1. Keep a Food Diary

Writing down every bite and sip in your food journal can be an invaluable tool for a successful diet. It can help you track what you are eating, and make you understand how much you are really consuming. Try writing down the calories net to each entry too.

2. Keep Snacks in the House

A common mistake of most dieters is to take all snacks out the house. Models know that snacking throughout the day is actually a key element of successful dieting. Everyone gets hunger pangs – just make sure that when you lose your willpower its with healthy, low-fat snacks rather than pizza or icecream.

Great ideas for healthy snacks are low-fat yoghurt, sweet potatoes, edamame and salted popcorn. Try to carry snacks with you when you leave the house too. A healthy nut bar in your purse will prevent you from stopping in at McDonalds on the way home.

3. Quit the Emotional Eating

Let’s face it life is difficult! Many of us make excuses that bottle of wine or box of chocolates on a bad day. Perhaps you’ve lost your job, broke up with your significant other, or had a disagreement with a friend. Learning to deal with the pains of life without turning to food is an important habit to create.

Try to get stuck into doing something you love, like a hobby or your favorite exercise, when life deals you a blow. Alternatively, consider seeking professional help with emotional eating issues.

4. Don’t Order the Sauce

Believe it or not, restaurant food doesn’t have to be a dieter’s nightmare. Dishes like salads, grilled meat and fish are perfectly fine for calorie-counting diners.. as long as you don’t put a thick, creamy sauce on top of them.

Order dishes without sauces if you can. If you really have to, go for something light like a soy sauce or vinaigrette. In an Italian restaurant, try the sauces with a tomato base as they will generally be lighter.

5. Grill, Baby, Grill!

OK, baking and steaming are fine too, but you get the point! You have to steer clear of fried food if you want to lose weight. When you cook, try to use the absolute minimum of oil. Many foods contain natural oils that speed the cooking process anyway, there’s just no need for spoonfuls of cooking oil.

6. Spice It Up!

Boost your metabolism with spicy food, it really works! Spicy food can make you feel more full, and it also gives your system a kickstart, forcing it to burn more calories. You have to be careful though – lots of spicy dishes in restaurants are extremely high in calories.

Add ingredients like black pepper, ginger and chilli peppers to your home cooking for a flavourful way to increase your weight loss.

7. Frozen Fruit

Before you go to bed at night, throw some fruit in the freezer. It can be grapes, berries, or whatever’s left in your fruit bowl just sliced up. The next day you have a nutritious, healthy snack ready for you.

There are two reasons why this is a great diet tip. Firstly, you will be forced to eat the frozen fruit slower than if it were at room temperature. Secondly, the lower temperature makes your body work harder, increasing your metabolism and helping you to burn off more fat.

8. Drink Lots of Water

When it comes to weight loss, water is a model’s best friend. Staying fully hydrated will increase your metabolism, stave off hunger pangs, improve your complexion and slow down the aging process. What’s not to love?

9. Green Tea

Studies have shown that drinking green tea between meals results in weight loss. Its not just the caffeine either, so coffee is no substitute. Buy some green tea and give it a try – it has plenty of other health benefits besides weight loss so you have nothing to lose.

10. Ditch the Mayo

In every model’s list of foods to avoid, one of the tops spots is always taken by Mayonnaise. Low in nutrients, high in fat, adding Mayo to your sandwich can turn a healthy treat into a high-calorie nightmare! Try mustard instead, its much healthier and will help keep your snacks low in calories.

As ever, the truth is somewhere in between. Most expat residents and visitors happily co-exist with locals, finding that local customs hardly restrict their lifestyle at all. As a general rule, be polite and considerate and you’ll be just fine.

Alcohol

Contrary to what you might read in the UK or elsewhere, Dubai’s rules on alcohol consumption are very relaxed. Although residents need to license to buy alcoholic beverages in shops like MMI and A&E, anyone of legal age can buy a drink in hotel bars and restaurants.

Drinking alcohol in public is frowned upon so you won’t find any open street bars. In fact, even carrying alcohol around can get you in trouble, so make sure it is covered at all times. The staff at the off-license won’t let you leave the premises without a brown paper bag wrapped around all your purchases.

Appearing drunk in public is also frowned upon so try to behave yourself when you step out of the bar! And if you take a day-trip to Sharjah, remember that alcohol is completely forbidden there. Even driving through Sharjah with alcohol in your car can get you arrested.

Clothing

Most of the restaurants in this guide are based in hotels, where a looser attitude towards clothing prevails. As soon as you step out of the hotel however, be prepared to lose the revealing clothing and put on some more respectful attire.

This does not have to mean covering up fully, but you should avoid strappy, short dresses and mini-skirts. Try to wear tops with sleeves, combined with longer dresses or jeans. This applies particularly during Ramadan, when the utmost care must be taken to respect local Muslims. 

