How To Motivate People To Lose Weight

As a gym owner, perhaps the biggest struggle you face on an ongoing basis is how to motivate people to lose weight. After all, most folks are not going to remain happy (and paying) health club members unless they're seeing some weight loss results.....and they're not going to see any weight loss results unless they're consistently exercising.

Thanks to a recent study conducted by Stanford University, you can learn how to motivate people to lose weight today!

As reported by the Wall Street Journal on May 18 in an article titled "The Power Of A Gentle Nudge", Stanford researchers proved that even a little bit of social support can yield huge motivational results.

In a nutshell, what the researchers in the Stanford study did was call participants every 3 weeks for a year. During this call they asked how much the participant was exercising, and encouraged them to exercise more.

Simple, isn't it?

At the end of the year, researchers found that the people receiving the encouraging phone calls were exercising 78% more than they were 12 months earlier. Did you catch that? Participants who received a phone call every 3 weeks were exercising 78% more!

One of the study participants, Ms. Lowe, summarized the study results quite nicely by saying "When you know you were going to have to report back on what you had done, it motivated you" (source: Wall Street Journal, 5-18-2010).

So how can you, as a gym owner, motivate people to lose weight with this same technique?

It's quite simple, and it will cost you NOTHING.

Here's the answer: Call your gym members. Call them every 3 weeks. Ask them how they're doing. Ask them how much they're exercising inside the health club, and also at home. Encourage them to exercise more. Don't pass judgment, don't be critical, and don't patronize them. Just get their report of how much they're exercising, and then encourage them to do more.

If your fitness center members follow the same trend as the participants in the Stanford study, the result is that they will exercise 78% more. That will, in turn, make them more successful in their weight loss efforts and more likely to continue as a gym member. Oh, by the way, they'll also be more likely to refer your health club to their friends and neighbors.

So, if you want to know how to motivate people to lose weight today, the answer is with a few phone calls. It costs you nothing. There is no downside other than your time investment, and the PROVEN results are huge (78% is HUGE)!