Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I was curious if any guys here either had/have had an eating disorder or have felt that they may be developing one, no matter what the severity.  I myself was morbidly obese 2 years ago at 5'5" and 245 pounds, but with lots of exercise and (at times) rigid diet, have gotten down to 130 pounds, but even still, I have issues with my reflection in the mirror.  After getting bored and taking pictures with my phone my my stomach and hips the other day, I realize that what I'm seeing in the mirror doesn't match up with what's really going on.  I'm pretty thin, but I still see a lot of fat....but not in the pictures.  It's so odd, and a bit alarming.

What I'm curious about is how this relates to being trans.  I never thought of myself as fat as a kid until my hips filled out and I grew tits.  I think the female patterned fat contrasts so greatly with how I've always seen myself that's it's helped to cause a minor eating disorder (until recently I obsessively exercised to the point of injury and got mad at myself for eating bad things and would thus deprive myself of food for some time after).  It's possible that when the fat redistributes on T I'll still have a lot of issues with my weight, but I'm not sure.  I know there's a tendency in those who were once obese to go the other direction and be obsessive about staying thin, but I have to wonder if the dysphoria played a part.

Anyone else have issues with this?

I went to inpatient treatment for anorexia 3 years ago. It didn't start out as body hate for me though, it started out as control issues and then became about weight and body image. I'm a normal weight now but I'm not cured, I still have times where I restrict my food intake. It seems to be a fallback coping mechanism for me.

I'm nervous about how my fat will redistribute on T. If it all goes to my stomach, I already hate how big my stomach is. I'm hoping I'll be able to lose weight once I start T, or at least build a bit more muscle.

I hope I never need inpatient treatment again - once I transition, I won't be welcome in women's treatment facilities any more, and there's not as much help out there for guys.

I was very obese for most of my life, I used to weight 96 kg and I'm a short person (only 1,61m)  I hated my body and didn't care at all about myself. Fortunately I've reached a point when I was so disgusted with myself that I managed to get down to 58kg in five years.

I started gaining weight when puberty kicked off, I'm not sure if gender dysphoria played a part, I had a lot of other anxiety issues not related to my gender identity, felt depressed and alienated for most of my teenage years. :P

I didnt start putting on weight until after puberty either and I struggle to control it now. I happen to love food, but my problem funnily enough isnt with eating too much, it is with eating too little. I hadn't 'til now considered if my dysphoria has anything to do with it.

This is the first post I've made in a long time, so it should be clear how much this subject affects me.

I'm currently really struggling with my weight and eating habits.  I know I have a problem, but I keep justifying it.  Today I reached my goal of 142 lbs.  It's taken me nearly 3 years to go from 215 lbs to now.  I've lost at least 6 inches (probably more) off my waist.

I look back at pictures of myself in high school and before my weight loss, and I can't believe how fat I look.  But when I look at myself in the mirror, I look fatter than I ever have.  Before T (started in Dec 2009), my fat was on my hips, thighs, and butt.  Now it's on my stomach.  I can't stand the way I look, but intellectually I know that I've lost weight and fat.  But it just doesn't add up when I look at myself.  I don't know how I was even living before.

When I was super dysphoric/pre-T, I didn't consider myself fat.  I knew I was heavy/overweight, but I don't think I ever realized how large I actually was.  Now, most days I'm utterly focused on how fat I am.  I restrict my calories and what I can eat.  Most days I don't eat lunch and only some I eat dinner.  I do have breakfast every day though (two pieces of peanut toast..always).  I'm in a perpetual state of hunger, I'm never full because I won't allow it.

I tried telling my therapist and she thinks I have some kind of body dysmorphia, but I think that's crap.  I can clearly see how fat my stomach is.  My BMI is still considered overweight (I'm 5'3").  My pants size (34) is still too big for my body and I still need large shirts sometimes.  So I feel like I have every right to diet and feel this way, because I'm still fat.  I don't think I'll be happy until my stomach is flat and I weight no more than 130 lbs. 

But deep down, I know I have a problem.  But I just..I feel like it's okay, because I still have a long way to go before I'm considered hwp.  None of this probably helps, but I've been needing to say this for some time.

