Leah Shutkever – Detailed Biography

Leah Shutkever is a popular competitive eater and YouTuber.

She has over 650K subscribers on her eponymous YouTube channel.

Introduction

Leah Shutkever was born on 11 May 1990 in England and hails from Redditch, near Birmingham, England.

Her mother, Esther, was a chef and Leah’s father was a farmer. Later they started their own business.

The young Leah was strong and boisterous and used to bale hay in farms in the summer.

Later when her father used to do markets and car boots, she used to help him by carrying 60-pound weights which were used for holding down marquee.

Leah’s mother hails from Guatemala and has Latina, Swiss Italian, Egyptian and Native American ancestry whereas Leah’s father is English and has English, Irish and Russian ancestry. They met while travelling and settled in the UK.

The word Shutkever was born when Sutskav, a Russian surname, was translated on the border for Britishers.

Leah has an elder brother, Uri.

An architect

Leah was an academic and good student at school and wanted to become an archaeologist and then a policewoman.

She studied business from Solihull College where she got maximum UCAS points.

Leah decided to become an architect after her tutor suggested she study architecture.

She studied Bachelor of Architecture at Birmingham City University from 2011 to 2014 and then worked as an architectural assistant at TKA Space Studio in 2014.

Leah worked as an interior design manager at Eos Interiors from 2015 and 2018 at Birmingham. Then she worked as a freelance designer at Diligent Design for the following two years.

She has been competitive eating full-time since 2019.

During the lockdown, Leah focused on social media and her YouTube channel took off and she never looked back.

Innate talent

The young Leah was a gourmand, thanks to hailing from a food-orientated family, her mother being a good chef and her father and brother being big eaters.

At the time, she was capable of eating twice as much as that of her father and brother.

She never felt full or discomfort and used to compete with her brother in eating.

Later, she used to eat 10 banana sandwiches every lunchtime at work.

Difficult phase

Leah was born a big baby of 11 pounds and was a big kid.

She was overweight, thanks to her huge appetite and had been bullied at school since 11.

Leah, who was very shy, started muting herself.

At 16, she got into rugby and was a loosehead prop. She got a lot of self-efficacy, validation and winning mindset but lost most of her muscle mass from playing the game.

Leah broke her ankle during rugby and had to quit playing the game. She tried to return but couldn’t.

She broke her fibula near her ankle when a nurse was strapping her leg. So, she had to quit rugby and drop out of college to take rest.

At the time, Leah was studying law, psychology, sociology and ethics at college and after returning to the college, she studied business.

Even though she started going to the gym at 14, she started working out seriously only at 18 because she didn’t want to lose muscle on the injured leg.

Leah learnt about muscle building but wasn’t properly guided at the time as she did too much cardio and reps, lifted only light weights and didn’t push her strength.

But she focused and improved her agility and mobility.

She learnt to properly work out in the gym only at 21.

Yo-yo dieting & NPC Bikini girls

As Leah was an overweight child, she started dieting young and following unhealthy yo-yo diets.

The dieting resources at the time weren’t decent and they pressured people to get extremely skinny.

Eventually, she became too slim for her size and shape and her energy levels were also too low.

Leah travelled during her gap year before joining university and lost much weight and realized that to lose weight it’s important to move more and eat less.

She started learning about nutrition and dieting through proper resources and learnt how to eat properly.

Then, Leah got into bodybuilding and lifting weights, at 21, after being inspired by NPC Bikini girls.

She learnt bodybuilding through reading books, articles and websites (Flex magazine, Bodybuilding.com and SimplyShredded.com).

Bodybuilding taught her structure, discipline and balance. She started living a healthy lifestyle and got into good shape. She has been bodybuilding since.

Leah’s weight dropped to 50kgs at 21 from 70kgs at 16.

Bikini show & first ever food challenge

Around 2011, Leah was the only girl lifting weights at the gym and the men at the gym encouraged her to do a bikini show. Even though she was shy, she agreed to do the show as she loved the challenge.

Leah started dieting for the show at 23 which left her depleted.

At the time, her brother, along with his friends, was participating in a burger stack challenge at the Crust restaurant in Shirley every Sunday, but couldn’t win even after competing for ten consecutive weeks.

Food challenges were really popular at the time, thanks to the popularity of Man v. Food.

Leah’s brother lied to her about winning the food challenge in the tenth attempt. When she found out about this, she called her brother out and he challenged her to participate and win the food challenge.

After dieting for 16 weeks, she participated in the UKBFF show, her first bikini show and came fourth.

Then, Leah went to the restaurant and not only won the food challenge but also broke the record.

She ate a big waffle stack, consisting of around 20 waffles with layers of ice cream, brownies and marshmallows, in just six minutes with a spoon. She received much accolade, much greater than when she graduated.

Leah also broke another four challenges at the same restaurant.

As she was just out of the bikini show, she realized the importance of refeeds, which made her feel stronger and more focused, thanks to the food challenge.

Her brother encouraged her to attempt more challenges, thanks to which, she realised her talent and later became a competitive eater.

Leah won a qualifier and competed at world championships in 2015 and 2017.

She competed at HWY55 World Burger Eating contest in 2018 and was titled “UK #1”.

Leah is UK’s number one female competitive eater.

