Leslie Bailey

The Indianapolis Star

Imagine walking a marathon after having just climbed the tallest mountain in Africa, carrying at least 120 extra pounds the entire way.

It’s difficult to breathe. Your joints ache. Everything aches.

That’s what Kara Richardson Whitely felt as she descended her climb down Mount Kilimanjaro, twice, weighing more than 300 pounds.

That’s right. She has ascended the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, reaching the summit twice.

During her third climb Whitely made the decision to start working through her lifelong issues with food.

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“Kilimanjaro is a great place to cycle through something in your brain if you’re going through change because there is so much time spent with yourself,” she said.

She has struggled with her weight since age 9, around the time her parents divorced and her father all but disappeared.

Then on her 12th birthday, Whitely was sexually molested by a friend of her older brother. Food became an emotional crutch and in college, “my weight pushed beyond the 300-pound mark.”

Whitely continued to struggle with her weight throughout her 20s and 30s but dreamed of going on great adventures, hiking the world’s tallest mountains.

"There weren’t a lot of hikers who looked like me,” she said. In 2007, after experiencing a dramatic 120-pound weight loss, Whitely, along with her husband, Chris, reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Two years, one baby later and back up to about 300 pounds, Whitely made a second attempt to climb the mountain that ended in failure.

In 2011, Whitely trained for the climb but made her third ascent without attempting to lose any weight.

In April 2015, Whitely published, Gorge: My Journey Up Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds. She completed the book while working with Wild author Cheryl Strayed in Butler University’s Chamonix Summer Writing Program in the French Alps.

A blurb by Strayed appears on the cover of Gorge.

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Since her first climb, Whitely has appeared on Oprah’s Lifeclass, Good Morning America and a Weight Watchers blog.

Now, 41 and a mother of three children, ages 8, 3, and 9 weeks old, she travels the country giving motivational speeches at universities and organizations like Google about adventure, moving past obstacles, fitness, eating disorders, body acceptance and more. Her next book, tentatively titled, The Family Plot is scheduled for release in spring 2017.

Question: How did your dream of climbing Kilimanjaro begin?

Answer: When I was at my heaviest at 360 pounds, that was before my first weight loss, the highest thing I could hike was a staircase and even that had me winded.

I would get these adventure catalogs in the mail and even though I was incredibly sedentary at that time, I would just dream of going to those places — Machu Picchu or The Alps or Kilimanjaro — but I’d be eating a king-size Kit Kat bar while doing it.

The first climb (on Kilimanjaro) was after a 120-pound weight loss, and I really did feel on top of the world. Then, as soon as I got down the mountain, I had another adventure and that was having a child.

Like a lot of people who struggle with weight, I put on 70 pounds. I was really in a bad spot.

I tried to climb the mountain about two years later and, unfortunately, I didn’t do the training and didn’t devote the time to myself to get ready for the mountain, so that was an epic failure.

Q. What made you try a third time?

A. After that second attempt, I didn’t feel like I could climb mountains or hike or do anything again.

Then I had some friends and a cousin who wanted to climb the mountain to raise money for the Global Alliance for Africa. So between us, there was all of this money on the line, about $25,000, for this charity that I loved.

Even though I was really struggling with my self-worth, I decided that I would try it one last time.

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But this time was different. I wasn’t looking at it as a weight-loss tool.

What I wanted to do was to love where I was, which was just about 300 pounds, and go from there. That was a very different take on my weight journey than ever before.

Q. How so?

A.: Because before, I would say, “I hate the way I look, so I’m going to go on a diet and do this detox because I’m eating crap.”

It was a much more loathsome conversation than deciding I was just going to do it as I was and not make it some miraculous weight-loss attempt. Because if I decided to do that, I knew I was going to fail.

So that meant finding a trainer who didn’t see me as a before-and-after picture.

I trained really hard, but I didn’t do it in a way that I was going to put down my body, so that’s where the real healing happened. Of course, I did lose a few pounds here and there, but I went on the mountain as me, as only I could.

