When you move to Qatar you often hear rumours and murmurings about the ominous "Doha Stone" - a creeping and irreversible 7kgs that sneaks into your life and rests visibly on your waste and hips announcing publicly you've settled in...
I've lived here 6 and a half years, and can definitely attest to the existence of this local phenomenon!
We just don't do enough walking! In London it was a 15 minute walk to the tube station, standing for 40 minutes trying to keep balance as you're jolted in every direction by the Underground, then an additional 10 minutes walk to the office block. You walk to a café for lunch, and you get up 5 times or more every day stretching your legs as you walk to the pantry to make your own cup of tea!!
Add that together, and it quickly builds up to at least 2 and a half hours on your feet every day.
Then you arrive here and, generally speaking, you earn more money (and hence eat out more often), and very rarely walk up even a single flight of stairs, let alone getting in a compound 12.5 hours of light exercise a week!
Luckily, VLCC are here to help. A wellness centre with deep roots in India and Ayuverdic treatments, they have several locations across Qatar and have helped literally thousands of residents, both expat and local, lose the weight they need to, to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
So, how does it work? I'm not sure what the official sales pitch is, but as I understand it they have 3 main opportunities:
1 - A deep dive into your bio-data, to understand your specific genetics and make a plan based on your needs
2 - Products that have been proven to help, and are made with naturally sourced ingredients
3 - Health and Beauty services, like massage and salon services.
When I met with them, after a short chat I was invited to try their bio-data measuring machine. I removed my socks (apologies to the technicians in the room :p), and stood on the metal platform. I held a metal sensor in each hand, and through a mixture of vibration and electrical signals (that's a guess based on my best scientific knowledge... I think the specifics of the technology are part of the VLCC secret sauce) within a couple of minutes, we had an accurate print out of my data, able to pinpoint my fat and muscle percentages specific to different zones of my body (I keep my Doha Stone on my belly it seems...).
Next up, I have the opportunity to sit with a nutritional specialist, and discuss my lifestyle and dietary needs, and develop a plan specific to me that will enable me to reach my goals guaranteed over a period of time!
If you're looking for a manageable lifestyle, rather than a fad diet that you can maintain in the short term but will ultimately drop when it causes too much friction with your needs socially, I'd definitely be happy to recommend an initial consultation with VLCC to see what they can do for you.
Ultimately, the decision whether or not to move forward is personal to your circumstances, and you should consider your financial and social obligations... but it can only be a benefit to meet and have more information in your hands when making the decision of what course of action is right for you.
It is proven that VLCC does work for many people. Some local case studies have seen people lose 70.9 kgs!! That's huge!!
To the people that shout out "why not join a gym"... well, if that works for you then that's great. But if you look at the stats for the number of paying members that actually attend the gym they pay for regularly, it's a shockingly low number. So we know there are literally tens of thousands of people in Qatar in need of assistance losing weight, but not motivated to head to a public gym. It's for these people that VLCC can create real change, and I for one wish them luck.
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