The airport lounge in Reykjavik. Thirty crew members waiting. Jeff sits across from the producer, heart hammering, and confesses: “I don’t know what to do. I’ve never hosted a show before.” The producer leans forward and starts quoting moments — that barbecue review, that interview, the way Jeff spoke straight to camera. “Do that,” he says. “That’s exactly what Nat Geo liked about you.” Relief floods in so hard Jeff cries.
Jeff Jenkins grew up in Orlando, Florida — his father a chef at Disney World, his childhood shaped by Space Mountain and the Spanish moss country of Central Florida. He wasn’t an outdoors kid, but he and his brother carved their own adventures in the woods behind the house, catching city buses to parts of town they weren’t supposed to see. No one in his family had graduated from college. He studied business, then music education at Florida A&M University, became a choir teacher — a stable job he never truly wanted. When his stepdad died young, Jeff questioned everything. The answer was simple: no, this is not what I want for the rest of my life. He resigned.
Today Jeff is the creator of Chubby Diaries, a platform built to help over a million people confidently travel the world regardless of their size. He hosts National Geographic‘s Never Say Never, has been nominated for a Critics Choice award, won a Taste Award, and sits on the board of East African Energy Solutions, a nonprofit building bio digesters in Uganda. He’s working on a children’s book and a memoir, developing new television shows, and making Antarctica the final continent on his list.
Rwanda and the question.
After leaving teaching, Jeff went on a mission trip to Rwanda to build gardens. While there, he and his friends realised the community needed water. They came home, started the Water Well Project, flew to Texas for a week of training, and returned to Rwanda to build manual water wells — no engineers, just commitment and a $150 to $600 budget per well. Digging into the ground with piping, using water pressure, filtering out the stink. It worked. It made him question everything in the best way. A friend asked if he’d ever thought about being an entrepreneur. He hadn’t. Then, while building those wells, Jeff asked himself: if money wasn’t an obstacle, what would I do? Three days later he had his answer: travel the world, help people, and get paid to do it. That’s when Chubby Diaries was born.
Building the brand.
Everyone told him to find a niche. His cousin, who works in PR, handed him a branding worksheet. He filled it out and saw nothing. She looked at it and said: “It’s right there — you could talk about being fat and Black.” The moment she said it, ideas flooded in. He came up with the name in under 20 minutes: Chubby Diaries. He set it up as an S corporation from day one, making decisions as a CEO, not just a content creator. For a year he blogged. Traffic was decent but not remarkable. Then reels and TikTok arrived, and momentum built. People resonated — they’d never heard anyone talk about the challenges plus-size travellers face. Accessibility, comfort, community. Jeff wanted to be that representation, because plus-size people were absent from every travel brochure, advert and magazine he’d ever seen.
If I can do it, you can do it too.
— Jeff Jenkins
Industry shift.
The feedback comes in waves now. People sharing hikes, scuba dives, wetsuits that finally worked. A woman approached him in a Costco in Austin and told him his picture was on the wall in her office — they’d addressed so many issues because of it. The FAA is looking at standardising seat widths. Restaurants are replacing armchairs with armless seating. Hotels have widened entrances and bathrooms. Some companies now allow plus-size guests to use wheelchair-accessible facilities — showers and tubs that are wide enough. Brands are featuring plus-size creators in campaigns. Jeff has had people tell him they put someone on screen because of him.
Never Say Never.
He wrote it down every single day: one day I’ll have a travel show. Then the email arrived. “We have a show idea for you. Are you willing to jump on a quick call?” Four or five meetings in seven days. A year of development. Another year before it aired. The production company pitched National Geographic. Nat Geo liked it, funded a sizzle reel, then gave the green light. Rock climbing terrified him — he’d never seen anyone his size climb a real wall. The Sky Bridge in Thailand — wooden planks with gaps, a mile up. Sumo wrestling. All of it pushed him past comfort. But some of it was bucket-list. Thirty people on set. Multiple cameras. Story producers quietly taking notes, finding narrative threads. As a content creator you’re everything — producer, camera operator, sound, lighting. Doing proper television was phenomenal. The show was received well. Critics Choice nomination. A Taste Award win.
In this conversation.
We hear how Jeff went from choir teacher to water well builder to travel entrepreneur, how the death of his stepdad made him question everything, and how a branding worksheet revealed the platform that would change his life. He walks us through building Chubby Diaries as a business from day one, the systemic changes happening in the travel industry, and the surreal experience of hosting a National Geographic series with thirty people on set. We also hear about bio digesters in Uganda, the bucket-list pull of Antarctica, and why Jeff believes you don’t need permission to go live your life.
Call to adventure.
Adulting is hard and mundane at times. Get out there. Even if it’s just standing in your backyard to get the motivation going. Almost every country has a national park somewhere. Get out and explore them. Even in the States, you’ll be surprised how much beauty there is in national parks and reservations. They make your life feel more fulfilled.
Pay it forward.
Jeff sits on the board of East African Energy Solutions, a nonprofit building bio digesters in Uganda. The digesters take plant gases to create fuel for cooking stoves, replacing charcoal and wood fires. Charring food and breathing charcoal smoke lowers life expectancy — bringing in something less harmful for the body is genuinely life-changing.
About Jeff.
Jeff Jenkins is the creator of Chubby Diaries and host of National Geographic’s Never Say Never. A former choir teacher from Orlando, Florida, Jeff left the classroom after the death of his stepdad and a mission trip to Rwanda that taught him to look at everything as a business. He set up Chubby Diaries as an S corporation in 2017 with a mission to help over a million people confidently travel the world regardless of their size. He’s been nominated for a Critics Choice award, won a Taste Award, and is developing new television shows while working on a children’s book and a memoir. He’s visited six continents and counting, with Antarctica still calling.
That airport lounge in Iceland — the tears, the relief, the producer quoting his own words back to him — was the moment Jeff realised he didn’t need to become someone else. He just needed to keep being the person who built water wells in Rwanda, who asked the hard question, who believed with all his heart that adventure belongs to everyone. And thirty cameras or not, that’s exactly what he’s still doing.
