If you are a gym owner or nutrition coach looking to gain revenue in your gym through your nutrition coaching program, read on! In this article we will who you how your nutrition coaching program can offer nutrition for teens and kids, an underserved demographic when it comes to nutrition education.
For gyms using the HSN Mentoring Program, we offer an entire Teens And Kids Certification to gym owners, and nutrition coaches who would like to get certified in this demographic.
If after reading this article you are interested in learning more, book a free call!
The D-Low On Nutrition For Teens And Kids
Did you know that obesity in the United States affects 14.7 million children? And, it is predicted that half of the world will be obese by 2035? The same study indicated childhood obesity could more than double from 2020 levels, to 208 million boys and 175 million girls by 2035. These statistics are so sad to me.
As leaders in our industry it’s time to take charge.
Having a nutrition coaching program that can offer nutrition for teens and kids is now more important than ever. As gym owners, and nutrition coaches we see how in this junk food driven world, it can be easy for people to overlook the importance of healthy eating. Using our passion, and knowledge to drive change is a way to help our community, and also generate revenue for the business.
TV and social media drive so many choices for our youth. If role models, and leaders in children’s lives don’t properly educate them on what a healthy diet looks like, they will fall to society’s norms where processed foods are king.
Unfortunately we live in a microwave world where people want things now.
Consuming meals is no different. Everyone is so busy that eating becomes something that people know they have to do, but not something they put a priority on planning. This is where fast food, and uneducated choices come into play.
I was having a conversation with my son a couple years ago. We were talking about eating healthy, making healthy choices, and not buying unhealthy foods. He was crying because he was the only kid in the lunch room that didn’t have Oreos, and fruit snacks in his lunch box. When were discussing foods and healthy snacks, he made a very good point.
He said, “Why do we even have unhealthy foods in stores? If they aren’t good for us why are people selling them.” I don’t know the answer to that question. But I definitely do agree.
Division Of Responsibility For Healthy Eating
Clearly our youth are learning their eating habits from their parents, educational leaders, and society. Our role as nutrition coaches is to start from the top and work down. Teens and kids don’t typically shop on their own for groceries, at least the young ones don’t. Educating parents, teachers and leaders in our kids lives is a great first place to start.
At Healthy Steps Nutrition, we teach kids and parents to all have a responsibility when it comes to healthy eating.
The Parents Role
Decide what, where and when kids eat
Provide healthy meals and healthy snacks that are balanced (proteins, carbs and fat)
The Teens And Kids Role
Decide if and how much they will eat
Be responsible for if and how much they eat of what is provided to them
First we educate them about healthy foods, creating healthy meals, and what healthy eating behaviors look like. We teach them all about the macronutrients and what they do for the body so they can understand why they need to make healthy food choices. Included is education on saturated fat, getting fiber from whole grains, eating the rainbow, avoiding sugary drinks, are sports drinks necessary, and what are energy drinks?
From there our discussions go into learning the plate method, and hand portion guides. We believe they can help immensely when trying to teach teens and kids how to eat balanced meals, and discover proper portion sizes.
This is obviously a very brief overview of the education piece, but the point I’m trying to make is that:
We first educate
Each party has a responsibility in the implementation process
Effective Ways Gym Owners And Nutrition Coaches Can Offer Nutrition For Teens And Kids
Knowing the role gym owners play when it comes to educating our community about proper nutrition for teens and kids is only half the battle. The other half is implementing the strategies necessary to create change.
At Healthy Steps Nutrition, we have come up with several ways that gym owners and nutrition coaches can spread the good word in their community, in addition to making money at the same time.
Option A: Run A Family Nutrition And Wellness Challenge In Your Facility
As we stated above, when it comes to nutrition for teens and kids, the parent is ultimately responsible for beginning this journey. This is why the family nutrition challenge is a great first place to start when beginning to implement healthy eating habits into the family.
The parents learn alongside the youth.
If you are a HSN Mentoring client, the family nutrition challenge is part of your mentoring subscription. We provide all education, and an app to facilitate your challenge that includes weekly videos and habit tracking. When parents learn with their kids, they can hold each other accountable to putting these newly learned habits into place. This lifestyle change can be started together which makes everyone more successful.
Gyms using the HSN Mentoring platform charge between $399 – $499 per family for a family nutrition challenge.
Running a nutrition challenge is fun, but does require structure in order to make it successful. If you are not an HSN Mentoring client, you will need to learn how to facilitate a challenge. Check out this article for a step by step guide to running a nutrition challenge.
We also have a program called the Nutrition Challenge Intensive which is a great way to learn all the skill’s necessary to run a challenge. This course is available on demand by clicking the above link. You can learn how to run a nutrition challenge through this course.
The course includes:
How To Price, Package, & Structure Your Challenge
How To Increase Sign-ups & Engagement
How To Deliver A Professional Nutrition Challenge
How To Turn Your Challenge Into An Ongoing Coaching Program
One Individual Mentoring Call To Help You Personalize The Information
You will receive:
Challenge Marketing Timeline
Client Resources (Videos, Handbook, Recipes & More)
Marketing Templates (Including Emails & Social Media Graphics through Canva templates)
Initial and Post Challenge Client Meeting Templates
One of the coolest things you receive when purchasing this online training course is a mentoring call with one of our HSN Mentors to help answer any questions, and hold you accountable to getting the work done necessary to facilitate your challenge.
