Can't sleep, hormones will eat me

[aidenonymous]

I've been meaning to check up on my body fat percentage since I outgrew two binders from upper body muscle gains, and I finally got around to it today while playing hooky.  The Internet tells me pretty consistently that I'm at about 20% body fat right now (which is considered "athletic" for a female but only "acceptable" for a male).  In December, I estimated it was about 25% ("acceptable" for either sex), so I feel pretty accomplished; I'm about half way to my six-month goal in under four months.  I was feeling badly about losing weight while trying to gain weight, but even though I'm underweight for the second time since I turned 18, I have something to be proud of.  (EDIT: Upon further research, it looks like gaining 10lbs in six months was rather unrealistic to begin with.  Given my female hormonal situation, it should take me twice that long to gain that much weight, and that's if I pay a lot more attention to what and how much I eat.)

And it's shit like this that makes me conflicted about T!  If I can work hard and see results, and the process of doing so makes me feel good about my body, do I really need T?  When I look in the mirror, I don't see a woman/girl/female anymore, and, in spite of very real and fairly regular bouts of dysphoria, I'm satisfied with that.  I realize others don't see me the way I do, especially once I open my mouth, and I'm not sure if I'll handle that better when I'm on a college campus again, or if it will only worsen as I continue to age out of androgyny.  But I don't even know why I'm trying to find reasons to delay T in the first place when I know it can help me become more than just satisfied with myself.  The letter is right in front of me, but I can't bring myself to grab it!  And I'm afraid to discuss my uncertainty with my therapist in case he decides he can't give me the letter because I'm not 100% sure I want it right now.

Comments

[alifjiim.livejournal.com]

Well I guess I'll just have to comment excessively to make up for the lack of comments from everyone else :p

That all sounds like a good plan...I know you're trying to gather the courage to start T so I hope a negative comment doesn't set you back too much, but like I said, even a low dose may have more effect than you intended, so you might want to keep that in mind. However, I only have experience with injections, and I'm really not that informed about topical T so I can't give you much advice about how that all balances out.

[ilanthefirst.livejournal.com]

*nods* I really appreciate your honesty and don't want to let myself get so set on T that I ignore information I won't want to hear. I know even with a low dose, the rate of various changes isn't predictable. I'm trying to do more research and have just discovered the genderqueer community on YouTube, where there's lots of documentation on the experiences of other non-binary folks on low-dose T, so I'll have plenty of "homework" to do over the summer before submitting my letter to an endo.