I was wondering something. I have a naturally pretty strong build (kinda sux for a MtF) and to suppress growing more muscles I always tried to avoid physical activities like gym class.

But now i'm gaining so much weight; while not eating that much that I see no other option than to excercise to lose more weight. Now i'm wondering, do you guys/girls have any suggestions what to train in order to work on a more female shape and to avoid getting more masculine?

aerobics, pilates, yoga, swimming, bike riding, walking/running, pole dancing, any dance class really. 

Don't lift weight. Reduce your calorie intake to 10x your body weight (lbs). Of the calories you do consume, only 10-15% should be from protein and fat, each. The majority of your calories should come from carbohydrates. Go vegan if you can. Avoid high intensity workouts where you have to use your muscles maximum potential. Stick to cardiovascular exercises like walking, running, swimming, and cycling. Workouts should be done 3-6 times a week for a duration of 30-60 minutes. You will get sore. Your muscles and joints will hurt but your body will start to consume its own muscles. Remember, muscles play an important part in your body so don't get rid of them but once you have reduced them down to a size you are comfortable with, then you can resume a normal diet and, if you are on HRT meds, you will build fat and no more muscles.

Vegetarian.

I will be writing an article a month from now and posting it on this site with the specs of a transwoman going vegetarian and also a testimonial.  Anyone else who'd like to add their personal experience can email me at clandestinevillian@yahoo.com and let me interview on vegetarian diets to help better my perspective and thus all my readers.

I was a pro athlete pre-transition, and after a year of trying to see what's most effective I finally got it slammed into my face.  One thing though, stay AWAY from the gym.  Period.  If you want cardio then get a bicycle or a treadmill, or a jumprope, that simple.

Got some tofu on the stove right now, actually...

Before:


http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a227/pixieluvsall/stuff/PIC_0010.jpg

After:

http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/22/l_648afad4261d43d9a68a1dad228f3b51.jpg

I started to notice that I was gaining weight. Especially during the winter. I have several injuries. So I must be careful about what I do. I've found that stretching and riding my bicycle helps allot. Plus I now have an elliptical jogger. Low impact on my legs and great results for my fem. shaping and cardio. Still got the boobs and hips goin', but loosing the waistline 

I do lots of cardio, treadmill, bike, dance, RPM, I eat sensibly. I don't do weights except for my legs 'cos they are sooo skinny. Take fish oil and vitamins. OK I'm small anyway 5'9'' 58Kgs but I still don't want to look guyish. One thing about tread mills. I don't mean this in a perverted way. Try and get a tread mill behind a cisgirl and practice walking like her. It's made a difference to how I carry myself.

Good Luck

Cindy James

Read the ingredients list of everything you eat.

Cut out all sugary drinks/foods.

Have a water bottle with you at all times and drink lots of water.

Walk everywhere you can walk at all.

Consider getting a bike for the longer distances.

I second everything that Miniar posted above.

Now about the vegawhatism/vegan diet... no more meat?
Wha, cry cry cry b*tc% moan whiskey tango foxtrot wails cries!!!

No more steaks, chicken, veal, lamb chops.

Well okay if helpss feminize the body.

Seems I'll soon be writing an obituary for my carnivorism.

Repeating above post but with my input:

Read the ingredients list of everything you eat. (amen momma)

Cut out all sugary drinks/foods. (cut out saturated corn sugars, nothing wrong with sugar if you've got the metabolism to handle and a small, high sugar snack twice daily is good for keeping your blood sugar from dropping, specially for diabetics).

Have a water bottle with you at all times and drink lots of water. (or juice, tastes better, or Fuze...)

Walk everywhere you can walk at all. (or run/bounce/hop)

Consider getting a bike for the longer distances.  (motorcycle)

Juice may taste better but is often PACKED with added sugar.
If you want a sweet treat, eat some fruit or dark chocolate. Both are yummy and good for you.

High carbohydrates and low fat/protein is ideal for losing muscle, so I don't see what's wrong with sugar which is: a simple carbohydrate.

Quote from: Annwyn on April 13, 2009, 04:53:10 PM
High carbohydrates and low fat/protein is ideal for losing muscle, so I don't see what's wrong with sugar which is: a simple carbohydrate.

Doesn't sugar convert easily to fat?

Quote from: Annwyn on April 13, 2009, 04:53:10 PM
High carbohydrates and low fat/protein is ideal for losing muscle, so I don't see what's wrong with sugar which is: a simple carbohydrate.

White sugar is a simple carbohydrate that converts easily to fat. The original poster isn't asking how to loose "muscle" but how to loose weight without gaining muscle.

White sugar is also addictive.
Consuming it causes your blood sugar to rock up and down which increases chances of blood sugar related diseases such as diabetes.

All in all, processed sugars are a bad choice when it comes to carbs.
Hence my advice, eat a fruit or some dark chocolate.

Juicy Juice is 100% juice and tastes great. I am quite addicted to the "Punch" variety. It also contains none of that artificial junk in it.

I second the recommendation for Juicy Juice. It is my favorite juice.

Yes, I'd expect carbohydrates to be addicting: you do need them to live, after all.