Public Behaviour

As mentioned before, the ‘Sex on the Beach’ scandal thrust expat behaviour into the spotlight in Dubai. Even kissing in public is disallowed – an Italian couple was fined nearly $4000 for kissing in a taxi in 2004. This rule applies to any public place, including hotel bars, clubs, restaurants and even the beach.

Visitors can get in similar trouble for public drunkenness, although it will only be a problem if you’re actually doing something wrong at the time. Always remember to be respectful.

It never really gets cold in Dubai, although wearing shorts in the evenings can become a little uncomfortable around December/January. The biggest problem usually is the heat, with temperatures reaching over 50 degrees Celsius in the middle of the summer.

Here is a rough guide to how the weather will affect your dining experience:

 Dec-Jan

Eat outside during the day, but you’ll need trousers and a light sweater at night.

 Feb-Apr

Perfect weather for outdoor dining in the evenings, sometimes a little too hot during the day. 

Jun-Aug

Too hot to eat outside during the day, but some evenings will be OK. In the heat of the Summer, it can get to hot to be outside at all, except maybe on the beach.

Sep-Nov

Perfect weather again for outdoor dining in the evenings. Some days will be cool enough to have an outdoor lunch.

Taxis

Taxis really are the only way to go if you don’t have a car. If you’re staying in a hotel, you should be able to find a cab with no problem at all. Failing that, the hotel limo service will usually be available.

Things can become more difficult however, when you are at another location in the city and are trying to hail a taxi. Areas where this might be a problem can include Mall of the Emirates and Madinat Jumeirah, where taxi queues can easily become 30 minutes or longer at busy times. See the number below for Dubai Taxi – they could save your life one day!

Taxi/Limo firms

Dubai Taxi – 04 2080808

Rental Cars

Dubai is very well served by car rental companies, both at the airport and around town. Having a car during your trip will make it much more enjoyable. Be prepared for some serious traffic, although the congestion is admittedly not as bad as it once was at the peak of the boom.

The traffic jams tend to follow the workers who come in and out of the city – try to avoid driving West towards Abu Dhabi from 8-10am, and East towards Sharjah from 5-7pm.

Car Rental firms

Thrifty – 800 4694

Hertz – 04 2060206

Budget – 04 2956667

Abras

Lastly, a much more traditional and fun way to get around the city is on the Abras. These small boats carry anyone from shop assistants to chief executives up and down Dubai Creek. With the bridges often jammed up, these little boats can often turn a 30 minute journey into a 3 minute one.

Typically the boatman will charge you 1 Dhs to ride across the creek, but you can rent the whole boat for 20 Dhs if you want to feel like a rockstar.

Obviously this mode of transport is fairly limited, but it’s a great way to see some of the older parts of the city. Hire a boat for you and your friends and you can take a 30 minute ride up and down the creek for very little money.

Dubai Metro

You need to buy a Nol card to use the Dubai Metro. Just swipe it and hop right on. Each train has a VIP carriage, plus one for women and children. Make sure you get on the right carriage or you’ll pay a fine!

Visitors probably won’t find the Metro very practical. There are bus routes feeding into each of the stations but by the time you’ve done all that you may as well just catch a cab. It is worth a ride at least once though, if only for the fantastic view of the city that it offers. Much cheaper and more comfortable that the Big Red Bus tours! Try to sit in the front carriage where you’ll get the best view.

Restaurants

Typically your bill in Dubai will come with a 10% service charge already included in the bill. This is particularly true of hotel restaurants. Most patrons will leave a small cash tip on top of that, generally no more than 5%, if the service has been good.

If the bill does not include the 10% charge, adding somewhere between 10-15% is customary.

It is important to leave a cash tip to be sure that your server receives the money. Tips added to credit card bills will sometimes be taken by unscrupulous owners, whereas a cash tip will either go straight to your server, or into a shared pool for the servers and kitchen staff.

Many of the waiters in Dubai are paid very little, and live in cramped accommodation outside of town. Their families are often left in their home country, typically India or the Philippines, and depend on remittances sent home from Dubai.

Bars

Tipping is not generally expected on drinks orders, but rounding up the bill by around 5% is a nice gesture. Barmen in Dubai, like waiters, are often paid very little and send most of their money home to their families.

In busy New York bars, a customer who doesn’t tip on his first drink may find himself being ignored by the barman for the rest of the night. There is no such attitude in Dubai, but small cash tips are appreciated.

Taxis

All taxis in Dubai are metered, so you need not worry about getting ‘taken for a ride’. They generally cost very little, at least by European standards, so rounding up and adding 5-10% to the bill won’t hurt your wallet too much.

To Summarise..

Restaurants 10-15%

Bars 5-10%

Taxis 5-10%