Well, I never told this to anyone but two-three years ago I was 37kg, wishing to weight lower. Would fast as long as a month and do horrible things to my body if I ate. I was... hating the world and ready to get married with Ana till the death (you know what I mean right?) then I started HRT and started enjoying life too. I can't say I'm recovered, I think us who have been such deep in the skinny world, won't ever been capable of forget it. I'm now stuck at 50kg, I'm 1,62m, and well at least I tell myself "Dude, put that weight on MUSCLE at least!!".

Keep moving and eating, moving and eating, that's the key. If one of those two fails, then you're lost.

I used to be worried if I felt overweight, but I'm really afraid of being noticeably underweight. I can't really gain anything if I eat. I can eat four plates full of food and not gain weight. I can eat as much junk food as I want and not gain weight. And it pisses me off. I'm underweight, at the moment.

I used to be able to see my ribs and it freaked me out so bad. I'm scared of being too skinny, so I don't think I could ever be anorexic or bulimic, and I certainly could not, for the life of me, be obese.

I've been eating a lot more than I usually do to gain weight, but it's not working. :/ My weight hasn't changed. At all.

Sorry. XD This must not contribute much to the topic.

I feel all alone...you listen to all the other ladies talk and you'd think they can't stop eating...me, i have to fight the urge to purge after even a fairly small meal.

I struggled with an eating disorder for about 3 years. It absolutely had everything to do with my gender dysphoria. I did it to stop menstruating and to rid myself of female fat distribution. Unfortunately, I still looked like a girl; just a starving one. I maintained a diet of about 1000 calories per day and went for 2-hour walks everyday. At 85 lbs, my arms were like sticks, yet my ass and thighs were still proportionally larger than I thought they should be, and breasts never completely go away. I was also suffering from a major depressive episode at the time, which was further exacerbated by the malnutrition I was putting my body through.

I finally chose to re-feed myself when my mother became so worried that I was going to die. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I felt like I was throwing away all the work I'd done to change my body, even though it still wasn't what I wanted it to be. As difficult as starvation was, re-feeding was much, much harder in terms of mental struggle. The worst was when my period resumed about a year after reaching and maintaining a healthy weight. I truly wanted to die.

Fortunately, with the right anti-depressants and psychotherapy, I got through it all.

I felt an extreme social pressure within the past year or so to look a certain way. I would stare at packaging and was eating less than 1,000 calories a day. I became really obsessed with my weight and it was just not very good. I lost 10 lbs in less than a week. I was alright with my weight and shape for most of my life because I could always avoid mirrors and don't look at myself often.

Wow, so judging by the replies- pretty prevalent.  That doesn't surprise me, even if it's not a direct cause and effect type correlation with dysphoria, many trans people seem to have histories of anxiety and depression, and eating disorders seem to go hand in hand with that.  I'm sorry so many of you have struggled with anorexia though, that's so terrible.  I'm lucky that my eating compulsions/guilt aren't so severe, I can't imagine getting down under 100 pounds.  Hats off to you guys for fighting that and living to tell about it, seriously!

Quote from: Jeh on February 25, 2011, 01:33:55 PM
I hope I never need inpatient treatment again - once I transition, I won't be welcome in women's treatment facilities any more, and there's not as much help out there for guys.

I've heard that, that the statistics on the number of men eating disorders affect is impossible to know accurately because there's so little help available to males with those problems.  Society has always created such an impossible standard of beauty for women that people assume anorexia and bulimia only happen to females, but I've known a few non-transmen to have anorexia, and it's actually somewhat common among homosexual cismen.   Here's hoping transition helps you with your body image and you won't need inpatient treatment again!

I have days where I don't feel like eating all day, so I don't. Then I'll eat a lot the next day and nothing the day after that. I've had spans where I would eat practically nothing for a couple days and even almost passed out a couple of times. I've always had problems with body issues but since I started working out, I don't have the desire to not eat as much. However, if I miss days working out I go back to the not eating.

I used to weigh 140 lbs when I was going through puberty. Now I'm 5' 6" and I weigh 125-130. I feel like crap if I'm anything over 125 though so I just stopped weighing myself. I used to do it compulsively. Now I do it once every couple months if that.

