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 soon became apparent that my busy lifestyle was contributing toward my expanding waist line.

Travelling on business and meeting clients 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 goes for travelling for a vacation. When your’re in a holiday mood you are far more likely to give in to temptation. When visiting a part of the world where the food and restaurants are too good to resist inevitably you don’t. In combination with a few holiday drinks and some relaxing time by the swimming pool and by the time you get home you find that your clothes don’t fit any more.

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 it a priority to get some exercise wherever I go. This isn’t always possible, particularly if I’ve been travelling all 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.

Also, since I never go anywhere without my trusty laptop and I have a few tried and tested keep fit routines stored on my hard disk that I can perform in my hotel room wherever I am. 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 wakes me up ready for my 30 minute drive home and burns off a few of the calories I’ve picked up while away.

I’ve started to go for much smaller portions and fewer courses when eating in restaurants. I will also select the healthiest option from the menu. Many restaurants, at home and abroad, have some very healthy fresh fruit and salad options these days. And anther technique I use is eating more slowly.

Theses days I have nearly cut out alcohol completely which has brought some enormous benefits. Wherever possible these days I just drink water.

I doubt that my techniques will be appealing to everybody but hopefully they will help a few people to keep in trim when on the move.

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.