How to Start A Weight Loss Blog – The Ultimate Guide
Wondering how to start a weight loss blog to chronicle your fitness journey? Look no further! If you have ever thought about starting a fitness journey blog to document your progress, this is the ultimate guide for you! Learn how to start a weight loss journey blog and make this your best year yet!
Hi there – I’m Chantal!
Welcome to my website. 🙂
I can’t wait to jump into the topic of my weight loss journey blog and how you can start your own, but first, let me give you a little background.
A few years ago, I quit blogging about blogging and gave myself quite the ultimatum.
If I was going to continue in the blogging world, I needed to make it fitness related.
I had weight loss goals, and I just wasn’t reaching them. I thought that having my own weight loss blog could be a great way to get to my goal weight.
But I needed to know how to start a healthy lifestyle blog.
I found myself asking questions like, “How do I start my weight loss journey with a blog?”
*If you’re looking for the ultimate guide on how to start a weight loss blog, feel free to skip down to the tutorial.
You see, fitness accountability became important as I got sucked into the world of virtual business and social media.
I’d let my health suffer even though I was becoming successful as a blogger.
At this point, I was making $900+ per month working from home. I loved staying home with my daughter and still making money, but I spent hours on end staring at a screen and sitting on the couch.
I began to feel myself slipping into a depression, which is just too familiar to me. My love-hate relationship with technology needed more balance.
I needed to be focused on my own health more than blogging. So I decided to go “all in” and start a weight loss blog.
It’s a long story, but since starting my own fitness blog, I’ve actually become a certified personal trainer and a nutrition coach.
It’s been quite the adventure!
Starting a fitness journey blog – Weight Loss Blogging for Beginners
By now I know that I need fitness in my every day life. (I started this blog way back in 2017!)
I need to be committed to it in a way that doesn’t give me any choice not to workout and be healthy.
For years, I tried balancing my own idea of being healthy and making money. I had to truly examine my history and become self-aware in order to realize one thing.
True health is a huge commitment. Consistency is everything.
Becoming a personal trainer and chronicling my fitness journey via blog and social media seemed like the best way to be 100% committed.
I decided to pursue blogging about weight loss knowing that I am an “all-or-nothing” person.
If I try to balance more than one or two things instead of focusing on just them, I get overwhelmed and accomplish nothing.
Complete Beginners Guide on how to start a fitness journey blog
In case you haven’t noticed, blogging is one of my favorite things.
Running a health and fitness blog lets me enjoy writing but still stay accountable for moving my body!
Learning how to start a weight loss blog was one of the best decisions I’ve made yet.
I love to write, and I love to connect with others who have the similar interests to my own.
Running a fitness blog allows me to combine the things I love! But aside from that, blogging is great because:
- It allows me to earn money from home. I’ve earned close to $1,000 per month blogging so far!
- It gives me purpose. I set blogging goals regularly and it makes me feel like I’m moving forward.
- It allows me to set my own schedule and own a business (yes, this is a business!).
- It gives me something more to do as a mom. Right now I’m a stay-at-home mom and running a blog makes me feel like I’m doing something more important than just housework!
- It gives me complete freedom. I write about what I want, when I want to! This started out as a postpartum weight loss blog, but it has become so much more.
- You don’t have to have a big, fancy degree or any special experience to start a blog. (Though more learning is never a bad thing.)
- This particular blog helps me stay accountable and connect with others on my weight-loss journey.
I totally believe that there’s room for anyone and everyone in the blogging world. If you really want to get started blogging about weight loss, why not go for it?
I love telling people about blogging because I think anyone can do it!
Plus, if you start a blog, you can use it for accountability. It can be a huge tool for your weight-loss. (See the ultimate guide to starting a weight loss blog below.)
Learn how to start a weight loss blog in just a few steps
Anyone can start a blog, so what are you waiting for?
In this post, I’d like to address weight loss blogging for beginners. I’m going to teach you how to start a weight loss blog from scratch.
This tutorial is meant to take the guesswork out of the technical aspect.
I remember just how confused I was when I was trying to start a blog for the first time, and it’s not so bad if you have some guidance.
By now I’ve had several blogs and learned how to grow and make money online – from time to time you’ll see info on that here on this blog.
I’ll help you find the right things to share with readers.
But this particular post is for people who are hoping to start a fitness or weight loss blog soon or are ready to get started now – so let’s get the wheels turning!
Note: I only recommend things that I have used and love. This post helps you set up a blog with Siteground as your web host. If you choose to make a purchase using my links, I may receive a commission. That doesn’t change your price.
Fitness Journey Blog Ideas
Before you go ahead and start your own fitness blog, it’s really important to have a clear niche in mind.
That is, if you want your blog to do well and potentially make money, you should know exactly what you want to write about (and for whom you want to write)!
