A Chinese zoo has given up on its plans to help an overweight leopard lose weight after two months of efforts yielded virtually no results.

Back in March, a leopard at the Panzhihua Park Zoo in China’s Sichuan Province became an overnight internet sensation after photos and videos of him went viral online. The overweight feline quickly became known as ‘China’s Officer Clawhauser’, a reference to the overweight police officer from Disney’s hit animated movie, Zootopia. Many people joked that the fat leopard resembled a seal, while others took his deformed frame more seriously, expressing concerns about the animal’s health and general well-being. Due to mounting criticism, the zoo was eventually to put out a statement, promising to make a series of changes to make the leopard lose some of its extra weight. However, it recently announced that its initiative failed miserably, as the real-life Officer Clawhauser hasn’t lost any weight in two months.

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A morbidly obese macaque named Godzilla who gorged on treats offered by passers-by in Bangkok, Thailand, succumbed to a myriad of weight-related illnesses at the tender age of six.

On May 6th, Godzilla breathed his last breath at the Crystal Pet Hospital in Bangkok as his master held its tiny hand in his. However, the man and his family are facing criticism for killing the young macaque with kindness, indulging his addiction to sweets and other fattening treats, and turning him into a popular attraction at their market stall. Tourists would pass by the vest-wearing primate and feed him all kinds of junk food, which led to him ballooning to over 19 kilograms, more than double the weight of an average macaque. Sadly, his condition never really improved after he was taken away, and a number of obesity-induced illnesses eventually claimed his life.

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It’s rare for any dog to reach 100 kilograms, let alone a stray one, but Krugets, a stray dog living in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, has become so fat that he can barely get up.

The Great Dane, the world’s largest dog breed, weighs between 300 (136 kg) and 400 pounds (181 kg), but for a midsize stray dog to weigh just under 220 pounds (100 kg) is somewhat of an oddity. Volunteers in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, recently found a stray dog so fat that he howled in pain every night, and barely managed to get up on all fours because of the unbearable joint pain. The dog had to be placed on a large scale by a number of people, and his weight reportedly stunned everyone. Krugets weighed a whopping 99.9 kilograms (220 lbs) and no one could understand how a stray could become so heavy.

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A 26-year-old Chinese man was recently labeled Wuhan’s fattest person after gaining a whopping 100 kilograms during the city’s five-month lockdown.

The man, referred to only as Zhou, to protect his privacy, wasn’t exactly fir before the coronavirus started wreaking havoc in Wuhan, prompting the authorities to impose a strict lockdown. But at least he kept his weight in check, worked at a local cafe and lead a relatively normal lifestyle. But that all changed when Zhou started spending most of his time indoor. Unable to burn off any calories, he started gaining weight, and in a few months’ time he had ballooned to 616 pounds (280 kilograms), over 200 pounds more than he weighed before the Covid-19 epidemic.

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A personal trainer on a quest to stop his 27-year-old obese client from “eating himself to death” has been distributing posters to local takeaway places instructing them not to serve him.

Every year, Mike Hind, a successful personal trainer from Middlesbrough, in the UK, takes on a client for free and tries to turn their life around in one year. Hind was named the best personal trainer in the UK last year, so he gets thousands of applications for his yearly giveaway, but this year he chose a 27-year-old man named Dibsy, after seeing him and his mom at his gym’s diner. He weighs 560 pounds (254 kg) and recently experienced heart problems that put him in the hospital for a week. The doctor’s verdict was very clear – ‘diet or die – and upon hearing his story, personal trainer Mike Hind decided to take him under his wing for a year. One of the first things the trainer did to help his new client was get him banned at local takeaway restaurants.

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Have you been wanting to join a gym, but hesitated because it feels weird to work out among all those super-fit people? Well, what you need is a place exactly like Downsize Fitness, the gym chain that only accepts clients who are at least 50lbs overweight. With branches in Chicago, Las Vegas and Dallas, the gym chain was inspired by the hit TV show The Biggest Loser, and aims to reduce the insecurities that larger people go through at regular gyms. So the only skinny people allowed at Downsize Fitness are the trainers.

And it doesn’t stop just there. The gym has gone a great length to ensure that its clients do not feel bad about themselves and stay motivated to come back every day. The facility has no mirrors lining the walls, and the windows are frosted so that passers-by cannot look inside. The machines are also specifically designed to suit those who are chronically overweight and obese. 39-year-old Francis Wisniewski, the owner of Downsize Fitness, was once overweight himself, so he knows exactly what it feels like to enter a gym filled with trip and super-fit people. When he finally shed his extra pounds, he identified the gap in the market. He is now the perfect ambassador to promote the business, having lost 60 lbs in the past year with the help of his team at Downsize Fitness. “Large clubs make you feel on display,” he said in an interview. “I’ve been big my whole life, and small incidents probably make it seem worse than it really is. But at the gym, it’s all out there for everyone to see. I was embarrassed to go the gym myself, it’s intimidating to go in when you can’t do all the exercises, when you feel like people are going to be staring at you and people are going to be judging you. And I know if I’m feeling it, overweight women feel worse. ”

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Susanne Eman weighs a staggering 540lbs (245kg) and unlike other brides-to-be, she actually wants to put on a lot more weight. To fulfill her bizarre goal of getting fatter for her wedding, Susanne is currently eating about 30,000 calories per day.

The 33-year-old, from Arizona, first made news headlines last year, when stories of her goal of reaching 1,600lbs appeared on the Internet and in various tabloids. Everyone was shocked that someone would actually want to become the world’s fattest person, and spend a small fortune in the process. Back then, Susanne revealed that she and her two boys, Gabriel, 16, and Brendin, 12, visit the supermarket and spend about eight hours filling six shopping carts with all kinds of foods. In order to reach the 800lbs-mark she had set for the end of 2011, the overweight single mom guzzled down about 20,000 calories a day. She didn’t reach her goal, but now the dedicated weight-gainer is getting married, and upped her daily intake to 30,000 calories, in order to become the world’s biggest bride.

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Goliath Caskets is a company in Indiana that makes specialized caskets – for the obese. With dangerously rising obesity levels among Americans, who could say they didn’t see this coming?

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says that one-third of U.S. adults are obese. Among the children and teens, the rate of obesity is at 17%. It’s no surprise then that several businesses have started to cater to the overweight – clothing, footwear, cars, airlines and now, as a generation of obese people begins to die, the need for extra large caskets has also become reality. Goliath Caskets was set up in 1990, specializing in large-sized caskets. However, over the years even the ‘normal’ sized casket manufactured by them has gotten larger. Owner Keith Davis says that when they first started, 36 inches was the widest one they made. But now they’re up to 52 inches wide and the casket can hold a person who weighs as much as 1,000 pounds. About half-a-dozen to a dozen of their biggest caskets are sold each year, as well as more than 200 slightly smaller ones. Read More »

Born at a normal weight, little Pang Ya now tips the scales at 41.5 kilograms, which is about as much as an adult Chinese woman.

Pang Ya weighed around 4 kilograms, when she was born, but reached 20 pounds in just 8 months, and ever since then she kept piling on the pounds. Now her worried parents are seeking medical help. They admit the toddler has a very healthy appetite, but claim doctors have no idea what is wrong with their daughter.

Pang Ya, from Taocun town, Shanxi province, is just one of over 60 million obese people in China. The numbers doubled between 1992 and 2002. That may have something to do with the opening of several fast-food chains in China.

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