One of my clients, Gavan, spent two weeks in Sri Lanka in the middle of his programme. Different time zone, different food, client dinners, a packed schedule. He came back half a kilo lighter.
That's not normal. Most founders return from a work trip carrying a few extra kilos, sleeping poorly, and needing a week to recover. Gavan's result wasn't luck or willpower. It was a system that worked regardless of the environment he was in.
This is the core principle I keep coming back to with clients who travel: your environment changes, but your anchors don't.
Why travel hits founders so hard
Business travel disrupts several things simultaneously. Your circadian rhythm gets compressed or shifted by time zone changes and artificial light. Your sleep is lighter and shorter in unfamiliar hotels. Your usual food options disappear and get replaced with business dinners and airport food. Your movement drops because you're sitting in meetings, planes, and taxis. And the social context of work travel means alcohol is almost always present.
Each of these alone is manageable. All of them at once, over several days or weeks, produces the typical travel result: you come home bloated, exhausted, relying heavily on caffeine, and have gained a few kilos that take a month to shift.
The mistake most founders make is trying to maintain their full home routine while travelling. That almost never works. The goal isn't maintenance. It's anchor points: two or three non-negotiables that keep your biology from completely derailing, no matter what else changes.
Anchor 1: Morning light, every day
Getting outside within 30-40 minutes of waking up is the single most impactful thing you can do on a work trip. It sets your cortisol awakening response, anchors your circadian clock to local time, improves alertness without caffeine, and accelerates jet lag recovery.
This costs nothing and takes 10-15 minutes. A short walk outside before the first meeting. That's it.
Most founders in hotels skip this because the default is breakfast in the hotel restaurant, then straight into the schedule. Moving the walk to before breakfast changes everything. Gavan did this every morning in Sri Lanka, even when it was already 30 degrees at 7am.
Anchor 2: Protein first, always
Airport food is almost entirely refined carbohydrates. Hotel buffets are the same. Business dinners involve bread, wine, dessert, and very little protein relative to the calories.
The one rule that overrides most of the chaos is: eat protein first, in every meal and snack. If breakfast is a buffet, go to the eggs before the pastries. If the business dinner starts with bread, skip it and wait for the main. If the airport has no good options, a protein bar is better than a muffin.
Protein keeps blood sugar stable, reduces hunger and cravings, preserves muscle mass, and doesn't cause the energy crashes that carb-heavy travel eating produces. You don't need to be perfect. You just need to make protein the default rather than an afterthought.
Anchor 3: Walk instead of sit
Movement drops dramatically on work trips. You're sitting in meetings all day, sitting in taxis and planes, sitting at dinners. Total daily steps can fall from 6,000-8,000 to under 2,000.
The fix is simple: walk whenever you have a choice. Walk to meetings instead of taking a taxi if it's under 20 minutes. Take the stairs. Walk during phone calls. Schedule a walk after dinner instead of going straight back to the hotel room.
Gavan walked 10,000+ steps almost every day in Sri Lanka by treating movement as the default rather than the exception. He had a full schedule. It just required making different small decisions throughout the day.
Anchor 4: Manage alcohol like a decision, not a social inevitability
Business travel almost always involves alcohol. Conferences, client dinners, team drinks. The pressure to participate is real and I'm not suggesting refusing it entirely. The social cost isn't worth it.
There's a difference between choosing to drink at a genuine occasion and drinking on autopilot every night because it's there. Most founders do the latter.
The rule that works: decide in advance which evenings you're drinking and which you're not. Two or three nights out of seven is a choice. Six out of seven is drift. Alcohol disrupts sleep architecture significantly. One heavy night creates two days of recovery.
What this looks like in practice
You're in Singapore for a week of client meetings. Here's what the anchor system looks like in practice:
- Morning: 15-minute walk outside before breakfast. Eggs or a protein option at the hotel buffet before anything else.
- During the day: Walk to any meeting under 20 minutes. Stairs not lifts. Water on the table in meetings, not soft drinks.
- Evenings: You're drinking Tuesday and Thursday (genuine client dinners). Wednesday and Friday you're not. Sparkling water with a lime looks identical to a G&T and removes the social pressure entirely.
- Hotel room: Blackout blinds closed, phone off the bedside table, fan or white noise on. Light exposure management doesn't require any special equipment.
None of these require the trip to look different from the outside. The meetings happen, the dinners happen, the work gets done. The difference is that your biology isn't being systematically destroyed in the process.
That's what Gavan figured out in Sri Lanka. And it's why he came back lighter instead of heavier.
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