I’m an average AMAB person: 32yrs old, 180lbs, 5’9" and I carry a lot of my weight in my belly. It gives me a lot of dysphoria and I stress over my belly fat a lot. I definitely don’t have a super healthy relationship with my weight.

Last year, I didn’t drink for the majority of the year. I took about 10 months off from alcohol, but I didn’t lose any weight. I was also going to the gym ~3 times a week. I believe in CICO and so I believe I must have been eating more as well. But my body fat distribution didn’t change at all. I moved away from my gym and so I couldn’t keep going and then I lost motivation.

For context, when I was younger I weight-lifted a lot. I wasn’t the biggest person in the gym, but my PR for bench was 305lb, deadlift 455lbs, and squat 365lb and I weighed 198lbs. I learned a lot of positive and negative associations with weight and diet. Weight lifting was all about eating as much protein as possible. Now I want to lose weight, but I’ve built this body to be big. I wish I never went to the gym. I used to hover around 155lbs and my body’s “set point” never fluctuated until I started focusing heavily on working out and eating as much as I could handle. Now I can’t seem to lose the weight. And it’s basically just fat. Not much functional muscle left.

Fast forward to today and I’m starting HRT soon. But I’m super worried that my body fat distribution isn’t going to change since I’ve read that fat cells can have “memory”. I’m basically excited to start my journey in every way except I feel so dysphoric about my body shape. I hate this “beer belly”.

What should I do about this? Can anyone help me with this? I fear the simple answer is that I just need to focus more heavily on diet and exercise, but I’m so demotivated by my experience last year. With no gym nearby (< 35 minutes away) and - frankly - a superb desire to eat, I can’t believe in my ability to achieve my goals.

I just wish I could start over and be skinny - then gain weight on my HRT to hopefully gain hips and boobs. What’s the advice you’d give me? Sorry if this post is toxic. I realize I don’t have a healthy mindset about this. I’m trying to accept myself, but I also want to be able to wear woman’s clothing and feel like a woman.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    10 days ago

    My suggestion is not to bother counting calories and estimating your burn rate, what you want is an app that can take your last two or three weeks of weigh-ins and give you an overall caloric balance. That’s a long enough baseline to model your actual habits and average out any variance in hydration, and the balance is the only figure you need, no estimation needed.

    Can you explain in more detail what these kinds of apps are doing and what exactly is wrong with calourie counting? It kinda sounds like the gist of it is “don’t bother counting, just eat less”.

    • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      Happily!

      In a sense, your gist of it is right, but I’m not being dismissive. More like, “you don’t need to count to figure out how much less to eat or more exercise to get”.

      Image uploads are broken for my instance right now, but I’ll add a screenshot when I can. The app I’m using is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.cachapa.libra

      The gist is the use of a rolling average to chart a trend line. That trend line is what’s important, the amount of calories one eats only matters where it isn’t burnt off by exercise.

      So, rather than having to do two estimates by accounting for everything one eats and does, one can get a far more accurate figure with much less effort by just weighing in and letting the software tell you how you’re trending.

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        10 days ago

        There’s a lot more to calourie counting than answering the question of “do I eat too much in general?”, though. e.g. it allows you to split it up by category (e.g. proper meals vs. sweets), and it’s also very useful too assess whether you’re eating excessively on a given day before the weight data rolls in.

        • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
          1·
          10 days ago

          Indeed, but I’m a creature of habit and weight loss is a long-term project, so the goal was to change my habits rather than force myself into a strict regimen that I’d never be able to maintain.

          Having a trend line over two or three weeks models my daily habits accurately enough to see how little changes can add up over time. It’s those baby steps that build momentum for real change.

          • rumschlumpel@feddit.orgEnglish
            1·
            10 days ago

            Just because you’re counting calouries doesn’t mean you need to set strict limits, though, it’s just a tool to actually know what your habits are. If you can do without that’s great but I think you’re being overly dismissive of it.

            • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
              1·
              10 days ago

              I don’t mean to sound as such, I’ve just got degraded executive function and counting calories was actually harmful to my weight loss journey due to the added stress.