Q. It sounds like the mental challenges were just as great as the physical.

A. When you go on a journey as epic as Kilimanjaro and you do that much walking, you run out of things to say to your fellow climbers. So you spend a lot of time in your mind.

In life there are so many distractions. I’m always looking at my phone or a TV a computer screen or something.

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But on a mountain, it’s just you vs. the mountain. All you can do is put one foot in front of the other.

I decided when I did this climb, that not only was I going to love myself and go from there but also to figure out the root and reason why used food as crutch for so many years, not just the narrative of my father left and I loved him dearly and really missed him through my life and also I was sexually assaulted on my 12th birthday but really how that translates into everyday life when I’m feeling lonely because my husband is out doing something and I go into abandonment mode.

That’s when I start using food — in those moments where I’m suddenly left alone and the only thing I can do to calm that racing heartbeat or whatever is going through my mind is with food.

Q. When did you decide your experiences with the third climb could be the basis of a book?

A. I was already a writer and had self-published a book called Fat Woman on the Mountain about my first climb. But with the third climb, I felt like I needed to write about not only about my journey of Kilimanjaro, but my issues with food with honesty and bravery because I knew that so many other people go through the same thing.

The more that I speak about it, now that I’ve written about my food issues and put it all out on the table, so to speak, food doesn’t have the same power over me because the challenge with my eating in the past was that I did so much of it in secret.

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Of course, nothing was secret. You could see that I had gained weight.

But I’d eat a half gallon of ice cream and then replace it. That's when I know I’m really in trouble.

The more I talk about it and share my story, the healthier that I am.

Q. As a mother of three young children, how will you talk to them about weight and body acceptance?

A. That’s a big part of what I’m writing about in my next book — the working title is The Family Plot — which is mostly about my community garden in our town. But it goes much deeper than that.

There’s a lot about this constant balance of your personal issues with weight and how you don’t want to pass them on to your kids. But kids are kids, too, so they want to eat sweets and stuff.

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It’s an ever-changing and flowing issue: How do you live a healthy life for yourself and then for your family?

I think that journey started with what I wrote about in Gorge and continues every day of my life. Sometimes I get it right, and a lot of times I get it wrong.

But I strive to keep working to be a positive role model for my kids.

Q. You used the words “fat” and “plus size” interchangeably. Did you make a conscious decision on what words to use in your writing?

A. There is a saying that fat is something you have, not something you are.

It’s true that I am fat. Even now my daughter’s friends will say, “Your mom is really fat,” or “Your mom has a really big butt,” and that’s true.

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I try not to use fat as a label. It’s a description.

I am a larger hiker, but the most important thing is I’m a hiker. I’m an American Hiking Society ambassador because there a lot of people who are larger like me who want to hit the trails.

Q. Comments about your appearance from children are one thing, but how do you deal with them from adults?

A. I don’t always deal with it well. I’m human, and I still have that terror about bullies.

I’ve certainly had my share.

The most important experience, which I wrote about in Gorge, was on the mountain when the porters were betting against me.

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There’s a scene about how I discovered this. When the night before the climb, I could hear all of them laughing and using my name — they called me mama kubwa which is Swahili for “big woman” and they kept saying it over and over again.

I confronted the guide and found out that they were betting against me on the mountain.

I asked the head guide, “Did you make a money bet?” and then, “You should. You should bet on me.” That’s one of the few times I’ve had a good comeback.

Q. What’s the message you want people to take away from your experience?

A. The most important thing about my journey is how I learned to love where I am and go from there. That’s key in my life, to keep moving forward.

That’s what Gorge is really about. Love yourself and go from there.

Q. Do you have any upcoming adventures planned?

A. I’d like to hike in Adirondacks in New York.

I’d really like to go hiking in Hawaii sometime soon. And of course, Machu Picchu is still on my bucket list.

Follow Leslie Bailey on Twitter: @Lesalina