Your blood sugar jumps up every time you eat regardless.  Proper fitness and diet planning overcomes that.

It would be much better to substitute a juice (that may or may not be loaded with glucose which may or may not be bad for you) than it would be to get sick of the bland taste of water and revert back to unhealthy habits such as sodas.

You also need to keep in mind portion.  Drinking 40 ounces of juice throughout the day with 8 ounces being a serving thus containing 132 calories dispensed in small portions to keep the blood sugar from going LOW would be much better than starving the body of sugar until it drops so low that the dieter is tempted to eat any and all carbs in sight. 



Yes.  I think everyone is addicted to sugar.  What one should be more concerned about avoiding are preservatives, additives, trans fats, saturated fats, mercury, and acids, oh yes and all those things like sucralose and aspartame(for people who aren't diabetic).

I whole heartedly encourage consuming orange juice, diluted gatorade, or some form of flavor(crystal light) to encourage adequate liquid intake because for most people, it's easier to chug something if it's sweet rather than bland.

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Post Merge: April 15, 2009, 01:18:38 AM

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Quote from: trans-health.comWant to feminize your physique? It sounds like a tabloid crash diet, but Lose Muscle! Gain Fat! Dieting for MTFs is the way to sensibly and healthily take maximum advantage of HRT and tested body building techniques to reduce your muscle mass and gain feminizing fat.

By Mistress Krista

When Raverdyke was transitioning, she took great pleasure in my observations that she was looking weaker and fatter. Probably few people would be happy to hear this normally, but Raverdyke just happened to start out as a 210 lb. male bodybuilder with a metric assload of muscle. At her height of just over 5'6", she cut an imposing figure even as a guy. She had problems finding jeans to fit her thighs (a testament to the power of squatting), and we used to joke about her back being used as a landing strip. Clearly, she was going to have a bit of a difficult time stuffing a 48" chest and 17" biceps into the average woman's clothing styles, or passing as any other woman than Kim Chizevsky.

Normally writing a diet and training plan for people is easy. They all want to gain muscle and lose fat in some combination. There is some standard, straightforward nutrition and workout information to achieve this end. But we had never, in our collective fitness experience, encountered anyone deliberately dieting to lose muscle and gain fat. Which isn't to say it didn't happen. Often it did, unintentionally. We had to look at the cases in which dieting resulted in a loss of muscle and eventual gain of fat, and pool our combined knowledge of nutrition, drugs, and training to produce a plan of action.

First off, we decided that gaining fat was pretty easy, so we wouldn't worry much about it. She had some fat but it was in the wrong places, mostly displaying the archetypical android (male, as opposed to gynoid or female) fat deposition pattern: belly and lower back. We figured we'd leave the fat deposition shift to the effects of estrogens, which would help deposit fat on hips, thighs, and breasts. Any gain that was needed would be achieved with a strict regimen of Doritos and Ho-Hos after the muscle mass loss was complete.

The bigger concern was getting rid of so much muscle. Poor Raverdyke, resolute as she was about transitioning, was nevertheless a bit bummed to see so much hard work going down the loo. She had put in a lot of effort in the gym and spent some time wailing about the loss of her beloved hamstrings. Again, the effects of estrogens would come in handy here. There was some small loss of muscle which could be attributed to the effects of hormones alone. However, despite anti-androgen medication, there seemed to be enough circulating androgens to retain most of the lean tissue. Something more would have to happen.

   1. Protein intake got cut way down. Protein intake while dieting is important in retaining lean body mass (LBM), aka muscle. When it diminishes, there is an increased likelihood of muscle catabolism (breaking-down).
   2. Carb intake went up and fat intake went down. At this point we had the classic late 80s/early 90s diet. Which, as people learned through experience, ate through LBM like wildfire, especially when combined with...
   3. Endurance cardio. Lots. Low-intensity endurance cardio is all about catabolism. Ever notice that marathon runners look like dried out string beans, while sprinters look like lean, healthy race horses? Not accidental. Part of it is a result of self-selection of body types, but a lot of it has to do with training. And low-intensity endurance cardio is the express bus to Catabolism City. Boring as hell, unfortunately, but Raverdyke gamely hopped on the stationary bike with a good book for 30-60 minutes, 4 times a week.
   4. We experimented with weight training, but eventually just discontinued it. She felt that it was making her retain too much muscle. I was torn on the issue because I knew that weight training helped a lot with weight loss, but I also knew that she had enough circulating androgens that hypertrophy remained a possibility, even with a workout protocol that was designed to avoid mass gain. I suggested training legs alone, because she wanted to retain much of the muscle on her legs, but that also fell by the wayside as pure size loss became the primary objective.