I have a big list of fitness blog post or article ideas here, but you really should narrow down your overall blog topic to something more specific than just general wellness.
Here are a few ideas of more specific fitness or health topics your blog could be about:
- Postpartum weight loss blog
- Gastric bypass / bariatric surgery weight loss blog
- Calorie counting / calorie deficit blog
- Healthy recipes for weight loss blog
- Personal fitness journal
- Keto or other diet blog
- Blog about lifting weights or other workout type
- Group fitness ideas
- Weight GAIN instead of weight loss blog
- Healthy habits & hobbies (i.e. outdoor fitness)
- Healthy travel destinations – restaurants, resorts, and retreats
- Losing weight with a chronic illness
- Better sleep for weight loss
- Meal plans
- Healthy recipes for swaps for sugary drinks
- General mom weight loss blog
Phew! As you can see, there is a lot you can talk about instead of just general weight loss content.
Consider this if you want to build a supportive community focused on healthy habits on your blog.
Your target audience within the weight loss niche matters!
🙂
How to Start A Weight Loss Blog – Step By Step
Step 1: Choose a hosting plan.
In order to have a blog with money-making potential, you need your blog to be self-hosted.
In simple terms, this just means that you own all of your own content and your site isn’t hosted by a free blog-making site.
If you make a free site that’s hosted by a free blog-making site, you run the risk of owing that company money when you start to monetize your blog.
Because of that, a lot of companies won’t work with bloggers who aren’t self-hosted (even if just on a basic plan).
So, you NEED to be self-hosted. In order to do this, you need a company to host your site (and all it’s files). I use and recommend Siteground for all types of blogs. So the first thing you’ll want to do is visit their site.
Next, click “Sign Up,” on the home page.
You’ll then be asked to choose from three hosting packages – Start Up, Grow Big, or Go Geek. Here’s a snapshot of that page:
Do note that the prices you see on this page assume that you purchase an annual package. You get a price break for buying a year in advance.
How do I choose a hosting plan?
If you only plan to have one site, you can choose the Start Up plan for now.
However, if you plan to focus on your blog a lot or have more than one site, you may want to consider choosing Grow Big or Go Geek.
The Start Up plan is best for blogs getting up to 10,000 visits per month, and if you are working on your blog consistently, it’s very possible that you reach this number in just a few months.
You may even reach the Grow Big number of 25,000 monthly visits depending on how hard you are working on your blog. (I reached 30,000+ page views in three months with my last blog, so I know it’s possible!)
Just remember that you can always upgrade!
Note: If you start a blog and later decide to stop using it, you can get reimbursed for the months you haven’t used, but you’ll still have your domain name until it expires.
Step 2: Choose a domain name.
Once you’ve chosen a hosting package, you’ll need to choose a domain name.
This is essentially going to be your blog name or something very close to it.
This is free with the purchase of your first hosting package at Siteground.
Choose a domain name that fits well with the topics you’ll write about and pick something that you’ll not be embarrassed to tell people about.
Since you’re starting a health, food, or fitness blog, I suggest that your name imply this in some way. Your name is something that you should consider carefully.
Remember that you’ll have this name for at least a year, if not longer!
It’s possible that someone will already own the domain name you want, so I recommend preparing a few ideas for this step. I also recommend that if possible, you include keywords in your domain name.
That means that your domain name (which will be your blog name and part of your URL) tells people at least a little bit about your blog’s contents.
For example, my blog name is “Ironwild Fitness” My domain name is ironwildfitness.com.
My name suggests to readers that my site has something to do with being home (because it does) and that’s useful in getting the right audience to my site. Get the idea?
Note: I recommend domain privacy if you can afford it. It will just protect your personal contact information.
Once you’ve chosen a domain name and finalize your payment, you own a weight loss blog! Congratulations!
Now you know how to start a weight loss journey blog – it’s super easy!
Next comes all of the fun stuff. Don’t worry, I’ll help you with all of that, too!
If you’re ready to get started building your site and customizing it, check out this video for installing WordPress with your Siteground account.
This video should set you up so that you’re ready to start writing and editing your site.
It doesn’t matter if you’re starting a postpartum fitness blog, overall weight loss blog, gastric sleeve blog, or any other style. The general process should be the same.
It’s time to start customizing and filling up your site with conent.
This is exciting stuff because now you can pick your colors for branding, make a logo, and customize everything else!
After that’s done, stay tuned for more info on what to put on your new weight loss blog.
Happy blogging!
Still wondering how to start a weight loss journey blog? Here are some other posts you might like:
- Free Ways To Increase Your Blog Traffic
- Virtual Product Ideas For Fitness Bloggers
- Free Blogging Tools To Try Today
