Katina Dejarnett (Katina Eats Kilos) – Detailed Biography

Katina Dejarnett is an American professional eater and a popular YouTuber.

She has over 1.1M subscribers on her YouTube channel, Katina Eats Kilos.

Introduction

Katina Dejarnett was born on 10 July 1991 in Eastern Washington, United States.

Katina is a Greek feminine name meaning “pure”. She has German, Scottish and Irish descent.

After living in Phoenix, Arizona for a while, she grew up in Spokane, Eastern Washington.

Her father is a Freemason.

Growing up in Arizona, Katina, along with her grandparents, did a lot of bass fishing on a man-made lake. She also did craw fishing and catfish fishing in her aunt’s pond.

She did her schooling from Central Valley High School in Spokane and was an honor student.

Growing up, Katina loved fantasy and wanted to become a stand-up comedian.

Appetite, WoW & art school

Katina has been a foodie, since a young age, with a huge appetite and an ability to eat a lot of food, thanks to her genetics.

She grew up watching Man v. Food, hosted by Adam Richman, on TV.

At 12, Katina got into the Warcraft III game and embraced World of Warcraft (WoW), when it was announced and played WoW for six years.

After completing high school, she wanted to study art and wanted to either design video games or work for the movies.

At the time, Katina was into Wētā FX, the company which worked on The Lord of the Rings.

At 18, she moved to Laguna Beach, all by herself, to join Laguna College of Art and Design. But she dropped out after just one semester as she didn’t like being told what to do.

Then, Katina moved to Pioneertown and later studied for an Associate of Arts degree in liberal arts and humanities from a community college.

At 23, she went on a three-month trip to New Zealand, with the National Outdoor Leadership School, and did sea kayaking, hiking, backpacking and mountaineering across the southern island of the country.

It was a fully off-the-grid trip with food rationing. The trip tested her physical and mental strength and she loved it.

Transformation

At 21, upon checking her BMI, Katina realized that she was obese and had a mental breakdown in the fitting room.

At the time, she was 165 lbs, had low muscle mass and used to gasp while climbing the stairs.

Katina was into World of Warcraft, all through her high school and university but ditched it and started working out in the gym to get fit.

She created an Instagram account, started following fitness accounts and started taking free fitness tips, which weren’t accurate, from Instagram.

She started following the IFBB PRO account and won the 12-week transformation giveaway contest and lost 30 lbs in 16 weeks.

At the time, Katina was following a cookie-cutter, 1100-calorie diet and was doing cardio exercises for one hour daily.

She learnt bodybuilding moves and routines from Bodybuilding.com and fell in love with bodybuilding and also got into physique improvement.

At the time, Katina wasn’t doing weightlifting and bodybuilding in a scientific way and wasn’t following scientific diets. She was into yo-yo dieting and even though she was getting fitter, she was ravenous all the time.

Nonetheless, she started feeling healthy and confident and liked how her body transformed.

Katina stopped following IFBB and Bodybuilding.com and started reading scientific articles authored by health professionals to learn scientific nutrition.

After switching from studying art to studying a basic degree from a community college, she got a certification in personal training as she wanted to teach fitness to others.

Working on missiles

Katina joined the United States Air Force (USAF), at 24, and started working as a missile technician. Her job involved working on defunct missile systems.

She worked at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. In 2017, she was deployed, for six months, to the United Arab Emirates.

Bodybuilding took a backseat when she joined the USAF.

Katina was in the active duty for three and a half years and worked as an Air National Guard for the remaining three and a half years. Then she got retrained for a system admin job and became a staff sergeant.

In 2017, while on deployment, she was following a diet plan and had chow hall access where every meal was an all you can eat buffet.

Katina used to get loads of vegetables and spinach so much that her paper plates used to fold in half and collapse and this earned her the nickname Spinach Girl.

She was in the Washington Air National Guard until March 2022.

Kinesiology & bodybuilding

After joining the National Guard, Katina studied for a B.Ed in Kinesiology with a Fitness Specialist concentration, from Gonzaga University in Spokane and graduated in 2020.

She studied kinesiology as she wanted to become an athletic coach.

Katina committed to a bodybuilding show, in 2019, after getting out of the active-duty military.

She started dieting hard and was on less than 1300 calories a day. She also started working out heavily and strength training for the show to look muscular and lean.

At the time, Katina was dieting hard, couldn’t eat to her heart’s content and was always hungry.

So, she started watching competitive eating YouTubers like Nathan Figueroa, Adam Moran of Beard Meats Food and Erik Lamkin of ErikTheElectric and started living vicariously through them.

