Hi there guys! I have two questions for people who have been on T for a long time, hopefully I can get some helpful answers from the community! Just for reference, I'm 20 years old and have been on T for a little over a year.

1. Does acne ever stop completely (on its own)? And if so, how long did it take since you started T? I'm worried that someday I will be 30 or even 40 years old and still have all this acne, but this second puberty eventually HAS to end, right? Like a normal puberty does?

2. I've barely noticed any fat redistribution at all since I started T, which I guess is not very surprising 'cause I do no exercise, so I was wondering if jogging 30 min a day for instance could help me look more masculine as I lose fat (more shoulders, less hips etc.)? Or would I need to go to the gym (it's expensive as ->-bleeped-<- though :/)? I'd like to go to the beach next summer and not have people staring at me, wondering why I look like a ->-bleeped-<-ing girl.

Thanks in advance!

I've only been on T for about the same length of time as you, but I can tell you if you want a more "masculine" shape, ie the broader shoukder etc, running ain't gonna do it for you. Yes, you will have to build muscle. If you can't afford a gym, there's lots of at home style exercises you can do, using little to no equipment, that can get you decent results. Easily found across the Internet.
To have "less hips" dropping bodyfat will do that, so in a sense yes running will get you that result... But like I said it won't do anything for giving you "more shoulders".
But if running is all you want to do something is always better than nothing!

This might help:

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,198479.msg1769458.html#msg1769458


hugs

Running will help keep you fit, and that is always good, but it really has not helped me look more masculine!  I have been a runner for 30 years, and on T for the past 5.  In my experience, it keeps me pretty lean, which further accentuates the fact that I have a female skeleton.  I do a whole lot of pushups, which has helped my chest and shoulders fill out, but I have had trouble building significant muscle which would help my appearance...it takes regular effort and consistency. The T is not going to magically change your shape while you wait    If you have access to a swimming pool that you would be comfortable using, swimming laps is a great way to get fit while building some upper body mass.  Of course, a public pool brings with it a whole bunch of dysphoria issues for many of us 

Regarding the acne, I had fairly regular mild acne for most of my twenties and thirties, and I did not start T until age 40...The severity of it should subside as your body levels out on a regular dose, but it may not disappear entirely.  During my first year on T I had some nasty 'Backne'...but it does get better with time.  I found daily use of St Ives Apricot Scrub very helpful. 

Going to the gym is going to give you results, running will give you results. But it depends on the person if your fats going to redistribute in the certain way you want it. Running everyday for 30-40 minutes has slimmed me down A LOT , but I have curves still. Strength training made my arms bigger, but it really does take dedication. Look into minocycline. It's a acne medication that cleared up my face completely while on T. I've had some pretty terribly backne. I think it's a T thing.

I am pre T but I have a lot of brothers, so I've seen a lot of male puberty lol

Like others have said, scrubs and washes are always good (I guess T makes your skin oilier and so you're more likely to get blocked pores? I may be wrong?) Sometimes acne is made worse by a lot of dairy + sugar in your diet too - this is what my brothers were told when they had theirs, it was pretty bad. Which I suppose genetically means mine will be too. I'm planning to stock up on Clearasil

Def agree with Peep on the dairy -specifically milk- and sugar.  Anything that spikes your insulin levels tends to set off a cascade of reactions that leads to increased oil output and inflammation.

I definitely feel you on the acne, Manny, but when I keep my milk and sugar intake low it's not too bad.  I'm not sure where you live but several states in the US have gyms that run about $10 per month which is pretty affordable (I was a member of Youfit for a couple of years at that price but I think there are others)

Otherwise the other guys have already said it as far as running and workouts at home. Ideally, you want to do BOTH if you really want to pursue an athletic, masculine body shape.

When did you guys start seeing your acne? I've had almost no acne my whole life, and so now that I've started T I cringe every morning when I look in the mirror, expecting it to be the day it starts appearing (especially after the HUGE warning I got about it from my doctor).  I know people are all different, but I was just wondering if there is an average time it is likely to appear.  My skin HAS gotten more oily, but I haven't seen any yet and am not looking forward to it!

