City whets appetite of professional eating couple
Famous food challengers Randy Santel and Katina DeJarnett recently moved to Milwaukee.
They’re like the Beyoncé and Jay-Z, the Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, the Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell of the professional eating world.
Santel has 1.34 million YouTube subscribers and about 1,020 food challenge wins spanning 50 states and 37 countries since 2010.
His girlfriend, known as Katina Eats Kilos, has 283,000 YouTube subscribers and has done about 70 food challenges since 2019.
‘I’ve always been a pretty big eater’
“I’ve always been a pretty big eater,” Santel said, noting he weighed 205 pounds as a fifth grader.
His mom helped him lose weight through Weight Watchers, he said, then he got into soccer.
In high school he switched to football and went on to play for Missouri State University, where he graduated with a construction management degree in 2008.
When he realized construction wasn’t his passion, he turned to health and fitness as a “fun thing to do” when he wasn’t working.
In 2010, he competed in a Men’s Health/Starz “Spartacus” Challenge, a national body transformation contest. After submitting his “before” photos, he had 12 weeks to train.
A couple of weeks before he was supposed to take his “after” photos, a friend asked if he wanted to attempt a food challenge with him.
“I had just done 10 weeks of hard training, very strict dieting and lots of exercise, so I figured that would be a fun way to treat myself as kind of reward for doing all that,” Santel said.
The mission: A 28-inch Pointersaurus Pizza from Pointer’s Pizza in St. Louis.
The reward: The pizza for free and $500.
Not only did Santel finish the challenge with his friend, he also had ice cream for dessert and dinner with his parents afterward.
“I realized through all that I was a pretty good eater, which I really had known already,” he said. “But I had never done a food challenge before.”
Becoming a professional eater
Once he got a taste of professional eating, he was hooked. (Oh, and he also ended up winning that body transformation challenge and got to appear in an episode of “Spartacus.”)
About a month after his first food challenge, Santel did his second, and things took off from there.
Santel retired from the construction management industry in October 2013 and has been a full-time professional eater, YouTuber and content creator since.
While there used to be more monetary prizes for restaurant challenges,
nowadays, the prize is typically the meal for free, some form of memorabilia, like a T-shirt, and the winner’s name on the restaurant’s hall of fame.
“The money as a professional eater definitely doesn’t come from the actual food challenges,” Santel said. “It comes from the social media and the monetization of the videos you post.”
Bodybuilding, professional eating go ‘hand in hand’
DeJarnett found fitness when she was 21. She went from being “really, really overweight” to becoming a certified personal trainer and joining the Air Force in 2015.
But when DeJarnett was on stage during an April 2019 women’s physique bodybuilding show, she said she felt small compared to the other contestants. So afterward, she decided to put on some weight.
The way she was going to do it? Restaurant challenges.
DeJarnett had gotten really into watching competitive and professional eating videos on YouTube while training and thought, “‘I think I can eat as much as some of these people.’ ”
“I kept doing it, and getting bigger and bigger ones, and never looked back,” she said.
Bodybuilding and professional eating go “hand in hand,” said DeJarnett, who now is a member of the Air National Guard and graduated from Gonzaga University’s kinesiology program in December.
“All the energy I use from doing these food challenges, I use the next day or sometimes the same day to lift heavy weights,” she said.
A food challenge love story
In 2020, Santel was invited to do the Garbage Can 40-inch team Pizza Challenge at Riverside Pizza in Nenana, Alaska.
“I wanted to bring someone with me that I never really collaborated with,” he said. “I had known about Katina through her channel and she had watched some of my livestreams. So, I invited her.”
She said yes.
They met in Alaska in mid-July and started dating a few days later.
“I’d say we connected from the moment she got in the car,” Santel said.
“It was like talking to an old friend,” DeJarnett said.
They share a love of fitness, nutrition and, of course, eating copious amounts of food.
“Nothing will solidify a bond quite like going through a hardship, then a victory together,” DeJarnett said. “Going out and doing all of these challenges and just struggling through them and then overcoming them makes a really, really, really solid bond.”
What their lives are like
A typical day in DeJarnett’s life looks like eating healthy and exercising a lot, posting on social media, filming and editing videos of restaurant food challenges, challenges that she builds herself and food reviews, and tracking down challenges to try.
Santel usually goes on dayslong trips, where he films a food challenge video each day, then takes time off to lose weight while getting the filmed content up online. “We’re able to go on the (food challenge) trips together and share in everything since we have the same basic career and path we want to go,” Santel said.
Santel is also the owner and operator of foodchallenges.com, which features a global database of food challenges and articles on how to prepare, train and strategize for them.
One way he said he has prepared for food challenges before is by eating 12 to 13 pounds of watermelon in one sitting, along with water, about 18 to 22 hours beforehand to expand his stomach without taking in too many calories.
“That gives your body enough time to process it all, so that you’re empty and hungry once it comes time to eat the actual challenge or eating contest,” he said.
The morning of the challenge, he said he might have a protein shake, yogurt or fruit.
Most memorable food challenges
One of Santel’s most memorable challenges was the 16-patty 3-kilogram Chainsaw Massacre Burger Challenge at The Burger Block in Melbourne, Australia.
He did it on his 31st birthday, and 250 people came to watch.
“With all those people watching, I beat the record by like 12 seconds,” he said.
The challenge that put DeJarnett “on the map” was the 72-ounce Steak Challenge at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo.
She had one hour to eat a 72-ounce steak, baked potato, side salad, roll and shrimp cocktail to get the meal for free, a T-shirt, a souvenir mug and a spot on the restaurant’s wall of fame.
She completed the challenge from a stage with lights, musical performers heckling her and a crowd cheering her on.
“It’s a world-famous challenge and one of the oldest restaurant challenges,” she said. “They make a big show of it . ... It was the one challenge that was on my bucket list.”
Fans sometimes drive hours to watch their challenges and meet the couple, Santel said.
“Sometimes we stay hours afterwards just making sure that we get to everybody,” Santel said. “We just stay as long as we need to. We try to be the first people there, last to leave.”
Moved to Milwaukee for internship
Santel isn’t planning on being a professional eater forever, though.
He went back to Missouri State University to get another degree, this time in dietetics, the science of how food and nutrition affect health. He graduated in 2019, and his goal is now to get his master’s in dietetics and become a registered dietitian.
Santel wants to use the weight management experience and knowledge he has gained through doing food challenges and in school to help others.
When he becomes a dietitian, he said he’s going to retire from professional eating and use his social media platforms to help his followers with nutrition and weight management.
This month, he’s starting a dietetic internship focused on health promotion and disease prevention through Mount Mary University in Milwaukee and will be taking a break from food challenges until Thanksgiving.
He and DeJarnett moved to Wisconsin in June.
“We both were really excited about getting to Milwaukee,” Santel said. “We’ve heard so much good things about the food and the beer.”
While Santel won’t start doing food challenges here for a few months, DeJarnett has already started filming a few, including Milwaukee Burger Company’s Big Milwaukee Challenge and Third Street Tavern’s six-stack burger challenge.
“I enjoy food, genuinely, and I enjoy promoting restaurants and seeing how the exposure helps the restaurant thrive,” DeJarnett said. “Traveling, seeing the world, seeing the country, meeting all sorts of people, it just keeps you going back for more.”