Last week: 407 lbs.

Start (2/3/15): 413 lbs.

Total lost: 14 lbs.

—

Clarity can often come from conversations with like-minded people in similar situations. And so it happened, during a phone call from Lake Placid to Toronto. A woman about the same age, on the heavier side like me, who enjoys competing in races, gave me the answer to a question I recently asked: “Am I an athlete?”

While she didn’t say it outright — because I didn’t ask her that exact question — Krista Henderson showed me that yes, I am most likely an athlete, even though I don’t feel like one at my size.

Henderson, 44, publishes a fitness blog for plus size women called Born To Reign Athletics (www.borntoreignathletics.com) and began competing in triathlons in 2004. She’s even been to the Olympic Village, volunteering for the Ironman Lake Placid triathlon in 2009, trying out the swim course on Mirror Lake and a portion of the bike course while she was here.

Henderson doesn’t give out her weight to the public. There’s still too much discrimination around those types of numbers. But she did reveal her size: 3X or a 24.

Is Henderson an athlete?

You bet.

I love her story. Below is a portion of our March 5 phone conversation.

—

FLYNN: What does it mean to be an athlete at any size?

HENDERSON: My opinion of exercise and fitness has evolved over these last 10 years. The way that I look at things today, I think when you’re an athlete, you’re training for a very specific purpose. You’re building your endurance, or you’re building your strength and your power. You’re probably doing it because you’re going to compete. But even if you’re not competing at a particular event or race, you’re still doing it with a specific purpose in mind and wanting to get better.

I think exercise or fitness tends to be more around maintaining your health. There can be improvements, but the improvements aren’t going to be as big as what you’re building up through training, and you’re rarely using a periodization schedule.

So for me, being an athlete and training as an athlete has a very positive focus on performance, and that’s the head space that I like to be in because it feels productive. You’re really pushing your inner limits and seeing where you can go. For sure, you’ll have setbacks or failures along the way, but there’s so much more that you’re gaining by moving forward, that those little setbacks are just tiny blips in the journey.

—

FLYNN: Let me just clarify with performance and competition. It could be wanting to win something or just competing against yourself and trying to get a better time, right?

HENDERSON: Absolutely. One of the things that I struggled with when I started racing, I did feel like I was always comparing myself to others. If it was a bike course that was very hilly, going up a hill I’m definitely going to be a lot slower than others and I would totally blow past them going down. I felt like I was cheating because I could ride down a hill a lot faster. But I was very focused on others, and it took a while — and definitely my coach helped me — to realize that it’s not about the other people. It’s really about you. You play off other people as part of the adrenaline rush that you experience that day, but ultimately you are competing against yourself.

—

FLYNN: The focus of your website is plus size women. Is there a specific reason why you focus on women rather than everybody who is plus size?

HENDERSON: I target women mostly because I’m a woman myself and I can naturally relate to situations, scenarios or experiences as other women. I do recognize that there are challenges for both genders, but it’s more coming from my personal experience so it was a place for me to start. I am working on some articles right now to feature men just to bring a different perspective into the community and to hear different experiences and different advice. … I do think that plus size women are a high-risk segment group that experience a lot of shame, anxiety or depression and measure their self worth based on their body shape. Again, it’s all really based on my personal experience, and it’s talking about what I know best.

—

FLYNN: I’ve always been heavy, but I don’t know if that’s been the case for you.

HENDERSON: I’ve been a heavier person in different sizes and different shapes since my adolescent years, my teens right into adulthood.

—

FLYNN: How about your athletic history? Were you in sports in high school?

HENDERSON: No. My last favorite memory was in grade 7 trying out for the field hockey team, and I didn’t make it. That was the first time I really tried for something, and it was disappointing. But then through high school, I was not interested in athletics, and a lot of it was probably feeling that there wasn’t a place for me. A lot of it was team sports and not really feeling you could contribute to the same level.

It wasn’t until adulthood, into my early 30s. I was exercising in my 20s, but it was really my early 30s that I started looking at sport versus exercise.

—

FLYNN: What was that moment when you decided you wanted to compete?

HENDERSON: There’s a couple moments.

The gym I belong to, they were advertising the triathlon. … I remember thinking, “A triathlon. That would be great.” I was very much in the mindset of shock and awe. I wanted to prove to others that I could do it regardless of my size. But I wasn’t sure that a triathlon might have been too big of a jump.

So I trained and did a 25k charity bike-a-thon for heart and stroke. I did it successfully, hills included, and as soon as I did it, I was like, “Oh, I’m definitely going to do a tri tri.” I made that decision, and by the end of the summer I was doing it.

But the decision to continue on and to compete and really want to build my athletic abilities in the sport came after I did my first tri tri. That was August of 2004. Through the process when I was training for it, I really loved that I was in this head space of wanting to go and train. And I love that I was excited about carving out time, and I’m going for my swim. Everybody’s going for drinks after work, but I’ve got to get my swim in because I’ve got my race coming up. And I loved that feeling that it was something so important to me, and I really wanted to do well. So when I did the triathlon, I find a lot of people either love it or hate it, and I just loved it. … By the following year, maybe January or February, I already had my first road bike and I was going to my first triathlon training camp in Florida, and it just sort of took off from there.