The process of leaning out is still ongoing for Raverdyke, since she had so much size to lose, but she's down about 45 lbs. from where she started. When she began transitioning, she had to wear XL men's shirts. Occasionally she could find something in a women's size 22 or so, but there were many tearful moments in mall changerooms (both of us developed intense sympathy for big women, who must go nuts trying to find something sexy in anything over a size 12). Clothing shopping can still be difficult, and she stays away from stores that cater to stick insects, but currently she can fit into a size 14-16 with relative ease. She still has a muscular physique, but now looks like an athletic female, not a freaky male bodybuilder. And when she sees cellulite on her bootay, she doesn't mind one bit.
MTF Super Muscle Munchin' Diet

   1. Your daily caloric intake should be about 10 multiplied by your bodyweight in pounds. So if you're 200 lbs., take in 2000 calories a day. One day a week, eat at maintenance levels, around 15 times your bodyweight in calories. This will help to keep weight loss process constant.
   2. Keep protein and fat intake relatively low, around 15-20% of total calories each, carbohydrate intake relatively high. Might be a time to consider a temporary vegan stint if you can hack it.
   3. Your training program should focus primarily on moderate intensity endurance type cardio. This augments your total caloric deficit, and creates an overall catabolic environment which is conducive to muscle loss. Begin with 3 sessions of 20-30 minutes a week, and work up to 5-6 days a week of 30-60 minutes of your chosen activity. Be aware that this kind of training carries a risk of chronic joint aggravation, so ease into it slowly, especially if it's an activity like running. Good activities include walking (especially inclined walking, on hilly terrain or an inclined treadmill) and cycling. Buy a secondhand stationary bike and park it in front of your telly.

By the way, I should mention that this is intended to be a temporary eating and training plan, to be used during transition. I don't recommend this level of cardio or this type of diet for the long term. If you intend to continue doing athletic activity, the protein and fat levels suggested are too low. They should be raised to around 30% of total calories after the desired mass loss is achieved.

Combine this diet and training with estrogen supplementation if possible, preferably injectable. Anti-androgens will also help. If you are able to do so, consider an orchidectomy, which will remove the primary source of endogeneous androgens from your body, and make it a whole lot easier for the estrogens to do their work. Any means of reducing androgens and increasing estrogens will speed the process of muscle catabolism, in varying degrees, but this diet and training should work on its own too. Once the muscle's gone, it won't come back if you're impeding androgens. When the muscle's gone, start eating normally again, perhaps even above maintenance calories (16-20 x bodyweight) if you wish to gain bodyfat (make sure to combine this with estrogen supplementation so that the bodyfat deposition exhibits the gynoid pattern as much as possible).

Wow! Thanks for all your reactions! I aprechiate it alot.   I'm 26 years old now; and my current weight is about 216 lbs.   I'm performing fitness now for 6 weeks, twice a week and gained about 5 lbs of muscles.  And that is when I dont train my shoulders and arms. I do some abs and primarily cardio / riding the bike or crosstrainer.

I am starting to run quite a bit now; which is getting better every day. I do all this in the gym since the gym is in the same building as my office and I rarely have time to start before 8pm. 

My food is probably of influence too. I dont eat much; but probably the wrong things.  I have a typical busy manger lifestyle i guess.  An example of a typical eating pattern would be : cornflakes in the morning; 2 sandwiches with cheese and some fruit salad in the afternoon. And usually a burger (  no fries) or a steak in the evening as dinner.

I do think I keep below 2200 calories. During the weekends I also walk quite a bit. I love playing golf; and try to walk 2x 18 holes every weekend.

I rarely eat at home; i always buy dinner on the way or eat in restaurants.  So I can influence what I order; but not what they exactly put in my dinner.

Further than that; I'm not on anti-androgyns or hormones right now. Although I do notice i'm longing for those again (sigh.. probably have to go to the local gender team again to get those; but that's another story).

I do like the options that are given, but I dont think i can fit much more in the life schedule so i'm stuck to the gym to excersise. I'll just try to stick to cardio i guess and leave the weights alone.   

If you're not in the process of transitioning, I don't see why you shouldn't use the leg press machines, leg curls and leg extension machines, and the abduction/adduction machines at least once weekly to exhaustion in addition to diet.  Putting on muscle on the lower body will help balance out the typical, "top heavy" male stereotype that people look for first at a glance to determine gender.  It will also increase your metabolism so you're burning calories around the clock instead of just when you're on a cycle or treadmill.

Get red meat out of your diet entirely.  Kick beef out of your life.  Save it for special occasions only, or once every two weeks.  If you want a burger, use soy burgers and go to allrecipe.com and learn how to cook them.  Don't say you haven't got time to cook either, I work 50 hours a week and take 5 classes a semester and cook a healthy diet and work out, so you can too.

Since you're NOT on hormones yet, focus on a high protein diet but use healthier sources of protein: soy, turkey, fish, chicken, sources low in cholesterol which has androgenic effects on the body.

Once you get on hormones, switch to a high carb low protein/fat diet.

Then again there's also a new diet craze of eating ONLY fats, poly and monounsatterated fats, thus teaching your body to utilize lipids as an active energy source instead of an energy storage device.  What that will do, supposedly, is burn fat off of you like a cigarette held next to a gas pump.  You can read more about that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
I'd reccomend buying the book though instead of just being another googlehead like all the other posters here, Dana Carpender has some EXCELLENT literature on it: http://www.holdthetoast.com/

Walking / hiking is great for the legs.  low impact.  Cycling is great, but if your an ex racer like me then you bulk up too much if you ride in too large a gear.  use small gears and spin.


Beni