hormone update

[rushthatspeaks]

At nearly a year on testosterone, you'd think I'd have gotten used to the idea that my response to T is as idiosyncratic as my response to every other medication, hormone, or, like, chemical on the planet, but I really do just keep not expecting it.

It's not weird side effects. It's weird second-order effects. And I mean WEIRD. As I mentioned, I am fairly sure going on T is going to cause me not to need top surgery because it somehow cures my physical top dysphoria. Which is just bonkers, but we are about eighty percent of the way there and I expect the rest to fill in. The 'this is me/this is not me' line changes every couple of months (I suspect it's actually a gradual creep over time and I notice it every couple of months). At the moment, I am in the very strange position of having my internalized physical self-image have breasts... which are smaller than the ones which actually exist. So that's a thing.

As far as the expected effects, I'm getting a fair few. My singing voice has dropped to baritone and seems to be headed further down, and while I can still speak in the tones I've been accustomed to my entire life, I can no longer get any significant volume, and people say I sound hoarse. I've been trying to remember that speaking in a lower range does the opposite of bother me, and that my upper range is the default mostly because it's what I expect to hear.

Sprouted a fair amount of hair, pretty much everywhere, except on my head, where I used to have a widow's peak and now don't. I am hoping my top-of-head hair does not recede much further, because that would be dysphoric in a different direction. I've heard folks have had good results with taking finasteride just for hair loss while also on T, but have also heard that you should pretty much let your actual masculinization process go as far as you'd like first, because the T will then serve mostly as maintenance. So waiting to see on that one. I was expecting more facial hair than I have as yet gotten, and was not expecting the chest and back hair.

I stopped menstruating after my first T shot, like turning a tap, and that has continued, and it's the best thing that has ever happened to my body. I appreciate it every single day.

Bottom growth is a thing, and a good thing. While it looks like I won't need top surgery, it's becoming clear that I may well need bottom surgery, but I want to see how far the hormonal effects wind up going first.

And here's the other really weird part, which requires a bit of explanation.

I gained a fair bit of weight in college and after, which did not surprise me, since I have food-related PTSD symptoms which make it very hard for me to eat slowly, save portions of things for later, or deny myself food that I want. Also, my parents were both heavy for most of my childhood, and my father continues to be to this day, as far as I know.

In her late thirties and early forties, my mother was about the weight I was before I started T. When she hit menopause, in her late forties, she lost half her body weight. She did absolutely nothing to cause this except for eating whatever she wanted. She'd been on all sorts of fad diets, crash diets, and New Age-y diets for my entire life, which had changed nothing; over the five years after menopause she lost one hundred and fifty pounds, putting her squarely into what is considered 'healthy' for her height. Eventually she hit a new maintenance weight, and has remained at it ever since. Her menopause symptoms were sufficiently annoying that she had stopped dieting while she wrangled them, so it was very clear that none of the diets she'd tried were responsible (and I am grateful for that, as she would have become evangelical about whichever she thought it was).

Being my mother, she literally assumed that this happened because she is a good person and deserved it. Not exaggerating. She went on and on and on about it.

At the time, I filed it under 'bodies are weird and hormones are weirder'.

The first few months of T nothing changed in my appetite, but after about the sixth month, I noticed that while I was still eating whatever I wanted and eating until full, the portions of leftovers were getting larger and larger. I used to feel full only if I'd had some kind of carb; I craved carbs on occasion, viciously and suddenly, where out of the blue I'd just really need, like, a bowl of pasta. I used to crave chocolate desperately, and eat huge amounts of it before and during menstruation, where it was one of the few things that really could mitigate the effects-- not just the pain, but the mood swings. These cravings stopped completely. I have always been a person who would prefer not to eat for most of the day and have one big meal; apparently now I am a grazer who would like small snacks at frequent intervals. I did nothing in particular to try to influence this, and just went with it.

Between my six- and nine-month-on-T endocrinologist appointments, I lost thirty pounds. I haven't had the year appointment yet, as it is in the beginning of July, but I am quite sure this continues at about the same rate.

It wasn't particularly a goal, and I have done nothing towards it, but I don't mind, and my knees certainly appreciate it. So I filed it under my body and hormones being weird in the same way as my mother's, and moved on...

except that it turns out that a lot of the overall masculinization appearance effects of T are just... not showing up on me. My subcutaneous fat deposit positions aren't shifting. I have way less facial hair than my endocrinologist expected. If you take a picture of me from pre-T and one from now, I do not look particularly different except for the widow's peak, and that is not generally how things work after a year of testosterone. I'm really lucky that my dysphoria is physical instead of social/appearance, because I would be very sad right now otherwise.

The key here is that I am dramatically hypersensitive to the effects of estrogen and progesterone, such that even the smallest shift in either of them produces outsized (and usually terrible) effects. I knew that going in, but as testosterone is a different hormone which uses different pathways, I didn't think the hypersensitivity would come into play.

... fat stores estrogen. It releases some of that store all the time, and all of that store when the fat burns off.

So the current metabolic pattern goes:

- T gives me a smaller appetite
- fat burns off
-estrogen is released into my system
- many masculinizing effects are therefore canceled out
- I keep taking T, so the fat keeps burning off, and I consistently have more estrogen in my system as well as more testosterone
- so I'm basically in a hormonal stalemate tipped towards burning off the fat

My endocrinologist figures I'll look about the way I look now until I hit my new maintenance weight, at which point, the T should suddenly catch up. If the pattern follows my mother's, that'll be in about a hundred pounds.

I have been heavy for most of my adult life and this is going to be strange. And 'no, I can't grow a beard, but I seem on track to lose half my body weight' is now filed next to removing the need for top surgery under weirdest T side effects I have ever heard about, anywhere.