—

FLYNN: Can you share one memory from a race?

HENDERSON: I pretty much do the same races year after year. It’s a set series that exists with the MultiSport Canada group. There’s a race known as Lakeside. I raced it in 2005, and I came back the next year and I raced it again. I didn’t have a change in my weight, and I took 24 minutes off my time. That whole year I was working hard, training hard, working with a coach. I do know that if you drop weight you’re going to go faster. That’s an easy way to pick up speed. But the fact that I dropped 24 minutes off of my race time, for me, was an amazing feeling. … I went from an hour and 29 minutes to an hour and 5 minutes.

—

FLYNN: What are the biggest challenges for you in competing?

HENDERSON: When I started, a lot of it actually had to do with finding the right athletic wear. You really want to feel like you’re fitting in, you look the part. So that was sort of the first foray into feeling like I’m standing out from other people.

I believe that a hard workout is a hard workout, so it doesn’t matter if my body shape changes and I lose weight or not. It will always still feel like a hard workout.

Everything has taken a while to sink in over these last 10 years to kind of understand and see things from a different perspective. For sure, going up hills is not an easy thing for me, but then I make it up on the way down when I fly past everybody. But I actually prefer flat courses; that’s where I excel. I can hold a high RPM for a good set amount of time.

I think everybody has their own challenges, and some of them may seem visibly more challenging. Others might think, “Oh that person is going to be more challenged because they are of a larger size and they have more mass to carry.” But everybody’s got something. It could be somebody has an injury, or maybe it’s a mental block they’ve got inside. … It’s like the iceberg scenario; you only see the tip of it and don’t know what’s happening underneath. I think more than anything, race day everybody’s worked hard to be there. I want people to be at their best because that’s what allows me to be my best. I just really try to focus on my performance.

—

FLYNN: When I first started, I’d be training on the highway in the middle of nowhere and thinking, “What the hell am I doing out here? I don’t belong out here.” When you first started, did you ever think that?

HENDERSON: No. Honestly I didn’t. I think I have been very, very fortunate that my triathlon coach worked out of my gym, and I pretty much got to see him every day whether it was for 5 minutes or attending one of his spin classes. I train at a gym that has a high percentage of people that are triathletes, and I got to know those people really quickly. I was included in a lot of activities that other triathletes were invited to regardless of my skill level. For me, I didn’t feel like I had to go through that same transition because I was already welcomed so quickly into that triathlon community. …

My coach, and the way that he interacted with me, he treated me exactly the same as all the other athletes. … He had to adjust things for me, but he never coddled me or gave me pity. … And that was the amazing experience, and that really started me thinking about wanting to do more and why I taught spinning classes and wanted to coach other people. At the end of the day, if we’re all out there doing the same thing, we all have a similar goal and we’re all doing it at different paces. … He just offers the same opportunity to everybody regardless of size or skill.

—

FLYNN: What’s the biggest benefit of competing for you?

HENDERSON: I think there are a few things. I like how I physiologically feel much stronger. It does keep me focused on doing things that are good for my body, healthy activities. I like the benefit that I’m put in situations where I have to rise to the challenge. There are lots of different weather conditions you have to deal with. Maybe the course has changed from last year and you’re having to deal with something differently. I think that gives you an opportunity to really see how you handle different adversities that come up to you and you have no control of changing them. So I like that aspect of it. I love mental challenges and the physical aspect of just working hard for your body. Every time you make a decision, it’s for a purpose of “How is this going to affect how I train today or when I’m training today? How is this going to affect my race?” You’ve got a heightened sense of awareness of yourself and the decisions you’re making and why you’re making them.

—

FLYNN: I want to clarify for readers, is your journey about weight loss, living a healthy lifestyle or having fun?

HENDERSON: My position is that weight loss is a personal choice, and I think that’s a choice that everybody makes for various reasons. It’s a conversation you have with yourself and with your health practitioners. There’s lots of research out there that talks about both sides, being overweight or being plus size, it’s not good for your health. Then there’s the flip side saying there’s really no evidence or everybody comes in different shapes and sizes. … I really focus on wanting to be healthy, and I believe that when you focus on being healthy and making decisions that deliver up to that, any body composition changes will naturally happen. But I don’t focus on weight loss because that is a mental head space that is way too crazy. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. I measured all my success based on the number that was on the scale, and it was just too much anxiety and I wasn’t happy focusing that way. I like focusing on healthy behaviors and healthy activities, and I just let my weight and my body shape fall where it does as a result of the good things that I give my body. …

This whole “calories in, calories out” situation, it’s not that simple. The body’s very complex. There’s a lot of things happening in the body. If you have an autoimmune disease, like a thyroid issue, man that is really going to screw you up. It doesn’t matter how you balance your calories in, calories out. You can’t overcome those types of things, so you have to manage around them. And I know lots of people who have those types of situations. …

I like the idea of training with a purpose. I like the idea of competing against myself and improving and seeing where I can go. That works for me, and I think it’s a much more positive mental head space rather than focusing on diet and exercise for the pure focus of the number on the scale.

