When I started presenting as male I became less self conscious and worried about being overweight because it seems more feminine to weigh less and more masculine to weigh more even though it's not all muscle. One thing I've noticed is that men's clothes run big and women's clothes run small. I wear an XL in women's and a medium in men's. I think society wants men to feel too small and women to feel too big to encourage women to lose weight and men to bulk up.
Has presenting as male made you less self conscious about weight or changed your body image and perception in any other way?

No, it's made me care more about it.

I have an eating disorder now, you might say, where eating grosses me out..., although I'm trying to combat it by eating lots of protein and working out because it is showing results now with T. Before I seemed to get nowhere ever with weights in terms of increasing strength and fitness. I know that will increase my weight but that's fine. I've just become paranoid about owning a fat-storing body, and for the first time in my life I've become properly aware of it and the need to take a bit better care of it.

Before I didn't even want to look at it... it was hard to care.

Yeah agree with Kylo. Pre T I didn't care about my body but gradually on T and the more and more I look masculine I've noticed I care a lot more. I still relapsed only until recently by eating too much junk food bcos it seems hopeless to lose the extra weight I've gained from T. But now I like how much more masculine my body looks and want to take care of it.

It's a gradual process but within a year on T I think many trans men start feeling this way.

I used to be super self conscious about my weight and for me I think it was actually more dysphoria than anything else. Once I got on T and my fat shifted more masculine and I got hairier on my belly and stuff like that, I grew a lot less bothered by my weight. Sure I'd love to lose it but it isn't something that causes me immense stress or triggers depression anymore. And I also do care more about my body, but it's a much more normal healthy level of caring. Before, it was an obsessive distress about my body but now it's just that I recognise I should change it but it isn't distressing like it was before. I've actually had more success now with losing weight or being healthier because before, I was overwhelmed by my dysphoria and felt hopeless, whereas now I mostly like my body and am able to focus on the things to change it to make it even better.

I became a lot more self conscious. Mainly because after starting testo, I wanted to burn off that female layer of fat on the hips and thighs. So I started to work out and eat a lot cleaner. I lost weight because of it, but leaned up quite a bit. But because I don't really want fat to come back to the female places, I keep a strict eye on my weight, on how I look.

I agree with you about the sizes.

Pre-transition I was very self conscious, but my weight felt kind of hopeless. On T, I found it easier to get in shape and needing to lose weight for surgery provided a lot of motivation that I didn't otherwise have. I'm much less self conscious now.

I dont see why we cant have a universal size chart and keep gender out of it. That just makes it harder, even for cis males and females, to find clothes in their size when they dont fall into a common size range. Clothes and shoes should just not need men's and women's sizes at all.

Quote from: FTMax on December 22, 2016, 03:40:08 PM
I agree with you about the sizes.

Pre-transition I was very self conscious, but my weight felt kind of hopeless. On T, I found it easier to get in shape and needing to lose weight for surgery provided a lot of motivation that I didn't otherwise have. I'm much less self conscious now.

I do want to get in better shape and will hope to be more motivated on T.

Quote from: WolfNightV4X1 on December 22, 2016, 03:43:23 PM
I dont see why we cant have a universal size chart and keep gender out of it. That just makes it harder, even for cis males and females, to find clothes in their size when they dont fall into a common size range. Clothes and shoes should just not need men's and women's sizes at all.

Men's and women's pants are shaped differently to accommodate different fat storage profiles. I find shirts are sometimes shaped differently as well.

Yeah I find most women's dress shirts are different shaped

Female clothing is much clingier and form fitting. I hate that about it.

I would say presenting as male, and more specifically being on T has made me more self-conscious than anything. I've always been a little on the chubby side, but never really even thought about losing weight until I started presenting as male. Especially now that I've been on hormones for a while, I've really been driven to work out and lose weight to masculinize my body shape, since I haven't experienced a whole lot of fat redistribution from T alone.