Weight loss in Dubai is one of the many reasons men and women turn to a personal trainer for help. However, many people have unrealistic expectations when it comes to weight loss.

We asked a professional PT what his top 5 tips are when it comes to being more ‘realistic’ about weight loss.

The main way for me to get clients in Dubai to understanding the realistic expectations of their goal is to provide the honest information about trade-offs that come during the process.

I never discourage people from going into strict diet, or training 5 times a week, if they have something very important upcoming in couple months.

On the other side, I do explain to them, that this kind of result will not last if they go back to the old habits.

The difficulty of why clients want the fast result is that they think they will lose the required weight and then they can not train and eat the same things they did before.

The reality of this is that those people spend years in frustration, disappointment, as each time they go through diet restriction and training they do lose weight, but the process of it is so extremely unpleasant, that they go back right into the same lifestyle, that brought them into all the extra weight.

Weight Loss Timing – Think Long Term Goals & Lifestyle Changes

Anyone who has 10-20 kilos extra must consider a road of minimum 6 to 12 months.

It takes time with the training and being patient with installing the habits that will stick to them not only for 1 month, but for the decades to come.

My task as a fitness coach is to teach clients how to fall in love with the process and small daily wins along the way.

And the main thing is to remind them to stay patient with themselves, encourage when they fall off track and bring them back to continue.

My top 5 tip for the realistic weight loss would be:

1) You haven’t gained the weight in one month, so don’t expect to lose it that fast.

2) Fall in love with the process, and result will come.

3) Focus on small daily improvements in training, exercise and nutrition.

4) It’s not what you do once in awhile, that determines who you become, but what you do consistently.

5) Being consistent is the fastest way to lose weight in the UAE.

Ultimately, a personal trainer in the UAE who is specialised in diet and nutrition can really help provide the advice and support you need.

With a combination of good exercise and good diet how much weight can the average person in Dubai realistically lose in 1 month?

Healthy weight loss is 2-3kg a month for an average person.

The biggest changes for it will come from both training and especially nutrition.

However, if the personal training client has more than 20-30kg too lose, and he or she was mostly inactive before, they might lose even more, even through just simple movement or minor changes in food intake.

On the flip side. Someone who has 3-5kg to lose very quickly will require more complex nutrition protocols and training, which is “fit fat loss”.

Fad diets don’t seem to work in the long run and crash diets are considered dangerous by many

How do you explain to your clients in the UAE that healthy eating should be seen as a lifestyle change rather than a quick fix option.

Usually people chose the quick fixes for their body shape because they don’t want to stick with dieting long enough and come back to the same habits, the reason why they got extra weight. According to the Livestrong Website up to 50% of women are on one diet or another at any one time.

They believe that there is a magic pill, that will cure them from the results of years neglecting their health.

And 6 or 12 months training and a nutrition plan isn’t that attractive for people as much as 30-60-90 Days Transformation.

The marketing campaigns are constantly making people confused with the multiple messages about new training method and the latest diet craze.

And we, as fitness professionals in Dubai must be responsible for telling the truth and drawing the line between marketing attraction and real world diet results.

It does require months to create a change in body composition, and especially in the lifestyle shift, but it will take even longer and multiple disappointments to go with quick fixes.

Crash Diet’s Don’t Work Long Term In The UAE

I have had multiple cases of people contacting me for personal training services in Dubai after crash diets. Most of them had drastic change through detox, low-carb diet, or any other food restriction, and having lost 10kg, they come back to even plus 12-15kg.

The reason for this is the huge calorie deficit, which makes the body slow down and actually keep the energy, rather than spend.

These people must relearn how to eat enough and train, speed up their metabolism. Many of them will benefit from resistance training, as very often these are the cardio-lovers.

A lot of cardio-training combined with diet restriction causes the loss in muscle mass and even further problems with joints.

I do believe, that the job of a professional personal trainer is to tell the truth and explain that quick solutions will backfire to them with many other issues, and healthy living isn’t that hard if goes hand in hand with consistent steady pace.

At the end of the day, all of us want to be healthy and feel energetic and happy. My clients will start to feel it even from the first week, even if the weight loss changes are still not showing fully.