
While there is no formal education required to work as a meal planner, you do need to learn as much as you can about food preparation, nutrition, and specialized diets. Because of this, many meal planners study diet and nutrition in two or four-year college programs. You can do so too so as to get an edge in the industry.
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Open a children’s fitness enter
Adults are not the only ones plagued with the issue of obesity. Statistics have it that approximately 21-24% of American children and adolescents are overweight, and another 16-18% is obese. This goes to show that we have a problem on our hands as far as the issue of obesity is concerned.
This is why it is needful to open a children’s fitness center where you can help children exercise so as to lose weight. If you promote your business well, you would start getting mums to bring over their overweight kids to your center. Again, if you get the required training and are able to counsel the kids, you would have a better chance in the industry.
23. Distribute Healthy Cooking Kitchen Products
People who love to cook, often also love healthy cooking gadgets and food products. Do you have a product that can make preparing healthy meals easier, quicker or cheaper? You could sell an existing product or manufacture one of your own
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Open a Wellness center, studio or clinic
Many people in the weight loss industry dream of creating a wellness center, and this dream is very much achievable. You can create a large, professional clinic with numerous professionals, or a cozy natural wellness center with an organic cafe and yoga studio.
When you setup a center, studio or clinic, you have the opportunity to bring in other wellpreneurs to work with you (or to give classes or services in your center.)
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Open a weight loss Spa
The spa industry is well-established and popular. You could create a spa which provided hydrotherapy as well as treatment rooms where other practitioners can provide their clients specialized services that can help them burn fat easily. If your techniques are seen to work well, you won’t find it difficult to get clients for your business.
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Retreat Center
Retreats are becoming more and more popular. If you create a retreat center in a location that you love, you can invite other people in the weight loss industry to run their own retreats at your center. You can prepare the center in such a way that it would support all kinds of weight loss activities.
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Open Juice and Smoothie Bar
one of the most beneficial things recommended for people who want to lose weight is to be taking more juice and smoothies. Juice bars have gone mainstream, although that means there’s more competition for them as well. You could set up a juice and smoothie bar in a physical location, or consider franchising with an existing brand.
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Healthy Restaurant or Cafe
Starting a healthy restaurant is a continually popular idea for people who want to have a stake in the weight loss industry.
Of course, having experience in the restaurant industry will help here, plus you’ll need money up-front to rent your space, fit it out, and get all the food and equipment needed for a restaurant. Though your restaurant would focus on everything healthy.
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Make and sell healthy snacks
A lot of people love to eat snacks, but because they are not much healthy snacks around, or within their reach, they tend to eat whatever they can lay their hands on. There are indeed snacks that not only would not make people put on weight, but they can help people lose weight.
If you know a lot about these snacks and how to make them, you can start up a business making them and supplying to your clients.
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Write Books that can Encourage People in their Weight Loss Journey
If you love to write, and have the expertise to share, you can write and publish your own book. While a single book probably won’t be enough to replace your full-time income, you can write a series of books, or use your book as a lead generation tool to book speaking engagements.
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Create Weight Loss Focused Podcasts
If you love to interview people and don’t mind the sound of your own voice, consider starting a health and wellness podcast that focus on weight loss. While the podcast alone doesn’t generate revenue, once you have an established audience you can sell sponsorships or advertising, recommend affiliate products, or even sell your own products and services through your podcast.
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Media Hub for weight loss
You could create a media site that becomes the ultimate source for a specific type of health information for those struggling to lose weight. With a media site, you might work with other experts as a guest writer to create authoritative content for your site.
Like the other Online business ideas above, your revenue potential starts when you’ve built a big enough audience for your site. Then you can sell advertising or affiliate products, run online courses, workshops or seminars, or branch out into books and other products to expand your online brand.
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Open a Zumba Studio
Zumba is a popular dance workout that is gaining huge popularity across the country. The major reason behind the immense popularity of Zumba is because it is a fun way to workout. You can set up a studio that specializes in offering Zumba classes to interested people, especially those who want to lose weight.
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Weight Loss Clinic
With the increase in awareness of the multiple health risks of being overweight or obese etc. people are trying to achieve a healthy weight.
Venturing into a diet clinic business can provide you with the opportunity to tap from the lucrative weight loss industry. You can set up a weight loss clinic that could cater to all issues relating with obesity as well as how to tackle them.
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Weight Loss/Fitness Consulting
Being fit will never go out of style, and businesses that offer consultative fitness and weight loss services are always thriving.
There are endless options to creating a niche business within this realm. For instance, your company may provide registered dietitians to aid in personalized programs for rapid weight loss, or you can open a private gym offering personal training services.
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Sell Slim belt and waist belt
If weight loss is proving difficult to attain, some “accessories” help individuals to achieve this effect, even if it is temporarily.
Extra belly fat can make one to be self conscious about wearing form-fitting clothes. Slim belts are designed to reduce the circumference of the stomach area by compressing fat cells. This is a temporary solution, but it can be used every day.
Slim belts are common among ladies, as it is gives them the hour-glass shape they often desire. They come in a broad range of different quality, make and material. Selling these slim belts is quite lucrative, thus making it a good venture for a business man or woman to embark on.
