Man who lost insane amount of weight in four week ‘Chinese fat camp’ exposes gruelling schedule

Earlier this summer, André Helgesen began his travels around Asia in a rather unique way – by going to a ‘fat camp’.

The Swedish 29-year-old had been on a weight loss journey already (dropping from over 21 stone to roughly 13). And so, he spent four weeks at Jianfeidaren in Shenzhen, China, to help him shift the rest he wanted to lose, going viral with his story.

But it was no easy feat, having a gruelling schedule to complete with fasting hours, multiple workouts a day and even mandatory TikTok sessions.

Having struggled somewhat with the sleeping arrangements and ‘strict’ rules, Helgesen spoke to LADbible about the experience which he describes as ‘truly amazing’.

And while he says it was somewhat like he expected, the camp ‘surprised’ him in many ways – “It was definitely harder than I expected.”

He had to do three workouts a day, six days a week. (André Helgesen)

Helgesen explains he was pretty surprised by how much of a ‘personal’ task it was.

“How it was up to me to finish the workouts,” he says. “I thought someone would like hold my hand or something like that. So, everything being up to myself kind of surprised me.”

But it was the ‘very hard schedule’ of exercise that surprised the Swede the most as he had to do three workouts a day, six times a week.

While Sunday was a rest day, he says there was a bit of an expectation to ‘work out in between the classes’.

Those classes differed from morning to afternoon also.

“The morning classes were mostly focused on cardio activities like aerobics, running or even swimming,” Helgesen explains.

“But in the afternoons, there were more weight training activities like we had some plates or even big bars that we lifted, doing many repetitions.”

He had to fast between 5pm and 8am. (André Helgesen)

So, with mornings focused on cardio and afternoons on weight training, the late class was always aerobics class with a live stream show to their TikTok’.

Helgesen claims the participants weren’t the ‘focus’ for this as much as the live stream.

All of this exercise with the strict meals ‘gets to you’, the lad explains.

“I was happy in the beginning, I thought it was easy, but in the second week, oh, it's hard,” he says.

“And then we have the food on top of that. We were fasting between five o'clock until eight in the morning. So being expected to work out so hard and not to eat anything was, the combination was very hard.”

His overall weight loss. (TikTok/@imhelgis)

Helgesen was limited to roughly 1,300 calories a day as part of the deficit. And for reference, the NHS recommends an average man consumes 2,500 calories a day to maintain a healthy weight or 1,900 calories a day if aiming to safely lose weight.

After the 28 days at the camp in China, he lost half a stone, taking his total weight loss to eight stone.

It isn’t totally a surprise that Helgesen hasn’t kept up the ‘strict schedule’ after the camp, having had a ‘wow, it’s finally over’ feeling once he reached the end.

“But that said, I haven't gone that crazy and got up all the weight,” he adds. “I'd say I've been stable and haven't gone down.”

And even though it ‘was really intense’ and ‘very tough’, Helgesen says the camp felt like ‘a safe environment’.

“There were stretches in between every workout and we have plenty of rest time during the day as well,” he explains. “So I felt like everything was planned out.

“If someone said they were feeling kind of sick or for example, hurt their knee, they would always take a rest day.”