One month on testosterone therapy versus three months

Useful Links: April 2020 Update | July 2019 Update | One Month Update | Three Months Update
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​In this month’s update on my journey as a transgender bodybuilding trainee, I’m going to talk about my experience with medical transition from female to male and the effects this has had so far on my training, nutrition, and body composition.
 
At the time of writing, I have been medically transitioning for four months, from March 13th 2020, but I will primarily reflect on the first three months.
 
The aim of the article is to cover:
 

• What is medical transition?
• What does my medical transition look like?
• How has this affected me in relation to bodybuilding so far?
• How has my approach to training and nutrition changed, if at all?

 
The purpose of this piece is to share my experience in order to educate transgender and non-transgender individuals alike, and to provide anecdotes and observations on how medical transition can change training, nutrition, and body composition in a transgender person who trains to improve their physique.
 
As a final disclaimer, I want to point out that this is only my experience.
 
I am not a medical professional, so I am not going to offer any form of advice.
 
Anything I share in this article is personal, individualised to me, and meant to inform, not make recommendations.
 
Without further ado, let’s delve into the update.

​A lot of us pursue fat loss at some point in our fitness journey.
 
But what is body fat and what is it for?
 
Where does it come from?
 
And how do we lose it?
 
This article is all about understanding the answers to these questions.

​I have recently posted a poll on my Instagram stories, asking my followers if they were staying on top of exercise.
 
“No” was the most popular answer.
 
In another poll, I asked “Why?” and offered two options: “No guidance” and “Low motivation”.
 
“Low motivation” received an overwhelming 100% response.
 
What many of us might not realise is that your initial motivation is fuelled by a sense of novelty and inspiration to achieve success.
 
Unfortunately, neither of the two lasts long.
 
Your shiny new training program becomes old news in a couple of weeks.
 
And your long-term goal of losing 50lbs can seem too far away when you step on the scale and you’ve only lost half a pound this week.
 
Once your starting levels of motivation are running low, don’t wait to wake up one day and find them miraculously restored.
 
Spoiler alert: It won’t happen.
 
Instead, become the architect of your own motivation.
 
One way to do this is to accomplish a workout when it’s the very last thing you want to do.
 
This will boost your confidence and thus perpetuate a positive feedback loop of success, followed by a sense of accomplishment and renewed motivation, followed by repeated success.
 
In this article, I will cover my top tips to do exactly that.

​“How can I stay full on my diet?”
 
In this article, I am going to do a deep dive into this topic.
 
First of all, a hard pill to swallow: Tips can help make you feel full for longer, but they will not completely stop the hunger.
 
The thing is, being hungry is your body’s natural response to a caloric deficit. When there isn’t enough energy coming in, the body triggers the release of hunger hormones, which in turn generate a desire for food.
 
Your body is trying to keep you alive. This simply happens to be very inconvenient when you are trying to stick to a fat loss diet.
 
So being hungry is an expected consequence of dieting, not the end of the world.
 
If you understand that some hunger is part of the process and that food will always be there, dealing with it mentally can become much easier.
 
That said, there are indeed food choices we can make and behaviours we can adapt in order to reduce the discomfort of an empty belly. Let’s get into them.

In my last post, I covered what to expect during your first weeks on a fat loss diet.
 
In this article, I aim to tackle the opposite: What can you expect in your first weeks on a muscle-building diet?