I travel a lot on business, often spending the whole of the working week hopping from one airport to another, sleeping in airport hotels and eating a lot of airline food. It was soon clear that my busy travelling lifestyle was helping to make me a much fatter person.
Travelling alone on business brings with it a whole load of obligations. You need to have dinner with clients and often share a few drinks after meetings in order to be sociable. Being away from home makes it difficult to take exercise and can make it hard to resist the temptation of the mini bar and room service.
The same is true for holiday travelling. When you are in a holiday mood you are far less likely to be able to resist temptation. You’re visiting a part of the world where the local food and restaurants are just too tempting to resist so, inevitably, you don’t. Combine this with a few holiday drinks and some days spent relaxing and lounging by the pool and when you get home you find that you’ve acquired several pounds of fat and your clothes are all too small.
Unfortunately there is no quick and easy fix to the problem of weight-gain while travelling. But I shall share a few of the tactics I use to keep my weight from increasing while I’m travelling on business.
Firstly, I make a point of getting some exercise wherever I go these days. This isn’t always an option, particularly if I’ve been travelling until late in the day. Whenever I can I book myself into hotels that have some good keep fit facilities like a swimming pool or gymnasium. I will always make good use of these welcome facilities when they’re available.
I keep a few good keep fit routines on my laptop hard disk and I use these in my hotel room whenever I can. Each day that I’m away I will always try to go for a brisk walk around the hotel area.I have found that a vigorous ten or twenty minute walk is not only a great way to get some exercise but also helps to clear my head.
I try to make the most of every opportunity to get a little exercise and work off some of those excess calories consumed on my travels. For example, when I fly home I will always take ten minutes to walk around the perimeter of the Cardiff airport parking lot before retrieving my car. This serves to wake me up enough to drive home safely and burns off some of the calories I’ve picked up on the flight.
I’ve started to go for much smaller portions and fewer courses when eating in restaurants. These days I will always choose the healthiest option available. Lots of the restaurants and hotels that I visit these days have some great healthy eating options which I will tend to choose. And anther technique I use is eating more slowly.
When it comes to drinking I have all but stopped consuming alcohol which has brought a number of benefits. Wherever possible these days I just drink water.
I know that my techniques will not suit everybody but hopefully these suggestions will help a few people avoid accumulating unwanted fat while travelling.
Top Tip: When travelling, for business or pleasure, alway make certain that you have adequate and appropriate travel insurance. If the worst should happen the last thing you want is the expense of a flight home in an air ambulance.