I'm fat, I'll admit it.  I'm 5'7'' and about 240.  I've always been very muscular, especially in my upper body (I have guy shoulders and arms) and so I never thought of myself as fat-- just big.  And they way I'm proportioned most other people didn't think I was as big as I was and always seemed to guess my size like two or three sizes too low.  Lately, though, I've noticed I've gained a lot in my hip/ass area, although for some reason my arms have become more defined on top without any extra exercise.  Love the arms, hate the bottom weight.  I keep telling myself I'm not going to eat any more junk, yet I keep buying it (just one more pint of ice cream, one more box of cookies, etc).  Maybe I do have an eating disorder on the other end from you guys...

Quote from: Jake84 on February 25, 2011, 12:55:15 PM
After getting bored and taking pictures with my phone my my stomach and hips the other day, I realize that what I'm seeing in the mirror doesn't match up with what's really going on.  I'm pretty thin, but I still see a lot of fat....but not in the pictures.  It's so odd, and a bit alarming.

I feel that. If I see pictures of myself, I know that I'm not overweight, but mirrors are the worst thing ever. I'm 5'3" and 115lbs; in some part of my brain I know that I'm not that heavy, but it doesn't stop me from skipping meals and doing stupid stuff.  :(

Growing up I constantly went on strict unhealthy diets or skipped meals for days. But mostly didn't last long more than months and wanted to kill myself.

Then I've done stupid things to my body a few years ago. I practically lived on diet products (powders, bars, drinks not pills) and worked out 2,3 hours a day. It went on for a couple of years. I don't know the exact mount of weight loss because I didn't weight myself and still don't. I used to have quite big boobs for my frame but wanted a stick figure like body with a flat chest so I punished me with insane amount of work out. I suspect the poor diet I was on of fairly long period of time caused my low energy level.  Blood works come out normal though.

Nah, but I could understand the reasoning.

Less fat = less feminine features.   

I wouldn't call what I have a disorder, but I do have serious problems with my food intake. Most of the time I don't feel hungry, so I actually forget to eat, the same goes for drinking. I've been to hospital a few times for other things and been kept back with a drip in my arm, not allowed to leave because the doctors said I was dangerously dehydrated. I've spent years not eating breakfast or lunch, simply because I have no desire at all to eat, only to find that late at night I become hungry and start to eat everything I can. Dinner and a slow progression of munchies afterwards is all I eat each day  :-\

Which of course has left me a little to the heavy side of what I'd like :( Also, whenever I get sick I can go days, or over a week without eating anything simply because I don't feel like it. Other times, if I go out in the morning and buy some junk food (I'm horribly addicted to all bad foods) I can spend the next three days gorging myself silly.

I can't seem to do anything about it, as much as I try to eat normally. I wouldn't be surprised if my being trans had something to do with my inability to develop a regular eating patern :(

Quote from: Jake84 on February 25, 2011, 09:46:31 PM
I've heard that, that the statistics on the number of men eating disorders affect is impossible to know accurately because there's so little help available to males with those problems.  Society has always created such an impossible standard of beauty for women that people assume anorexia and bulimia only happen to females, but I've known a few non-transmen to have anorexia, and it's actually somewhat common among homosexual cismen.   Here's hoping transition helps you with your body image and you won't need inpatient treatment again!

No one noticed when I was at school...including me I just told myself I was being really fussy with what I ate, i think I ended up having a decent meal every 3/4 days. Pop culture thinks that boys don't get eating disorders, but they do.

I look in the mirror and think I look fine, but the first thing anyone one who hasn't seen me for a while says is "you're too skinny". Body image sucks.

I've been eating weirdly since I was, like, 10 or something.
When I came home from school (I was a latchkey kid), I'd just cram down everything I could find. I started with the cookies, the candy, and then I started with the un-cooked pasta, un-cooked rice, anything I could chow down.
When I was about 14, I got into a kind of bulimia-esque cycle, where I would feel bad, eat junk food to make the feelings go away, feel guilt and shame for what I had done, try to vomit it up (undoing the sin), failing, feeling horrible, eating more...
I wanted the ugly female fat to go away, I wanted to just lose all of it, to become a skeleton, but I could never do that.

Nowadays, I'm not like that. I no longer feel that terrible anxiety after eating candy, and I no longer rummage through all the cupboards just to eat my feelings away. I'm regarded as a bit fat, and I suppose I am. My parents tell me this. I should exercise more, but I don't. I guess I don't really care any more, and that's good.
I'm 165 centimeters tall (5'4") and weigh approximately 62 kilos (130-odd pounds).

