With countless children and adults living a sedentary lifestyle, chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes became more prevalent. Fast food is favored over healthy home-cooked meals, and weekends are spent getting drunk instead of unwinding and working out.
However, it’s not always fair to blame the masses for living such a life. The daily grind is just stressful, and healthy foods are generally too expensive. As such, people don’t always realize how unhealthy they’re already being.
But if you strive to obtain a professional health coach diploma, will you be able to encourage a niche in the masses to shift to a healthier lifestyle? The training program covers a wide scope of health and nutrition topics, so you’ll doubtlessly become a credible figure in the health and wellness industry. The only question is, is your target market willing to be coached?
The Health Coaching Market
In 2018, health coaching in the U.S. had entered the year as a $6 billion service market. An estimated 109,000 health coaches and educators became available to help clients change their unhealthy habits and lifestyles. Large self-insured companies also began to collaborate with health coaches to have the health of their employees improved, which can cut claim costs.
Health coaching is basically like a sports coach, who helps an athlete excel. Similarly, health coaches help people improve their lifestyles, especially if they have chronic medical conditions. The coaching process resembles a talk therapy, with two people also engaged in a discussion tackling health issues and ideas. But in health coaching, clients are given more control in setting goals, and creating strategies that will help attain those goals.
People usually hire health coaches when they want to lose weight, lower stress, or manage chronic health conditions. People recovering from addiction or serious diseases also employ a health coach to help themselves adjust to their new lives.
Is It Truly Effective?
Harvard has found health coaching to be effective. A key technique employed by health coaches is motivational interviewing, which consists of open-ended questions to urge clients to express their own reasons for change. For instance, instead of advising a client to lose weight, a health coach might instead ask what kind of change does the client expect from losing weight. Many studies have found such technique to be effective, because people who are encouraged to change for their own reasons, rather than to meet society’s expectations, are more likely to meet their goal.
Is it a Good Career Choice?
If you’re intimidated to start a health coaching career, here are some positive market analysis to encourage you:
- The health coaching market reached $6 billion in 2017, 15% higher than it was in 2014.
- By 2022, the market is predicted to reach $7.85 billion, with the number of health coaches rising to 121,000.
- The market of weight loss, which is a subspeciality health coaching, is foreseen to jump to $1.05 billion in 2022.
Having more competitors may be daunting, but it clearly indicates that there is an increasing demand for health coaches. Considering how difficult it is to book a doctor’s appointment, and that physicians aren’t trained to help their patients change their behavior, health coaches have indeed become more trustworthy professionals in the health and wellness industry.
As a certified health coach, you can choose to specialize or practice in any of these settings:
- Private coaching
- Group coaching
- Medical facilities
- Resorts or wellness centers
- Gyms
- Corporations
Health coaching is a highly rewarding career, knowing that you help many people embrace a healthier lifestyle. It adds to your sense of purpose, and enables you to be your own boss. Every day, you’re doing what you love, and you always discover new things in every client you meet.
As long as you have the right personality and determination to help improve people’s lives, health coaching might just be the right career for you.
