I Lost 140 Pounds So That I Can Travel the World

Amber Smith’s love of travel inspired her to a jaw-dropping weight loss. (Photo: Amber Smith)

You ask any hard-core traveler what they like most about seeing the world, they often say, “When you travel, you learn so much about yourself.”

For Amber Smith, a 34-year-old Australian living in England, one particular trip taught her something about herself, alright: that she had gotten too fat to travel.

“I felt so mortified, I can’t even explain it,” Smith tells Yahoo Travel about her big, fat “aha moment” back in October of 2012 when, trying to board a plane for a vacation to Moscow, she had to ask for a seatbelt extension. At the time, she weighed more than 320 pounds.

“I didn’t realize how big I’d gotten,” Smith remembers.“The [seatbelt extension] was embarrassing enough. But when I sat in the seat, I was bigger than the seat. And the people next to me, I could see them shifting uncomfortably. They asked to be moved because I was squishing them, basically!”

Amber can laugh about it now. That embarrassing incident three years ago inspired her to drop almost 140 pounds, a remarkable weight loss recently featured in The Daily Mail. Her dramatic weight loss has re-invigorated her passion for travel that was nearly smothered by her 300-pound-plus frame.

“I just thought I’m just too big now to travel,” Amber tells Yahoo Travel. “I’d just not go anywhere. I felt like I had no life.”

Now, thin and once again traveling, Amber tells Yahoo Travel about how her love of food conflicted with her love of travel — and how travel won in the end.

A passion for travel

Amber’s weight gain threatened her love of travel. Something had to give. (Photo by Amber Smith)

Amber says she’s been a frequent traveler ever since she moved to the U.K. 10 years ago. “I would always go to Europe,” she says. “I went to America a couple of times. And Canada.”

But she then hit a depressing period in her life; a stressful new job and a move to Newcastle (a three-hour train ride from her friends in London) led her into a spiral of emotional eating. “The whole move was bad and I missed my life in London,” she says. “At the time, I didn’t really realize how unhappy I was or that I was eating so much.”

But as she quietly packed on the pounds, Amber recalls noticing that traveling was becoming slightly more challenging. “I found that people would always kind of look me because I was so big,” she says. “It made me feel uncomfortable.”

There was physical discomfort, too. “I also felt like I couldn’t do as much, like walking for long periods,” she says, “or climbing stairs, or going to a cathedral or something. I found it really difficult.”

Flying while fat

At one point Amber weighed more than 300 pounds. (Photo by Amber Smith)

Flying started getting more complicated as well. “Because I was so big, I’d never be able to sit in the middle seat because I’d just spill over into both the other seats,” she recalls. “So when I booked my ticket, I would book the aisle seat so I could at least try to sit awkwardly and let my fat legs hang over the aisle.”

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She’d also make sure to sit in the back of the plane. “I’d always get on first so people wouldn’t see me with the seatbelt extension.”

That continued until that pivotal 2012 flight to Moscow, when her massive weight caused obvious discomfort for her seatmates. “I’m not someone who really cares what other people think,” she says. “I’m quite comfortable with myself as a person. But that was the first time I realized I was just so big and I was just embarrassed. It made me not want to get on a plane. It made me not want to go anywhere.”

A flight to Moscow provided a rude awakening for Amber. (Photo by Amber Smith)

And she didn’t. For the next six months, Amber didn’t leave the U.K. “It was depressing,” she says. “Those were pretty dark days because I was already so unhappy, and now I can’t travel, the one thing I really love to do.”

That’s when Amber decided her massive weight and her equally-sized wanderlust could no longer co-exist.

The joys of traveling light

A newly-thin Amber enjoys Victoria Falls in Zambia. (Photo by Amber Smith)

With Amber’s self-imposed travel ban becoming an unsustainable burden, there was only one thing left for her to do: lose weight. She researched weight loss plans and settled on Cambridge Weight Plan, a U.K.-based weight loss company that provides meal replacements.

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“I had four shakes a day,” says Amber (who, by the way, says she’s not a compensated spokesperson for Cambridge), “and just a lot of water — 3 liters of water a day. And I had a consultant come to me every week.”

The result: she lost 140 pounds in a year.

The other result, of course is that she’s started traveling again. “Oh my God, it’s made life so much easier,” she says of her weight loss. For one, flying is no longer an issue. “I always used to think about how fat my ass was when I had to sit in plane seats,” she says. “Now, I don’t have to sit in the aisle seat so I can let my bulge hang over. I can sit in the aisle, or the window or the middle seat.”

Amber’s weight loss has simplified other forms of transportation. “I did a tuk-tuk tour when I was in Ho Chi Minh City [Vietnam] and I didn’t have to worry about, ‘Am I going to fit in that seat?’” she says. “Thats a big thing.”