I remember I considered not eating enough when I heard it could stop the monthly bleeding.  I've always been underweight (naturally, I can't help it), to the point of being able to see most of my bones, so my chest really contrasted with that, and that was very upsetting.  I wanted to stop eating until it went away, but luckily for me I never did.  I knew I was underweight already and that losing weight would be very unhealthy, and I just liked food too much.  I'm thankful it never went any further than thinking about it for me (although I may still think about it from time to time).

I'll admit that I'm quite obese [5'4", 18 stone on a good day], but when I eat my concern is whether my chest will shrink if I lose weight. Don't get me wrong, I HATE being the fat dude in the room. But should I lose weight and my chest doesn't shrink, I will have an extremely hard time hiding my breasts - right now I'm able to bind and pass most of the time when I don't talk, but having a DD sized chest would definitely hinder my passing should I lose weight.

I have weird eating habits, but not an eating disorder. I had a bad appetite pre-T, I'd go some days without eating either because I forgot to or because it seemed like too much effort in exchange for not much reward. I always wanted to gain more weight, because I have such skinny arms and a small waist, and I felt feminine when I was so small (5'4 and barely more than 110 lbs for the past 2-3 years). Now I'm closer to 120 and feeling better about it. I love the feeling of having an appetite. I do however know an FTM who is probably bulimic, and is not even close to being overweight, despite what he says.

After I wrote this yesterday, I got severely dysphoric and had a major binge.  Gained 2 lbs.  :(  It's so hard not to compare myself to others.  I know that these are tales of dangerous struggles, but frankly, I was/am jealous.  I see my therapist tomorrow, but I don't think any of this matters enough to talk about.  I don't meet the criteria of any eating disorder.  Do other "normal" people have these problems?  Am I just having an "average" person's weight struggles?

Quote from: gilligan on February 27, 2011, 04:34:42 PM
I'll admit that I'm quite obese [5'4", 18 stone on a good day], but when I eat my concern is whether my chest will shrink if I lose weight. Don't get me wrong, I HATE being the fat dude in the room. But should I lose weight and my chest doesn't shrink, I will have an extremely hard time hiding my breasts - right now I'm able to bind and pass most of the time when I don't talk, but having a DD sized chest would definitely hinder my passing should I lose weight.

I had/have this fear as well.  And as I've lost weight it's been a battle against losing more to be happy and keeping it on to hide my chest.  My chest has shrunk with both binding (about 6 or so years now) and through T.  I was a D cup before and now I guess I'm a flat C?  Not sure.  But I do think that my weight loss has made them stand out just a little more.  Hasn't been enough to discourage me from continuing to lose.

I used to think I was developing anorexia. There were days where I wouldn't eat. There were days where if I ate over 800 calories I would feel really ->-bleeped-<-ty and go run on the treadmill for as long as I could. Eventually I got better with it and got down to my target weight with healthy diet and exercise. However my cup size didn't change at all and that really bothered me. Even though I think my face looks more masculine when I'm thinner, when I bind it looks better now that I've gained 30 pounds. Staying at 130, which is really low for me, was extremely difficult. I'm still happy at 160. Now I think the want to be thin came from wanting to prove to myself that I could do it, that I had control over my body even though I'm trans.

Quote from: MaxAloysius on February 26, 2011, 05:19:17 AM
I wouldn't call what I have a disorder, but I do have serious problems with my food intake. Most of the time I don't feel hungry, so I actually forget to eat, the same goes for drinking. I've been to hospital a few times for other things and been kept back with a drip in my arm, not allowed to leave because the doctors said I was dangerously dehydrated. I've spent years not eating breakfast or lunch, simply because I have no desire at all to eat, only to find that late at night I become hungry and start to eat everything I can. Dinner and a slow progression of munchies afterwards is all I eat each day  :-\

Which of course has left me a little to the heavy side of what I'd like :( Also, whenever I get sick I can go days, or over a week without eating anything simply because I don't feel like it. Other times, if I go out in the morning and buy some junk food (I'm horribly addicted to all bad foods) I can spend the next three days gorging myself silly.

