I'll preface this post by saying that while I definitely want and value any input you may be able to give me, the post may be a bit jumbled at times as I am using it as an opportunity to organise my thoughts. I'll try my hardest to put in actual questions. OK so many of you will know that some time ago (early december) I had an appointment with the local mental health team which resulted in a referral to the gender clinic. Now they told me it might take some time, but I got impatient today and decided to see if I could find out something about wait times. It did say it would likely take about 6 months (which sucks) and on top of that they most likely won't give out hormones on the first visit, which just adds more months to the list. This bothers me, but isn't actually the problem I'm struggling with. I decided to read an FAQ on the website and it got talking about surgery. Specifically it talked about size and weight requirements for surgery. Now obviously I know that surgery is a LONG long way off for me, but what bothered me were these requirements. I made a thread not long ago about weight loss, so some of you will already know I'm in pretty bad shape. Or more accurately, according to the NHS I'm in incredibly bad shape. Which is odd, because actually I don't LOOK that big, or at the very least the people around me are a hell of a lot bigger. Now they gave a waist measurement of 37 inches, and a BMI of 30 (which for my height, puts you at 14 stone). Now I'm not 100% sure where they consider the waist measurement to actually be, so I just measured around my belly instead of underneath it. To reach that, I have to somehow cut off 10 inches. To reach a BMI of 30, I need to lose somewhere in the region of 7 stone. (Hey look at that, first time admitting just how grossly overweight I actually am to people...perhaps that's a step forward?). Anyway. I can lose weight, I lost some before and I'm sure I can do it again BUT that is a serious amount. I mean I literally haven't weighed that little in the last...probably 10 years (I have never, ever been small). So this on it's own causes me a great deal of worry, because while I know I can lose some, I seriously doubt my ability to lose so much. So far my only successes from weight loss have come from a change in diet, which I was able to do but since coming to terms with my gender and trying to work through that I find myself comfort eating a lot. I mean that's a failing on my part and essentially I am just making excuses at this point, but so far I've yet to find an alternative to it to make myself feel good. At the moment, eating chocolate and things is the emotional equivalent of a long hug for me. I'm not sure how to change that. In addition to this we have my problems with exercise. Specifically, I can't just do it for the sake of it. I've never been able to just go out and run for example. If I don't actually have somewhere I need to be I just lose the motivation because I don't like running. I enjoy swimming so I don't lose motivation to do that, but in addition to the cost, I've also never been swimming 'as a girl' before and if I'm quite honest, I'm too scared to go on my own. Which means I need my mum to come with me, and her schedule is too busy to make that happen very often. This leaves me with 2 opportunities for exercise. The first is my reenactment battle practice. Once a fortnight I go hit people with metal for 3-4 hours. But that doesn't do much on its own. My second is ninjutsu (a martial art), which I used to do, then stopped. The big problem with this is that it's in the evening. My work only comes in the evening of a weekday or sunday morning. I already can't work wednesday evening because of therapy, and I worry if I then say I can't do thursday either because of ninjutsu I'm missing out on a third of my weeks pay - which incidentally would probably prevent me going to ninjutsu anyway. To make matters worse, even if I DO manage to overcome ALL these things and lose a whole bunch of weight, I will have to buy an entire new wardrobe, which won't fit anyway because of my shoulders. Something I couldn't afford to do when I got rid of my 'male' clothes and I certainly can't afford to do now. What in the hell am I supposed to do!? :tears:
Well, I'd like to mention that they aren't just putting an arbitrary requirement out - a heavier person is at higher risk of complications with their airway during surgery. As for how to lose weight, you might want to bring that up when you have your appointment. They might be able to advise you on weight-loss strategies or refer you to a dietician.
I don't exactly know a whole lot since I only recently started taking my health, weight and look seriously, and I am learning a whole lot at an alarming rate (and forgetting even faster) but here is my 2c worth. I myself am not exactly badly overweight but when I look in the mirror and see my flabby belly and chubby cheeks I consider myself to be the human equivalent of a whale. I noticed the desire to fix and change that and then started looking for ways. I tried gym, shelled out a whole lot of cash monthly for it, hated it and gained instead of lost, when I wasn't waiting in rows to use the equipment. Then I tried TaeKwonDo, also paid my monthly fees which weren't a whole lot but after 5 months I still didn't feel like I was achieving anything really. All in all two years of giving out money and time was basically wasted (okay not exactly, I learned from it I guess). This year I started by again promising myself I will achieve the weight loss. The fact that most of my family members are big made me worry, I mean it seems like a family thing to end up with a round look, that's discouraging, and I am lazy in general. So until here my methods were wrong and my motivation was hardly powerful enough, not to mention I kept thinking it won't work. End last year was when I started questioning my interest in female clothes and after trying on some relative's stuff I just thought it looked horrible with the belly being mostly visible (I AM NOT PREGNANT!). Some thinking and research and advice from friends later I fixed my eating pattern and started swimming using the pool in the estate where I live and riding bike, dragging a friend along when I can but remembering I do it for myself when I go alone, these are activities I enjoy and cost me nothing, my motivation went from "I want to lose weight" to "I want to lose weight so I can look better in feminine clothes". It's not a huge change really, but where both years before bore no fruit, I lost 7 kilos (sorry my country works in metric units) in the span of two months. Now I have to live with my aunt and uncle for the next two weeks and here there is no pool nor bike and running isn't my thing so I started worrying about it all just coming back with interest. Here I discovered YouTube videos that you can copy in small private spaces. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) videos and things like hip hop abs and so on. Okay I cannot guarantee they work but I felt like I was working out with the HIIT so I guess it works and from what I heard if you eat correctly, any activity or exercise could work. These HIIT videos are about 20 minutes more or less and requires nothing. What I am trying to say is motivation and method is important. You can do it. Anyone can. Just power on through. You probably have faced harder obstacles with being trans in our current society. And stay positive. One step or unit of weight at a time. There is no rush anyway, as you said the surgery is a long way off. Don't doubt your ability to do anything either. You can do anything you put your mind to.
You do the battle reinactments? I did that too, until it kept clashing with my job. Also, lose as much weight as you're comfortable losing. While being overweight can complicate surgery, going by weight and BMI alone probably won't help. I seriously doubt that you need to lose 7 stone. Especially since you're pretty tall, right? And I know it gets said a lot, but diet makes a huge difference. Even watching calorie intake makes a HUGE difference. (I recommend a phone app called MyFitnessPal, if that's an option for you.) Also, cardio helps, can also help with a more feminine figure, I believe. There's no rush, since surgery is a long way off, right? Take things however you want to.
Did you gain in weight, or waist size? Because with exercise, an out-of-shape fat person will typically lose fat and gain muscle. Since muscle weighs more than fat, their weight could increase, but muscle is also more dense and so the person typically looks skinnier.