Thanks for your answers guys! So I guess I will have to build muscle then, if running won't cut it...  I will look online ways to do it at home, and if it doesn't work I guess I will have to pay to go to a gym (but I hope not), hopefully I'll get good results in a short time period. As for acne, are you guys saying that it will NOT go away on its own? I don't mind acne treatments but I wish I didn't have to, that it would leave on its own, I just hate the thought of spending more money. I've had top surgery recently, my parents paid it and I don't want to ask anything else of them. :/ Btw Mitch I started seeing acne shortly after I started T, but I had acne pre-T too. I guess age matters a lot here.

Hey, I find that acne doesn't go away unless you tackle it. Clearisal works well or I  bought soap from Lush. Bit expensive but it works well and lasts you a long time. No need to buy expensive acne creams from a doctor unless it's really stubborn. Good luck with the exercises

Try not to get TOO nervous, FtMitch. I only have seen a slight increase in what I had before (I'd still call it very mild to mild acne), and one of my good ftm friends didn't have any increase in acne, and he started in his late teens.  I haven't heard of anyone going from 0 to 60 in terms of acne, just an increase due to the increased oil.


Manny, when I first went on T I started weightlifting that targeted my shoulders, arms, and back, and it made a major difference in my body shape. If you have access to a pool and want to avoid weights, swimming a LOT would work those muscles out just as well.  Otherwise, if you can find some cheap or free pairs of dumbbells on craigslist or something you can do a lot at home.

Not sure if you've seen it already or not, but this site is both entertaining and informative on describing shape differences between men and women and how to modify your body shape (and other useful topics):
http://ftmguide.rassaku.net/

I naturally have acne and oily skin. That's one thing that makes me hesitant about going on T. I've had acne my whole life and my first two semesters of college it was HORRIBLE cystic acne. They actually put me on T-blockers for it. :/
I still have nasty scars on my temples, etc, from it.
One very very important tip about acne: DRINK LOTS OF WATER. I have been drinking 50+ oz of water per day lately and I only wash my face. No other fancy treatment. I have a few spots here and there but otherwise my skin is under control. Another thing is just washing your face daily--when you get up and before you go to sleep. Try not to touch your face, that's a big no-no and always have clean pillowcases. Change them at most once a week.

Sent from my SPH-L720T using Tapatalk

I had no acne at all pre-T, so the sudden onset of acne was sad to deal with.
I tried a lot of face washes, but what ultimately helped me was lowering my T level a bit (my levels were really really high, even on a "normal" dose), taking finasteride, and getting a topical face ointment from my primary care doctor.
I also use a really gentle soap from Lush called "Fresh Pharmacy" which seems to do the trick. It doesn't dry me out TOO much and seems to have a calming effect on the breakouts.

I'm not sure what really helped the most, but I think lowering my levels and the topical ointment played the biggest part.

Good luck!!!!!

I think looking back to your first puberty may be helpful. My skin has always been abysmal. It started getting bad when I was 13 and didn't look halfway decent until I was about 20. I've noticed that my breakouts are centered around when my period would've been if I was still having it, so I'm hoping it'll calm down once I have a hysto. I have heard things start to calm down around the 2 year mark, if that helps.

I changed my diet and the weight loss has helped make the fat redistribution more noticeable. My legs have thinned out a lot, I've gained 2 inches across my chest and 4 across my shoulders, lost 3 off my waist. I have a gym membership but I really only use it once a month or so when it's too cold to walk outside. I walk 5+ miles a day with my dog. That is the only "exercise" I get.

Weirdly enough, my acne gets worse in an instant if I eat chocolate. It doesn't even need to lot of it. It literally worsens overnight if I've had even a little bit of chocolate (like some chocolate coated candy etc). Heck, I can't even have hot chocolate anymore.
We first suspected it was the milk in chocolate but considering I can have any other dairy product and get no reaction, it has to be something else. Me and my fiancée reasoned it could be the fat in chocolate but I don't know. But I tend to consume lot of dairy along the day (milk, cheese, yoghurts, you name it, we Finns love our dairy) so yeah. Now that I think about it, my acne does get a bit worse after I eat food with lot of fat in it... like pizza and chips. No way I'm gonna give those up, though. :'D Chocolate, though? Good riddance, didn't like it anyway. However, I do miss Snickers bars...