Additionally we run day long live trainings that coincide with this course that are VERY beneficial to the success of your challenge. Our next training is on July 25th, 2023 from 9:30am – 4:30pm EST. If you are reading this article after this date, please book a free call to find out when our next live training is.
Option B: Youth And Teen Athletic And Community Partnerships
Another way to educate the youth community about nutrition and healthy eating is to partner with different athletic groups. There are several different demographics you can target.
Sports teams such as baseball, softball, soccer, and gymnastic teams
Almost all towns have local sports teams that are not associated with the schools. We have several in our community, and I know from my experience with sports throughout the years that they are prevalent all over the country.
Working with sports teams to help the athletes properly fuel for performance is a great way to help, and also generate revenue for your nutrition coaching program. There is even a potential to develop a long term partnership with these organizations.
Healthy Steps Nutrition has a long term relationship with a gymnastics club in our area. We provide nutrition services on a monthly basis both to the group, and individually.
How To Get Started
Brainstorm your current relationships to figure out if you know someone who has a connection to one of these teams. If you don’t come up with anyone who has a connection, developing one is extremely easy. Simply reaching out to the head of the organization by researching their contact info on the organizations website, or social media pages. Express your passion for nutrition, talk briefly about the importance of nutrition with athletes and how you can help, then request a meeting.
I always prefer to meet in person. If that isn’t an option definitely try to secure a zoom meeting over simply speaking on the phone. It’s great to put a face with a name, and building a relationship always seems more authentic when you can see a person face to face.
What Do Services Look Like?
Examples of services are:
Seminar series
Group coaching
Individual coaching
If you are an HSN Mentoring Coach, keep in mind that all coaches providing individual or group coaching services to anyone under the age of 18 needs to have a Teens And Kids Certification from HSN. After you are kids certified, all the resources you need to fully offer nutrition for teens and kids is provided to you.
What Do I Charge?
Seminar Series: Getting your foot in the door is huge. We have found that offering one free nutrition talk does wonders for building trust. After that one talk is complete, we bill for all other services. We will typically charge $400 for individual seminars, or a 4 part seminar series for $900.00 – $1600
Group Coaching: For family nutrition coaching we charging $359/month for the first 12 weeks. After that, the ongoing rate is $229.00/month.
Individual Coaching: We charge $179/month for individual coaching that moves into $109/month after the initial 12 weeks.
School, Camp And Doctors Office Partnerships
Building relationships with these demographics is totally possible. Often times providers in these environments are so busy seeing patients, and teaching they don’t have time to properly educate clients about eating a healthy diet, and the importance of physical activity.
Schools
Communication to parents, teachers, and food support staff is key when teaching adolescents. All of these people play an important role when it comes to teaching the youth healthy eating tips and physical activity tips. This information can be delivered in many ways. It’s very effective to work with a teacher, like the gym or health teach to come up with a format and schedule for education.
At Healthy Steps Nutrition we have found great success using these formats:
Lesson Plans
Activities
Videos
Being on a monthly retainer with the school makes the most sense in this scenario. If you are providing one off lessons, then coming up with a fee to charge per lesson would be ideal. Just like a nutrition seminar, somewhere between $300 – $400 would be ideal.
Doctors Office
Doctors are so busy seeing patients with ailments they literally have next to zero time to offer healthy eating recommendations. They inform parents about the importance of maintaining a healthy weight, and eating healthy foods, but they offer no support beyond the recommendations.
Working with a doctor on a referral type basis, and coming up with a process for implementing nutrition into their monthly and weekly newsletter would be a great first step.
Camps
Because camps are typically shorter in duration than school, working with camp organizers to offer a short nutrition and activity tips seminar to different camp groups works very well. This allows you to provide help to the different camp sessions within the same organization.
Examples of Content For Teens And Kids
How to eat breakfast
Junk food
Building successful snacks
Proper hydration and how to drink fluid regularly
Nutrition facts label lesson
Sugar shocker and sugary foods
How to build a balanced plate
Meal convenience is big for parents so keep that in mind when you are coming up with content. Healthy eating, plus quick meals are true winners. And remember, nutrition is about more than just cutting out soft drinks, and worrying about body weight.
It’s about learning healthy habits, one step at a time, so teens and kids can life a holistic healthy lifestyle.
Wrap Up
Always remind yourself that nutrition for teens and kids starts with the parents.Remember to provide literature about what you are teaching, to the kids parents. This can be done by directly emailing them if allowed, or providing content to the kids to take home.
If you are providing content, ask the doctors office, camp, or sports organization to also email the content to the parents directly. Often times kids will misplace the information you give them, and the parents will never get it.
Reminder
Individually coaching kids and teens under the age of 18 requires a special certification. If you are an HSN Mentoring client interested in coaching teens and kids, book a free call, or talk to your mentor.
We can help.
