Lakecity photographer Jana Roller had no idea when she entered the Kelowna Classic amateur body building competition last Saturday that she would spark an international discussion on body shaming.
Roller, who lost 140 pounds while training two years for the competition, posted one of the photographs of herself in the competition on Instagram that has gone viral, because she questioned a photographer who omitted the image which shows her with saggy skin left from her weight loss.
“When I posted my photograph it was meant to inspire people,” Jana says. “I have documented my entire journey on Instagram.”
She knew going into the competition that she needed to wear high heels and a tiny bikini and that there would be criticism from those who thought she wasn’t fit enough to be there.
But as a fitness coach in training, Jana wanted to see what the competition was all about from the inside. And the challenge of a competition helped her to stay on track with her own fitness goals.
“There’s no hiding up there,” Jana says. “For someone who used to weigh 300 pounds that is a scary endeavour, but I did it.”
She wasn’t thrilled with how she looked in the photographs that were taken by the event photographer, but she wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed by the way she looked either, she says.
So when she didn’t see her individual photograph in the competition’s website gallery with the other competitors she asked why. She was told that she might be embarrassed by the photograph that showed some loose skin and stretch marks around her belly.
While she has experienced some criticism for the photograph, Jana says she wasn’t going to let a little extra skin get in the way of showing people what she has accomplished so far.
“It was just to inspire people, because people often let other people’s opinions get in the way of achieving their own goals,” Jana says.
In the few days since the photograph was published Canadian media has done a story about her and People.com also called her for an interview.
Jana says her Instagram post had received more than 10,000 views and 2,000 shares as of Wednesday evening. She has also received more than 90 friend requests which she has had to stop accepting.
She is also a bit tired this week having stayed up into the small hours of the morning trying to answer the hundreds of messages she has received from people around the world, Scotland, United Kingdom, Germany, Africa, China and North America, to name a few.
While there has been a small amount of criticism and body shaming in the messages, she says the vast majority of them have been positive and encouraging.
“It has sparked this amazing conversation around the world,” Jana says. “It is a conversation that really needs to be had because people are so much more than appearances.”
“I am speechless that so many people are sharing their stories with me and encouraging me,” she adds.
Jana’s own struggles with weight gain started in childhood.
“I had a few traumatic experiences as a child and always struggled with depression and anxiety growing up,” Jana says. That trauma entailed twice being raped, once as a young child and again as a young teen. She coped with the experiences by eating.
Through it all Jana says she has had the love and support of her longtime love and husband Clayton and more recently their five-year-old son Asher.
“He has been extremely supportive through everything,” Jana says of Clayton. “He knows about it all.”
Over the years Jana has tried to deal with her weight issues in various ways. Before Asher was born she was into competition kick boxing.
After Asher was born she experienced postpartum depression and once again started to gain weight.
So about a year after Asher was born she started researching diets and healthy eating.
A professional photographer for the past nine years, Jana says she has made it her life’s work to help build people’s self-esteem with the portraits she takes.
But it wasn’t until she did a photo shoot for a friend who was preparing for a body building competition that she decided to start training as a body builder herself.
With the help of Crystal Hoelzler at Concrete Fitness and encouragement from friends she started working out on a regular basis following programs she found on bodybuilding.com and reading nutrition guides and articles.
Working on her own she would lose 20 pounds then start to gain it all back again.
“If something stressful came up the first thing to go was the fitness training and healthy eating,” Jana says.
She needed a goal to stay on track, so on May 30, 2015 she hired Jeremy Reid as her personal trainer and started working toward becoming a certified fitness coach. She has achieved that goal and is now also working toward earning her certification as a nutrition coach.
While training for the Kelowna Classic over the past two years she had to take a couple of weeks off from her exercise routine here and there to recover from three surgeries, one an appendectomy and two to repair internal damage sustained in child birth.
When she started training she weighed 307 pounds and lost 140 pounds for the competition.
She now weighs 172 pounds.
Over the long term she plans to get down to 140 pounds, but there is no rush.
“My goal is to just be happy for the summer and make some improvements,” Jana says.
She says everyone at the Kelowna Classic was very encouraging and they all had their own reasons for becoming body builders.
Several of the women she spoke with, like herself, had struggled with maintaining a healthy weight.
Jana also plans to compete in the Popeye Fall Classic in Vancouver this year.
Two competitions a year is the maximum recommended for body builders because the training is hard on the body, she says.
“Body building is an extreme form of fitness,” Jana says.
“I don’t want anyone thinking this is the only way to lose weight. In my opinion the training should never be done without the supervision of a coach.”
She says it was definitely a mental challenge to go out on the competition stage and be proud of what she has worked so hard for and she won’t let a little criticism stand in the way of entering future body building competitions.
“It’s likely the Irish in me.”