My top 5 personal trainer weight loss tips

Never in the history of mankind has it been easier to lose weight, or has it been easier to gain weight. We're constantly bombarded with fast food advertisements, adds selling sweets, chocolate, fizzy sugary drinks that sucker us in to consume garbage high in calories and low in anything else.

I wasn't always a personal trainer, I used to spend my days sitting at home watching tv and eating rubbish, the weekends would be takeaways, nights out in Dublin, downing as many pints as possible, smoking and generally being an overweight slob, but I decided to make a few changes, get fit, get healthy, lose the weight, start a personal training course and help others get these changes for themselves.
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I know from my own personal experience (trying and failing on many attempts) of losing weight, what works and what doesn't, so to avoid all the rubbish advice out there like meal replacements and fad diets these are my top 5 tips that will get you over the line to reach the weight loss you want, and maintain it for the future.
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1. Track your calories
​You have probably heard it a thousand times, calories are bad, you need to avoid them blah blah blah.
This is rubbish, we need calories to put weight on... Yes, but we also need calories to lose weight, it's just about finding the right amount of calories to keep you going and stay under a deficit to allow your body to utilise your body fat as energy because thats what body fat, is stored energy.





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​Lets be honest, you didn't put the weight on by eating low-calorie salads and running a marathon every second day.

You put the weight on because you sat on your arse and shoved too many calories in your mouth.
If you know how many calories you are consuming, then you will know what is required of you to lose weight.

Apps like my fitness pal are amazing free tools that let you track exactly what you are eating and show you how many calories you have left in the day to lose the weight!

2. Get moving

As a personal trainer, I get asked by my clients all the time, 'Should I do more squats, or sit-up's to lose the weight here and there'. My answer is simple, 'you're missing the fucking point'.

You didn't get fat because you stopped squatting or missed doing sit up's for five years.

You're not going to lose it by doing a few squats.

You need to burn more calories.

I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2009, I was moving so much I was burning around 4500 calories a day and consuming 2000, after 9 days I got home, weighed myself, I was down 5 kilos on the scales. I brought my daily calorie deficit up, the weight fell off.

So get fucking moving, go for a walk, a run, a cycle, a fitness class, jump on a rowing machine. Do whatever you like but get moving and burn calories.

3. Be consistent

You are not going to lose 5 kilos in week one, shit you probably won't lose it in week two either.


You didn't get fat in a few weeks so you certainly won't lose the weight in a few weeks either, it takes time, but it also takes consistency.

Giving yourself a pat on the back for changing to a salad dinner every Wednesday is great, but if you go crazy at the weekend and gorge on junk foods and alcohol is going to outdo any calorie deficit you achieved from swapping to a salad.

I'm not saying eat a salad every day, I'm saying if you stay under your calorie goals Monday to Thursday, then you go way over Friday to Sunday, you can't expect to lose weight because for the entire week you have not stayed under a deficit.

So work on tracking your calories 7 days a week, do this for a month, you will be shocked by how much you can achieve.

4. Be patient

When you see some idiot on social media, recommending a product that has helped them she 10 kilos in 4 weeks, I'm going to tell you right now, that person is talking out of their arse!

There is no product on this plant that burns fat, its not real.

Weight loss/meal replacement shakes, skinny teas, fat burners are all rubbish.

At best they are simply a low-calorie option, nothing more, and you don't need them.

Why would anyone replace a meal with a shake??? Just make a low-calorie meal, your life will be so much better!
Real fat loss takes time!

Most people that get extreme results over a short period put all the weight back on within a year. I've seen it many times.

Most of what they lose is not fat, but fluid and that affects the scale.

As soon as they start eating normally again, the pounds start going back on and before they know it they are back to the start.

With a consistent real fat loss, its harder to put back on because you are actually losing body fat, and not fluid, its harder to put back on because you need to massively increase your calorie deficit over time for your body to start storing the extra calories, and because of the work you put in to losing it, its much harder for you to let yourself slip back into old habits, because you value the work you put in.

5. Get help from a good personal trainer

Affordable personal training is out there, (bodycoach.ie for example) but not all personal trainers are good personal trainers. 

Just like any industry, there are true professionals and there are the rip-off merchants, so some research is required.

You might get trainers that work in gyms that have simply lost the joy for their work and just do the bare minimum because they are paid anyway.

Then there are the true heroes, the fitness coaches that care, they want nothing more than to see their clients succeed in the goals and money is just a necessity of life.

One of the best ways to find this out is to look at their reviews, check social media, website, google business pages and see what you can find on them. 

As a personal trainer myself that has clients all over Dublin, I pride myself on the personal training reviews my clients give me, because I know that they have gotten what they wanted from working with me.

My advice, google "personal trainer near me" and check the Google business pages that come up. Look at their reviews, and that should help you make the right choice.
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You can also check out my reviews from bodycoach at www.bodycoach.ie/reviews

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