I can't seem to do anything about it, as much as I try to eat normally. I wouldn't be surprised if my being trans had something to do with my inability to develop a regular eating patern :(

This describes me 100%.  :-\ In the past month or so, I've also begun counting calories and trying to eat no more than 1300. For reference, I'm about 5'5 165 lbs so I am a little overweight. I keep getting stuck and can't seem to get the weight off. I'm sure my crap diet/eating habits contribute a ton to that. Ughhh.

In high school I dealt with a pretty nasty eating disorder. Despite the fact that my BMI never fell below average, I frequently got comments about how I was too thin. There was a point where I had friends asking each other if I had an eating problem. At the time I had severe depression and starved myself in order to feel like I had control over something in my life.

Quote from: gilligan on February 27, 2011, 04:34:42 PM
I'll admit that I'm quite obese [5'4", 18 stone on a good day], but when I eat my concern is whether my chest will shrink if I lose weight. Don't get me wrong, I HATE being the fat dude in the room. But should I lose weight and my chest doesn't shrink, I will have an extremely hard time hiding my breasts - right now I'm able to bind and pass most of the time when I don't talk, but having a DD sized chest would definitely hinder my passing should I lose weight.

I'm sure it varies from person to person, but I definitely lost a lot of size in my chest when I lost the weight.  At 245lbs, I was a D or DD, not sure exactly.  At 130lbs, I'm a small B (and some of that is just skin, if I lift up my arms, I'm an A cup).   It's harder to know if you were always very overweight.  In high school, I was a C cup and about the weight I am now, so I figured they'd shrink back to what they were then.  They're actually much smaller now for some reason, but I'm not complaining.

I realize this topic is desolate, but I'm posting to it anyway. I'm just that badass. I'm 5 foot 2-ish and I weight about 110lbs. I guess you could say that I've struggled with anorexia on and off for about a year. I'm not fat, but I hate my curves. A few months ago I literally ate nothing for a week, but I was in school at the time. We had to wear heart-rate monitors during gym. At the end of the week I noticed that it was almost impossible to get my heart-rate above 100b/m (we needed to get to at least 135 to get credit.) I was sweating heavily after just a little exercise. I found it oddly enjoyable and I liked the feeling, but I was concerned that someone would find out what I was doing to myself because I wouldn't be able to get credit for my heart-rates in gym. I went back to eating fairly normally for a little while. During this time I started working out a lot more. After it became difficult to exercise everyday because of my schedule, I have gone back to not eating. I mean, I do eat. I eat just enough for no one to be concerned or notice. I guess that's my main goal. I want to lose at least some of my curves. I know it's impossible for a biological female to do that with only starvation and exercise, but I want my curves to be smaller so I can hide them easier. I don't want any of my family or friends to be concerned or think that I have a problem.

Quote from: Bane on February 26, 2011, 05:19:17 AM
I wouldn't call what I have a disorder, but I do have serious problems with my food intake. Most of the time I don't feel hungry, so I actually forget to eat, the same goes for drinking. I've been to hospital a few times for other things and been kept back with a drip in my arm, not allowed to leave because the doctors said I was dangerously dehydrated. I've spent years not eating breakfast or lunch, simply because I have no desire at all to eat, only to find that late at night I become hungry and start to eat everything I can. Dinner and a slow progression of munchies afterwards is all I eat each day  :-\

Bane, are you on the autism spectrum by any chance? I don't have anywhere near that kind of severity but I do have to kind of put myself on a schedule and more or less eat because it is a certain time or drink something because I need to drink more vs feeling rather more normal hunger. T has changed the hunger thing but not the thirst. So I don't think my issues with this are severe. Just kind of curious I guess.

Don't know who said this but:
>Wow, so judging by the replies- pretty prevalent.  That doesn't surprise me, even if it's not a direct cause and effect type correlation with dysphoria, many trans people seem to have histories of anxiety and depression, and eating disorders seem to go hand in hand with that. 

I agree with this. I have a hx of consecutive hospitalizations for depression in my 20s. I seemed like I got better when my seizure disorder was controlled (stopped the hospitalizations anyway). But still dealt with that stuff. I kind of got better, and my guess is that maybe I adjusted to kind of being androgynous. I think the connecting was so far from my experiences I wasn't able to do it.


--Jay