Katina felt that she could eat as much like them, thanks to her appetite.

She competed as a natural bodybuilder in the National Physique Committee (NPC) show, in 2019, in the women’s physique division in Spokane and came fifth.

Compared to other bodybuilders, Katina was tiny on stage and just 104 lbs. This affected her confidence.

So, she decided to get bigger, jacked and heavier through the restaurant food challenges. Her bodybuilding coach also supported her decision.

Katina also competed in the Empire Classic Bodybuilding show.

It all started with XXXL Kingburger

After deciding to bulk up with restaurant food challenges, she decided to film and post them on her YouTube channel, Katina Eats Kilos, just as a hobby.

So, Katina bought a camcorder for $90 on an Amazon sale, took it to a local Fatburger restaurant and attended the XXXL Kingburger challenge. This was her first official restaurant challenge and she found this through foodchallenges.com, Randy’s website.

She was supposed to eat the 1.5 lb cheeseburger in less than 30 minutes. The meal wasn’t free but a completion certificate was offered.

The challenge was too easy for her as Katina finished it in just 6 minutes and 15 seconds without any preparation and was hungry even after the challenge.

So, she started attending more and more restaurant challenges and started posting them on her channel. As she loved challenging herself, she fell in love with food challenges.

At the time, Katina loved surprising people with her eating abilities.

As she was dieting for the bodybuilding show, she was able to eat huge quantities of food.

Prior to posting her XXXL Kingburger challenge video on her channel, Katina posted a 5lb DIY Chipotle Burrito Bowl challenge and mukbang video, in 2019, just to learn the camera and video editing basics.

Starting on YouTube wasn’t an issue for her as she was confident speaking in front of people and camera and was confident of her fitness knowledge and eating abilities.

At the time, Katina learnt how to become a YouTuber by watching YouTube videos and was inspired by the editing, formatting and presentation of BeardMeatsFood and a few other YouTubers.

She had a little bit of video editing experience from high school where she dabbled with the 2008 Final Cut software.

Katina edited her first few YouTube videos with iMovie before switching to the Final Cut.

Initially, she used to post her YouTube videos onto her Facebook page and request her Facebook friends to watch her videos and subscribe to her channel.

Katina used to also log in to YouTube from her mother’s account and watch her own videos and engage with them to nudge the algorithm to push her videos.

Initially, as she was shy and didn’t want to always go to the restaurants, she used to film herself eating at the home, by taking the food home, in addition to the restaurant challenges and food reviews.

Later, Katina started posting only restaurant challenge videos.

It took just 2 months

In 2019, Nick Dompierre did a 10,000-calorie donut challenge and announced to give a free T-shirt and a shout-out to anyone who can eat 10,000 calories of donuts in a day. At the time, he had around 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel.

Katina tried the challenge and ate over 10,000 calories of donuts in less than 12 hours.

Her channel gained traction when Nick gave her a shout-out and shared her video. She realized she could pursue YouTube as a full-time job rather than just as a hobby.

Thanks to the donut challenge, Katina grew from 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers in just two months of starting on YouTube and started earning part-time job level income from her channel.

She also received shoutouts from other YouTubers like Wayne Algenio.

In October 2019, Katina published a Pasta Bowl Season at Olive Garden video and got around 800,000 views within a month. Later this became her first video to cross a million views.

Currently, she has over 1.1M subscribers on her channel and is a full-time YouTuber.

One of the reasons for Katina’s success on YouTube is being genuine by showing both her wins, losses and vulnerabilities.

Her videos help promote restaurants. She prefers promoting small restaurants over big restaurant chains.

Her catchphrases are “groovy t-shirt,” “Ain’t nothing to it but to do it,” “let’s pull our hair back and get this challenge started,” and “Okay, peace out. Bye.”

Process & preparation

Katina does low-calorie, high-volume eating, by eating 3-4 lbs salad, along with a big bowl of protein and oatmeal and drinking two litres of liquid, to stretch her stomach to prepare for the challenges.

Also, her sound psychological state, discipline and competitive spirit which she borrowed from her bodybuilding days also helps her to eat more.

As Katina usually does food challenges in the evening, she eats a normal breakfast and does either lifting workouts, push-ups or walking.

She does a lot of cardio to get hungry and eats a small snack three hours before going to the challenge to avoid being hangry and to avoid stomach upset.

After finishing the challenge, to avoid discomfort, Katina hydrates herself and walks. A good night’s sleep relieves her of all her discomfort.

Her capacity to eat is 4 kgs or 8.8 lbs.