Winning without preparation

Leah doesn’t prepare for eating challenges but maintains a positive mindset throughout the challenge.

Thanks to this, along with her inherited ability to eat a lot of food, a good digestive system and concentration and having no gag reflex, food allergies and heartburn, she has been able to win many food challenges.

Leah has the ability to swallow huge quantities of food and she mostly swallows food instead of chewing and has no choking fears.

She fasts for around 12 hours before a food challenge to remain hungry and keep an empty stomach. This allows her to devour huge quantities of food and she doesn’t get a jaw ache, as she has been chewing gum a lot since a young age.

Leah fasts for a few hours to a few days after finishing a challenge.

YouTube

After Leah competed at the world eating championship in 2015, she was called again to compete, in 2017, in an international eating contest with YouTubers who do food challenges.

At the time, she wasn’t posting videos on her channel. A few American YouTubers inspired her to publish videos but as she was shy and self-conscious, she was reluctant to work on her channel.

But eventually, Leah started working on her channel and one of her videos, which she published in September 2017, got picked up by Matt Stonie.

Thanks to his shoutout, her small channel crossed 10K subscribers and became monetized. This inspired her to seriously work on her channel.

Leah’s first viral video is “6lb [96oz] Steak Challenge || Shuts Vs Randy Santel || Cattlemens Grill Harrogate”. It was published in September 2019 and currently has over 3 million views.

Currently, she has over 650K subscribers on her channel.

It started with Terry’s Chocolate Orange

In 2017, Leah attempted for a world record in eating Terry’s Chocolate Orange on her YouTube channel.

A year later, Channel 5 approached her and as they saw her Terry’s Chocolate Orange video, they offered to feature her on the Britain’s Favourite Chocolate show where she was offered to break a world record for the fastest time to eat a Chocolate Orange.

But Leah was shy and didn’t want to appear on TV. She was working full-time as a designer and was doing food challenges on the side.

She accepted to attempt for the world record on TV when they offered her compensation.

Leah broke the record and created a new Guinness World Record in 2018.

This inspired her to break many Guinness World Records over time.

She appeared on the Battle of the Super Eaters TV show and broke two Guinness World Records.

Leah broke a few more world records when the Guinness World Records approached her.

Guinness World Records relaxed its rules during the lockdown and allowed people to film themselves at home while attempting the records.

Thanks to this, she racked up several world records related to eating and this popularized speed eating in the UK.

Leah got featured in four Guinness World Record books.

Staying fit

Leah follows a healthy diet of lean proteins, vegetables and good carbs and follows a healthy lifestyle all through the week and participates in an eating challenge only once a week.

She chooses a variety of eating challenges, week over week, so that she can keep a tab on her calorie intake, which she tracks on a weekly basis.

Also, she eats mindfully and consciously and according to her ability in the challenges. She prioritizes her mental and physical health over money.

Leah exercises daily and restores her body to the normal state after an eating challenge. She fasts for a day after the challenge and doesn’t overeat on the normal days.

She is able to do high-performance eating, thanks to her high-performance training.

Leah keeps herself hydrated by drinking a lot of water.

She is 5’8″ tall and around 70 kilograms.

Blacking out

In November 2019, Leah was booked to go for a TV game show in Japan where she was to participate in a food challenge against four men, a popular presenter, an ex-sumo wrestler, ex-footballer and a comedian.

They sat on a long bench, in a tiny, narrow, long, underground English pub, on which they were served five kgs of food consisting of fish and chips, a giant Cornish pasty with whole sausages in it and a giant Scotch egg with three eggs.

Leah, who was jet lagged and exhausted, knew that she couldn’t eat that much food but couldn’t reject it as she was agreeable.

Within 15 minutes, she ate half the plate while others were barely eating.

Leah decided to stop eating as she felt full but the organisers encouraged her to finish the challenge but halfway through the Cornish pasty, she blacked out.

After regaining consciousness, she was taken to a clinic in an ambulance where her blood tests were done.

As the results came out fine, the doctor reasoned that she blacked out because she ate too much food in a place with not much oxygen and her brain was deprived of blood as too much of it went to the stomach to digest the food.

Tidbits

• Leah is double-jointed and got featured in many TV shows like Game Of Talents, Apocalypse Wow, Richard Hammonds Brain Reaction, Battle of the Big Eaters, etc.
• She ate 5 kilograms of chicken skewers at the world championships. It was the most food that she had ever eaten in a challenge.
• Leah beat Eddie Hall, a former World’s Strongest Man, in food challenges.
• She loves Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food and she can swallow whole eggs.
• Leah collaborated with Randy Santel for a 143oz Indian Mixed Grill Challenge.
• Her hobby is baking and favourite foods are sushi, medium-rare ribeye steak, mac and cheese, cereal and milk.
• Leah finds it difficult to speed eat bread-based and chocolate-based foods.
• She loves chocolate and her favourite ones are Raffaello and white Lindt. Her favourite drink is virgin mojito.
• Leah admires and derives inspiration from Betty White, Ruth Westheimer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dolly Parton.
• Her favourite competitive eaters are Joey Chestnut and Adam Moran.
• Leah’s nickname is The Shuts and zodiac sign is Taurus. She knows Spanish.
• Her future plan is to start a food bank in the UK.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Leah Shutkever?

Share with me in the comment section below.