“Uh-oh, I don’t see any chippies here,” says contestant Russell in the first episode of Channel 4’s controversial new series of weight loss journeys Around the world in 80 weights. Russell, 36 years old and from Kent, stares from his seat in a luxury coach at the tidy outskirts of Tokyo – the capital of a country with an obesity rate of 4 per cent, compared to the UK’s 25 per cent.
Insurance worker Russell and five other Britons – Russell’s 31-year-old wife Marisa; South Londoner Therryi-Jay, 32; empty nester Susan, 57; Leeds father Lee, 34; and 24-year-old Tiffany – are in Japan on what the show’s voiceover calls a “research mission” to “throw some wood” by discovering how slim-waisted Tokyoites go about their daily lives, diets and exercise regimes.
The four-episode series also sees the group travel to Tonga, where obesity rates are soaring since the introduction of Americanized junk food; to a weight-loss clinic in Texas; and to Mumbai, where participants will enjoy a week of yoga and vegetarianism at the world-famous Yoga Institute in Santacruz East.
But with the first episode featuring awkward scenes, including the “great pilgrims” (in the show’s jargon) where Tiffany, Marisa and Therryi-Jay are pointed out by locals at a food market, and contestant Lee is too ashamed of his stomach To strip off for a traditional onsen (hot bath), some plus-size travelers have labeled the television show as “retrograde” and “fat-shaming.”
Kirsty Leanne, a 31-year-old travel blogger from Shropshire who runs the major British group travel company Plus Size Travel Too, said she thinks the reality show promotes the idea that overweight travelers are fair game to be shamed. On the first evening in Japan, she notes, participants are introduced to the Japanese concept of eating in harmony washoku, and are served small meals of balanced vegetable and fish dishes that they can eat with chopsticks by their hosts and Japanese food bloggers Mr and Mrs Eats.
“The participants are informed [at that first meal] that fat people are destroying the ‘harmony’ of Japan because they ‘don’t look good’,” says Leanne, adding: “Saying that people ‘don’t deserve’ to be somewhere where fatphobia is encouraged, and that’s what we are being the US is already fully confronted with. the world.”
In recent years, plus-size travelers have started speaking out against travel policies they say are discriminatory. These include the shrinking size of airline and train seats, weight restrictions on attractions, and the policy of some airlines to charge passengers based on their weight, or for extra seats if they need them (Samoa Air has charged passengers in the past will be charged for their combined body and luggage costs). weights and in 2015 Uzbekistan Airways announced it would weigh all passengers to “ensure flight safety”).
It was the absence of plus-size people in glossy travel brochures that caused Leanne to postpone her dreams of traveling the world. “The only time you hear of people traveling plus size is when they are being shamed on planes for taking up space, or photographed in swimwear without their consent,” she says. “So I kept telling myself, ‘I’m going to travel when I lose weight.’”
Today, Leanne, who started traveling with enthusiasm after a trip to Paris in 2017, is part of an emerging ecosystem of plus-size travel experts. They include American travel YouTubers Jimmy Lierow and Amanda Ervin who run the travel agency Chubby and Away, which books tailor-made trips and cruises for plus-size travelers, and American ‘fat travel activist’ Annette Richmond. Richmond’s Fat Camp, a cheerful and outdoorsy answer to traditional weight loss vacations, has dates through 2024 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 2,024 routes exploring the UK’s locations BridgertonTuscany and the Amalfi Coast, and Loy Krathong, or Thailand’s “Festival of Lights” in November.
Leanne’s Plus Sized Travel Too has tours for 2024 including Plus-Sized Soeul and Plus-Sized Bali. “I ensure that the accommodation has firmer beds, that restaurants have suitable chairs (no armrests, not plastic) and that the activities have high weight limits on the tours,” explains Leanne. “I also plan activities that empower plus-size people and encourage them to love their bodies.”
Leanne’s friendly world map for large travelers lists countries where larger people stay (Australia and the US get top billing), as well as countries where large-sized travelers face stigma. She says her worst experience was a bike tour in Vietnam, where she double-checked the weight restrictions for the human-powered bike tour before leaving. “Twenty minutes into the 45-minute experience, the person cycling made me get off and said he couldn’t cycle me anymore and pointed to his knees,” Leanne recalls. “It was scary 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 plus-size travelers gain more space (for example, by looking for ‘neighbour-free’ and ‘customer to size’ policies on airlines). “Why can I only take 23 kg of checked baggage, but if I weigh 120 kg I can get a free seat and also the baggage allowance?” moans a commenter named Alan under one of Leanne’s Instagram posts. But for Leanne, the joy of helping plus-size travelers experience the world for the first time overshadows that of Alans. “I see people coming out of their shells and doing things they wouldn’t be able to do if they weren’t traveling with other plus-size people, like wearing a bikini to a beach club,” she says.
Halfway through the first episode of Around the world in 80 weights, Russell breaks down in tears as he looks out over a landscape of lush rice fields. He admits that he came on the show in memory of his father, a cheerful and obese pub owner who died suddenly of a heart attack when Russell was just 19.
Russell and his wife Marisa are desperate to lose weight, he confides, so they can have their own children. This moment is a moving reminder of the life changes that can be brought about in all of us by the open skies and expanded perspectives of travel, but unfortunately Around the world in 80 weights is not Eat pray love for Britain’s obesity.
Or as Leanne puts it: “Let’s forget all the shame, shall we, and just be a little nicer to the plus-size person sitting next to us on a plane.”
Around the world in 80 weights airs on Channel 4 on Tuesdays at 9pm and can be seen in full on All 4 from February