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Develop a weight loss Coaching eCourse
If you’re someone who loves the idea of sharing your health and wellness knowledge on a large scale, then maybe you should consider developing a weight loss coaching eCourse. This is a clever idea for someone who is looking for a part-time commitment or an additional source of income alongside their other business.
To get started in this business, you need to look at other online courses or think back to any eCourses you may have taken previously, and critically assess what you liked and disliked about them.
You then have to develop your course structure, learning content and methods of assessment. Decide on an online teaching platform. Udemy, Teachable and Ruzuku are three of the most popular platforms available. You can see which ones would serve you best.
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Write a Book on weight loss strategies
If you are gifted with writing, you could make money from writing and selling books that provide people with different weight loss strategies. Even if you don’t know how to write, you could still employ a ghost writer who would write it for you and then transfer all rights to you.
With a booming weight loss industry, your insight and experience as a weight loss expert is sure to be helpful to the growing number of health coaches, students and wellness enthusiasts, who are looking at ways to increase their own knowledge and education.
A great way to get your knowledge out into the world is by writing a book. To get started, you should put together an outline, or an idea of what you want the book to be about. You can always modify your outline as your book progresses, but it would help you as you start off.
Next, you need to research into what you want to write about. Take your information from quality resources such as scientific articles, books, blogs, vlogs and podcasts written and produced by respectable experts.
You now have to generate your content. If you’ve been writing a health blog for a while, you’ve already made a head start on your content generation, as you can use your blog posts as content for your book. Schedule writing into your week.
Set aside a set amount of time each week to work on your book. Then have your writing critically assessed by someone that will give you honest feedback. This could be an editor, or a family member or friend. Be prepared to take on board their feedback.
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Open a Diabetic Care Center
According to the CDC, 9.4% of all Americans either have diabetes or are prediabetic. And it also a known fact that obesity is a common cause of diabetes.
Opening a diabetic care center can help diabetic patients improve their quality of life by providing nutrition counseling, diagnosis and other medical services. You can also provide preventive help such as teaching healthy eating habits or providing support groups for diabetics.
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Medical Foot Care
A growing population of seniors and diabetics means more need for foot care services. Something as simple as trimming toenails can be impossible for seniors and overweight patients who can’t reach their feet. You can either open a foot care clinic or save patients a trip to the podiatrist by providing mobile foot care services in their homes or in a van. You’ll need to train as a podiatrist or hire one.
41. Selling weight loss equipment
If you want to get into the weight loss business, you can start by sell equipment that are used in the gym to achieve physical fitness. You could make money from selling gym equipment to your clients or to people in your area. You could sell dumbbells, stepper machines, treadmills, bicycles and several other gym equipment that are usually in hot demand, individuals as well as fitness centers.
42. Start a reality show on weight loss
Only very few people can claim not to have seen the show titled the ‘biggest loser’. These is one of the shows that helps extremely obese people to shed weight with the help of professionals, but on television.
You could earn money from getting sponsorships for your own reality show which would be a way to encourage people who want to lose weight. If your show is successful, not only will you be impacting the lives of your fellow human beings, but you will be making money for yourself.
43. Start a weight loss club
A weight loss club is a good way for people who want to lose weight to meet, interact and be inspired by each other. You can start such a club for people in your area who want to lose weight. You would earn money from the membership subscription fees.
44. Develop a weight loss tracking app
There is nothing like being able to track your weight loss journey in real time, that is why some app creators are now developing apps that can help people track their daily weight loss journey. They can use it to track their weight loss results, record their food intake and exercises. You could develop a mobile application with a fitness theme and sell in apps markets like Google play, mobogenie etc.
45. Make and Sell Exercise DVDs
Exercise DVDs are also hot products in the fitness industry. If you are a fitness buff, you can produce your own weight loss DVD and make money from selling and distributing it too.
46. Organize workshops and seminars
You could also make money from organizing workshops and seminars for people who are interested in learning about their weight and how they can keep off the excess fat. At those seminars, you could sell educational materials like books and tapes that you have produced, or could sell for other authors and collect your commission.
47. Corporate fitness
Some organizations hold P.E sessions from time to time to help their staff keep fit so that they are able to do the job without problems. You could apply to such organizations for an opportunity to be their in-house fitness coach.
You can start by meeting with the management and explaining why their workers should always keep fit. If you are able to bring them to your side, then you have gotten the contract. Again, know that you mustn’t always be at the office to train the workers, you could do your training online.
48. Become an Athletic coach
Athletes usually need help with training if they to make any headway in their career. You could look out for such athletes and work with them one-on-one. This is another business you can start in the weight loss industry. Keeping them fit would keep the excess weight away.
49. Design exercise equipment
Lastly, you could choose to design and produce your own exercise equipment that is tailor made for the needs of your clients. You could start from little equipment like dumbbells, skippers, sit-up bench and then gradually, you could start manufacturing the bigger equipment.
50. Start your own gym
This is every personal trainer’s dream; to own a gym where your clients can come in at anytime for workouts and they can also have access to a wide range of gym equipment. You should know that starting a gym is financially intensive, but you start off with little expenses by buying your first set of equipment as second hand. You can upgrade them when you start making enough money.