—

FLYNN: What motivates you?

HENDERSON: It’s a race, right? It’s all about how fast you can go. We do a lot of training, and we do a lot of workouts based on pacing, and it’s finding that sweet spot where you’re not sure if you can hold it. For me, that’s the spot where you want to race at. You’re like, “Can I hold this the whole entire time?” And when you do all the training, and you put it into play on race day, there’s a lot of jitters because you’ve rested, you’ve tapered, this is it. For me, the excitement is all around, “How much can I hold it in that particular pace — whether it’s that speed on the bike or how fast I’m swimming — before I just blow up?” And the excitement of managing that is what gets me going. …

You don’t have to wait to lose weight to get active or be an athlete. You don’t need to fix yourself. You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with improving yourself, but it should come from a place of positivity not because you don’t feel like you’re good enough.

That’s what motivates me, every time I make a connection with somebody. I had somebody last week on my Facebook page telling me, “Because of your Facebook page, I’ve taken the plunge. I found the courage. I signed up to a tri club, and I’m going to do my first tri tri.” This other woman said, “I always thought I was athletic stuck in a fat body, but now I see that I’m really an athlete.” And when you hear that feedback, it gives me chills. The fact that women are really stepping into their own and they’re doing things for themselves, not because they’re feeling pressured by mainstream media and society, that’s what really motivates me to want to keep being out there and telling my story and how you can be happy as well.

—

FLYNN: Are there any people or stories that inspired you?

HENDERSON: I have a very strong relationship with my coach. He’s not my coach right now … but he has been and will always continue to be somebody that I admire and I look up to and is a great role model. I’ve seen him go through his own changes in his life. He now has a family, and he’s older like I am. It’s amazing to see him and how he is still performing at an elite level.

Since creating Born To Reign Athletics, the whole premise was that I can’t be the only person out there who’s doing this. When I started racing, I certainly stood out from a body shape perspective, but as I got into my later years of racing, I started to see a little bit more. … Since creating the online community, I have met a lot of amazing women who are in similar situations in terms of body shape or size who are going out there and giving it their all and they’re focusing on performance and focusing on health, and it’s not about the dress size that you’re wearing. I love meeting those women.

One of the women is a writer for me for the website. Her name is Leah Gilbert. We just have a very similar mission and vision of what we want to create in the world as a social change. I’m really thankful that I met her and we’ve connected and we support one another. I love her story and why she does what she does. Throughout my years, I’ve never been sponsored as an athlete until last year. I found her on Instagram, and she was sponsored by a major brand. I was like, “Wow, that’s amazing. That’s where we need to go in the world.” We need more recognition of body diversity in sports.

Leah and my coach James, those are the people that I really look up to the most, connect with and inspire me every day.

—

FLYNN: In a past column, I described you as a woman who competes in triathlons and is “breaking down social barriers and stereotypes by getting out there and being active.” Is that accurate?

HENDERSON: It is. I would add “athletic.” You’re paying money to train and sign up for a race and show up for the race. I think there’s extra pressure involved when you step into the realm of sports and competing, so it’s more than just being active. It’s being an athlete and competing athletically.

—

FLYNN: It’s a supportive community, isn’t it?

HENDERSON: Very, very supportive. And I think a lot of that is because people know what it means to tow the line, what it means to get your ass out of bed and get to your race destination and be ready. Races happen early in the morning. It’s not like you’re sleeping in on Saturdays and Sundays. To put yourself out there. You’re swimming in the lake or the ocean. You’re putting yourself out in a vulnerable situation, and I think there’s a lot of respect for other athletes because we all understand what it means to be there and what you had to do to get there and how important it is. And that’s why I love it. … And nobody’s talking about, “Oh, I look so fat in this tri suit.” There’s none of that negative self talk or negative body language talk. It’s all positive. …

I don’t know what those people are thinking. For all I know, they could be thinking, “Oh, good for them. If they keep doing this, they’ll lose weight.” I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter to me what they’re thinking. You have to look for your own silver lining. But I look at it as everybody respects everybody else for the work that they’ve done to get there. That’s where the commonality is, and that’s where the bond is created.

—

FLYNN: When I walked the half-marathon last year, friends and strangers came up to me because they knew about my column and my weight loss, and I had hundreds of people give me high-fives throughout the whole race. … It got me hooked.

HENDERSON: When you think about it, you don’t get that experience when you’re at the clothing store when you’re trying on a new outfit. Nobody’s coming up to you and saying, “You look amazing in that outfit.” … There’s no other place that I have experienced where you get that kind of support, and it all comes down to that mutual respect of understanding of what it’s like to train and compete.

I don’t do it for the external accolades from others. I do it for myself because I’m intrinsically motivated, but it’s always a nice little bonus, right?