A group of overweight Britons who signed up to travel the world in a quest to learn weight loss secrets were left upset by their experience in Tokyo where they people stared, pointed and laughed at them.
The first episode of Channel 4’s latest series, Around the World in 80 Weighs, which aired last night, follows six contestants from around the UK who ventured to Japan, where only 4 per cent of the population are obese compared to 25 per cent of Britons.
Workers are legally obliged to do a morning exercise session – and have their waists measured by their employers – and with obesity so uncommon in Japan, the participants quickly stood out from the crowds in suburban Tokyo where members of the public openly gawked at them.
‘As we walked past all of the school kids pointed and laughed at us,’ said Tiffany, 24, who admits she needs help to ‘not eat c**p all day every day’. ‘I’m starting to feel a bit self-conscious, as we’re walking, everybody’s staring.
Marisa (pictured left) and Tiffany (pictured right) were made to feel ‘self-conscious’ after being stared at in the streets of Japan
‘They’re so open about being rude,’ she continued. ‘Why would you point and laugh at another human being? It’s just cruel.’
‘It just blows my mind that you’re not allowed to be who you are and you just have to fit it,’ agreed 31-year-old Marisa.
‘I don’t feel like I should be here,’ Marisa continued. She added: ‘In this country I don’t feel comfortable, and for me personally, it isn’t somewhere I would come back.’
The young women braved their journey through the busy streets despite appearing dejected from the humiliation.
They joined the rest of the group to meet with their tour guides – YouTubers called Mr and Mrs Eats – who admitted that upon meeting the group, it was their first time seeing ‘bigger people’ in the flesh.
‘Obese people are extremely rare,’ said Mrs Eats/ ‘Do we have obese people in our town, maybe. But I just don’t see them at all.’
She explained to the group: ‘A lot of Japanese people are very disciplined. We believe that harmony is very important, so that if you are too big and you stand out too much, you kind of destroy the harmony in society in a way.’
The group move in with the couple for a few days to learn a new approach to eating, and are served a meal of miso soup, fresh veg and meat and fish.
They are only allowed to eat with chopsticks so that they eat slowly, giving more time to digest their food. They are told to eat in a triangle, by trying a little bit from each plate at a time, and to finish when they are 80 per cent full.
Later in the trip, the group also partook in a Japanese practice called Rajio Taiso.
The participants complained that members of the Japanese public openly gawked at them as they stood in the streets
The group were publicly humiliated as people stopped to stare at them in the streets because of their size
To help combat obesity, the Japanese government broadcasts an exercise class every morning, and it’s the law that workers across the country pause to work out together.
In 2008, Western eating habits sparked a rise in obesity in Japan, and the government introduced a law making the employees responsible for monitoring waistlines.
Individuals are measured at work and waistlines should be no more than 85cm for males and 90cm for females.
It comes after This Morning hosts Josie Gibson, 38, and Dermot O’Leary welcomed three of the participants on the show yesterday to discuss the eye-opening experience – and the culture that shocked them the most.
Among the participants are Russell and Marisa, a married couple who have known each other from the age of four – and are equally desperate to lose weight so they can have children.
Participants Marisa and Russell (pictured), from the UK, joined Channel 4’s show Around the World in Eighty Weighs in a bid to lose weight
Therryi-Jay (pictured left) joined Marisa and Russell and travelled across continents to learn about different cultures and their eating habits
The series kicked off in Japan, where the contestants meet Mr and Mrs Eats (far right). Pictured left to right is participants Susan, Russell, Tiffany, Therryi-Jay, Phil, and Marisa
Sue also appeared on yesterday’s show – a woman whose experience with obesity has stopped her from living life to its full potential.
Chatting to the hosts, the group revealed the monumental impact that the show has had on their health, general happiness, and waistlines.
‘Across the globe more than one billion adults are obese – 650 million adults, 340 million adolescents and 39 million children, and the number is increasing,’ Josie revealed.
That’s why Channel 4 took a group of individuals grappling with obesity travelling to, so they could discover why the rate is so high and how other countries handle the problem.
Participants also strive to lose weight throughout the show – a longstanding reality for contestants Marissa and Russ.
‘I think for me and Russ, we struggled with our weights since we were quite young. We tried lots of fad diets… but things didn’t work, and we’d always fall of the wagon,’ Marisa said.
Russell added: We got into a cycle of being good during the week, and at the weekend, we’d go rogue and eat anything.’
‘When this opportunity came up, we just couldn’t say no. We both want to have children one day; we just want to be the best versions of ourselves, not just for that but for us,’ Marisa added.
For Sue, her weight loss journey was all about retrieving her confidence. She said: ‘I lost my confidence being overweight, I didn’t have a 50th birthday party, there was no way I was going to do that.
She added: ‘Some days I didn’t go out, I’d get dressed up and go to the back door, and I couldn’t go. I couldn’t even take my dog for a walk.’
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