How Much Weight Can I Gain in World's Most Obese Town?

Will Tennyson

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The video follows a fitness-focused YouTuber who flies to McAllen, Texas—often labeled the world’s most obese town—to test how much weight he can pack on in a single day. He starts by stepping on a scale at his hotel; the opening weight is 177.4 lb. Armed with a calorie tracker and a list of the city’s most indulgent eateries, he sets himself a 24-hour countdown to consume as many calories as possible while documenting every meal and reaction.

Breakfast comes from an all-you-can-eat buffet where he downs stacks of syrup-drenched pancakes, biscuits smothered in gravy, bacon, sausage links, and multiple glasses of chocolate milk. By 9 a.m. he’s already at 5,200 calories. Between bites he explains how McAllen’s combination of low food prices, car-centric infrastructure, and limited access to nutrition education have contributed to obesity levels topping 44 % of adults.

Mid-morning snacks include convenience-store corn dogs, jalapeño poppers, and two 44-ounce fountain sodas. Lunch is a double-meat brisket platter at a local barbecue favorite, complete with mac-and-cheese, coleslaw soaked in mayo, and a butter-glazed cornbread muffin. Calories climb past 10,000, and he’s visibly sluggish. The video cuts to interviews with residents who acknowledge that oversized portions and a culture of celebratory eating make healthy choices harder than defaulting to fast food.

By late afternoon he hits a drive-through to order a 20-piece fried chicken bucket, a family-size mashed-potato tub, and a large chocolate shake. He calculates that he’s consuming salt and sugar levels eight to ten times higher than recommended daily limits. For dinner he joins a local competitive-eating regular at an all-you-can-eat Tex-Mex spot, polishing off cheese-laden enchiladas, refried-bean nachos, and churros dipped in caramel. Total intake reaches an eye-watering 17,800 calories.

Just before midnight he returns to the hotel for a final weigh-in. The scale reads 186.1 lb, a net increase of 8.7 lb in under 24 hours. He closes by reminding viewers that most of the “weight” is water, undigested food, and glycogen, not pure body-fat gain; sustained surplus over weeks is what actually drives fat accumulation. Nevertheless, the experiment underscores how easy it is to overeat in an environment saturated with ultra-processed, inexpensive, calorie-dense foods, and it illustrates why McAllen consistently ranks at the top of obesity statistics.

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