Y'know, when I signed up for this back in June I had grand plans for some grand writeup on the domestically produced unmagnified gunsights of Cuba. I had collected images and info and sources but I lost sight of it as life stuff happened and my time for the trans mega snuck up on me.
Que sera sera.
Anyways, today felt like the first whisper (you have no idea how hard I just thought about the ideal word for this metaphor) of autumn and that put me in the mood for one of my favorite autumnal albums. More Constant Than the Gods by SubRosa is a really lovely doom? sludge? metal album. I like how big it sounds. The lead vocalist is a really talented lady, and its got violins, also the lyrics talk about dying and stuff and I'm into that. Its very fall-y to me, as is Standard Time Volume 1 by Wynton Marsalis, but for extremely different reasons.
The funny thing is that, like the poster of the previous mega it is also my 5th transiversary, I started HRT half a decade ago today (ok technically it was the 17th but I'm gonna count it since thats when I started writing this). Now, I don't think that taking HRT was what made me "officially trans", rather it was the degree of self acceptance required to get to that point. It's a long story, and one I prefer to share privately, but it took a very, very long time before my fear and desperation gave me the strength to allow myself to have this. I think it all turned out pretty well, I experience existence in much higher fidelity, I'm this whole person, along with everything that entails.
I feel very blessed to be transgender.
I hope you all stay safe and have a good, or atleast tolerable week.
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As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.
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spoiler
Girls can wear that fit too, Gen Z did a lot to make comfortable wear and even androgyny fashionable. You probably have some of the same outfits as Billie Eilish, not joking. If you wanted to femme it up I guess you could try a women's cut for vests or t shirts? If you wanted to explore why you feel comfortable in what you feel is boy clothes instead of what you think is the femme version of the same outfit, that's okay. Maybe its an anxiety thing over being perceived as trans? Then again that could totally not apply to you at all lol.Ive been obese and lost weight. I lost 60 lbs by cutting calories (and actually counting them). If you want to lose weight, there was no shortcut. The people in my family were also clinically obese and a few of them are on Ozempic now (and lost weight). Theres no genetic condition that Im aware of that can overcome calories in/calories out. There's generic predispositions towards maybe needing less calories than the average person or nurture stuff from a family that uses food as an emotional regulator (like mine), and I gotta say it was very awkward not eating as much around my family cause boy they tried to get me to eat more lol, but there's no "big bones/obese" gene per se where your weight gets set to some number no matter how much or little you eat. Losing weight was not easy and I gained some of it back because I never dealt with the emotional side of eating (so fun I get to lose some of the same weight twice ๐ ). You CAN be healthy with a bigger weight or healthy enough anyway, you CAN be beautiful at any weight, but if you want to lose weight for dysphoria reasons and health reasons thats valid too and I would suggest counting your calories and aiming to lose a pound a week (maybe 2 AT MOST) and see how you feel in a couple months. One pound of body fat is worth about 3500 kcal, so cutting 500 kcal a day from whatever your maintainance should make you lose some weight.
At work (I work in Trauma and Oncology) we get a lot of people who swear they are generically obese but the disease process and just breaking your arms and feeling nauseous makes even these people lose weight (too fast and malnutritionally, like they also decondition cause they lose muscle, actually its a fight to get them to eat enough tbh).
spoiler:weight issues
I know calories in and calories out makes sense thermodynamically. There's no point in making excuses, but eating definitely helps me regulate my emotions. I've tried fasting before and I can fast (I feel much better while fasting than when I'm not), but I just don't stick to any schedule for fasting that I've made.The worst part is that I have largely cut out all of the low hanging fruit in my diet. I drink sugar free sodas. I'm vegan. I barely even eat fast food because BDS killed all my options. And yet that belly fat doesn't budge. That's what's disheartening about this.
if youre interested in advice
Try counting, non judgementally, what you eat in a day. No pressure to decrease for the first bit, just count. Count the snacks and "just a bite" etc. You dont have to cut a lot to lose weight healthily but it is a big barrier if food is comfort and emotional.so I read A Physical Education by Casey Johnston
One thing that's kind of misleading about calories in/calories out is that the amount of calories your body uses at rest is variable, which can be based on a lot of factors but is mostly based on how much muscle mass you have. That's why blocking testosterone can cause weight gain, without T that muscle mass is harder to build and keep, so what was once a sustainable diet becomes unsustainable, weight creeps up easier and faster, etc etc.Building muscle mass isn't only dependent on hormones, though, and that's where exercise comes in. Rather than focusing on burning calories by working out, it can make more sense to ignore how many calories you're burning in favor of focusing on increasing your strength while getting enough protein for body recomposition. Your weight mostly stays the same, but you lose fat.
This isn't applicable advice for everyone, I just wanted to gush about the cool book I read.