Katina’s favourite professional competitive eaters are Kate Ovens, Randy Santel, Molly Schuyler, Nathan Figueroa, Dan Kennedy, Wayne Algenio, Geoff Esper and Raina Huang.

Health

On the days she isn’t competing, Katina maintains her health by dieting and working out in the gym.

A day after participating in the big food challenges, she fasts and only consumes either a little quantity of salad or protein shake.

Katina competitively eats only for half the year and eats clean in the remaining half of the year.

She also focuses heavily on nutrition and her calorie intake.

Having a degree in kinesiology helps her to maintain her health. She has a good understanding of nutrition, thanks to her educational background.

Katina also does ultra-running, lifting, walking, cardio, strength training, jogging and spin biking.

It’s important for her to stay fit and lean as becoming heavier and gaining fat puts pressure on the stomach which can’t expand during the food challenges.

Future plan

Her future plan is to slowly phase out food challenges with food tourism videos.

As Katina loves travelling, she wants to travel all over the world and showcase different cuisines.

Personal life

Katina is getting married to Randy Santel, a popular professional competitive eater, on 10 October 2026.

In 2020, Randy was offered an undefeated team pizza challenge at Riverside Pizza in Nenana, Alaska.

As he needed a partner for the 10-day trip, he DM’d Katina as she was a full-time professional eater and YouTuber. At the time, she had around 100,000 subscribers.

Randy got to know her thanks to her viral video of 72oz Steak Challenge at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas.

As Katina was his fan, she agreed to go with him.

On their first day, in July 2020, they went on a fishing trip together but weren’t able to catch anything.

Then, they headed to their first team challenge, a barbecue challenge at Mama’s Wilderness BBQ, where Katina lost.

Later, they also participated in a few other challenges.

As they spent long hours travelling together in a car, in between the challenges, they got to know each other better and they also stayed in the same room.

They fell in love just five days after meeting.

After participating in four challenges, they participated in the team pizza challenge and shared their first kiss after it.

Katina is 5’2 and lives in Nashville.

Tidbits

• She loves middle eastern, Korean, Thai, French, Japanese and Indian food.
• Katina isn’t a fan of spicy foods, raw red onions and peanuts. She stopped doing spicy food challenges as they upset her stomach. She struggles with eating bread.
• Her spirit animals are a wolf and a stag because even though she loves having  good company, she can be fine on her own.
• Katina loves singing and country music and has been playing the guitar since she was a six-year-old. She grew up playing bluegrass music with her father. She also played 80s and 90s rock and roll, Stairway to Heaven, Smoke on the Water and AC/DC.
• She got food poisoning, when she started on YouTube, from blue cheese in a burger challenge. It took her three years to be able to enjoy the taste of blue cheese again.
• Katina loves dramedies and her favourite movies are Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Dan in Real Life, Charlie Bartlett, Date Night, Hot Pursuit and The Princess Bride. She also loves Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy franchise and Tomb Raider series.
• Her favourite dish is pizza and she likes Hawaiian pizza; she likes pineapple on pizza. She also likes St. Louis–style pizza, Imo’s Bacon Pizza and Pizza quattro formaggi and goat cheese topping.
• Katina has a sweet tooth and loves cheesecake and donuts. Her favourite dessert is soft and chewy cookies and favourite cake is carrot cake.
• She likes Egyptian mythology and can speak French.
• Leather working is her hobby and she loves reading books. Her favourite book series is Dungeon Crawler Carl.
• Katina loves playing World of Warcraft, Mario Kart and Kingdom Hearts III.
• As she grew up in Arizona, she loves hot weather. She doesn’t like the cold.
• Katina loves sushi, ramen and udon and Irn-Bru is her favourite flavour of soda. She took a couple of Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes.
• Her favourite seafoods are swordfish steak with raspberry reduction, scallops and fried calamari.
• Katina loves mushrooms, chip shop curry sauce, haggis, Lorne Sausage, battered sausages, crumpet, black pudding, white pudding, Yorkshire pudding, sticky toffee pudding and fish and chips.
• Her favourite and best tasting food challenge was when she ate a six-course meal of Polynesian rice dish served in a hollowed-out pineapple, 2lb cheesy shrimp taco, 4 cheese logs, fried green tomatoes topped with crab, a pineapple boat loaded with blackened grouper, risotto, a shrimp cocktail and a slice of turtle cheesecake, at Ugly Grouper on Anna Maria Island, Florida, in 2021.  This challenge took place outside, in front of the Ugly Grouper statue with the playing of live music.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Katina Dejarnett?

Share with me in the comment section below.