I started playing hockey when I was around seven years old, and quickly moved to ice hockey, which became my lifelong sport. There was a short period of time in my 20s when I didn't play – I was moving around a lot, and was homeless for a bit.

But I always had my hockey gear with me, with the intention of playing. When I moved to Los Angeles, I got on a health and fitness kick that led me down the path of being a competitive, natural bodybuilder and powerlifter – I set my max deadlifts at an LGBTQ event where I deadlifted 600 pounds.

In retrospect, going down the path of bodybuilding was all from a place of dysphoria, that "Oh, maybe if I got really ripped, I wouldn't hate myself anymore."

I wanted to transform my body. At first, I lost a bunch of weight, because I thought, "If I was really skinny, I’d like my body."

But I didn't. Then I thought, "Well maybe if I'm really muscular, I'll like my body."

But that didn’t happen, so I would be like, “What next?"

One of the clues pointing to my transness was that I always wanted the biggest pecs. I didn't care much about other muscle groups. No matter how much I trained them, the pecs were never big enough.

My story of coming out was a long, drawn out process and for a little bit of time, I was identifying as non-binary. Then there was a weird 'aha' moment when I was doing weight training as a power-lifter, lifting 600 pounds.

I was working out in my training studio alone in short shorts and a sports bra. And the first time I did that, it was that like lightbulb moment like, "Oh, fuck." So that's why I was always obsessed with big pecs.

In that sort of way, I would say bodybuilding had an impact on my understanding of gender and gender expression. But it wasn't too apparent at the time, it was an after-the-fact realization.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta ]