Russell Valentin weighed 21st 6lbs when he left Chicago in January 2025.
He now weighs 12st 5lbs.
The nine-stone difference, he says, comes down to the last thing anyone would guess: British food.
The 32-year-old reviews English sweets and traditional delicacies for his 151,000 TikTok followers (@redbusruss), where his verdicts on our national cuisine get a mixed reception.
His waistline, meanwhile, has delivered its own review.
‘I was dying when living in the US’
“I was dying when living in the US,” he tells CreatorZine..
“I used to be quickly out of breath or winded when walking up and down stairs. And I used to have low energy, as well as sleep apnea, on a daily basis.”
At his heaviest, Russell says he felt trapped in a body that didn’t belong to him, with his real self hiding underneath the weight.
Being a food creator made it worse.
“I felt embarrassed to have pictures taken of me and going out in general,” he says.
“I used to get derogatory comments, particularly when doing food reviews.
People would tell me to go to the gym instead of recording myself eating.
Or tell me that I was ‘spilling’ out of my clothes or ‘built like a deep breath’.”
Restrictive diets and punishing gym routines got him nowhere.
“I thought attacking my calorie intake and workouts with intensity would increase my weight loss results,” he says.
“But all that did was make the process miserable and unmanageable for me.”
Crumpets in, corn syrup out
Then he moved. “I started noticing my weight naturally declining when I moved here,” he says.
“I used to put in a conscious effort to lose weight; but, now, my weight just suddenly went down.”
The old Chicago menu ran to waffles, eggs, bacon and coffee for breakfast, a sandwich with fruit and crisps for lunch, then meat and vegetables for dinner, with crisps or sweets filling the gaps.
The London version swaps breakfast for toast or a crumpet and the snacks for light picky bits.
Lunch and dinner haven’t changed.
Russell doesn’t credit the menu itself. “Everyday British food contains far fewer chemical preservatives and substances engineered to keep you eating more,” he says.
“Less high-fructose corn syrup and added sugar also plays a big role.
There’s more straightforward labelling here and smaller portions – not American ones.”
Selling his car before the move helped too. Walking everywhere in London pushed his daily step count past 12,000, whether he fancied it or not.
‘Moving here has absolutely saved my life’
“I feel far more confident and I’m no longer afraid to go out in public or have pictures taken of me,” he says.
“I finally look like my true self. Moving here has absolutely saved my life.
If I knew that the better food and walking everywhere would lead to this, I would’ve made the move much sooner.”
His advice skips the intensity that failed him back home.
“My advice is to start with very small, achievable changes in your life that you can repeat everyday without too much struggle,” he says.
“If looking to move here from overseas, make full use of quality British food ingredients. It makes a huge difference.”
Why It Matters
Transformation stories are reliable creator fuel, but Russell’s lands differently because it inverts his entire content premise.
A food reviewer whose British snack habit coincided with a nine-stone loss is a walking rebuttal to the comments section that told him to stop eating on camera.
His story also plugs directly into the US-versus-UK food comparison genre, one of the most dependable engagement machines on TikTok, where Americans marvelling at British ingredient labels routinely pull millions of views.
Russell now has something most of that genre lacks: before-and-after photos.
Expat creators comparing American and British food standards have become a fixture of UK TikTok over the past two years, and audiences show no sign of tiring of the format.
Whether Russell’s followers treat his transformation as proof or coincidence, the comments section that once mocked his weight now has something new to argue about.
He’ll keep reviewing the crumpets either way.
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