Walking is easier, as well. “If I have to walk to save money, which I do a lot, I don’t have to worry about not making it or getting tired,” she says. In fact, Amber’s gotten so adept at walking, she recently completed a bucket list item: hiking the 26-mile Incan Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru.

Conquering the difficult challenge of losing weight allowed Amber to conquer another challenge: hiking to Machu Picchu. (Photo by Amber Smith)

“It was one of the best things I’ve ever done,” she says of that grueling three-day journey. “Even smaller and slightly fitter, it was a massive, massive struggle. The altitude was ridiculous, and [I was] in the rain constantly, climbing uphill. There’s no way I would have done it when I was heavier. I wouldn’t have even made it the first hour!”

A new travel wardrobe

Amber can now enjoy travel frivolities that weren’t available to her before. Like spur-of-the-moment clothes shopping trips.

“I can just go into any shop anywhere and buy clothes,” she says. “I don’t have to worry about finding a fat girls store or worry that I’m not going to find a pair of jeans that fit.” If she needs, say, billowy elephant pants for a tour in Cambodia, no problem. “I just went into a shop and bought them,” she says. I didn’t have to think about it.“

Amber at the Great Wall. She’s now on a 10-month journey through Asia and other continents. (Photo by Amber Smith)

Same thing when she needs a bikini which, thanks to her weight loss, Amber now rocks with confidence. After spending so long avoiding the water because she was ashamed of her body, Amber says she finally took the plunge during a recent trip to Croatia.

Related: Fitness Vacations: These People Lost Tons at Weight Loss Resorts

"I found a little store and I was like, 'I’m going to buy a bikini,’” she says. “I’ve never, ever had the confidence to do that before. And I sat on the beach for ten minutes working up the courage to take off my clothes before I got in the water. I just worried that people were going to look at me like they used to because I used to be so big. I got in the water, no one looked at me, and I had the time of my life. It was the best feeling ever!”

Those people on that Moscow flight who asked to be moved because Amber was so big? They should check her out rockin’ a bikini in Croatia! (Photo by Amber Smith)

Staying skinny on the road

Now on a backpacking tour through Asia, Amber is no longer drinking those Cambridge shakes she got during her weight-loss program. So she has to be extra vigilant if she wants to eat healthy. “It is so, so difficult,” she says, “especially a place like Asia. It takes time to search out fresh fruit because supermarkets are difficult to get to.”

We all know how hard it is to eat healthy on vacation. How does Amber do it?

1. Skip the bad stuff

That may seem obvious. But considering how inconvenient healthy foods are — and how convenient the bad stuff is — while traveling, sticking to a diet on the road is extremely challenging. “If you’re in an airport or a train station, there’s KFC, noodles, and chocolate,” Amber says. “I don’t want to eat that. I’m trying to be healthy.”

For Amber, that means passing up a lot of easily available items. “If there’s only chocolate available, I won’t eat the chocolate,” she says. “I don’t eat stuff that’s deep fried. I try to eat things that are steamed. I don’t go for the egg fried rice; I go for the steamed rice with some vegetables. Make the healthier choice. You can still eat but just make the healthier choice.”

2. Shop wisely

One secret to eating healthy is always having healthy food on you. “I buy a lot of snacks, like nuts and fruit” — which, Amber says, can come in handy during long bus trips.

When you do find healthy food to buy, Amber recommends stocking up. “I’m backpacking, so I tend to go in supermarkets and buy a whole bunch of things — like yogurt, fruit, stuff like that — and carry the rest around in my pack,” she says, “things that aren’t perishable. Make sure you’ve always got something healthy.”

3. Change your approach to eating

“Right now I always think about what I put in my mouth,” Amber says. “I definitely changed the way I think about food and my relationship with it.”

That’s an approach Amber recommends for eating, both on vacation and at home. “Don’t just think, 'I have to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner,’” she says. “Think about the energy that you need and what’s the healthier option.”

The good news is Amber says it’s okay to treat yourself occasionally. “Every now and then, I really fancy a chocolate,” she admits. “So I’ll go grab a chocolate. Instead of eating it every day, I have it once a month or once every couple of weeks. It’s not about cutting all the bad stuff out completely.”

Besides, Amber doesn’t miss junk food that much. “I’ve eaten salad and stuff for so long, I really like it,” she says.

The freedom of healthy traveling

Amber stands triumphant at the Salt Flats in Bolivia. (Photo by Amber Smith)

Now, Amber is enjoying traveling light to the extreme. She and her new body are in the middle of a 10-month trip that will take her through Africa, Asia, the U.S., New Zealand, and Australia. With each leg of her bucket-list worldwide journey, Amber reflects on the emotional weight loss journey that made it all possible.

“I didn’t do a lot of things because I was bigger,” she says proudly. “Now I can do everything!”

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