For me, also the kind of T made a difference. I had acne pre-T but it wasn't terrible and didn't really change after I started with gel. When I switched to Sustanon, it pretty much exploded and I swear I turned into a were-pimple during the fullmoon. Now that I'm on Nebido it has calmed down but I still have it. It's manageable, though.

Can't really say much about body shape. I think I'm still kinda shame shape as before but I've... filled out. I've gained ~10kg but I was pretty small to begin with so I'm more in the healthy weight area now for my height.
I think my legs are bigger than before but that's solely because of muscle. I ride a bike a lot these days and sometimes walk long distances as well.

1. My acne never went away completely, though I've kind of always had gross skin. Started getting that crap in 4th grade, and it just kind of never stopped. It's much less, and mostly on my body rather than my face, now that I'm in my mid-late 20s, but there's still some there. YMMV.

2. That stuff takes forever. I've been on T for nearly 6 years and didn't notice any significant fat redistribution until fairly recently. You can't control where you lose fat from if you go the rout of trying to take it off. You can, however, control where you put on muscle. If you want to diminish the appearance of your hips, work on adding bulk to your back/shoulders.

You don't need a fancy gym. Standard dumbbells and plates are fairly inexpensive and you can shove them under the bed when you're not using them.  On the other hand, to 'do it all' (large/compound lifts otherwise done with barbell), you'd really want to look for Olympic dumbbell handles and plates (and really good or 'lockjaw' collars). Olympic plates you can find easily second-hand, but not Olympic dumbbells (much to my consternation; don't want to buy standard plates seeing as I have 500lbs of Olympic already lol). You should be able to get a decent setup for around $150 (Scour Craigslist for an even better deal), or 2-3 months of what the average gym would run you. You won't need as many plates starting out... few 5's, 10's and maybe a pair of 25's or 35's (or 'standard' equivalents). You won't need 45's for quite a time unless you also get a barbell (my personal favorite but you really can't isolate the arms/shoulders with them much, hence the dumbbells. And it's INCREDIBLY stupid to use a barbell without a bench/rack anyway, so don't until or unless you can get one or the other; and if/when you do, DON'T collar your barbell so you can ditch out if you need to. Never collared and it's saved my ass many a time... I lift alone).

Oh, and disturbingly, gyms are moving almost exclusively to machines or 'machine assist' (racks), from what I've been seeing (have to conclude it's over liability BS). That is a piss-poor way to do it. They don't, at-all, work your stabilizers (your deep muscles)... so you're essentially throwing away 50% of your effort and potential gains, right from the off. There's nothing a machine can do that you can't get done with free-weights, dumbbell or barbell. Free-weights are ALWAYS best... you just have to pay more attention to do it right/safe. Our local Fitness 19 being the absolute worst offender I've ever yet seen... I haven't used my $9 membership in a year over it. It disgusts me. The only thing they have there that I could actually benefit from, can't really have at home, are the roman chairs and dip stations. But that's about as far as their free-weights go. It's a total joke. My high school gym had nothing but free-weights; the way it really ought to be.

Dude, if you don't work out at all, any kind of training is going to have an effect on your body. I remember seeing a YouTube video of a guy who only did 200 push ups a day for a month and his chest got noticeably bigger (he wasn't particularly skinny to begin with either). Bodyweight training works great (gymnasts might not be huge but they're probably the strongest people for their size), I'd recommend that you start training with just bodyweight for a while, and maybe save up a bit for a gym membership once you feel like you've gotten really good with bodyweight movements. It'll take some time.

As much as I'd like to tell you to invest in some weights, I wouldn't recommend you buy equipment unless you know what you want to do with it. Playing around with free weights without proper guidance and knowledge of proper technique could get you hurt.

What I would suggest is you try doing some bodyweight crossfit workouts. There are tons that you can just look up, and the only worthwhile investment would be a pull up bar, which shouldn't cost you much.

Same issues here.
But for me, I've been on t for years and my acne never went away.
I think any type of exercise might help. I still have curves, but I mean exercise is said to be good for you in any case.

Quote from: darkblade on November 30, 2015, 12:08:40 PM
Dude, if you don't work out at all, any kind of training is going to have an effect on your body. I remember seeing a YouTube video of a guy who only did 200 push ups a day for a month [snip]

Only? I do like 80 a day and I think I'm hot ->-bleeped-<-. 200 is a tonne.