by “Uh-oh, I can’t see any chips here,” contestant Russell says in the first episode of Channel 4’s controversial new weight loss travel series Around the World in 80 Weight. Russell, 36 and from Kent, looks out from his seat on a luxury coach into the neat suburbs of Tokyo – the nation’s capital with an obesity rate of 4 per cent, compared to 25 per cent in Britain.
Insurance worker Russell and five other Englishmen – Russell’s wife, Marisa, aged 31; South London Theerryi-Jay, 32; Susan’s empty nest, 57; Leeds dad Lee, 34; and 24-year-old Tiffany – in Japan on a “fact-finding mission” to “find some wood” to find out how low-key Tokyoites go about their daily lives, their essays food and their exercise regimes.
In the four-episode series, the group will also travel to Tonga, where obesity rates have been rising since the introduction of American junk food; to a weight loss clinic in Texas; and to Mumbai, where the contestants will enjoy a week of yoga and vegetarianism at the world-renowned Yoga Institute in Santacruz East.
But with the first episode featuring uncomfortable scenes including the “plus-sized Pilgrims” (in the show’s lingo) Tiffany, Marisa, and Therrii-Jay being shown by the locals in a food market, and contestant Lee putting too much shame on his stomach. end for a traditional onsen (hot bath), some plus-size travelers have slammed the TV show as “regressive” and “fat-shame”.
Kirsty Leanne, a 31-year-old travel blogger from Shropshire who runs UK plus-size group tour company Plus Size Travel Too, said she thinks the reality show plays on the notion that overweight travelers are equal to shame. On the first night in Japan, she notes, the contestants are introduced to the Japanese concept of eating together, or washoku, and are served small meals of balanced vegetable and fish dishes to be eaten with chopsticks by their hosts and Japanese food bloggers Mr and Mrs Eat.
“The contestants are told [at that first meal] that fat people destroy the ‘compromise’ of Japan because they don’t ‘look right’,” says Leanne, adding: “Saying that people don’t ‘deserve’ to be somewhere encourages fatphobia, and we’re facing plenty of that already in the world.”
In recent years, average travelers have begun to speak out against what they say are discriminatory travel policies. These include shrinking dimensions of airline and train seats, curb weight restrictions and some airlines’ policies on charging passengers based on their weight, or for extra seats if required (Samoa Air has charged passengers in the past which have been removed from their bodies and their combined luggage.weights and in 2015 Uzbekistan Airways announced that it would weigh all passengers to “ensure flight safety”).
It was the lack of plus size people in glossy travel brochures that made Leanne put her dreams of world travel on hold. “Literally, the only time you hear of plus size people traveling is when they’re being shamed on planes for taking up space, or being photographed without permission in a bathing suit,” she says. she “So I kept telling myself: ‘I’ll travel when I’ve lost weight’”
Today Leanne, who started traveling on a whim after a trip to Paris in 2017, is part of an emerging ecosystem of mid-sized travel experts. They include US travel YouTubers Jimmy Lierow and Amanda Ervin who run travel agency Chubby and Away, which books custom cruises and cruises for plus-sized travelers, and US “fat travel agent” Annette Richmond. The Richmond Fat Camp, which can disrupt traditional weight loss vacations, has 2024 dates in New York state’s Finger Lakes wine country and the Scottish Highlands. Her Fat Girls World Tour is a more formal group tour, with 2024 itineraries exploring UK locations BridgertonTuscany and the Amalfi Coast, and Loy Krathong, or the “Festival of Lights” in Thailand in November.
Leanne’s Plus Sized Travel Too has tours for 2024 including Plus-Sized Soeul and Plus-Sized Bali. “I make sure that the accommodations have firmer beds, that restaurants have suitable chairs (without arms, not made of plastic) and that activities on the tours have high weight limits,” explains Leanne. “I’m also planning activities that empower plus-size people and encourage them to love their bodies.”
Leanne’s plus-size friendly map of the world reviews the nations that cater to plus-sized people (Australia and the US get top billing), as well as those where plus-size travelers are stigmatized. She says her worst experience was on a cycling tour in Vietnam, where she double-checked the weight restrictions for the male-driven cycling tour before setting off. “Twenty minutes into the 45-minute experience the person who was cycling me really gave up and said they couldn’t cycle me anymore and focused on their knees,” recalls Leanne. “It was dangerous and dangerous because I had no idea where I was and no one else would pick me up.”
Not everyone is receptive to Leanne’s online tips to help average travelers save more space (by looking for “neighborhood free” and “customer size” policies on airlines, for example). “Why can I only take 23kg of checked baggage but if I weigh 120kg I can get a free seat in addition to the baggage allowance?” moans one commenter named Alan about one of Leanne’s Instagram posts. But for Leanne, it’s the joy of helping average travelers experience the world for the first time ever in Alans world. “I see people coming out of their shells and doing things they might not do if they weren’t traveling with other plus-sized people, like wearing a bikini to a beach club,” she says.
Halfway through the first episode of it Around the World in 80 Weight, Russell tears up as he looks out over a landscape of lush rice paddies. He admits he has come on the show in memory of his father, a jovial and obese pub landlord who died suddenly of a heart attack when Russell was just 19 years old.
Russell and his wife Marisa are desperate to lose weight, he confides, so they can have their own children. The moment is a cheerful reminder of the life changes that can be made in all of us through the open skies and wider perspectives of travel, but sadly Around the World in 80 Weight no Eat, Pray, Love for overweight Britain.
Or as Leanne puts it: “Let’s forget all the shame, shall we, and just make the plus-size person sitting next to us on the plane a little nicer.”
Around the World in 80 Weight on Channel 4 at 9pm on Tuesdays and can be watched in full from February on All 4
