fasting before hrt?

[lolimarkeloff]

I'm going to be starting E soon and I was wondering if it would be a good idea to fast and lose fat, and when I stop all the fat from my normal diet will go to all the proper places.

[svaso]

In my experience, HRT takes care of the distribution.  Though it doesn't move fat, I found that I burned off the male pattern fat I had, and new fat was distributed in a more feminine pattern.  I do maintain a fairly healthy diet and try to exercise 3 or 4 days a week.  I don't think it would make a difference fasting before HRT.

[Heather]

I doubt it fat displacement is based on genetics it's really out of your hands whether the fat goes to the right places. I would suggest maintaining a healthy diet and regular exercise though not eating will not help you out at all and will hurt more than it helps.

[Thylacin]

I'm going to be starting E soon and I was wondering if it would be a good idea to fast and lose fat, and when I stop all the fat from my normal diet will go to all the proper places.

Fasting is not a good idea.

Instead, try a healthy, balanced, but calorie restricted diet. I lost 20lbs in about two months before starting HRT (160lb to 140lb), which I plan on putting back on. Volume-wise, I ate just about as much food, I just didn't pour oil onto my pan before cooking food, or serve my food on a huge bed of white rice (empty calories). Instead, I ate a lot of veggies/high protein/high fiber foods. If you have a smart phone, I found it very helpful to use a diet journal app to record food intake.

[TessaMarie]

I had a similar idea about losing weight, but 'fasting' (ie: starving myself) seemed silly when I knew I need my health to be good when starting HRT.

So I decided to use a very old-fashioned weight-loss plan:  Diet & Exercise.

Diet:
I stopped snacking between meals & cut out almost all snack foods from my diet.  I ate 2-3 meals per day. 
I tried eating home-cooked meals as much as possible (pizza, burgers & pancakes are not very slimming). 
I ate until I was full instead of eating until I was stuffed (the difference being being completely not hungry versus not being able to move for 30 minutes). 
I didn't count calories or worry too much about what I ate.  E.g.:  I used real butter when mashing the spuds & full-fat milk in my porridge (oatmeal), tea, etc.  I still put 4 spoons of sugar in my porridge (made with 7 dessert spoons of oatmeal) and 2.5 in my tea (20oz cup).  I did not ration my tea or coffee intake.

Exercise:
I decided to do some exercise as opposed to none.
I started by walking 2 miles per day.  I gradually brought this up to 3 miles, then 4 miles.  When 4 miles became easy I added a few ounces of leg weights, then a few ounces more ... until I had 2.5lbs on each ankle.
I walked every single day.  No matter what.  Snow, ice, rain, single-digit (F) temperatures or heat wave (100°F).  On the really hot days I would usually walk after sundown.  On really cold days, as near to afternoon as possible. 
I gave myself permission to shorten my walk or to leave off the leg weights whenever I felt I needed to, which was about once every 2-3 weeks.

That's it.  That's all I did.

I went from 202.6lbs on 20/Jan/2013 to 166lbs on 31/Jul/2013.  A loss of 36.6lbs.
I started an anti-androgen in early May & estrogen in mid-June.
I did find some of that weight again when I visited my parents for a few weeks in October, rising to 183.6lbs at the start of November.

Surgery in late-November & illness since kept me from walking for a few weeks, but I'm back walking again now & this morning my weight was 171.8lbs.

This graph shows how my weight changed from 18/Jan/2013 to 1/Jan 2014:    http://imgur.com/7MrBW8K

Also see my post in another thread here:    https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,156250.msg1325183.html#msg1325183

Do please note that the 7-day & 28-day rolling averages are much more useful indicators of progress that the daily measurements.  The daily measurement could go up or down by as much as 3lbs.  I wasn't really gaining or losing that much per day, it was just the luck of timing (good or bad).  The rolling averages give a better idea of whether the trend is rising or falling.