IN­NIS FRAN­CIS

The price of suc­cess is high, and for Za­meena Marisa Khan, it has meant ac­cept­ing the harsh re­al­i­ties that come with chas­ing ex­cel­lence: em­brac­ing crit­i­cism, re­main­ing per­sis­tent and ig­nor­ing those who seek to un­der­mine her jour­ney.

Khan be­lieves con­tin­ued suc­cess re­quires block­ing out pub­lic scruti­ny, stay­ing mo­ti­vat­ed and fo­cus­ing on be­com­ing a bet­ter ver­sion of her­self.

On May 17, she rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go at the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Body­Build­ing and Fit­ness (IF­BB) World Cham­pi­onship in Bar­ba­dos, plac­ing sec­ond in the Women’s Physique cat­e­go­ry among com­peti­tors from 35 coun­tries.

Her achieve­ment placed Trinidad and To­ba­go firm­ly on the glob­al body­build­ing stage.

How­ev­er, Khan says one of the most dis­ap­point­ing as­pects of her jour­ney has been the crit­i­cism she has re­ceived from oth­er women, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­ments about her ap­pear­ance and physique.

She de­scribes those at­tacks as un­nec­es­sary and be­lieves they of­ten stem from jeal­ousy.

A pas­sion­ate sup­port­er of strength train­ing, Khan en­tered the com­pet­i­tive are­na as an am­a­teur in 2015 be­fore be­com­ing a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete in 2022. Since then, she has con­tin­ued to com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly while push­ing the bound­aries of her own phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

Prepa­ra­tion for com­pe­ti­tions, she says, does not in­tim­i­date her. In­stead, she em­braces the dis­ci­pline re­quired to sculpt her body through strict train­ing and nu­tri­tion.

Her prepa­ra­tion in­cludes a low-car­bo­hy­drate, no-sug­ar, high-pro­tein di­et, with wa­ter as her main source of hy­dra­tion and no milk or caf­feine.

Khan said: “I would get a lot of neg­a­tiv­i­ties, main­ly from women! So sad! I get it from men who are in­tim­i­dat­ed. It is so sad that women does want to bash oth­er women. She looks like a man! And it is com­ments from the club; peo­ple would go on the club page and com­ment on my pho­tos. She looks like a man; she has no breasts! Did I tell you I want that? At the end of the day, this is what I want; I am do­ing me, I am not do­ing this to please any­body but me. I don’t care what any­body thinks.

“When I’m prep­ping, di­et­ing, and train­ing, I does be so tired; my bones and skin does hurt. No­body don’t know that, be­cause fat lev­els drop­ping. So tired I don’t want to get up, and that is not a com­plaint; I like the feel­ing.

“At the be­gin­ning, it (neg­a­tive com­ments) used to both­er me, but at the end of the day I’m do­ing this for me. I’m go­ing through the stress of it; no­body else... To me, it’s jeal­ousy most of the time; every­body wants, but doesn’t want to do the work for it.

“A lot of women does stand up for me on so­cial me­dia, and they would tell these oth­er women it’s jeal­ousy. I like the fact that there are a lot of women who stand up for me, and well, neg­a­tive is good as well as bad pub­lic­i­ty.

“My son would get an­gry, so I would tell him not to study it; mom­my don’t! Now I on­ly laugh.”

For Khan, body­build­ing is not a male-dom­i­nat­ed pur­suit. She be­lieves women have every right to com­pete and re­de­fine per­cep­tions of strength and beau­ty.

“I al­ways liked the sport. I start­ed at 12 years old, be­cause I had al­ways liked ex­er­cise. I am an ac­coun­tant by pro­fes­sion... I al­ways liked the mus­cu­lar look; to me, a mus­cu­lar look on a woman is sexy.

“I al­ways imag­ined what it feels like to com­pete. I had a train­er, but they didn’t know what they were do­ing, and then in 2012 I met Waz­im Mo­hammed. He trained me, and I told him what I want­ed for my­self from it.”

De­spite her com­mit­ment to body­build­ing, Khan re­mains de­vot­ed to moth­er­hood. She bal­ances the de­mands of com­pe­ti­tion prepa­ra­tion with rais­ing her 15-year-old son, Zacharia Lutch­man, who she de­scribes as her biggest sup­port­er.

Her son of­ten ac­com­pa­nies her to gym ses­sions and has wit­nessed the ded­i­ca­tion re­quired to com­pete at the high­est lev­el.

Khan’s record in­cludes 14 first-place fin­ish­es in se­nior com­pe­ti­tions. Yet, de­spite her suc­cess, she pre­pares her­self men­tal­ly for dis­ap­point­ment and us­es every com­pe­ti­tion as a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

She says her fo­cus re­mains on im­prove­ment rather than sim­ply col­lect­ing tro­phies.

“I don’t mind the plac­ing; I know every year I am get­ting bet­ter. So, last year my world rank­ing was fourth, and this year it is sec­ond.

“My goal is to get first, rank first in the world. I told Mo­hammed, every year we go, we’re not get­ting first, but even­tu­al­ly we would. Get it, and once I be­come undis­put­ed, it will hap­pen for a few years.

“I was a point away from plac­ing first, so we know what we have to fix. So last year we know what we had to fix, so we fix it, but we had a lit­tle glitch.

“I just want­ed to bring up my world rank­ing, and that’s what I did; I’m sat­is­fied with that. And now we know what we have to fix; we’re work­ing on it all now.”

Be­yond com­pet­ing, Khan is al­so help­ing oth­er women pur­sue health­i­er lifestyles through her work as a mo­ti­va­tion­al train­er.

One of her clients, Sayya­da Ras­sool, has en­tered her third month of train­ing with Khan and has al­ready be­gun de­vel­op­ing mus­cle tone while work­ing to­wards her own fit­ness goals.

Khan ad­vis­es women in­ter­est­ed in com­pet­i­tive body­build­ing to seek guid­ance from ex­pe­ri­enced coach­es who un­der­stand the de­mands of the sport.

She be­lieves an ef­fec­tive coach should have com­pet­ed be­fore and should un­der­stand the phys­i­cal and men­tal chal­lenges in­volved.

Com­mit­ment, dis­ci­pline and prop­er rest, she says, are es­sen­tial.

For Waz­im Mo­hammed, Khan rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of years of train­ing and ded­i­ca­tion.

Mo­hammed, a cer­ti­fied In­ter­na­tion­al Fit­ness and Body­build­ing Fed­er­a­tion train­er, de­scribed Khan as his “proud­est ac­com­plish­ment”.

“I train many to reach the na­tion­al lev­el, but she is the first I trained and reached this lev­el in an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion. It is like the pin­na­cle of hav­ing a client.”

He said Khan’s achieve­ments have al­so en­hanced his own rep­u­ta­tion as a train­er.

“It is a good­will feel­ing, and it al­so places me on the map as a train­er. I felt like she won.”

For Khan, how­ev­er, the jour­ney is far from over. The world ti­tle re­mains the ul­ti­mate goal, and she con­tin­ues to build—one mus­cle, one com­pe­ti­tion and one chal­lenge at a time.